Here I would like to place some opinions on liberty and freedom that I have about China. There is a great deal of politically motivated inaccuracies regarding China in the United States. For if, you think that China is a full-on totalitarian communist regime, and America is a freedom-loving Republic you will be wrong on both counts. Names have no bearing on realities. Here I would like to opine on this subject.
"Before coming to China, I had this idea that China was rigid which in some ways it is, but in reality it is brutally chaotic because there are no rules it is the pure rule of the jungle with unconstrained might imposing their will and all others ignoring laws to behave as they see fit with no sense of morality or respect for right." -Balding's World
The reasons behind this are many, and I won’t go through the lengthy list. That is for others to parse and explore. From my point of view, I wish to discuss the opinions that I have formed about China since I have left the United States.
Now, please note that most of these opinions are comparative. That is to say that I cannot help but compare my life in the United States with the life that I lived while in China. I must admit that this is an emotional subject with me, and therefore, the reader will encounter strong emotive opinions on this matter…
Travel as a Necessary Part of Growing
“Americans should travel internationally, especially in Asia. When they return to the States they will see what a police state it has turned into.” -roddy6667 Jan 8, 2018 3:19 AM
Yeah. It becomes obvious.
I apologize in advance for any radical or offensive opinion that I hold regarding this subject. The reader is cautioned that my opinions are all a product of my unique experiences, and should be viewed as such. All that I am doing is a comparative study of what I have experienced. This is not a formal study by someone sitting in front of a computer in a university. This is not some kind of research paper that was pulled together using tabulated data from “Think Tanks”. This is not a rehash of the conventional narrative that “everyone knows”. This is something much different.
This is what I have experienced.
First of all, because of my experiences overseas. I spent twenty years on the outer reaches of empire and understand very well the nature of empire. The mask of empire was ripped off and I watched the empire function in Latin America, in Africa, in the Middle East. And so the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves were exposed. You can't go through that experience and come back to the United States and accept the myth of American exceptionalism and of American virtue, which you know full well do not exist. - Chris Hedges: Princeton or Harvard Are Schools that Have Always Existed to Train the Ruling Elites to Manage the System of Corporate Capitalism
I love the USA
Now this is also not a “bash the old USA” post. I love America. After all, I gave up a large portion of who I am just to join MAJestic. Yeah, I gave away something to contribute to the good of America. I am a believer. I am a true and real believer. I always was. I still am. So hear me out.
What I put together here are my opinions. It is based on my experiences and observations. It is visceral. While I speak about what I know and what I have experienced, let it be known that I am not alone in my opinions. These have been verified and validated by others who have actually studied the economic data. (If you actually need that kind of data stream.) Read, “Is The United States Still The Best Country In The World? Think Again” . So, I ask the reader to chill out, have a beer and listen to what I have to say. This is not going to be what you all expect.
This is about Myself
This is all about MY growth.
Yes, in this case it is all about me. It is about my growth as a person. It is about how I have come to grips of the shock that one feels when they leave the United States, and move to China. Ugh. Not just China, mind you; communist China. A communist nation, of all places!
I wanna be a Naval Aviator... I wanna fly that F-14... I wanna fly with the canopy open... So I can hear those commies scream... -Cadence that I learned while at AOCS
How we live our life, and what we make of it is of absolute concern to us.
Crappy Jobs and Crappy Bosses
Have you ever worked at a crappy job? You know the type; the boss is a jerk. You are always being tripped up, cheated on, swindled, and shortchanged. Your coworkers were idiots, and the weather, food, and environment sucked. It was like a scene from the movie “Joe versus the Volcano.” Have you ever been in this situation?
I think many of us have been there.
Now, do you remember the shock and emotions when you finally left that awful job? Do you remember the relief? Do you remember somehow feeling that you were sore all over the day after? (It was because you were so stressed that your body became so tense.) Do you remember your nervousness, yet the relief that you were no longer working there?
The Feeling of “Release”
Well, my move to China was something like that.
It wasn’t that the United States was bad. It wasn’t that China was so great. It was that there were so many things about my life in America that I just took for granted. That I no longer paid attention to them. I thought that everyone in the world lived this kind of life. I was used to the bars on my cage. I was comfortable with the chains around my ankles. I thought that the cleanliness of the handcuffs was a sign of being a good citizen…
This included such things as always looking down at my speedometer when I noticed a police car.
This included watching what I would say so that someone wouldn’t be offended. This included making sure that I would stock up on beer before Sunday, because the stores couldn’t sell on that day. This included having to show two forms of ID to cash my paycheck. This included being careful not to have HR get angry over what is on my desk at work. This included such things as undressing when you took a plane, and having to pee in a cup at a new job.
They were all little things. These were things that I just adapted to. They were things that I took for granted. Much like Pavlov’s dog.
When they were no longer part of my life, it was as if a big cloud was lifted off of my shoulders. It is precisely that moment of enlightenment that is significant. It is precisely that feeling, and those emotions, relative to my move that I would like to discuss.
It is only through my travel that I became aware of this.
I wonder how many people, not just Americans but those in other countries, have come to the conclusion that the United States today is a less free and less aware society than the societies in the dystopian novels of the 20th century or in movies such as The Matrix and V for Vendetta. Just as people in the dystopian novels had no idea of their real situation, few Americans do either. -Paul Craig Roberts
We all NEED to Grow
For us to grow and advance in both the physical and spiritual aspects of our beings, we need to adapt to the changing circumstances that surround us. We need to adapt to the environment as we find it. We need to do this with acceptance, and without trying to alter or change the environment; for it is only us who will be able to change. We can only change ourselves, not the environment around us.
In my case, I left the United States, and I moved to China.
As such, I needed to adapt to the Chinese way of doing things. Which was, in many ways, very different from what I have come to expect. This shock to my system, and what I have learned from it was eye opening. As such, I wish to write about some of the things that I have learned. Though, I will have to tell you (the reader) that many of what I will relate will not make any sense, and you will probably not believe me anyways.
“Most people do not believe traveller’s tales.” -Glory Road
Differences are always good
What a boring place the world would be if all we could eat was salt-free oatmeal, and warm water. Even for you oatmeal lovers out there, it would be boring. Day in and day out. The same old… same old. Lucky for us, it isn’t that way. We can choose to eat ice cream, pizza, pork chops, bacon, and French fries. What a wonderful situation!
If we wanted to, we could eat chicken fried steak with sunny-side-up eggs. We can eat butterscotch milkshakes and brownies. We can eat thick pan, double-stuffed pizza and wash it down with a pitcher of icy cold Budweiser. We can eat bagels and cream cheese and a wash it down with a nice hot cup of coffee with real cream. My goodness! Isn’t it great to be able to have choices?
That means, boys and girls, having choices is a good thing.
