‘Colluding’ with unsavory friends
Russia’s no picture of perfection, as Democrats are at great pains to point out these days. But what nation is?
Surely not the unsavory ones we eagerly “collude” with on a routine basis. China and Saudi Arabia, to name two.
Virtually all of our blue-chip corporations do business with China. And China’s still run by a coterie of Commies who brook no dissent or other nonsense, including opposition political parties or churches.
Yet from right to left, from News Corp. (Rupert Murdock) to Microsoft (Bill Gates), the big capitalists of the West are not only colluding with the Chinese powers that be. You might go so far as to say they’re almost canoodling with them.
And the Chinese powers that be are indeed powerful. You may infer this from the fact that the one-party Chinese government possesses such ominously named agencies as the “Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.”
America reassures itself that China’s okay because it now has its own business tycoons, its own Jeff Bezoses and Mark Zuckerbergs. But their winning lottery numbers were drawn by the regime and may be withdrawn by the regime. For them it’s the yacht today, maybe the Gulag tomorrow.
The Chinese government may be a repressive force in its own land, but it’s a helpful force in our land. China helps keep the Washington swamp filled to the brim by lending us money. China holds 8 percent of U.S. debt, i.e., Treasury financial instruments valued at around $1.3 trillion. When it comes to colluding with China, Democratic Party environmental sensitivities seem not much offended by the fact that China’s now the world’s leading producer of emissions said to cause global warming.
In China, no environmental lawsuits keep factories from ramping up production, coal mines from being dug or electrical lines from being strung. In China, you don’t need no stinkin’ EIS (environmental-impact study). All you need is the nod of the Central Committee’s Politburo. And the Politburo’s never been very persnickety about ecological impacts.
Other realities regarding China may prompt cries of xenophobia if pointed out. But let us risk it.
China establishes military bases on islands in international waters in the South China Sea, hones its cyber warfare capabilities,develops antisatellite weaponry, declines to rein in its psychotic, nuclear-armed sidekick, Kim Jong-Un.
Yet at the same time literal mountains of cheaply produced Chinese goods pile up on the docks of LA/Long Beach, destined for U.S. box stores or the warehouses of giant online American retailers.
Meanwhile, there’s also plenty of American colluding and canoodling elsewhere in the world. Most notably the Middle East.
There our government plays footsie with dubious partners in Afghanistan (still), Iraq (still), Syria, Yemen and Libya. There America meddles in distant civil wars, religious sectarian feuds and tribal squabbles.
Yet liberals are all at once impersonating chest-thumping neoconservatives. Both are eager to elevate Russia to the top of our lengthening list of adversaries.
No colluding whatsoever with Russia! But it’s perfectly permissible to collude with the likes of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. No Democrat’s going to sic a special prosecutor on you for nuzzling an Arabic prince. Promise.
“Kingdom” as in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia means, by the way, just what it implies. A place ruled by a king. And assorted princes.
This is no fake, ceremonial monarchy like the one in England. Saudi Arabia’s monarchy is the real thing. When the Saudi monarchy says “Off with your head!”, it’s off with your head.
Decapitation is a hohum event there — scores per year. Sometimes, for good measure, crucifixion is ordered on top of decapitation! But the brisk clip of beheadings seems no impediment to amicable diplomatic relations and business dealings with the kingdom and its plutocracy of 10,000 princes.
In much of the Middle East — Saudi Arabia in particular — there’s no freedom of religion. It’s Islam or else the dungeon or the sword.
It’s also a fact of life throughout the Middle East — the Saudi kingdom included — that females, in the rights they’re accorded, rank not far ahead of donkeys and goats. If ahead at all. And gays? Forgetaboutit.
But you don’t hear much protestation over collusion with such countries as send out all-male religion police to make sure the womenfolk are appropriately hijabbed head to toe.
That such countries cling to retrograde values seems no big deal. Few indignant remonstrances over collusion with them issue forth from CNN and other tribunes of the Washington swamp.
We eagerly collude with Saudi Arabia — indeed, grovel before its princes — even though the kingdom’s Wahhabi brand of Islam gave us 15 of the skyjackers of 9/11. Plus Osama bin Laden.
Osama is thought to have been the 17th child in a family of 50-some brothers and sisters by his father’s countless wives. Before the Seals put Osama out of business, the jihad jefe himself managed to rack up five wives and sire an estimated 25 children by them.
Such patriarchal, polygamous fecundity doesn’t seem easily squared with the feminist values you hear vociferously expressed in liberal milieus. But who’s making a squawk over it? Not NOW, not Emily’s List.
With Saudi Arabia, it’s not only oil itself at stake but the things black gold buys. To look the Arabian gift horse too closely in the mouth might occasion some discomforting revelations.
What if fussiness over “collusion” starts to include the treatment of “infidels,” females and gays in the Middle East? Would, say, Harvard and Georgetown then be compelled to return, with interest, the $10 million apiece they received from just one of those 10,000 Saudi princes?
If so, many a university endowment fund and payto-play charity (such as the Clintons’ foundation) might soon find their revenue stream as dried up as a Nevada gulch.
Permissible collusion with the likes of China and Saudi Arabia is said to come under the heading “realpolitik.” Realpolitik, the professors explain, is diplomacy that accepts existing realities and avoids ideological fussing.
What, then, do you call the saber-rattling demonization of a country such as Russia, stretching as Russia does over two continents and 11 time zones, possessing as Russia does significant military capability, including nuclear arms?
What do you call this when it’s done solely to stick a partisan thumb in Trump’s eye?
Looking back, maybe it’ll be shrugged off as nothing more than a brief interlude of petty politics.
And hopefully not go down in history as the era when America went bat--t crazy.