I have to confess that I am a registered Democrat, and I voted for BO (Barrack Obama) during the presidendial primaries in California in February. I changed my mind. I am flushing my ballot down the toilet come November.
As the campaign went on, and on, and on, I am not only suffering from "spin" overload, media manipulation, deceptive campaign soundbites, and worse, "pandering" "parsing" and "pay to play" politics which have come to characterize democracy "American style" at its most banal, "dumbed-down," and "manipulative" worst.
I don't see a real human being in BO, or Hilary anymore, but a package with a brand-name. It is all marketing hype. Spin. Soundbites. Pandering to get votes from a dumbed-down American electorate, too stupid to see what's happening within their own society, thanks to a dumbed-down, socially irresponsible, and sensationistic Free Press, more into Britney Spears not wearing panties, and George Clooney's and his "rat pack" antics. What a crock of b.s. or "mi, tian, gong," as we Chinese call it.
For Americans to try to hector the developing world in the non-WEST, I say "Shove it." Most of y'all folks ain't got it anymore. And Westerners are mired in a civilization in distress because of their spiritual vapidity.
America is in deep "doo-doo." And our country's leaders, instead of confronting the nation's own domestic big mess, are "talking the nonsense talk," but not "walking the walk," and "doing the do." Go beyond the rhetoric of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. statements:
"The government gives them [African Americans] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strikes law and then wants us to sing 'God bless America,' No, no, no, not 'God bless America,' God damn America. That's in the Bible, you're killing innocent people. God damn America for treating us citizens as less than human."
And, after 9/11:
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye...America's chickens are coming home to roost."
What came out of the Rev. Wright Jr.'s mouth have to be viewed in context, coming from a Black man pained and tormented by the racial injustice and hubris he saw within America. Look beyond the words, but the metaphor behind how many Black Americans see racial justice within American today. And today, much of the same pain and torment have similarly been spewed by China's youth in the West "dissing" of their own society. Folks, look beyond the rhetoric. Feel the pain, as the Clintons once felt the pain of the ordinary working stiffs of America --- stressed by a collaspsing economy, can't pay their bills, losing their house to foreclosures.
In the meantime, the rich keeps getting richer; and the politicians within Congress keeps demagoguing with nonsense issues about human rights in China, "Save Darfur," "Save Burma."
Save America first. Save your own asses first. I say along the same passion for hyperpole of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. God bless Black America and the Black American churches. And Obama be damned for playing "cutesy"with y'all white folks who can't stand Black rhetoric in the Church pew. That's real, man. That's the truth and nuthing but the Goddamn truth.
Democracy American style is no longer about that "vision" thing where leaders talk straight and level with the electorate -- with the good and the bad, and where the country is headed and how the candidates and their parties can bring forth the flock to the "promised land."
That said, I am becoming more skeptical and close to becoming a cynic that America's precipitous decline as a civil society or even a coherent political community is even sustainable anymore.
Instead of a vibrant democracy, what we are seeing is a "dumbed down" democracy, with a "dumbed down" citizenry, more into imagery, "soundbites," than into probative debate about where the society, as a whole, is headed.
This decline has been ongoing since America's quagmire in Vietnam. I know, I was part of that "boomer generation." And since then, after three wars in that region, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now into Iraq, and soon to be Iran, the collaspe of America is happening right before my own eyes, in Spatium Trientis.
History has revealed to us that empires rise and fall for reasons which may not be readily clear by those mired in the middle of that experience, because of myopia. Look at the Brits, the Dutch, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and how diminished they are today, debtors to their former colonies in the Arab and Asia-Pacific emerging countries and economies.
The last time I visited China, I picked up a copy of one of the best documentary series scripted and produced by some of China's most talented academics precisely on this subject of the rise and fall of empires. And I learned something looking at America from the outside.
But more and more, I am having severe doubts that either BO, or Hilary, or any of the Democratic Party leaders, least of all Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi, can steer America and its citizens away from the shoals of our seriously declining society. Madame Speaker, is the "Gucci" activist on human rights in the West that I have come to despise. "Feed those poor yellow and brown people some "bird seeds" Dear." And ditto with the Richard Geres, George Clooneys, and Mia Farrows, all "Gucci" activists.
The parochialism, insularity, and downright ignorance of Americans and their leaders about the Non-Western world is downright disgusting. And at this time, at this juncture, what Americans have done in terms of insulting the Chinese people over their hosting of the Beijing Games on 08/08/08 is not only vulgar, boorish, but downright stupid.
Globalization is upon us; while other developing countries, including China, India, Vietnam, and other non-Western societies are embracing it, Americans as a whole seems to be living in fear, and worse, downright mortified by a sense of paranoia that as the shifts sent shock waves and reverberations through the Western Euro-world and especially America, Americans are withdrawing, hurtful, rude, xenophobic, and worse, becoming rabid racists against any others who don't subscribe to their "Europeanized" view of what globalization is all about, or about their "Europeanised" views about human rights, sexual rights, or animal rights. Good grief. Animal rights trumps human rights. Don't feed my dog poisonous food, while the rest of the third world can't feed their babies.
From the demagoguery of the highest ranking Democratic Party official, Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi, hectoring China about human rights issues, to Hilary and BO screaming "Bloody Coca Cola" pandering to America's dumbed-down special interest groups, clamoring for President George W. Bush to boycott the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing on 08/08/08, the China bashing from Democratic leaders from the nation's highest echelons, have been relentless and downright stupid and opportunistic.