You can live in Boston if you want bagels and coffee from Duncan Donuts, or live in California if you want taquitos and coffee. You can live in Florida if you want nice sunny skies, or you can live in Wisconsin if you like ice fishing. Choices are good. Having different choices in different places are good.
That’s pretty important.
That is why it is so great to live in Europe. A two or three hour ride will take you to a different part of Europe with different customs, languages and lifestyle. Well, it used to. That is until the progressive started to run Brussels and dictate conformity throughout the EU. Anyways, I digress…
Different things are really great.
It doesn’t matter what it is. Not really. Different types of food are nice. Like, for instance, getting a cup of coffee at the Café du monde in New Orleans as opposed to walking into a Starbucks franchise. Or having different pets. Having a few dogs around the house to liven it up, and having a few cats to mellow things out and keep everyone in line, is a good thing. Or maybe having different cars. Like having a beat-up pickup to go mudslinging, or a cheap car to commute to work back and forth, or having a nice big Lincoln to go out to the lounge in the big city.
Different is good. It is really, really good.
We need to Broaden our Experiences
Now, I contend that the greater your experiences are with different things, the broader your personality becomes.
For instance, I never had any Mexican (or Tex-Mex) food until after I graduated from university. Yet, when I had my first taco and burrito, I became hooked. How I could, I possibly live in a world without refried beans, melted cheese, and tacos? Since then, this type of food expanded my experiences. It made me a better person. And, perhaps, a little thicker around the middle.
It doesn’t mean that all that I ate before (my discovery of Mexican food) was bad, it is just that I found another food that I like just as well as (stuffed) pork chops, pizza and double tomato hamburgers. It was equal.
Later, when I experienced “real” Southern cooking and had my first “real” BBQ in Mississippi, I added yet another food to my list of favorites. Shortly after that, I added deep-fried catfish, pickled tomatoes, and hushpuppies. Some of the things that I was exposed to completely replaced the old “standbys”. For instance, once I had “real” Southern mint iced tea, I never bought a regular “iced tea” from a fast food restaurant ever again.
My experiences expanded me.
That is a good thing. We have to keep on constantly pushing, striving and working on growth. Instead of just ordering the same $5 pepperoni pizza from Domino’s pizza, mix it up a little and try a Greek gyro with salad and French fries. Instead of a number #2 meal out of Burger King, order their new “signature” special and try it out for a change. Instead of drinking a Coke out of the 7-11, go a little nuts and drink a Dr. Pepper. Let your “hair down”, live a little bit.
Stop going to McDonalds and KFC all the time. Go to “Quaker Steak & Lube“, “Submarina“, “The Hat“, “Portillo’s Restaurants“, “Duchess“, “The Varsity“, “Honey Dew Donuts“, “Bojangles“, “Runza“, “Arctic Circle“, or “Blake’s Lotaburger“.
Not all hamburgers are the same. Fast food is NOT about a basic McDonalds hamburger. It can be anything. There are choices out there you know. You have choices. You can decide what YOU want to eat. Your choices are not limited to either [1] a cheeseburger, [2] a big mac, or [3] a quarter pounder.
Step outside your comfort zone. The world is filled with all kinds of things that are are quite different from what you have grown accustomed to. Different is good. Listen to me, different is GOOD.
It’s not only about food either. It’s about everything.
This includes different types of personalities, different fashions, different styles of buildings, different weather, different ways of doing things. Each one has their good and bad aspects. There is no “best” way to do anything. You can select and you can choose.
Don’t fall for the busybody narrative that there is only ONE best way to do things (their way). You are your own person. You can make your decisions and you own choices.
"I certainly had no idea about sex until I was 52 and living in Asia. But I didn’t understand what I was missing either, so can sympathize with a lot of the white guys living in their home towns. I don’t even bother telling my pals back home about sex out here, they just claim I’m lying, or at best think I’m lying." -John
We need to Push and Strive
You have to push to learn and improve your life.
Unless you push, strive and experience, you will become fat and lazy. We have to constantly push ourselves to be better people. To do this we need to strive. Strive to be good men. Strive to be good fathers. Strive to be great employees. Strive to do what is the best. Strive to learn.
"Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win." -Robert Heinlein
In most cases this will not happen if all you do is sit on your lazy-boy and play video games all day. You need to break out of what you know and enter the realm of what you don’t know. You need to go “outside” and experience other ways of doing things, and other ways of thinking. This might mean that the way pizza is made in Chicago tastes better to you, than the way pizza is made in New York City. Or not. Maybe you end up liking both types of pizza. (Like I do.)
But there will be one take-away from your comparative experience. That is, at least you will know the difference between a pizza in Chicago and one in New York. That knowledge is a good thing.
With that in mind, there are no absolutes here. China is NOT the best, but then again America is not the best either. Both nations have their own ways of doing things. Just like the EU does. For me, and after all this is my own comparisons, I find that some things that America does is fantastic, and other things that China does are fantastic as well.
That is how we grow.
We experience life. We make decisions, pass judgments, and move forward.
If all you know is only one place, you will be convinced that it is the best place in the world. That is because that is all that you know. You have nothing to compare it against. You are stuck with whatever your environment lays out for you. You will repeat everything that everyone around you says. You won’t need to push yourself and think. You will just parrot it, and believe (mindlessly) that everyone will agree with you. Because you will surround yourself with people who will mirror you and echo what you say.
"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." — Robert A. Heinlein
Liberty & Freedom in China?
When I first started to work in Mainland China, I came across the following advice:
“If you have visited China for one month, you can write a book. If you have visited China for a year, you can write a chapter. If you have been in China for 10 years, you can only write a sentence with nine words. The sentence is- China is a big country with a long history.”
China is an awfully big place.
It is not only different from the United States in many ways, but it has regional differences as well. There are places of just amazing beauty, as are places of pure desolation that look like a scene from some dystopian novel. China has amazing mountain ranges, huge pristine beaches, and islands that rival Hawaii. China has a network of super-fast bullet trains, a major highway grid, and all sorts of airports and ferries. It is just like the United States in infrastructure, but much much larger.
The Chinese People
In general, the Chinese people are really nice. They all tend to really like Americans. You know, on a personal level, Americans and Chinese have a lot of things in common. We really do. We have far more things in common than say a person from the Middle East has.
The Chinese like to party and have a great time. They love sports, and go nuts over basketball. They love their families, friends and outdoor sports. They love to eat, and drink, and play with pretty girls. They believe in hard work. They believe in doing your best, striving and learning. They think that the family is the most important aspect of their lives. They respect older generations and honor them. They love new technology and like to play electronic games and communicate on social media. They love their cars.
They think that Americans have their act together, though they are not too sure about the American government. They think that America is a great nation, and they would like to visit it, but they really don’t want to live there.
They don’t think that they can be themselves in the United States.
Why Not?
