On Nov. 15, CNN showed yet another debate of presidential candidates. This time seven Democrats were on the stage, answering questions from the audience.
My impression: The United States is one of the world’s small parochial countries. It is immersed in its own culture. But what about news regarding the outside world? The subject of the debate about the outside world was confined to “general daily news” — the war in Iraq (all the participants of the debate being against the war as is now fashionable) or current “general daily news” — Pakistan and the “toys from China.”
The population of the dictatorship of China is 1.3 billion, more than four times bigger than the population of the United States and 150 times bigger than Iraq’s Sunni population against whom the United States has been fighting since 2003. But the growth of post-nuclear military power of China has been of no interest in the CNN debates of presidential candidates in 2007, be they Democrats or Republicans (in the previous debates).
So, what was of interest on Nov. 15 concerning China?
The “general daily news”: the toys imported from China posing a threat American children.
Well, to begin with, many of these imports have been produced by $2-a-day slavery, including child labor and sweatshops. No wonder some of the imported toys are defective. But owing to its slavery, the dictatorship of China makes trillions of dollars on U.S. consumers, in cooperation with American and Chinese businessmen.
All of the dictatorship’s profit, or any arbitrary part of it, goes into the development of post-nuclear super weapons, able to annihilate the United States or make it surrender unconditionally. But this is beyond the “daily general news.” Western culture has been developing into a “police pad.” To be successful, even a work of serious literature or high art must contain at least one murder or a fatal accident.
China’s development of post-nuclear weapons able to annihilate the entire population of the United States is not entertaining. But here are fatal accidents: Some children played with lead-paint toys imported from China. General daily news! Presidential candidates and voters are interested!
On Nov. 15, I received an e-mail from a reader, Lars Gilbertson, that said in part: “It seems to have become “uncool” in America to even discuss the potential threat of China and superweapons. The new standard is for everyone to be so ‘laid back’ and politically correct and nonjudgmental.”
Gilbertson was reacting to my Nov. 15 column about Hillary Clinton’s article in the November/December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. But what he said applies to all seven Democratic presidential candidates participating in the Nov 15 debate. A goal of the debates was to see whether Obama had pushed off Hillary as the leader of the race. Actually, he was no worse (if no better) than the six other presidential candidates, discussing the “general daily news” of the “mass communication media.”
Does it matter which one of them will be elected as president?
While George W. Bush was twice elected as president, last summer 45 percent of Americans favored impeachment hearings for him. Bill Clinton, who was also elected twice as president was not indicted after impeachment hearings only because the Democrats in the Senate did not vote for his indictment for fear that it would harm the Democratic Party as a whole. How can anyone believe that Hillary Clinton is superior mentally to her “nearly impeached” husband or to George W. Bush for whom 45 percent Americans favored impeachment hearings?
Until the 20th century, the West had a technological and hence military superiority over countries like China (recall the two Opium Wars!). In the 20th century, Hitler’s Germany would have defeated the free West if Hitler had not been a geostrategic idiot, and had he continued his development of nuclear weapons under his mask of peace, instead of launching conventional wars against Poland, France, Britain, the United States, and his ally — Stalin’s Russia. These botched campaigns ultimately led to his suicide in Berlin to avoid being captured by Soviet troops.
Today, the West faces a non-Western enemy, China, whose dictatorship is by no means as geostrategically inane as Hitler’s was, and who cooperates militarily with Russia, which Hitler attacked. On the other hand, as previously stated, the current U.S. commander-in-chief has been twice elected as president, but last summer 45 percent of Americans favored impeachment hearings for him.
Having seen and heard the presidential candidates shown by CNN in 2007, we have to ask, Does the presidential election procedure that was a matter of pride in the United States in the 19th and 20th century fit the 21st century? Genius (in today’s geostrategy, for example) is a rare gift, not the general ability like Hillary’s ability to speak her mother tongue. How can a voter discern a geostrategist of genius if this voter does not know the ABCs of today’s geostrategy and is no more intelligent than Hillary?
So far, there has been one way out of this dilemma: Let both presidential candidates and voters keep mum about subjects like the annihilation of the West by the dictatorship of China. This is pleasant for both voters and presidential candidates who are thus convinced that they are omniscient even if they are stupid and/or ignorant. In the debates, Hillary referred to her head as Einstein might have referred to his. The method is not new. An early 19th century Russian novel related how a flippant chatterbox knew “how to keep silent with the air of a sage on an important issue.”
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush knew how to keep silent about China for almost 16 years with the air of sages. And the voters also kept silent on the subject for those 16 years and will keep silent until the time comes to be annihilated by the Chinese post-nuclear super weapons.
As for problems like poisonous or otherwise defective toys imported from China, such problems will no doubt be resolved, since the dictatorship of China needs peace to have access to Western military know-how as well as Western money to become omnipotent vis-à-vis the free West. For liberty is the main enemy of the dictatorship of China, and either it establishes its world domination or it will lose all in its native country as well, as Tiananmen demonstrated in 1989 and the fall of the Soviet dictatorship did in 1991.
* * *
You can e-mal me at navlev@cloud9.net.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.