Sigh...
Does anyone remember 2016?
Does anyone remember how sick and tired we were of violent maniacs taking over American streets...
...Of seeing America beset from within by psychopaths with no respect for its symbols...
...and morons dressed like something that fell off a Barnum and Bailey truck parading down the street in protest of whatever-it-was-this-week?
I remember it.
This shit was the meat and potatoes of the Obama years, and I for one had gotten so fed up with it that a few years prior I'd I moved to China, fucking CHINA of all places, so I wouldn't have to deal with it. "Remember back when America was something to be proud of?" All the other expats and I would ask each other wistfully over drafts of whatever swill a Chinese bartender tried to pretend was American beer. And there was a book that I remember reading over and over during that year and the years leading up to it, at least once a year since I bought my copy in 2012: Time to Get Tough, by at-that-time entrepreneur, Donald J. Trump.
The book cut through the garbage that was put forward by the media talking-heads who felt obligated to praise every clumsy and ignorant move made by that imbecile, Barack Obama, because they feared being called racist and investigated for "hate crimes" if they dared criticize him. It showed in no-nonsense terms how, when, and with what tools Obama had systematically dismantled America's status as the world's dominant power. I remember saying as early as 2012, "my God, I wish this guy'd run for president." So in 2016 when he did, with a platform perfectly outlined in that book, I was in. The fact that his opponent was Hitlery Klingon... I mean, Killery Clinton... I mean, Monica Lewinski's ex-boyfriend's wife (a woman so undesirable that her own party nearly chose Burning Slanders... I mean, Bernie Scandals... I mean, a guy who never held a job for a day in his life until running for office in his '40's), simply made it an even more obvious choice.
Election day 2016 rolled around and it was a landslide. Watching the news reports roll in in the morning in my office in Beijing (due to the time change it was late night election day in the US while we were in the middle of the next work day), I remember throwing my hands skyward and shouting in celebration when Ohio and Florida were both called for Trump, sealing his victory. "The Trump shall resound!" I shouted out, channeling the old hymn, It Is Well With My Soul.
And the Left can rewrite the history books any damned way they please, but the plain fact is (and will always be) the following years were a Golden Age.
Take North Korea, for instance. For years we'd been held hostage by China's foreign ministry, too spineless to do anything about North Korea on our own and relying on China to negotiate on our behalf. Of course they never did, and they actually were doing everything they could to strengthen North Korea and use it as leverage against us. With casual ease, Trump put on a show of force that scared the piss out of North Korea (Friedman) and brought them to the negotiating table, face-to-face and one-on-one with us. No "Six-Party-Talks," no meddling by the self-anointed "Central Nation," just straight-up, man-to-man talk between heads of state. And what was the result? China learned they no longer had a voice in the matter. Watching Wang Yi calling Mike Pompeo and helplessly begging him "come on! Tell me about the conference! What did you guys say," (Xinhua Staff) seeing him stew over the fact that he'd never know what his former puppet and his rival decided unless one of the two told him because he wasn't even there, was the biggest American diplomatic victory since the fall of the USSR (no matter how the DNC-owned media in the US tries to paper over it).
Other victories followed. Our parasitic "allies (if you want to call them that)" in Europe got put on notice that we were tired of being the only one in NATO to actually fulfill our obligations (Barnes). Once Europe got slapped in the face with the realization that we're no longer their combination bellboy, ATM and Human Shields against Russia (who is a threat to Europe but hasn't had the power to be a threat to us since 1989), it was time to move on to Russia itself. Overtures were made and while it's too soon for two countries that have been rivals for nearly a century to really trust each other, it was good to see signs that a US president was FINALLY coming to see the glaring reality: Russia, which is at odds with China (Goble; Marrow; Siow) and with Europe, just as we are (Meixler), even as the EU and China lace their hands together under the blanket (Lau; Fallon) would make a far better ally than the EU would.
