You know I don’t’ blog, but prefer to write essays. But this entry will be sort of bloggish and chatty for a change because my schedule is rather frazzeling.
I’m back in Hong Kong again, this time, among other things, attending the Hong Kong premiere of the feature bio-doc of Nancy Kwan, To Whom It May Concern, and related events, and to meet with Ms Kwan and her producer about possibly turning my screen treatment of my book into a feature motion picture. So far, so good. But more, perhaps, on that front as things (hopefully) develop.
Sitting here in my 400 sq. foot flat in Hong Kong always gives me a fresh perspective on my homeland. Now I am not going to make any invidious comparisons that suggest that the Chinese have things figured out better than us. The fact that their “civilization” has been around about 50 centuries longer than us hasn’t kept them from being screw-ups in the human drama. Just look at what the nouveau riche of the PRC are doing with their new wealth and you will see the kinship with our Wall Street bonus boys. When these folks embrace an ideology, be it communism, or capitalism (ahem, “market socialism with Chinese characteristics and cute pandas”), they go all out. Only problem is that they are embracing capitalism at a time when it is probably going to be the system that will bring down the planet. I can’t help the feeling is that both China and the U.S.A. are heading toward hell in a hand basket; the Chinese are just taking a shortcut. The other day Google finally told China what it could do with their site-blocking and other shenanigans and a China spokesman got up and said the would not be embarrassed by the move; which of course means that they are.
One of the things that living in 400 sq. feet makes me realize is that I can function just fine with two suitcases of possessions and a flat that would just about fit in my living room. I have almost four times the space in my condo. But I know couples who have homes with five bedrooms, three and a half baths and three car garages, which the fill up with loads of crap they really don’t need. And this is what a lot of Americans aspire to possess—and new rich Chinese as well—and which took a lot (but not all) of the people who got sub-primed and credit card maxed to the land of foreclosures and bankruptcies, while the Wall Street boys got the bailouts and bonuses. Capitalism runs on consumption. Then more consumption the better it runs—that is the more profits and return on investment. The system has to keep pushingdemand—ad infinitum—in a finite world. America has raised the market to a secular religion, and not to get too Manichean about it, there is a dark side.
We se all the negatives of this system in the run-up to the recent health bill that squeaked through might be hailed as a “victory” by the Democrats. But that elation, despite having given up what the country really needs to get it passed, is that the Democrats narrowly avoided a loss. There is more regulation off insurance companies and coverage of more (though hardly all) of the uninsured, but the fundamentally corrupt structure that runs American health delivery remains safely in place. We have no right to use the phrase “American civilization” until (perhaps not even then) we have universal affordable healthcare for all our people. Bhutan, a country without even a stoplight, has universal healthcare for its citizens, so let’s stop with that “we are the greatest country in the world” BS—until we catch up with them.
There’s another reason we are not so great—America is rife with bigotry and hatred. We should make no mistake about it: the vile antics of the extreme right brought to the surface by the health care bill debate exposes the reprehensible, rotten, ugly underbelly of racism, homophobia and discrimination against the rights of women that resides in the marrow of American society. The shame one feels for one’s country when the images of hatred are broadcast over foreign television is difficult to bear. We were never a great country, but we had great promise. In the last three decades, the toxic brew of political conservatism and religious fundamentalism has found provocation and resonance in an increasingly vile right-wing media that has taken us to an all-time historical low point. These people bring international shame on all Americans.
Typically, incipient authoritarian systems employ lies, deceptions and character assassinations, as Right Wing media have shown much facility to do and their allies and street thugs, Tea Bag American extremists, have amply demonstrated to he entire world. They have been part of an insidious slide to the political right of the entire American political spectrum. They might call Obama a leftist when in fact he is a good deal right of “center.” The only way to get our political system ideologically back to where it can have a decent debate over policy and legislation is to make the right wing Blue Dogs of the Democratic Party the new Republican Party (along with any, if there are any, moderate Republicans) and make the rest of the Republican Party and the Tea Baggers what they really are—THE AMERICAN NAZI PARTY. Make no mistake about it, these folks, in addition to being incredibly stupid, are a vile lot willing to parrot all the frightening bugaboos that we used to hear from the Joe Goebbles media machine of the ‘30s. They supposed fear socialism while most of them are on Social Security and carrying signs saying “Keep Government out of Medicare.” These dim-witted bigots are so far off the planet, there is no telling what they might be capable of (remember they like to carry their guns.)
Another American peculiarity that people over here have a hard time getting their minds around is our drug problem. No, I don’t mean the one where the major pharmaceutical companies have appropriated television and other forms of advertising to push us “ask your doctor” to prescribe there stuff. No, I don’t mean the one that is based in alcohol that is our legal drug tat kills tens of thousands, is responsible for an annual slaughter of vehicular manslaughter, and who knows how much spousal and child abuse. I mean the incredibly ridiculous, so-called “war on drugs” that is a major American industry for building and filling prisons mostly with minorities convicted of possession and sentenced to terms that are longer than murder in some countries. It creates a nice industry built around interdiction and, as we have seen, raises mayhem in our supplier states, mainly Mexico. And has become a profitable enterprise in the property that it acquires.
I have to close with this. I was late getting to the premiere of the Nancy Kwan bio-documentary at the Hong Kong Convention Centre the other day. The 500-seat theatre was jam-packed. I had seen it at 20th Century Fox in LA, but I wanted to see the local reaction. The nice young Chinese lady at the desk asked for my business card. I gave it to her and started to walk away to find a café when she called after me. “Sir,” she said, “I am sorry, I did not know that you are media,” she said, mistaking my UrbisMedia card for press media. She put a bright orange lanyard around my neck with a plastic MEDIA id in bold letters, took my bag and escorted me to a reserved seat in the front row of the theatre, five seats down from Ms Kwan. Useful word, media.
Oh, and this. After the film there were the usual dignitaries giving remarks, including an official of the Chinese movie industry who spoke in Mandarin with sequential translation. He apparently thought the affair was as much diplomatic as artistic and went into an interminable speech that sounded like he was declaring war on the U.S. but was actually praising the American movie industry and calling for more cooperation between America and China. He said we were a leader in the motion picture arts. I agree. But when he said “America is a great country” . . . I just slunked down in my seat.
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© 2010, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 3.25.2010)