“My name is Angus, originally from England, I have now been in China almost 6 years, working as a teacher. Why did I choose China? Simple, life is better in China as a foreigner than it was in England as a businessman, constantly having to deal with our corrupt government. Life is what we make of it in China. I don't know about you but I find I have more freedom here in China than I had in England. Admittedly the standard of living is lower as is the income. But on the upside there is no pressure except the pressure I put on myself to do my job professionally. I have been to many countries and worked in some. For me Cuba and China are the best places, I would never eat Chinese food in England because it is awful. But Chinese food in China is a wonderful culinary adventure. Everyday I try something I have never had before, sometimes I enjoy it, other times I don't. Learning to cook real Chinese food is relatively easy and great fun. If you ask you will find some of your Chinese friends are very happy to show you, they love sharing their culture with us. The only real problem I had had to face in China are the bad employers who ignore the contract and agreements and feel they can impose their will on all their employees. Because there are so many illegals working in China Employers have been able to do as they please with their foreign workers. I have actually taken legal action against one such employer and won. If you are legal and have problems with your employer you will find the Arbitration service is wonderful. If your illegal you haven't got any protections and it is your own fault.” -Angus
Which is sort of why this post is written in the first place. Why don’t the Chinese people (that I know) want to become Americans? Oh sure, everyone wanted to immigrate back in the 1990’s, but in case you haven’t been paying attention to current events, that was over three decades ago. China has changed a lot since then. Back then, there was a President Reagan, a President Bush and a President Clinton. It was a different time. Since then we have had a totally different crop of presidents, with a completely different set of values. President Bush II, and President Obama had changed the United States to “improve it”. But, I dare say, the changes end up in taking something away from the American citizens, and giving it instead to the rich elite.
Many Chinese fear that if they move to the United States that they will lose their freedom.
This is not a debatable subject.
It is a truth. For instance, in China, no one, not even the government can seize your bank account. In China, right or wrong, the only person who can take money out of a bank account is the person with your thumbprint. That is it. No legal retainers, documents, negotiations, or changes to the law will alter this fact. Which is why, in nations such as Saudi Arabia, that the government might hold you “captive” under house-arrest, until you agree to hand over your money. If you don’t want to part with it, they cannot get it. Period.
In many parts in the rest of the world, banks guard YOUR money. It’s not the property of the government. Not so in the United States. Americans think that the all-powerful American government can do just about anything it wants with you. Examples of Americans are made all the time, to help reinforce this narrative.
WTF, happened to the fourth amendment?
At least China believes in 4th Amendment Protections
For all the bad things that you can say about these nations, you have to at least give them credit that they follow the American 4th Amendment, and allow individuals to keep their personal affairs and money private.
Look at the actions that the EU took against Facebook.
Look at the actions that China took against Facebook, Google and their aligned Silicon-valley oligarchs. Do you believe the American-media generated narrative that it is to limit the “freedom” of the Chinese people? Or, are you willing to see the truth that the Chinese respect the privacy of their citizens more than the United States does?
Ouch! The truth hurts.
In America, the opposite is true. Just about anyone can seize your assets. It starts at the IRS, and branches out to everyone else. There is no fourth amendment, and no one even considers it, ever.
Many of my Chinese friends tell frightening stories of other Chinese who have moved to America and had ended up losing entire bank accounts, getting their houses repossessed, and having all sorts of problems. Once they became a citizen they risk losing everything. Don’t be under the impression that the Chinese are unaware of this. They know about it quite well, and it is disturbing to them. They look to me imploringly; “how can the government possibly freeze your property?” they ask. “It is YOUR property.” They state.
They consider this ability; the government to take something of yours, to be a loss of freedom.
America is Different than China
Yet, in America it is not considered a loss at all. It is considered the price that you must accept to “live in the greatest nation on the earth”. America has the “Bill of Rights” that are always protected. No one will ever try to take away the freedom to speak, or your guns, or your ability to worship as you wish. Not in America! So, many Americans just can’t understand why any Chinese would feel this way. It’s just the price you must pay if you want to be an American.
Which, of course, leads me to think about things.
So, in comparison with my Chinese friends, I have discovered that I have more freedom in China than what I had in the United States. Here in China, the IRS won’t come smashing my door down at three in the morning with an armored vehicle. Here in China, the FDA will not shut down my business because of some complaint. Here, the DHS will not freeze my papers and subject me to household detention for undisclosed reasons. The FDA will not require me to have a doctor write me a prescription. The FCC will not limit my bandwidth on my cell phone. The NSA will not be monitoring, recording, and indexing all my computer activity. The CIA won’t be trying to blackmail me with some attractive prostitute. The FBI won’t be monitoring my email, or smashing down the offices of my attorney.
Anti-Chinese Propiganda
Now, I caution the reader not to buy-into the propaganda that the Chinese government can do anything it wants. The Chinese, if there is one thing that they do actually do, it is follow and obey rules. They don’t bend them like they do in the United States. They simply do not have the same kind of militarized domestic police forces like what is maintained in the United States. They just do not.
Why? You might ask.
Why doesn’t China have all these laws to make things “safer”, “better”, and “more wonderful”? Why aren’t they improving the lives of Chinese citizens by requiring them not to serve sunny-side up eggs, or limit the sizes of soda, or mandating special child protections in automobiles? Why aren’t they improving their automotive emissions requirements? (Actually they are, but the implementation is quite different.) Why aren’t they policing social media with fact-checking staff? Why aren’t they making laws against eating “Tide pods”? Why aren’t they making playgrounds safe for crippled infants? Why aren’t they banning toys that look like guns? Why not?
There is an answer. Though, most Americans will not believe it.
The Reason WHY the Chinese don’t Suffer through the many ILLs that Americans endure
Well, fundamentally it is because those people who are trying to change things (for the better or worse) are known as “Busybodies” (爱 管 闲事). And in China, “busybodies” in China are put to death. (Actually, organ harvested for three years and then put to death.) While in America they are embraced and allowed to dictate policy. (Heck, we even elected one to two terms as President, Barrack Obama.) China is a land where it is against the law to be a busybody.
It is so very refreshing.
You see, what I refer to as a “busybody” is some person who wants to change how another person lives their life. They come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses. The most famous is “it’s for the children”, but there are many others. For instance, to make the parks safer, or to make tomatoes easier to ship, or to increase the size of an ear of corn, or to protect children while riding in cars, or to prevent children from getting familiar with guns. There are laws to make children eat healthier, rules to make walking on stairs safer, and guidelines to guarantee that no ones’ feelings are getting hurt. So many reasons. Each time there is a restriction on a liberty, it is done and fabricated by a busybody.
Busybodies are the scourge of the decade.
In China, there are no busybodies. The only way that someone can have the authority to dictate policy is through the government only. In China that means the Chinese Communist Party. Individual members are not permitted to do it. There must be total and complete agreement on the changes and restrictions. Then once something is proposed, studies are conducted and the merits discussed and evaluated.