And of course, predictably enough, as soon as Trump began to pursue this line of thinking, the Chinese operatives and Europhiles in the American media began screaming "See?! We TOLD you he's in bed with the Russians!"
Let me just say from experience, "in bed with the Russians" is not a bad place to be.
...But I digress.
My point is, the Trump presidency was a paradigm shift. America had spent years being the world's bitch. Berlin, or Brussels, or Beijing, or Tehran commanded, and Washington slavishly obeyed, and took out the taxpayer-funded checkbook to ask "how much do we owe for the privilege of licking thy illustrious boots, oh Great Foreign Power?" Then along came Trump, and I got to spend every day from his swearing-in in January 2017, to my departure from China in January 2020, watching China get humiliated as nation after nation rejected them and turned to America. First it was the actual coalescing of the "Quad Alliance", never more than an idea under previous administrations. Then it was the Pacific Islands Forum, then ASEAN, then all of APEC, and even the Belt and Road Forum turned into a chorus of "I don't know, I like America's offer better." I got to watch from inside Beijing as China got the shit beaten out of them again and again by the man I was proud to call "MY president," for three solid years, to the point where the broken and contrite ruin that used to be called China couldn't even feed their own population, while manufacturing and heavy industry returned to the US (Winkle & Cho; Brotherton-Bunch; Lambert; Hui; Cheng & Li). There is no altering the fact that before Trump, China was rising, and at the beginning of 2020, China was on death's door. Even now, in 2021, only the damage done to the rest of the world by Chinavirus-19 has kept the floundering nation arrogant enough to call themselves "Celestial Empire" even marginally afloat
And So, 2020
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Joe Biden is able to show his face in public. Oh, wait. HE ISN'T! So how the hell did he campaign?! To be honest, having already commented on the fact that Americans are now officially too stupid to deserve democracy I shouldn't be TOO surprised, but after the unbelievably dubious circumstances surrounding the re-re-re-recounts and the mysteriously "discovered" mail-in ballots, more than 60 electoral votes that had been red when I went to bed on election night, were blue when I woke up the following morning. And of course, Donald Trump screamed that there was election fraud. Well, I'd like to address a few lines to Mr. Donald J. Trump.
Well of, fucking, COURSE there was election fraud, you idiot!
The Party that ran Tammany Hall has been rather open about their plans to rig the election for nearly a year. Warnings that mail-in ballots were a gold mine for electioneers have been flying around like cannonballs on an 18th century battlefield, since March! How in the blue Hell were you blindsided by this?
Not even the Democrats are denying it anymore. They're simply saying "well, there was fraud but not enough to change the outcome." And you, Mr. President, had plenty of time to head it off. But you acted like the notion of this happening, simply never occurred to you.
So now, the people who have spent four years saying "Russia hacked the election" are saying "it's treasonous and seditious to imply an election can be hacked."
Now, we have the president who spent years kicking America's enemies in the balls, crying on Twitter because Oh my God, the city he went to with intent to fight corruption, is riddled with corruption. And surprise surprise, no one in the Washington establishment is rushing to the aid of the man whose entire platform was to bring down the Washington establishment.
Gee, hoodathunkit?
You've seen the Star Wars prequels, where the Jedi Order fell because they were too arrogant to think the enemy could be that close at hand, right? And it ended with them getting shot in the back by the ones they thought were their loyal comrades. Remember that? Yeah, looking around you'll find you're in the company of Ki-Adi Mundi and Plo Koon. Not bad company to keep except that, you know, they're dead. And fictional.
Perhaps a historical example would be better. Just like Peter III, you failed to notice forces rising against you, right out in the open. Like Peter III, you failed to heed the advice of men around you who warned you of these threats. And so, like Peter III, you are "[allowing yourself] to be stripped of [your] throne like a child being sent to bed with no supper." All that has been left is a man who has been broken by his enemies, struggling to hold on to the hope of an 11th hour Brandenburg Gate miracle.
And where does that leave America? Well...
We have violent maniacs taking over American streets...
