Symphony – Page 42 – Pacific Daily Times Editorials

The latest assault against Trump for a supposed conspiracy with Ukraine is pure demagoguery fluff. Combining a few scary words in a few scary sentences, attaching the label “whistle blower”, then the usual “resistance is futile” Borg propaganda—it wreaks of playbook rehashing. Leftovers chef surprise reheated and re-served might fool dinner guests once or twice. But, triggering alarms that have been often false before won’t sway Trump’s base for one big reason among many: China.

America faces larger threats than what is being alleged with Ukraine. The accusations aren’t alarming to ears that favor Trump. Even if they were serious, Democrats have cried wolf too many times to be taken seriously. If a real scandal actually did hit the presses with Trump, no one who mattered would care. That is the greater danger the Democrats are creating. Just how an award is only as valuable as those who receive it, false alarms make people ignore alarms we shouldn’t. We haven’t ignored real alarms yet, but Democrats are laying in the groundwork for it. Maybe that is the real alarm.

Republicans have nothing to lose in playing along because the truth will win in the end anyway. Of course, Democrats mistake Republican “play-along” for Republican “support”—a miscalculation likely to make a Republican 2020 even bigger.

With bigger issues looming, and with the lines blurring between “whistle blower” and “wolf bellower”, the American public is more focused on supporting the president who is stopping China from taking over… well, taking over everything. Whoever can stand up to China these days deserves an acquittal, so the voters think, especially an acquittal for doing nothing wrong.

In Cadence

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, September 23, 2019

SymphonySeptember 22, 2019

China is dipping into its pork reserves while America is largely unaffected by the surge in oil prices. The pork crisis in China started with an outbreak of the African Swine Flu and has been exacerbated by the trade war. China doesn’t have energy independence like America does. Soon, China will have a crisis of both food and energy. Wars have started over less.

Taiwan is ready and on high alert. Though there is a surrender movement in Taiwan as always, Taiwan stands ready with the advantage. Projecting power for an invasion is not as easy as defending an impossible island. With a coastline of either cliffs or marshes and jungle mountains everywhere else, Taiwan is no walk in the park. Taiwan’s president is wise to the bullying of China and believes in taking a stand. This is why she supports Hong Kongers as she does.

The situation in Hong Kong is past dire. As foreseen, the protests turned violent because of a deaf government. “No” means “no”, but China and its puppets can’t bring themselves to accept that, and Hong Kongers won’t let “no” mean anything else. Chinese Confucian Communism now faces the determination of the West. The great showdown between the Shame culture of the Far East and the self-determined culture of the West has begun. It’s only going to escalate. And, all those people who preached “capitulation to the bully” and the “invincibility of Chinese Shame” are about to be proven drastically right or fatefully wrong.

In Encore

Encore of Revival: America, September 23, 2019

SymphonySeptember 22, 2019

Drama, drama, drama… With the celebritization of Kavanaugh, the judiciary is gaining even more power than it had in the past.

The Left is unhappy with new judges who hold the value of “applying the law”, rather than judges who “do whatever they think is right”. What you think is right might not be what I think is right. Who decides? The law should. Liberals want judges who take sides and create an imbalance. New judges will keep balance and apply the law, even if they disagree with it, thereby giving justice even to their enemies. The only way that the Left hopes to stop this new sweep of justice in our courts is to attack Kavanaugh—but that is only making him famous and, thus, more powerful.

Drama is the Left’s way of shooting its foot off. AOC has been a gift to the Republicans. Congressional Democrats just don’t get how much they alienate voters with their incessant pushing. Of course there are voters who support their left-of-center ideals, but not most voters. And, they don’t know that. And, it’s about to cost them the election.

In Cadence

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, September 16, 2019

SymphonySeptember 16, 2019January 26, 2020

China is running into one of the problems of Communism; once the government controls a company, what that company buys is fair game in treaty negotiations. China’s government owns a lot of Chinese companies. The world already knows this, but Trump is the first president to figure it out.

Neither Trump nor Xi are attempting any kind of long term trade deal. Xi will only accept a deal where China can grow enough to eradicate the English language from Western culture and the Magna Carta is forgotten, in which case a trade deal wouldn’t be necessary anyway. Trump will only accept a trade deal in which that can’t happen.

No deal is anticipated by either. Both are vying for time and ways to milk money away from the other to fund their own goals, which are already known, though not everyone has figured them out because not many people want to. We’re on a collision course with war and no one wants to admit that.

