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I'm reflecting on the overlap between @caylanford's essay in @ArcDigi & @LeeSmithDC's essay in @tabletmag. Each offers a unique lens on the horrors wrought by progressives' infatuation w/ China.
Here are some takeaways: https://arcdigital.media/why-did-liberal-elites-ignore-a-21st-century-genocide-17ab88bc5adb?source=friends_link&sk=e318c53a935e9e27cf530a5a1be3c887
Here are some takeaways: https://arcdigital.media/why-did-liberal-elites-ignore-a-21st-century-genocide-17ab88bc5adb?source=friends_link&sk=e318c53a935e9e27cf530a5a1be3c887
Smith focuses on how progressive elites & their institutions have enriched themselves on CCP money while selling out their countrymen. Most salient is his claim that, for many US elites, the CCP exists to protect their power & privilege. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-thirty-tyrants
American oligarchy is underwritten by the CCP autocracy they admire & emulate. China's continued rise to global dominance ensures our elites will maintain power domestically. As Smith notes, we've even subsidized defense of their Belt & Road Initiative via War in Afghanistan.
Whereas Smith focuses on the harm done to America's working-class & democracy, Ford focuses on the hypocrisy of elites who care only for victims they deem "useful" to their political projects. https://arcdigital.media/why-did-liberal-elites-ignore-a-21st-century-genocide-17ab88bc5adb?source=friends_link&sk=e318c53a935e9e27cf530a5a1be3c887
Progressive elites' disinterest in the CCP's genocide of Falun Gong is an especially ugly instance of a larger pattern that also includes disinterest in the genocide of Christians native to the Middle East.
As René Girard wrote: "The victims most interesting to us are always those who allow us to condemn our neighbors."
(It requires vigilance not to default to this mindset, & I often struggle w/ this myself.)
(It requires vigilance not to default to this mindset, & I often struggle w/ this myself.)
For progressive elites, the "wrong" sort of victims tend to be "regressive" religious minorities abroad who resemble their religious conservative enemies at home. Too much sympathy, let alone substantive policy, might improve the relative standing of their domestic rivals.
The worldviews of progressive elites & the CCP share in common an Enlightenment-derived metaphysical anthropology that rejects teleological limits on human nature.
Each rejects assertions of natural limits by divergent means, of course. But the difference is one of severity, not substance. Each sees "the human" as raw material to be molded by the will. Whether that will is collective or individual, this is still nihilism.
My major takeaway from Smith's & Ford's essays:
The romance of America's progressive elites w/ the CCP is a match made in neoliberal Hell.
The romance of America's progressive elites w/ the CCP is a match made in neoliberal Hell.