...we have America beset from within by psychopaths with no respect for its symbols...
...and we have morons dressed like something that fell off a Barnum and Bailey truck parading down the street in protest.
We've spent four, whole, YEARS, passing every law we could to make sure people from countries where they dress like this, couldn't even get into the US!
IF I WANTED THIS SHIT, I'D HAVE VOTED DEMOCRAT!
...Sigh
Marxism outlived Marx.
Maoism outlived Mao.
Buddhism outlived Buddha.
All we can do now is look to 2024, and to the hope that the movement will outlive the man.
Raises glass. Here's to you, Mr. President (at time of post that title is still true). You gave America 3 damn good years... and 2020.
Works Cited
Barnes, Julian. "Trump Puts NATO Allies in the Crosshairs Over Military Spending." Wall Street Journal. 14 Feb, 2017. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-puts-nato-allies-in-the-crosshairs-over-military-spending-1487088613
Brotherton-Bunch, Elizabeth. "Stanley Black & Decker Wants to Revitalize Craftsman by Bringing Production Back to U.S." Alliance for American Manufacturing. 17 August, 2018. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/stanley-black-decker-wants-to-revitalize-craftsman-by-bringing-production-back-to-u-s/?fbclid=iwar2sxtm6w6kvfhm4j95zdwyxz08xay-xerv4-x4i7ghutu6puss1wexefoi
Cheng Ting-Fang & Li, Lauly. "Taiwan's TSMC begins hiring blitz for $12bn US plant." 23 December, 2020. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Taiwan-s-TSMC-begins-hiring-blitz-for-12bn-US-plant
Fallon, Theresa. "The Strategic Implications of the China-EU Investment Deal." The Diplomat. 4 January, 2021. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/the-strategic-implications-of-the-china-eu-investment-deal/
Friedman, George. "GEORGE FRIEDMAN: A US attack on North Korea is imminent." Business Insider. 23 May, 2017. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-attack-on-north-korea-is-imminent-george-friedman-says-2017-5
Goble, Paul. "Moscow worried about Beijing’s ‘sinicization’ of Central Asia, Caucasus." 112 News. 13 November, 2020. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://112.international/russia/moscow-worried-about-beijings-sinicization-of-central-asia-caucasus-56405.html
Hui, Mary. "A US rare earths miner is staging a comeback to take on China." Quartz. 16 Nov, 2020. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://qz.com/1931653/us-rare-earths-miner-mp-materials-takes-on-china-dominance/
Lambert, Fred. "Tesla’s next factory is going to be in Austin, Texas, and it’s going to happen quickly." Elektrek. 15 May, 2020. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://electrek.co/2020/05/15/tesla-factory-austin-texas/
Lau, Stuart. "EU won’t ally with US against China, foreign policy chief says before Pompeo meeting." South China Morning Post. 14 June, 2020. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3089014/eu-wont-ally-us-against-china-foreign-policy-chief-says-pompeo
Marrow, Alexander. "Russia announces troop build-up in Far East." Reuters. 17 September, 2020. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-military-idUSKBN2682JM
Meixler, Eli. "French President Emmanuel Macron Calls for a 'European Army' to Defend Against China, Russia and the U.S." Time. 6 November, 2018. Web. 9 January, 2021.
https://time.com/5446975/emmanuel-macron-european-army-russia-us/
Siow, Maria. "Could Russia Side With the US, India Against China?" South China Morning Post. 22 August, 2020. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3098398/could-russia-side-us-and-india-against-china
Winkle, Kate & Cho, Yoojin. "Apple’s new Mac Pro will be made in Austin, not China." KXAN News. 23 September, 2019. Web. 9 January, 2021. https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/apples-new-mac-pro-will-be-made-in-austin-not-china/
Xinhua Staff. "U.S. Secretary of State to Visit China, Talk About Trump-Kim Summit." Xinhua. 13 June, 2018. Web. 9 January, 2021. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-06/13/c_137251381.htm