Friends, we've seen it coming for a while now, but it's still hard to believe it's happening. Joe Biden is running for reelection! An 80-year-old president thinks: heck, why not serve until I'm 86? Amazing. Even more stunning, at least to me, is Biden's decision, announced at the same time, to keep Kamala Harris as his running mate. Seriously??? A weak, unpopular president, who many people doubt can serve out his first term, let alone his second, is going to retain the services of an even weaker, less popular Vice-President, who no one wants to see in the Oval Office? Basically, as far as I can tell, the Democrats are daring the American people to vote for anyone other than Biden-Harris. The message they're sending is: "Yeah, we're old and awful and out-of-touch, but who else you gonna get?" The third article below aptly summarizes Democratic/leftist thinking: they're confident that Biden can and will win, because the GOP alternative is simply unacceptable. That is to say, they (the Dems) would never dream of voting for Trump (or DeSantis), so they assume Mr. and Mrs. America must feel the same way. That seems like dangerous hubris to me. This is a country that elected Trump once, and almost elected him again. If the Dems think all they need to do is rest on their laurels and they're a lock for 2024, I say they're nuts! Time will tell...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-2024-presidential-re-election-campaign-87ef002b
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/joe-biden-polls-approval/2023/04/25/id/1117508/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/25/biden-2024-campaign-weak-republicans
In other news, the irrepressible Jack has brought this article to my attention, and I hereby bring it to yours. It's about a book on China and its economic policy. Now, I agree with this skeptical analysis, to a large extent, but it does rather beg the question: how did a band of corrupt and incompetent communist gangsters manage to incubate one of history's greatest economic miracles? Was it really all done despite the CCP leadership, instead of because of it? That's hard to believe...but it may be true.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/maos_legacy.html
Dr.Waddy from Jack: It may be that the very strong work ethic embedded in Chinese culture, which most of us have seen in Chinese in the U.S., was severely depressed by the insane strictures of communist dictates seeking to enforce "equity". Why work hard when it brings only denunciation and denies personal reward; it might even get you "reeducated". This may have been a major factor in Chinese unproductiveness. The relative relaxation of comprehensive command starting with Teng Hsiao Ping might have been all that Chinese enterprise needed to become, well, Chinese again. Their leaders can yap Mao and Marx all they want and they might yearn for the lofty , exalted and privileged sway enjoyed by "Dear Leaders" and "Great Helmsmen" but I don't think the "broad masses" could stand enduring it again.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: Chinese society has always been authoritarian. For most people the man who headed the extended family had extensive quasi legal authority even as far as levelling capital punishment. The aged were venerated and rendered much deference. Counterintuitive communist measures seeking to remake human nature and proven tradition could be maintained only by force.. The profoundly shocking excesses of youth driven to madness by Mao's urgings in the 60s "Cultural Revolution", often against senior citizens, were, I think, a primary cause of the violent repression in1989 by a leader determined never again to allow the callow young such irresponsible latitude. Though tragic, it may have have been seen as necessary in order to preserve an order consistent with Chinese norms vastly predating communist depravity.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Jack: I don't think we'll see a revival of Marxism-Leninism anytime soon...unless you count slave labor as the embodiment of that creed, in which case it's alive and well!
ReplyDeleteAnd I would tend to agree that there is a strong vein of what might be called authoritarianism running through Chinese culture, as well as most cultures, which we Americans struggle to understand. Ergo, anyone expecting Chinese democracy to blossom shouldn't hold their breath.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Oh, slave labor was the bee's knees for the Nazis too and this and many other factors confirm its close congruity with Marxism. Naziism resides in the very fringes of humanity but its leftist equal (or better)in limitless oppression of multitudes still thrives and brings moths to the flame.That it is still viable is one of humanity's infernal realities.
ReplyDeleteNo argument here, Jack. It's a bitter irony that the "humanist" ideologies promote, at the end of the day, staggering levels of dehumanization. As I suggested in this week's Newsmaker Show, our failure to strangle Marxism in its crib may yet be the undoing of civilization.
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