In America, the MEDIA promotes Progressive Social Justice
The problem in America is that busybodies are promoted by the mainstream media. They are praised. They are applauded. They are noticed, and the loudest and most ignorant get the greatest airtime. If they cannot find a report of a busybody doing something they quickly make one up.
CNN is notorious for this. They are always crafting reports about busybodies doing one thing or the other. But of course, they don’t call them busybodies. They call them something else. Like “proud gay parent”, or “hero of the student movement”, “community organizers”, “a concerned citizen”, “survivor of a school shooting”, “community activist” or “an unnamed official”.
The media promotes busybodies through propagandized fear and manipulation.
Before the reader “has a cow”, let it be understood that what I am discussing is day-to-day freedom and liberty. This is the freedom and lifestyle that you experience every day. This is how you live your life in doing your normal activities. These are the simple things in life. These things include working; eating, spending time with your family, travel, saving money, and spending money. These are the comparatives. These are the measurables and the deliverables that one can use to actually determine how free they are. As well as comparatively determine their overall standard of living compared to the rest of the world.
The American media is wholly devoted to division and fear. (Image Source.)
For me, liberty and freedom concerns what I eat, and how I eat it. It concerns how much money I get to keep after I work a good long day of work, and how afraid I am (or not) when I go outside. Remember, boys and girls, a life lived in fear is a life not lived.
Someone Rigged the Game
When I was younger, maybe 10 or 11, I remember playing a game of Monopoly with a friend. We had spent all day out at the “boney dumps” (slang for strip-mined wasteland) and were shooting off some of the .22 that we had bought earlier. The day went well, aside from a pair of dead mice that we found stuck in a bottle, and we had gone to a friend’s house. His father was out running a dragline and so we had the kitchen to ourselves. We pulled out the Monopoly game and started playing.
I was never a Monopoly expert, but I was doing well. At least I thought I was. I owned some major property (Park Place and Boardwalk), and a red plastic hotel. I was pretty well convinced that I was ultimately going to win the game, but I was still losing. No matter how profitable my real-estate dealings were, and no matter what my luck was in the cards that I drew, I was still losing.
It took me a while, but eventually I realized that my friend, who was acting as the bank, was cheating. What he would do was to secretly move money from the bank over to his own pile. It took a few turns, but, once I figured this out, I quit the game.
Dude, why play a game when it’s impossible to win?
In a nutshell, that’s what’s happening to us in today’s America. Throughout your entire childhood, you were told about the American Dream, and how if you worked hard and did the right things, you could build a good life for yourself. But you know, something went wrong: Either someone’s cheating, or they changed the rules without telling you.
That is, I am very sorry to say, is exactly what happened.
They changed the rules on you. The game has changed and it is no longer in your favor. The busybodies have taken over and rigged the game in their favor. No matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you try. No matter whatever you do, you will never be able to get ahead. You will never be able to save money. You will never be able to live the kind of lifestyle that your parents had.
It is Sad
Yeah. It is sad.
I know it is sad. The generations before us actually did have a real shot at achieving their dreams. Yet, you know, over time, so many people cheated. They looked for shortcuts to achieving their own dreams. In the process they ended up changing the game. They rigged the game. They rigged it in their favor. And now… now that it is your time to play, they’ve made it almost impossible for you to win.
Now, of course, this is not something that is told to the American people. Instead Americans are told that they are the best; that they are exceptional. All Americans know how fantastic and exceptional that the United States is. All Americans know that every other place in the world is a shithole. All Americans know this. They have seen “Save the Children” commercials, and CNN news articles on the oppressive smog in Beijing. MSNBC likes to talk about the protests in Hong Kong, and the protests in Tibet.
In fact, this is what Americans are told about China;
“This is all nonsense! Everyone knows that there is no freedom in China. You cannot protest. You cannot have LGBT bathrooms, same-sex marriage, and firearms. There are no open borders, and no refugees are ever allowed in unless carefully vetted. Heck, they expect immigrants to actually learn Chinese. Imagine that! Completely crazy! You can’t do anything worth anything in China! The people live in squalor and ride bicycles everywhere. Only the very rich have a great life and their lives are so different from that of the average person. It is beyond anyone’s comprehension that you would live in a place where factory workers routinely jump off the roofs of the factories because they can’t take the pace of work. It is a place where people are begging to leave. I know. I read the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, CNN, and Salon. I even double check it with Snopes. They tell me all that I need to know. They are the guardians of the truth.”
And here is an example of what people do when they say something along the lines of “look, you really got to stop talking shit about China, and visit it.” Here, a caller to the Rush Limbaugh show says this, and while Rush admitted that he never visited China; he just ignored the points being made. Instead, he listed a litany of the same-old American propaganda. Do not be like El Rush Bo.
Go and see it yourself, with your OWN eyes.
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” -Rose Luxemburg
Go to China YOURSELF. See it YOURSELF.
Don’t make judgments based on what other people tell you. Their realities are not yours. They just aren’t. El Rush Bo was complaining about Tibet, and “President for Life”, and saying that Obama liked the Chinese infrastructure. So fucking what? Really. So what?
- Go through Chinese airport boarding procedures, and then go through American TSA.
- Go through Chinese customs, and then go through American customs.
- Fly on an aging old decrepit American airline with fat ugly women stewardesses, and then fly on a state-of-the-art new Chinese airline with attractive young waitresses.
Make your own comparisons. Don’t take my word for it.
Do not take my word for it.
With that well established as the conventional narrative, everything that is written here is going to ruffle some tail feathers. There are going to be those who have never stepped out of the USA parroting the contemporaneous narrative. Yeah, it’s gonna be something like “America is exceptional, and there is no other country like it. So, I refuse to listen to anything else. So there!”
On top of that, you will have a handful of those who have taken a five-day trip to one of the factory zones in China supporting it. For instance, you might have an engineer who traveled to Dongguan say that “I’ve been there, it’s a slimy hell-hole”. Yeah, and I can say that about Baltimore and Detroit as well. Every nation has factory areas, and they all typically stink. What the Hell do you think an industrial area is supposed to look like? Have you ever been to Torona, California or Petrolia, Pennsylvania? Just like every nation also has areas of beauty as well.
Shanghai is a very beautiful city. (Image Source.)
But this post is not about convincing anyone of anything. It is only my opinions based on my own unique experiences. So don’t believe me.
Go to China yourself and see it from your own eyes.
You Decide, Do not Listen to Me
Just because I have these opinions does not mean that you will agree with me. In fact, I have a friend from NYC. He’s been in China for at least five years. He likes it. He is always cavorting with Russian models in Shenzhen, China and is always going to clubs and having such a great time. His long dreadlocks, olive skin, and huge smile are always appealing. But, he does not agree with me. In his mind there is only one, and one only, place to live. That is New York City, baby. Nothing else even comes close.
