On a splendid May summer day, from my "Third space," Spatium Trientis, I experienced first-hand California -"Nancy Pelosi" country and her constituency of American old labor, Democrat apparatchicks, the ultra-liberal whites, and new "Green" neo-fascist China Bashers, and Darfurites, many of whom are historical-amnesic Jews suffused with "Tikkun Olam," basically too naive and too Euro-narrow-minded to understand the forces at play in the growing techtonic shifts in the non-Western world. These groups are livid about China and India's rise and resurgence. And they are blindly acting out.
California, America's "once used to be most "innovative" and cutting edge" state, is in distress. And the signs are not healthy. While 5% of America's high-tech cutting edge innovators are soaring in the new world of globalization, where innovations are being incubated in Silicon Valley, then sourced to CHINDIA for production, the remaining 95% of America is under dire straits, and suffering from the deindustrialization of America and the hollowing of its core manufacturing.
Just look at the wasteland in America's heartland, in Michigan's auto industries, and in its core old-tech manufacturing base. Those jobs are gone, and they will never come back to America ever again. Johnny and Jane can't come to grips that they can no longer compete with Ah Wang, Lao Lee, and Arvind, Suddhir, and Prakash from CHINDIA, i.e. China and India. .
Faced with a looming state budget of shortfall of US$ 20 billion, and I say this with a big capital "B" not "M," our governator, Mr. Arnaud........ (Schwarzenegger), the muscleman on steroids, prone to "grandstanding" but can't govern and tell Californians the honest truths about its deteriorating erosion of competitiveness, is in denial. Let's face it, Hollywood can't cut it anymore. It is stuck in drugs, vapidness, and lack of creativity. Not only is it making awfully bad movies; it can't stand the new media out there in Asia-Pacific. And Steven Spielberg can't accept that he is creatively "over the hill."
San Francisco, a small liberal city of less than 800,000 inhabitants, is faced with a looming budget deficit of US$ 300 million, this coming fiscal year. And its streets are full of potholes, and mass transit crumbling. On any given evening, almost 5,000 to 8,000 homeless bums are encamped in the dark, mean streets of San Francisco, in doorways, and in San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Park. Crack addiction goes unabated. And the local municipal government is stuck if not going on reverse, while its "telegenic" mayor, the Great White Dope, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, governs by sticking his fingers out the windows and see where the wind blows. It is classic new style of governance, American style, "Government by Public Relations." All form, no substance.
One small city across the San Francisco Bay, 20 minutes from San Francisco, Vallejo, is at the precipice of municipal bankruptcy, and most Californian "Johnnies" and "Suzies" don't have a clue what this municipal financial collaspe bodes for them and their banal existence; click on the story:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/05/03/MNIJ10FV5N.DTL
Folks, this is the heart of Madame Speaker NANCY PELOSI country, the 3rd most powerful politician of the U.S.A., leader of the U.S. Congress, and her own backyard, California. And look where her focus is these days, instead of taking care of business at her own messy backyard.!
Home foreclosures have skyrockted; jobs lost; food costs keep rising; and there is no end in sight as Wall Street spirals out of control with mismanagement, looting, and plundering, with little government oversight. In the meantime, American pols, from both the Democratic and Republican aisles, govern with a sick political culture of "pay to play" and the politics of pandering, and packaging. All media hype and spin; little by way of honesty and leveling with the American public, and truthfully telling Americans that their country is collaspsing from within, weighed down by the Iraq War, a moral and economic collaspe, with a convergence of the double-whammy of global competition from the outside, and the crumbling from within of America's civic and civil culture.
No doubt about it ...... the re-emergence of CHINDIA, i.e. China and India, has caused tremendous angst in the WEST; not least of which is the increasing stridency against the impact of deindustrialization and hollowing out of America and Western core manufacturing base.
And our "Johnny Six Packs" and "Suzie Cup Cakes" as well as our "Johnny Hipsters" and "Soccer Jane Moms" can't take it anymore !
Pick up the latest issue of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, and read up on the apologist of the WEST in "Honorary white," i.e. Fareed Zakaria's spin on why "America will survive the rest;" Mr. Zakaria has lived in the U.S. a little too long, and just can't see it.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
Compare Mr. Zakaria's commentary and read up on our wise man from Singapore, Kisore Mahbubani, and his new book, on the "New Asian Hemisphere - Asia Rising."
http://www.mahbubani.net/
The juxtaposition can not be more divergent. And what is astonishing is that both intellectuals have roots from Asia-Pacific. One is a "Euro-West" apologist; the other is a "Asian" Eastern booster who calls "CHINDIA's"(China and India) re-emergence at the world stage a major watershed in human civilizational history.
Let me convey to you a few vignettes on my take on what is happening, and why in the WEST, there is not just a convergence of forces which have been unleashed against CHINDIA, i.e. China and India, and the re-emergence of these two major societies and civilizations after a hiatus of almost two centuries.
And many White folks from Europe and the West just can't stand it anymore !
"Made in CHINA," and "outsourced to INDIA" have become the pejoratives of our times in the Western world.
