China has no idea how bad it looks
Liberal s have been strangely quiet about the Hong Kong crisis. — Glavin
If you’re watching China slowly strangle Hong Kong and wondering why tyranny has not crushed freedom globally and forever, it’s certainly not for lack of trying. On our part as well as theirs. Luckily we’re not quite as dumb as we look, and they’re much dumber.
Being relentless and single- minded gives tyrants an initial edge. Even Hitler, who never quite lost his comic- opera feel, enjoyed an astonishing winning streak for almost two decades. But he was out of touch with reality and it only got worse as his power accumulated.
Also, he had a lot of help from everybody who was anybody, from Neville Chamberlain to Charles Lindbergh, William Borah and The Times of London, all treating Churchill as the problem. If you’re looking for idiots, the most obvious place is in the corridors of power or academia in free societies. But here you get to look, and laugh.
Not in Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party has no idea how bad it looks using a global pandemic it helped cause as cover to strike brutally at Hong Kong. Instead it rejects criticism with Radio Moscow- style purple prose, like its Calgary consulate’s half-literate tirade against Jason Kenney: “If Mr. Premier did not deliberately turn his head away, these facts and evidence are presenting themselves crystal clearly before his eyes. Oh, no, he is holding a magnifying glass with preconceived judgment ….” Who approved that drivel?
Possibly a secret dissident. I sometimes wondered if many Soviet propagandists weren’t deliberately making their stuff ridiculous, knowing nobody within the system could say so and few could notice. Remember the old East Bloc joke: “Intelligent, honest and a Communist. Pick any two.”
So here’s Exhibit A for tyrants being fools. With the PRC facing terrible PR headwinds, Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam urged “the majority of Hong Kong to agree with the legislation” and not worry, be happy, because “We are a very free society, so for the time being people have the freedom to say whatever they want to say.”
You get the idea? That “for the time being” is a dead giveaway, intentional or clueless. She added “If there is objection, we would deal with illegal opposition acts in accordance with law and will not back down.” So basically the plan is to silence you and if you object you vanish into the Laogai and only your kidney ever emerges.
So much for cunning. So much for cleverness. And so much, crucially, for realizing how such talk will strike people in democracies. As I’ve channelled Victor Davis Hanson previously, free societies understand ourselves and tyrannies, and they understand neither, because shooting every bearer of bad news quickly deprives you of independent analysis of anything. Think Xi Jinping often asks “How’m I doing?” and gets told “Not so great?” China’s extraordinary loss of prestige over COVID-19, especially among regular folks, has no chance of registering with the Politburo. Whereas sooner or later someone’s going to tell Trudeau. If only a pollster.
One reason democracies seem forever on the brink of the abyss is that our leaders give the impression of working hard to get there then topple in. If you read, say, Jean- François Revel’s How Democracies Perish, you might well conclude that the great and the good, the politicians, professors and pundits, were trying to “throw” the Cold War. Or take Justin Trudeau … please.
My regular reader knows I do not believe in conspiracy theories. Not because people are too nice or too wise. Because we just can’t walk like that. Unfortunately those with power and privilege often seem to be conspiring because we’re so keen to be criticized we lose all sense of perspective. Don’t bother me with the Gulag, we say, I’m busy hating my own bourgeois society.
There’s an element of narcissism to it, and of danger. And yes, it’s way past time Justin Trudeau got a clue or a new job. But here in the West we look everywhere and question everything and are logical, slowly. Not too slowly, yet, though it’s been scary many times. Whereas from Berlin and Tokyo to Moscow, Baghdad and Beijing they’re icing Champagne even in the bunker.
The Calgary Consulate’s tantrum at Kenney ended “please don’t hat us with ‘ wolf- warrior diplomacy’ since we are compelled to fight back. We are defending ourselves with facts and reasons rather than slander and stigma.… And your China- blaming comment might not please Mr. Trump since he will not spare a glance, let alone those American audiences as many of them are not fond of Mr. Trump, but instead, have profitable and unshakable businesses with China.”
OK then. May I hat them with “fools’-cap diplomacy?” They can’t even decide whether to threaten, flatter or bribe. So they mix them together. Naturally we’re disgusted. And they can’t see it.
Fools.