How The U.S. Must Look From China

I really don’t know much about China except what I hear on mainstream news. Which is to say I have heard nothing about China from any credible source. But even knowing nothing about them, I can imagine what the United States looks like to them. I imagine it looks not too different than how it looks to me or to anybody who is living outside the U.S. media bubble. Excepting Europe, of course, which doesn’t even have the courage to question who blew up the Russian/German pipeline.

I imagine China watching the news coming out of the United States and being alarmed. After five years of absolute obsession and deranged speculation regarding Russian interference in what the U.S. likes to quaintly refer to as its “democracy,” the United States has now seamlessly pivoted to worrying about a Chinese weather balloon. Not content to down that with the most sophisticated weaponry known on Earth, they have sought and destroyed other “UFOs”, one of them being perhaps a balloon launched by the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. This hobbyist balloon, costing somewhere within the range of $12 to $180, was confronted by a plane that costs $80,000 an hour to operate and was brought down by a pair of sidewinder missiles, costing $400,000 each. Apparently, two were required, because the first one missed. I’m not sure where it ended up.

Meanwhile, the Chinese surely must have seen the train disaster that occurred recently in Ohio and the resulting toxic cloud that hovered above the land like an ill omen of things to come. At least I assume they would recognize the laughably outdated vehicle that derailed and then was blown up (by choice) as a train, thought it bears little resemblance to the modern marvels China has built and sent throughout the world in the last decade. Biden, concerned leader of our country that he is, heard the news and promptly went to visit…Ukraine. I assume someone high in his administration is on the scene, though it’s hard to know since they are arresting journalists unwilling to tell the story according to the official narrative. Norfolk Southern, the company responsible for the accident, promptly responded to the environmental disaster by offering every citizen of East Palestine 5 bucks each.

And then, the typical citizen of China must wonder about the sort of goods they make in China to ship to the United States. Which, of course, is virtually everything. China sends ships of unimaginable size to the United States, packed full of merchandise. The United States, in return, fills the ships full of plastic waste to send back to China. Or rather, they used to. The Chinese no longer wish to receive what the U.S. has to give. Sometimes, the U.S. sends chickens to China to have them processed before they are shipped back to the U.S. Talk about lazy.

A country ought to have enough pride to ensure that it produces certain items themselves. I’m thinking sex toys and flags, mostly. I can imagine what some worker in a factory in China who’s packaging box after box of strap-ons thinks about Americans. Similarly, I wonder what they think of a people who wear T-shirts that loudly proclaim Made In America on the front while sporting a Made In China label on the inside. But honestly, the amount of products that are made in China to be sold in the U.S. is astounding. It probably makes them wonder what the typical American spends his or her time doing. Besides waving flags and strapping on, that is.

Bombs. That’s it. That’s what the U.S. is producing The U.S. is the single largest manufacturer of them, as well as the biggest customer, although Russia has been stepping it up quite a bit of late. Even fighting a existential war, however, Russian military spending pales in comparison to that of the U.S.

The United States is quite proud of saying they are the world’s greatest protector and promoter of democracy while occupying China’s neighbor for nearly eight decades after nuking them. This seeming contradiction does not bother Americans. They don’t even seem to be aware of it, though I’m guessing China is.

And then there are the U.S. politicians. You don’t need to speak English to get a good read on Donald Trump. My mother, when she was old and hard of hearing, could not make out the words Trump used as he was running for president, but could pick up on tone. “Who is this man?” she would ask. I would have to tell her that he was running to be the President of the United States. Fortunately, she passed away before I had to tell her that he won.

Not that Trump stands out as exceptional anymore. Our current President is sometimes seen wandering aimlessly, trying to shake hands with a wall. They’ve tried to keep a tight reign on him but the thousand yard stare is sometimes undeniable.

I can only hope that our Vice-President never succumbs to senility. It would lay waste to an otherwise remarkable vapidity. Although looking at Nancy Pelosi, I can kind of see how the combination would look.

Imagine being a Chinese diplomat or politician who took years of their life to learn to speak English well, only to be forced to talk to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Dan Crenshaw, or Mitch The Human Turtle McConnell. Imagine such representatives of the U.S. government visiting Taiwan and acting as if they did not know that their own government proclaimed Taiwan was a part of China. If these people look stupid to us, just imagine how stupid they look to the Chinese when speaking about issues relating to Asia. And God, just imagine having to conduct any kind of diplomacy with the likes of Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Antony Blinken, or Lloyd Austin.

I can imagine, without knowing much of anything about the Chinese people or their government, how the Chinese must view us. I expect they’re too frightened to do anything to make us angry — us having nukes and all — but at the same time, I don’t think they’d mind too much if the U.S. was swallowed whole by a great tidal wave. After all, it’d just mean more flags and strap-ons for themselves. And a whole lot less plastic waste and chicken entrails.