So, these are my opinions, and I do believe that you (the reader) will have your own. This is an important point, as I was raised as a “flag waving” American citizen. I was an American who believed in the promise and, most importantly, the practice of freedom and liberty. However, over the years, with the encroachments of various laws and legislative actions, those freedoms have whittled away to nothing.
Busybodies Run the USA Today
It began oh so “innocently”.
Firstly, they took away our “freedom to save money” by passing the 16th amendment. Yup. So, now “oh yeah” you can save money. But first, you have to give 15-30% of what you make to the federal government. Then you have to pay your state tax (0-8%). Then you have to pay your mandatory social security and Medicaid taxes (8%+8%), then you have to pay your mandatory Obamacare taxes (>0, obviously). Whatever is left over you can save (although it too is also subject to tax).
Then, secondly, they took away our ability to travel freely. Now you need a driver license to get about. (If you want to drive, but now you also need it to board a train, or get on the bus. Thank you DHS.) Along with that are all kinds of restrictions that you need to follow to keep that “privilege”. You can’t drink, smoke or text in the car. You must wear a specially approved restraining device, and your children must have a specially constructed and approved safety seat.
The list goes on and on.
Oh, sure we take the removal of our freedoms as “given”. It is the price that we pay for “living in the best nation on the planet”. It doesn’t matter if you need to get a license to paint your own living room or if you can lose everything and share a prison cell with a mass murderer because you picked a plant in your backyard and smoked it…
“The US Constitution does not give the federal government any authority to criminalize marijuana. Thus, the question of whether marijuana is legal is one of the many issues reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. If the Constitution gives Congress the power to ban marijuana, then why was it necessary to amend the Constitution to give Congress the power to ban alcohol?” -Ron Paul
You tell them Ron. He’s got a point, don’t you know. Hey! Mr. Sessions, listen up!
Freedom used to mean something. People used to proudly say that they were “free” in the United States. They really, and honestly, used to say this. I am not kidding in the least. People said it and really believed it.
Ah, how quaint.
Freedom Used to be Important
The transformation will be absolutely complete when they take away guns. Then, only the rulers will have weapons. Oh, what a dangerous time that will be. (Have you ever wondered why people in the Democrat party are so absolutely focused in disarming the population? Well you should.) Then, once the people are disarmed, then the “real” changes can take place.
The REAL changes.
Oh, this will be a dangerous time to be an American, I’ll tell you what. I shouldn’t need to tell you what will happen then. It will just be a repeat of what has always happened once people are disarmed in a nation that is an oligarchy.
If you have been paying attention, you the reader, should know all the arguments. “(That) one’s individual freedom is not nearly as important as the needs of the defenseless children.” Anyways, the point is that the United States government is dismantling our rights one by one and offering nothing in return except empty promises.
American RIGHTS are being dismantled one by one, and NOT ONE PERSON is defending them.
Americans are treated as Cattle
To keep us in line they promote all kinds of fears, distractions and divisions. A person listening to the American news today would be petrified to leave the United States, as the outside world must be horrific! (Which of course, explains the reaction that my father had when I told him that I was going to move to China.)
Americans lie to each other about what America is and what other nations are. If you really want to be serious about the reality of our life, then you need to accept the reality of what America was intended to be. America today, is not at all what it was intended to be…
“The word Republic has all but disappeared from our political lexicon. It has erroneously been replaced by Democracy. The Founders must be turning over in their graves. They had nothing but contempt for democracy. They sought to, and did, create a constitutional republic, but not before doing their homework. Unlike today's politicians, talking heads, and academics, the Founders had an acute, in-depth, and nuanced understanding of history and political systems. Prior to the 1787 constitutional convention, James Madison undertook a comprehensive study of every known republic in recorded history to ensure that the Founders didn't repeat their mistakes. The Founders as a group were also well studied in democracies. They knew that every democracy in recorded history disintegrated in a pyre of chaos, tyranny, and mob violence. The word democracy does not appear in any of the Founding documents: the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, nor the Constitution. For good reason: the Founders had no intention of creating a democracy. They wanted to fashion a mixed republic of constitutionally infused checks and balances which incorporated elements monarchy, aristocracy, and popular consent. Monarchy would manifest itself in the Office of President, aristocracy the senate, and popular consent, the House of Representatives. The checks and balances are both vertical and horizontal. The division of the government into the executive, legislative, and judicial constitutes one form of checks and balances. The "division of labor" among the federal, state, and local levels of government constitutes the other. This division of labor was made law in Article 1, Section 8, and the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution. The Founders drew much of their inspiration and thought from Baron Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws." Montesquieu (1689-1755), a Frenchman, was a political philosopher and man of letters. He is one of the central figures of the Enlightenment. Published in 1748, the Spirit of the Laws is a comparative study of three types of government: republic, monarchy, and despotism. Montesquieu held that government powers should be separated and balanced to guarantee individual rights and freedom. It is considered one of the most influential political studies of all time. The Founders would agree, and some 40 years later, would incorporate much of Montesquieu's masterpiece in the founding of our Republic. I'll bet very few Americans can cite the differences between a republic and a democracy, or care for that matter. But even high-level politicians and prime-time political commentators continue to refer to "our democracy" rather than "our republic." Spread the good word---we don't live in a democracy; it's a republic, thank you.” -Artful Dilettante
So now, today most Americans now have strangely warped ideas about life and life in other nations. This is a direct result of the onslaught barrage of propaganda out of the United States media and the oligarchy that controls them. This can be irritating, because most Americans believe the lies because that is all they know. Those of us who live outside of the echo bubble framed by the American media machine know differently. And, over time, the gap between our reality and the American narrative keeps getting wider and wider.
Strange Ideas about Other Nations
In fact, the narrative is often completely “off the wall”, and just complete nonsense. Consider this article; “Chinese Researchers Experiment with Anti-Gay Spray”. Which begins as;
“Around mid-November 2017, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a shocking report detailing China’s gay conversion problem. Powerful first-hand accounts expose how state-owned hospitals are using electric shock machines and medication to convert gays back to some form of 'normalcy'. The practice is an open secret in China, where a majority of gays are forced by their families into hospitals, because the culture labels it as a curable-disease. Even the World Psychiatric Association has come out denouncing the practice as “unethical, unscientific and harmful”.”
What in the Lord’s name are they friggin’ talking about? Theres nothing even similar to this, in any way, in China. There just isn’t!
Yet, who is “Human Rights Watch”? Who is publishing this nonsense? Well, you’ve guessed it… None other than George Soros, who worked with President Obama to create a contentious relationship with China. Want to read about the activity in this area, then check it out.
Yeah, it’s all exposed. However, the United States Mainstream media are all controlled by Soros, so you won’t see any reports there. Have to admit the absolute BULLSHIT from the Soros minions is getting pretty darn deep. You need some pretty tall boots to slug through all of it. Ya! You bet! Here, you can read more fear generating anti-China Soros propaganda here.