And worse, the "yellowing" and "browning" of America and the European world, in the influx of migrant workers, more eager, more motivated, more willing to do the "brawn power" and "brain power" requisite in a modernizing world of globalization, have combined with the stridency against CHINDIA, to create the "perfect storm" in the WEST against anything non-WEST.
If not the BEIJING OLYMPICS, TIBET, DARFUR, GLOBAL WARMING and ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILIY, then there will be other "prextextual issues" which will be exploited by the WEST to sustain their "beef" against not just the "yellowing" and "browning" of the World's pivotal endeavors, but also the "yellowing" and browning" within Western societies, distressed and aggrieved in what many Whites and Euros perceive to be the "take-over" of America and the WEST, and their hegemony since the epoch and era of Western imperialism and colonialism in the non-WESTERN world.
These days, the game has shifted; no longer can the WEST dictate upon the non-WEST its Europeanized "rules" about governance, growth, and direction of modernization.
The fault lines are cultural, social, economic, and premised on a fundamental issue:
"Whether "Modernization" must be equated as "Westernization."
And " Whether Liberal Democracy, as the WEST interprets it, is the appropriate model for the Non-WESTERN world to modernize and leapfrog the WEST, in this new challenge of globalization."
Getting back to my perch from California, and my vignettes about why Americans can't stand the "yellowing" and "browning" of not just the world, but also of California :
This weekend, in my usual Saturday morning jaunt at my Farmer's Market, to buy fresh produce and fruits from farmers who sell their own home-grown produce and fruits, as they drive into San Francisco's Alemany Blvd. Saturday market, let me tell you what I found in comparative pricing:
From "Manang" Anita, a Filipina immigrant farmer from Fresno, I bought 10 lbs. of fresh navel California oranges, at a price of $ 0.25 a pound, or US$ 2.50 for a 10-lb sack of fresh California navel oranges.
Next to "Manang" Anita, a White farmer from the Central Valley, is also vending his fresh oranges, same California navel oranges, priced at US$ 1.00 a pound; or US$ 10,00 for the same 10-lb scak of fresh California navel oranges.
And all this White farmer did was stamped his sign, with the word, "Organic." Gimme a break. How can Johnny and Jane not lose out given "American pricing" versus "Yellow pricing" and "Brown pricing" not just on imported goods, but goods produced from within America.
And I have not even talked about the US$ 0.99 cent stores which are proliferating all throughout America's cities, with goods and products imported by these stores, all "MADE in CHINA." What Sam Walton used to promote in his WALMART stores, with the sign, "Proudly Made in America," has been replaced with "MADE in CHINA," without the adverb, "proudly." And WALMART is America's biggest employer.
I went to Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi's pet project - San Francisco Presidio - the former U.S. military base of the 6th Army (where General Douglas McArthur started his military career prior to World War II). The Presidio had been transfored into a public park for San Franciscans focused on "Green" issues of the new mantra du jour, "environmental sustainability." Inside Pelosi's "pet project" of Green environmental sustainability, i.e. the Presido, I visited a "Green" store, the "Sports Basement" a retail merchandiser of sporting goods, clothing, garments, shoes, hiking and camping paraphernalia, that "White Green" San Franciscan urban yuppies and techies are into these days -- "Green" sells !
Guess what? Visit their online store and judge for yourself, by clicking on below:
http://www.sportsbasement.com/
Their goods, from sporting garments, hiking to jogging, atheletic shoes, whether branded North Face, Columbia, Burton, etc. etc. are all invariably stamped either:
"Made in CHINA;" "Made in VIETNAM; " "Made in INDONESIA;" almost nothing "Made in America."
Another vignette, Consider that there is a new "electric" car being hyped up by Americans to compete against gasoline automobiles; the mantra is "Go Green," use less oil.
Well, click on and be shocked at the sticker price of the new "Green" toy, a Tesla, proudly made in America, a shocking US price of $ 105,000, for this new car:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/latestheadlines/ci_9141684?nclick_check=1
And compare with a "China-made" automobile, the Cherry, soon to be marketed in the U.S. for around US$ 8,000 sticker price.
You be the judge ! Who wins in the final analysis ?
No wonder there is a lot of angst in the WEST these days.
CHINDIA rises.
After IRAN, the # 1 enemy, and Thug # 1. Yes, Enemy # 1.
And Thug # 2 is now CHINDIA., Enemy # 2.
CHINA is now being targeted; INDIA is next.
Mark my words. It is the inconvenient truth ! And our Greens are at the front of the bashing bandwagon. Greens are green with envy against CHINDIA.
And the German Greens are extremely envious in Germany, and its Chancellor Angela Merklel is lashing out against China in strident terms; just as the Greens are envious in North America (just look at San Francisco), and in Australasia.
Finally, consider this: in a 2009 conducted by Pew Research, 88% of Chinese said they believe their country is headed in the “right track” vs. 3% who saidit is headed on the “wrong track.” Among Americans surveyed, 34% said “right track” and 59% said “wrong track.”
Guess who will ultimately prevail ? And which society is headed in the right direction ?