It is demogoguery at its worse, rather than confronting America's fundamental problems of erosion of competitiveness, inability to cope with the needed "brain power" and "brawn power" that other societies have been able to harness and move forward, including CHINDIA, i.e. China and India, America and Americans aren't seizing the moment to reform from within and attempt to overhaul its sick social-political culture of indolence, insolence, and vulgarity.
Get real, folks. English ain't even my first language, and I am more eloquent than some of your native-born "real Americans," who can't communicate nor articulate beyond curse words, like the "F" and "S" words.
Look no further than within your own homes -- look at the increaing banality, vulgarity, and hedonistic perversity of America's youths, in schools that have turned into zoos, streets which have turned into urban jungles of random violence, drug dealings, and rip-off vandal world.
In the campuses, on one weekend alone, over 5,000 bongheads, hooked on marijuana last weekend, congregated at the University of California, Santa Cruz campus, to do a dope-out, commemorating 4-20, with abandon. And this dope parties extended all the way across America's educational institutions of higher learning, including University of Colorado.
Higher learning ? Yes, "Getting High" and no learning !
Global warming ? Or Global Warning ? with an "N" not an "M"?
What has America's youth come to ? And our Baby-boomer parents think it is cool ? And chic ? For their kids to be hooked on dope ? And what else other drugs that's out there ? Have our baby boomer parents abdicated on their parental responsibility? And have their children likewise abdicated ? Give 'em their beemies and credit cards to splurge further.
Today, more American kids are born out of wedlock, than in wedlock. It has become a chic lifetyle statement to be "out" of marriage, than to be "in." And think about all those "little monsters" who will grow up to be "big monsters." No wonder America's streets are no longer safe nowadays. Talk about human rights.
Think about Opium, and what China went through a hundred fifty years ago ! Deja Vu. Seen it, done it, and didn't like it -- the Chinese people are saying to us Americans.
And here we are, it has become quite Hollywood to celebrate dope, booze, and vapidness in American values in American movies. Crack is cool. Bong is cool. And cocaine is super cool.
Thank goodness, America.
It is not just Iraq. Nor is it about the economy, Stupid. It is fundamentally the unraveling of civil society, and the breakdown of the "social compact" by what used to be a country known for "e pluribus unum." I don't see the "unum" anymore. And to compound the problem, the cultural blinders and idiocy of Americans in general about the outside world, as it is, is just astoundingly stupid, if not full of hubris and arrogance.
As I write this, gasoline in California has hit the US$ 4 gallon mark; of course most Europeans would say, "that's chump change" compared to European prices for gasoline. Wall Street has imploded and America's financial system is under stress by looting, plundering, and fiscal mismanagemnt caused primarily by greed, mismanagement, and collusion between those in the power circles who dominate the Washington beltway and Wall Street.
Johnny "Six Pack" and Suzie "Cup Cake" are financially stressed, losing their homes and cars, and soon can't afford their beer and pizza. Pretty soon, they can't even afford to go to the ball games, and have to be reconciled to watching it on the boob tube. And becoming more boobsy.
The deindustrialization and hollowing out of America's core economy are massively causing severe dislocations, plant closures, and unemployment in America's heartlands. And America's blue collar workers are no longer able to compete. Look at Detroit, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio.
The brown and yellow people are working harder, longer hours, at lower pay, and eating the white folks and black folks' lunches within America and offshore. Eat your lunches !
In our urban centers, the schools are broken; the streets are full of bums, crackpots, crackheads, and aggressive panhandlers. Drive-bys are seeing more casualties and fatalities every night which are in shocking numbers exceeding those war combattants in Iraq.
In fact, U.S. military medics are now undergoing field training on trauma wounds by first-hand experience in cities like Philadelphia, Oakland, where drive-by gang shoot-outs occur more frequently every single evening in America's urban inner cities.
Just think Oakland, California = Violence, Homicide, Drive-Bys.
And our street bums, crackpots, and crack addicts ? Wallowing in America' favorite city, our great liberal city of San Francisco ?
As a American of ethnic Chinese descent living here, I often ask, "Where are their family members ? Where are their parents ? their sons and daughters? Their brothers and sisters? Their uncles and aunts ? Their cousins ? Their nephews and nephews ?
What happened ? Where's family values and the supportive network that most Asian societies and the non-European world, and the Islamic world so cherish and nurture ?
But consider the America I am now experiencing from my vantage point. It is not a pretty picture.
And here, we want to pick a fight with China and the Chinese.
Gimme me a break. But for the yellow and brown people around the world, and in the United States in the form of yellow and brown "brain" and "brawn" power, America starves.
Get real. And for Democrats. Stop your China Bashing and Chinaman Lynching.
China and the Chinese People is not your enemy.
You are your own worse enemy. Clean up your own mess in your own backyard.
Clean up after Katrina in New Orleans. Take care of your inner city poor, many of whom are your former slaves, who are now clamoring for racial justice.
Global warming ? More like Global Warning to me.
Talk is cheap. But rice ain't cheap no more to many of us in the non-Western world.
Human rights ? Yes. But at this time, at this juncture, "Human rice' is more important.
Give us rice. Give us rice. And stop driving those humonguous SUVs.
America is less than 5% of the world's population but consumes 60% of the world's resources.
America has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but almost a quarter of its prisoners.
What human rights ? Get real !
As Pogo the cartoon character said, "I have seen the enemy and he is "us."
