Dakota Beacon

Remember when you were in grade school?  You probably remember the schoolyard bully, right?  You could never motivate that guy with the “common good” or, for that matter, even his own benefit.  He wanted only the power to make you fear him. He got his way usually, often because the teachers didn't want to take him on either.  He was capricious, like the weather and you more or less just tried to avoid him when you could and hope you didn’t have to run in to him.  He often had a couple of thugs backing him up, just in case, little toadies who looked tough to the rest of the kids. If you remember this guy, you also remember that being nice did no good.  If you offered him your best marble to gain his favor he would take the whole bag.  

China is that kind of bully.  And, as with the thug on the playground, there is no point in making nice with them.  Just like the bully from your school days, China equates “nice” with “weak” and will act on that assumption.  The other kids aren’t like that. They usually appreciate the nice kid, and although they might not really respect him just for being nice, they generally don’t go out of their way to steal his lunch and eat it.  Not so the bully. The bully will take your lunch and taunt you while he enjoys devouring it. Sounds a lot like China, doesn’t it? And there’s never any point in asking “why”. It’s just the way they are.

I have been advocating a course of action which would create discouragement for the rogue government of the People’s Republic of China.  They have been very prideful of the strides they appeared to have made economically, rising from one of the world’s poorest countries to what appears to be the wealthiest nation on earth.  I say “appears to be” because in truth, the people of China are not doing all that well - just the government. It is a lot like the government of Romania under the Ceausescus. They live very luxuriously at the top while the ordinary citizens must sacrifice.  In China this is taken to a whole new level. Dissidents quickly become political prisoners. They are forced to recant their dissenting expressions and then they are disappeared. Where do they all go? There are options. For the government. Everyone has a file and this includes everything from blood type to age, to family, to everything else.  One might end up in a slave labor camp, making cheap two-cent face masks, or they might have a higher value, as an organ donor. The Chinese are world leaders in organ transplants. They have come to understand that the “fresher” the organ being transplanted, the more successful the transplant. Better to have, say, a freshly harvested kidney to the ones kept in a cooler.  How do you get the freshest organs? You bring the donor in when you bring the donee in and take his kidney out right there. How do you get them that quickly? You go to the files. You find the perfect donor based on the information therein and you strap him down and wheel him into the OR. That’s how. Organs are “harvested” without consent, and often while the donor is alive and perhaps even conscious.  

China is only a “rich” country at the very top.  Everyone else worries about his “social credit score” - did he cross the street against the light?  Was he too noisy on the bus? Was he late to work? Did he make a comment he shouldn’t have? Does he have the wrong friends or read the wrong books?   China is, in reality, a very poor country, a country of people accustomed to eating things like pangolins (just look at one), civets, cats, dogs, live baby rats and . . . of course, bats.  China has not earned anyone’s respect. They behave badly with regard to other nations as well. The current crisis is but one example. They have their thugs - leftist minions in other nations which sell their own people out to stay on good terms with this bully, the ones who mindlessly scream “racist” when another nation’s leaders want to protect their own people from the malice of the bully.  We have these thugs among us here in the United States, of course - they are celebrities, politicians, the media and often, international organizations with misleading names such as “the World Health Organization”.

The recent caper of the Chinese has had an incalculable cost to the entire world, including the United States.  President Trump has called for reconsideration of the amount of money we, as taxpayers, pour into the WHO, which has revealed itself as a mere extension of the government of Red China.  This is a good start, and Congress is supportive of it. I have been advocating a harder line myself and it is gratifying to hear from someone else who has an audience, that he agrees.  

The President has referred to “wartime” measures with regard to fighting the coronavirus attack.  Even the British queen has made a rare appearance a la World War II, to buck up the people of her country to soldier on and muddle through.  Around the world people are under siege and many are trying to aid the war effort by making masks and providing other creative assistance to the “front lines”.  If we are actually on a “wartime” footing, as our leaders are urging, we should be 100% behind it. This means that we need to take a look at the scorecard. At the moment we know that the least it has cost is in terms of money is US $2 trillion.  It will cost much more. Our economy, like those of the rest of the countries in the world, is tanking in a way which compares to a combination of the Great Depression and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. What is the cost to us, just the United States, of our dealings with China?  