Don’t believe me? Then fact-check it using a Soros-based Fact-Checking internet site like Snopes…
Why all this Propaganda?
Why is every single instance when you turn on any media it is always about how great the United States is? It’s not that I don’t think the United States is great, it is that you don’t give any other nations any credit. It is as if the entire rest of the world is nothing but scenes from a “Save the Children” commercial. Gawd, you’d think that the rest of the world walks around barefoot, sorts through trash, lives in windowless houses, and prostitutes’ children. It’s really a very lopsided view of the world.
On the top of the list is China. China is always maligned.
Don’t believe me, eh?
Ok. Here, try this. (I am serious. Please stop reading and do this “sanity check”.)
Do a picture / image search for “dogs in china”. One is a United States search engine; Bing. The other is a Chinese search engine; Baidu. Now look at the difference in the photos found. Big difference indeed. If you search using American search engines, and American web sites you will get the idea that the Chinese hates dogs. You would get the idea that they eat them and treat them brutally.
When the real truth is that the Chinese love dogs like their very own children. They dress them up in clothes, including socks and shoes. (Even my dog Shao Pi has sock, shoes, a coat, underwear, sunglasses, a cap and his very own backpack.) They have hairstyles and perms that they give the dogs. They groom them in pet salons, and offer them high-end doggie hotel accommodations, complete with dog-friendly television shows. It is a completely stark mind-blowing difference.
Yet, you know you would think that the US media would WANT to show this bizzare behavior to the American public. It is, afterall, newsworthy. But they don’t. Anything that shows China in a positive light is suppressed.
Here are two videos to make this point. Both are from an APP that is very common in China. (It is called IesDouYin,(Not a very English-Friendly name, I am afraid.) you can get it HERE. It is a kind of You-Tube in a Twitter kind-of format. It’s pretty cool and super popular in China. Heck, if you really want to get a taste of what China is actually like, then watch the videos.)
Walmart
You know, part of the reason for this anger directed at China is because of Walmart.
Yup, good old Walmart. They, through their greed, was the engine that introduced shabby products to the American middle class. I know, I was in the appliance industry in the late 1980’s when Walmart was dictating terms to all the manufacturers. They wanted cheap at all costs. Yet, Walmart maintained a baseline margin of 30%.
So here we were, a factory dealing with a 3% profit margin over costs, and here was the retailer demanding a plump 30% profit margin. If we couldn’t hit their sales prices, we were out of the game. The American companies couldn’t compete. Oh, Sears tried. Oh others tried. But the only way that we could still be able to sell our products was to have them made in China. And that, my dear boys and girls, is why I first started to come to China in the first place.
Walmart sent me.
So, anyways, the cheap stuff got made in China and shipped to the USA. Meanwhile the high quality stuff was also made in China by shipped elsewhere. It was shipped to England, Japan, Russia, France, and Germany. So an American might think that they are buying some really high quality stuff out of Japan, when in reality they are still buying stuff made in China, just redirected via Japan.
Yah. It’s a global world we live in today.
Global Manufacture
Yet, for all the supposedly “junk” that China makes, Americans sure as heck like to buy it. Hey! You know that iPhone you use; made in China. How about that nice Japanese car; made in China. What about that expensive German camera; made in China. What about that high-end gaming computer; made in China. What about the HDTV in your living room; yup, made in China as well. How about that Porsche or Mercedes Benz; both made in China. Just because Walmart sells junk does not mean that junk is all that China makes. It isn’t.
In fact, America is NOT the only buyer of Chinese products. China sells to the world. So while a lot of products leave China and arrive on American shores, it is only around 11% of all Chinese exports. So, for all of you who like to believe the unicorn dream that tariffs on Chinese products would harm China, you are in for a rude awakening. It’s not going to happen.
Nice Pie-chart of where China exports to. (Image Source.)
It’s just that the average American cannot afford anything decent any longer. They shop at Walmart and the Dollar Store to purchase “affordable” products. Which is really the super cheap junk, now mostly made outside of China.
Made and Sold in the USA
Now, here is the most important part of this post, so please pay attention. Which is now my pitch for “Made in the USA”. Listen up. Look everyone, good products can be made just about anywhere. But if you want something made that is high quality, and is reliable, and is worth your good hard money to buy… don’t go to Walmart. Go to your local hardware store, and buy American.
It is not that China only makes junk, it is that Americans allow mercenary business practices to set the pace for American product quality. This needs to end. Your first stop; buy American. Your second stop; buy local. Go to businesses that employ the people in your local area.
So turn off the propaganda. China makes good products, but they are out of the price range of most Americans. Stop buying junk. Stop shopping at cheap stores. Buy only a few things, and what you buy… make it of the highest quality. If you really want to make a difference, buy American.
Turn off the propaganda. So the argument is always the same;
"Well, maybe China makes all the products, but they are just junk. And, of course, well maybe Japan has all the cool gadgets, but who really needs them. Let’s not forget the argument that China is Communist, not a wonderful and safe “Democracy” like the United States is."
Ugh. America is not, nor ever was, a Democracy.
America is a great place, and full of wonderful people. It is just that America has allowed truly bad people; truly evil and corrupt people to run the government. They in turn have permitted busybodies to meddle. They were allowed to meddle in everything. Now the USA looks like a playroom where toddlers had a food fight in it.
This is true, and you the reader knows this.
Sigh.
American Laws and Rules
Oh, the reasons and intentions were always, supposedly for the best of intentions. Seat belt laws requiring (forcing) us to wear seatbelts while in a moving vehicle is to protect the vehicle occupants. Anti-smoking legislation is supposedly to prevent lung cancer in the population. Forcing people to purchase ACA insurance is to help those who cannot afford medical insurance. The banning of wood-stoves is to prevent homes from catching fire and to preserve trees. The list goes on and on.
However, the truth is that the reasons why laws were written is often not the real purpose and reason why they were put in place.
Their overall accumulative effects were anything else. And thus, when a person steps out of the United States, for the first time, and is exposed to another way of life… Well, the absence of freedom that Americans have becomes overwhelmingly obvious. It really becomes clear. It is just beyond obvious. It is frightening. It is mind-boggling. It is amazing. How in the world can a person be free in Communist China, and why do I, a real “red blooded” American, feel this way?
I am not the only person who has noticed this.
Americans are like the boiling frog. How do you cook a frog? You put it in cool water and then slowly turn up the heat. By the time the frog notices that something is wrong, it is too late.
“Americans should travel internationally, especially in Asia. When they return to the States they will see what a police state it has turned into.” -roddy6667 Jan 8, 2018 3:19 AM
Yeah. It becomes obvious.
Landing in China
A home in Shenzhen, China.(Image Source.)