Delaying the October 1 tariffs because 1. the Chinese premier asked for it and 2. because of the 70th Anniversary celebrating the Chinese Communist Party will only embolden the Chinese Communists. The Chinese love parades, and if they think America respects their parades, they will think it proves that they are invincible. This is a part of Chinese thinking Americans struggle to understand.

Equally, the Chinese struggle to understand Trump. In his Tweet announcement, where he delays the tariffs, but also reminds everyone how bad they will be just two weeks later—it’s a mind game that Beijing can’t grasp. Even reading this article won’t help the Chinese get wise to how much they are being played. The only reason they are so easy to play is because they make it so easy by refusing to abandon their Confucian values. Ironically, those are the very values they want to impose on the rest of the world by Sinicizing the rest of the world.

So, mid-October has become the big date. That’s when Trump slaps more tariffs on China, and that’s when Taiwan is expected to finalize its purchase of 66 brand-new, shiny, American F-16Vs.

In Encore

Encore of Revival: America, September 16, 2019

SymphonySeptember 16, 2019September 16, 2019

America faces a crossroads. We have enemies mounting against us. Great monsters, fed and allowed to grow, are coming back to haunt us, hunt us, and devour us. It’s scary. And, there is a natural tendency to negotiate and avoid provoking wrath of what already wants to eat us.

Some Americans—many, perhaps—have done very bad things in the past. But, many of us learn and improve. Others of us fought against the injustice. Like any nation, America needs to heal, grow, fight the bad, and strengthen the good. We don’t need to all lay down and die as our enemies want.

Death comes like a burglar, sneaking in the night. It seeks to isolate, frighten, paralyze first with fear, then with venom, and finally consume. Death makes us long for fear and even death itself. Don’t follow its poisonous seduction.

When a people find their heart, no matter how dark times have become, they have what they need to overcome any obstacle. The greatest battle is not over land or law, nor waged with guns or swords, but over the heart and fought with the heart.

We face trying, fearful times. By standing on our values, no matter the cost, we will pay a lesser price in the long run anyway.

In Cadence

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, September 9, 2019

SymphonySeptember 9, 2019September 9, 2019

The missile issues in North Korea have too much unknown about them to formulate a clear opinion. From reports, Kim has indeed kept his promise, though he has violated seemingly less significant UN sanctions. Japan is on alert. Trump doesn’t seem to care. If we made a stack of American clothes made in China, then stacked what we don’t know about the North Korean missile crisis, the stack of what we don’t know about North Korean missiles would be higher. It’s unsettling, but sometimes we just don’t know.

Carrie Lam’s response to the “five demands” from protestors will not bode well in Hong Kong. She withdrew the controversial bill. The best illustration from Hong Kongers is a bandaid on a scratch after it turned gangrene. “Too little, too late” is what most are saying. Expect riots and burning buildings in the weeks to come.

Some Hong Kongers will indeed be satisfied with her speech, dare we say thrilled, but others will be enraged that she waited until after three months and a leaked recording. That recording included Lam’s claim that she couldn’t resign and that she had two masters, one of them Beijing. This is contrary to the autonomy required by the contract allowing China to claim Hong Kong as its own. If true, that recording could return Hong Kong to Britain merely in court. The stakes are high. Beijing cannot allow the public to believe that the recording demonstrated any truth. And, apparently Lam can’t either.

If that recording was inaccurate as she said, then she wouldn’t be so angry. Not only did she admit that the recording was real, it made her angry. Her objection to it is the recording’s greatest notoriety. But, Confucian Beijing-minded Chinese don’t understand that evidence speaks louder than spin. They only bake the cake they’ll have to lay in.

Withdrawing the bill will be seen by many as an attempt to counter evidence that Beijing interferes regularly, violating the Basic Law and the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984. But, the evidence remains, and there are greater grievances.

Lam’s speech fails to address the protests’ demand for her resignation, which is the very subject of the leaked recording, which came just before her sudden withdrawal of the bill. The protestors insist on her resignation and will continue to. When she said that she never considered resigning, she further incriminated herself by proving that Hong Kong does not have its required universal suffrage and that she is part of the reason why.

Some will stop protesting, but those who continue will do so with more veracity. Apart from withdrawing the bill, everything in Lam’s video ignores and insults the protest demands, essentially telling the people what they ought to want.

Telling people what they should want is widely accepted in Confucian society. But, it mixes with the West like water with oil. Lam wants to investigate to find out why Hong Kong rejected what are essentially Confucian values. But, there is no disturbance or interference or social trend to investigate. The conflict arose because the Confucian minds controlling Hong Kong, namely Lam and Beijing, are incapable of recognizing that Hong Kong already was Westernized. The question now is whether William Wallace can defeat Mao Tse-Tung.