And this isn’t enough either.  Just like the bully taunting us while chowing down on our sandwich in the schoolyard, China is accusing others, namely us, of causing the virus while dangling the goods and services of which we have allowed them to take control - our pharmaceuticals and medical supplies and equipment, our electronic technology, our manufacturing of all the things we buy, from makeup to toys to shoes and clothing.  They feel a tremendous rush of power as a consequence of their evil actions and motives.

We need to take our lunch back, even if it’s been adulterated and is no longer edible.  We need to take our manufacturing away from China. We need to shut down their efforts to insinuate themselves into our electronic infrastructure.  We need to seize their assets in the United States and we need to inform China that our $1 trillion debt is canceled, effective immediately. It is gratifying, I must say, to see this concept addressed by Gordon Chang.  He has correctly observed that this amount is not compensation for loss of life and damage to our way of life in America.  That is beyond any dollar amount. But this is a good start. He also notes that this is unlikely to be the “last” pandemic which will issue from China.  It is better that they understand there is a cost to their kind of “diplomacy”. And Chang is not alone. A consortium of small businesses in California plan to sue China for immense losses and medical workers in New York are looking to this remedy as well.  A think tank in Great Britain is advocating a lawsuit and we might do  the same. But at the very least, we should cancel our accounts with China and cease to treat them as a legitimate trading partner.  Their human rights violations should have been enough for many years to have caused this decoupling just as we would have found dealing with Hitler as a trade partner unacceptable.  Now we see what happens when we either placate or simply tolerate the bully - he grows up to become a murdering felon.

Someone recently observed that had Hitler not been white, the Left would not condemn him.  If we compare the regimes of the Third Reich and the People’s Republic, Hitler looks a little better than Xi Jinping:  his atrocity of gassing Jews, gypsies and the infirm while totally condemnable and unacceptable, compares favorably with Xi’s policy of simply throwing coronavirus victims alive into crematoriums, one might argue.  And as to medical “experiments” perpetrated by the soulless Nazi "doctors", supposedly they were to find “cures” for human ills.  That is not an acceptable reason to a civilized society, obviously. But compare it to China’s “one child” laws and its more recent business of organ harvesting and transplants.   We are all ready to condemn the practice of slavery - but only the slavery that existed in the deep South which ended in 1865, with a bloody civil war fought to end it. It is okay for slavery as part of a “culture” - such as that of Muslims or as part of a cynical “business” policy such as that of China.  We need to re-think this. When our president says he “likes” or “admires” Xi Jinping, just substitute “Adolf Hitler” for “Xi Jinping” and see how that sounds. Would it have been acceptable to consider Hitler an equal in the company of national leaders? Of course not.

Certainly there will be fallout from our ceasing to be an obsequious helper of Xi - he will hold up several tons of contaminated facemasks or a shipment of defective ventilators.  This could save us a lot of trouble.  Ask the leaders of the Czech Republic, or the Netherlands, or any of a dozen other “trading partners”. Xi will rattle his sabre.  Big deal. It could also result in the people of China deciding they have finally had enough. If you think we have suffered, imagine their suffering.  

And there is a more sobering thought here.  As Gordon Chang has pointed out, this will not be China’s last pandemic.  If there are no consequences for this, or if those consequences accrue to China’s favor, we will have given the green light to what could become a century of pandemics and other anti-social “contributions” from the People’s Republic of China.  It may be that severe financial consequences, perhaps resulting in a Ceausescu-esque overthrow of a criminal and totalitarian, dystopian regime, are the only pathway to stopping this kind of disaster. Ask yourself how many of these events America can tolerate.  How many can we survive?  

This is the only question which should determine our future relations with China and the actions we must finally take to prevent another such attack as we have ongoing today.  This is a worse kind of warfare than that of World War II because there is no way that China can call off the dogs of war here. They have loosed a pandemic. They can’t recall it.  The next one will not be more benign than this one. This is our opportunity to take the action needed to prevent the next one. Send the president a message: America will not tolerate any more of this.  It can no longer be perceived as acceptable to recognize China’s government as legitimate. They are a rogue enterprise out to rob and destroy us. It is antithetical to the values which shaped America. As the President of the United States and the representative of our country on the world stage, we can’t have him praising the leadership of this criminal regime. Let’s start with that and the flat-out canceling of our “debt” with China.  Then we should move on to consider a more aggressive policy - such as a lawsuit. Even if we did not or could not shake an award out of their pockets they would stand humiliated. We shoud include the WHO in that.

Comments:  (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)