When I landed in China, the first thing I noted was that people were living their lives in a way that was alien to what I had become accustomed to. They smoked in restaurants! They drank beer in the street! They slept wherever they felt like it – and no one even took notice. No, this was not some third-world banana republic where swarthy brown-skinned natives walked barefoot and wore cone shaped hats. No. They were as modern and erudite as modern Tokyo, and lived their lives as they saw fit.
The government did not tell them what to do and how to do it. No, the Chinese government DID NOT tell their people how to live. They were not controlled by the wealthy; those in power, and the corporate army. They, themselves, decided.
“Liberty, the right to be left alone, is at the top of the Constitution’s hierarchy.” -Bruce Fein
Only the most ignorant or uninformed American still believes that the USA is “free”. Oh, at one time, Americans were free, but that time was over 200 years ago. The freedom eroded over time and now it is all just an empty promise. It is all but empty air.
Here is something found on the DNC server by Wikileaks. Apparently all of the donors to DNC 2016 Presidential Candidate recognize that the USA is neither a Republic or a Democracy;
From: "Sandler, Jim" <james@sandlerfoundation.org<mailto:james@sandlerfoundation.org>> Date: August 24, 2014 at 5:43:34 AM EDT To: "Sandler, Herbert" <hms@sandlerfoundation.org<mailto:hms@sandlerfoundation.org>> Subject: Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer an Actual Democracy I guess it takes a study to point out the obvious. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy Sent from my iPad
While those who control the government understand this fact quite well. Most Americans don’t understand. They don’t see it. That is precisely because they don’t understand what they see. They have nothing to compare things against. They don’t leave the country and compare their life with that in other nations.
Yet, as an American who leaves the USA… oh, what a shock it truly is!
To Learn you need to Compare
Yes, I am aware that many people are still trying to desperately enter the United States. For them, the image that Hollywood portrays is seductive. The proclamations made by our political leaders during political posturing is seductive, and the “cult” of “American greatness” is alluring. “Free healthcare”, “Free housing”, “Free education”, and a high standard of living without having to go to work or labor for it. What a seduction! A nation where every single thing is FREE!
Free stuff. You never have to work, and everything is just given to you. What a wonderful place. You don’t even need to learn English. Just come in and register for all your free stuff.
America is a place where everything is FREE!
America is a place where everything is FREE!
You Get What You Pay For
But the truth is, the reality of what awaits them in America compared to what they left is not as great a disparity as one would believe. While the American standard of living has declined, the standard of living in other nations has increased. Today the difference is not that striking. When they arrive, their life is not at all what it is portrayed in the media.
For many Americans when they leave the protected shores of America (Canada and Mexico do not count. As they are more or less American-protectorates.) they go into shock and surprise. How can this be? Your mind recoils in horror, and as time presses, you become more and more understanding. All of this increases every day until, well, until one day it all comes together. And, in a blazing flash of light, you see the real hard and stark truth.
“You learned the dry-mouthed, fear-purged purging ecstasy of battle and you fought that summer and that fall for all the poor in the world against all tyranny, for all the things you believed in and for the new world you had been educated into.” -For whom the bell tolls by Earnest Hemingway
You see that many things are simply, out and out, wrong with the United States. There are things wrong with what it is supposed to be, and what it actually is. In fact, it is a complete cluster-fuck, and it is so bad that there has to be a logical reason behind it. How did the USA get into such a terrible mess, and why has it deviated so far away from the core fundamental principles on which it was founded. When you look and study it, you see how terribly wrong everything is… you see the evil… you see the greed… you see the threats and danger… and you just explode!
The Chinese City of Hong Kong. (Image Source.)
I spent a considerable amount of time in China. I did this (of course) as an American expat. And China is, possibly, the antithesis of the United States. Yet, it is refreshingly free. How can this be?
I, like all Americans, have been taught that China holds the world’s most repressive government. That the people in China are poor, starving, and in need of American help. We are told that they eat fish-heads, and rice; not because they like it, but because that is all that the government will let them eat. Americans are constantly reminded of every single anti-government protest in China, whether it is about Tibet, or the Hong Kong Democracy movement. They are constantly alerted to every downturn in the Chinese economy. They are constantly told every bit of bad news that hits the American news wires. But those events, even though they do exist, are not reflective of the true reality of what China is.
The actual reality of life in China is really, really different than what we Americans are told. Why? Why is reality so different from what we are told?
Well, for starters…
China is Communist in Name Only
“The balls on this guy! You looted Haiti like a peg-legged pirate. You, your crooked wife, and your cheesy slush fund “foundation” worked in concert to turn it into the shithole it has become. #BagmanBill #ClintonFoundation #Haiti https://t.co/kPRxesS72C” A comment on former President Bill Clinton’s statement - James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 13, 2018
Most Americans consider “mainland” China to be communist. After all, the communist party runs the nation, right? So it is communist. Right. It is all “cut and dry”.
No. That is not the case at all.
When America was founded, we believed in liberty and freedom. You could make your own whiskey and sell it to whomever you wanted. You could ride on the roads and not have to pay for a permit to do so. The nation pretty much did not get involved in all the wars in Europe at the time. American was for its people.
Presidents, Senators and Representatives made decisions based upon the needs of the American people. It was not based upon the needs of wealthy foreign agents. Well, is this the case today? No it is not. America has changed.
“Our leaders engaged in nation building abroad while they failed to build up and replenish our nation at home. They undercut and short-changed our men and women in uniform with inadequate resources, unstable funding, and unclear missions. They failed to insist that our often very wealthy allies pay their fair share for defense. They neglected a nuclear menace in North Korea, made a disastrously weak and incomprehensibly bad deal with Iran, and allowed terrorists such as ISIS to gain control of vast parts of territory all across the Middle East. They put American energy under lock and key. They surrendered our sovereignty to foreign bureaucrats in far-away and distant capitals. And over the profound objections of the American people, our politicians left our borders wide open. Our leaders drifted from American principles. They lost sight of America’s destiny, and they lost their belief in American greatness. As a result, our citizens lost something as well. The people lost confidence in their government and eventually even lost confidence in their future.” -President Donald Trump (R) on 18 December 2017
The same is true with China. China has changed as well.
Mr. Deng
争先恐后 (zhēng xiān kǒng hòu) is an expression that describes modern Chinese society after Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms – everyone is “struggling to get ahead” because they are “afraid they will be left behind”.
Contrary to what everyone thinks, the modern architect of China is not Mr. Mao, but a Mr. Deng. He is the reason why China is such a dominant power in the world stage today. “What?” You, the reader, might say, “How can this be?”. Yet it is true.
Trump is the reverse. He's not a conservative either, but a Dengist, as in China's Chairman Deng Xiaoping (one of the most positive figures in the twentieth century for almost single-handedly overcoming Maoism), who abjured ideology and famously said "I don't care if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." -Why the left is having a nervous breakdown
The story is an interesting and important one…
Back in the 1980’s when China was getting “back on its feet” after the turmoil of the 1960’s and 1970’s (with armies of young progressive SJW), there were all kinds of power struggles going on in Beijing. It was an interesting time for certain. To boil it down and distill it into its most basic form, let’s just simply say this. (Here comes the simplified overview that describes everything. I suggest the reader actually study the history to get a true overview of the situation at hand.)
There were two groups within the communist party at that time.
One group [1] was a “progressive” wing. They wanted central government, central management, and Beijing running everything along the principles of classical communism. Their plan was almost exactly like the DNC plan under President Obama. One central government in control of EVERYTHING. This group was led by Mr. Mao and his followers.
The other group [2] was a “free market” wing. They wanted Beijing to establish a structure from which everyone would work under. But, when they operated under this structure they would implement “free market” activities. People would be “free” to do what they could to make money. The government would step back and not interfere. This group and effort was led by Mr. Deng.
This “free market” wing eventually became dominant. This is because it was so darn successful.
Free market economies will perform much better than socialist models on all levels. (Don’t believe me? Compare the nation of Venezuela (socialist paradise) with China (free market economy).) Today, China is a “American Conservative Free Market” “wet dream”. It is the reason why China is leading the world on so many levels. China runs the nation like an American Conservative would.
We can all thank Mr. Deng for this.
Free market policies are utilized in Chinese business practice. (Image Source.)
Life in “Communist” China
“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.” — Thomas Jefferson
The USA media bashes China. They claim that China is terrible, repressive, and that people have no freedom there. They point to the Tiananmen incident, the pro-separation protests for Tibet, and western media crackdowns as evidence of that. They makeup statements and reports, some of which I can actually verify and double check the validly on, (after all, I am right here) that are absolutely made-up bullshit. The media is just propagandizing, and the content that they provide is just full of nonsense.
It is all bullshit. Sure, you can’t protest the government in China, but you can’t do that in the USA either. Have you forgotten Kent State? Have you forgotten about the IRS targeting the Tea Party? Have you forgotten the “Occupy Wall-street Movement”? Have you forgotten about “designated free-speech areas”?
Ah. Such a selective memory we all have.
Modern China
Day to Day Freedom
Actually, in America, most people do not engage in protests on Wall Street every day. Most people do not write anti-government propaganda every day. Most people live quiet lives where they go from work to their families. That is what is the most important. That is also what is most important to me. It is the ability to live one’s life how you see fit. It is to be able to just live without anyone telling you otherwise. And, what matters to me is living this simple life in Freedom and in Liberty. Their political influence is typically restricted to voting efforts in an election and an occasional letter to their congressional representative.
"In the state of nature, liberty consists of being free from any superior power on Earth. People are not under the will or lawmaking authority of others but have only the law of nature for their rule.” - John Locke
Perhaps that is why I wax so vociferously on this subject. When one experiences the absence of something so precious, one cannot help but get emotionally connected to its meaning and it’s significance.
All Americans must carry identification on them at all times. These “papers” consist of driver’s license, or residency card, social security card, passport (if they have one) or Insurance cards and registrations. This is not true in other nations, where a person can go for months at a time with no one asking them for identification. Some links;
- FindLaw says Americans must carry Identification
- Liberal Newsweek agrees that Americans must carry their papers
- Debate on why all Americans need to carry an ID card
People; we are all the same. All over the world we are the same. We all want to go about our business, and not worry about the police pulling you over when you drive. (And, you and I both know how true this is in the United States.)
American Facts of Life
This is a fact of life in the United States. When an American drives and they see a police car, they wonder, is he going to pull me over for some infraction. The American driver looks at his speedometer to make sure that he is going slower than the posted speed limit. This is a uniquely American phenomena. You NEVER experience this in other countries. The police just leave you alone. (Except for countries like North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan.)
Wearing a seat belt is mandatory in the United States today if you ride in a vehicle. If you are caught without wearing one your risk a fine, or even jail time depending on where you are arrested. This is only in the United States. Other nations might also have laws of this nature, but they are rarely enforced, and often ignored.
We want to work at a job, and get 100% of our earnings paid to us. We do not want some invisible person, or agency, removing money from our pay out before we see it (Impossible in the United States.). This basically means that we can order a hamburger and not worry about whether or not we should have a slice of cheese on it. (Can we afford the extra 25 cents today, we wonder?) We want to live our lives without anyone telling us that we have to wear a seat belt, buy insurance, or show our ID to buy beer. (In fact, today in America even the failure to have an ID on your person can get you thrown in jail.)
One of the highlights of President Obama’s administration was “providing” “FREE” healthcare to Americans who did not have it. How this was implemented was that he made a law requiring all Americans to buy healthcare. Those that could not would pay a stiff fine. Today, if you do not have mandatory medical insurance you must pay the fine and it is enforced by the most feared federal agency in the United States; the dreaded IRS.
Not only that, but President Obama gave the IRS military weapons, tanks, and a complete SWAT team. All to be used against tax evasion. But, only American citizens pay taxes, so that means that all these military weapons are being used domestically against Americans.
The Internal Revenue Service had in its weapons inventory 4,487 guns and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition as of late 2017, according to a report published this month by the Government Accountability Office.
Included in this arsenal, according to the GAO, were 15 “fully automatic firearms” and 56,000 rounds of ammunition for those fully automatic firearms.
The same report–“Federal Law Enforcement: Purchases and Inventory Controls of Firearms, Ammuntion, and Tactical Equipment”–says that the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services had 194 fully automatic firearms and 386,952 rounds of ammunition for those fully automatic firearms.
Please Leave Us Alone!
We just want to be left alone. (I ask the reader; for you personally, is this not true? Or do you welcome having the nosey neighbor two blocks down the street telling you want to do about your front yard?) To be left alone and to live your life as you see fit; that is the forgotten key component of liberty.
“Human life is one long struggle for Freedom. People struggle individually for Freedom from different personal things in their lives. You have your personal struggles and I have mine. But there is a struggle for Freedom that is paramount in importance to our personal ones. It is the one Freedom which binds us all together. It is Freedom from the bondage of another individual or the bondage of a big overbearing, regulating government. It is the Freedom of living the way you desire to live in happiness, and the Freedom to pursue that happiness. If we find ourselves without this Freedom, none other matters. Death would be better than suffering the consequences of the loss of this Liberty. That’s why Patrick Henry muttered those profound words, “Give me Liberty or give me death.”” -John Porter
In an effort to “improve” the United States; to make it safer, more secure, and “better”, we have stolen from our most basic of principles; that of Freedom and Liberty.
Other People have Other Ideas
You know, my ideas about China and the United States are my own. Maybe you (the reader) might think differently. Maybe you will love it absolutely (like some of my friends), or hate it terribly (as I have read on the internet). So, get yourself a passport, and see for yourself.
Never take my word for anything. The reader must come to their own conclusions. Get a passport, and go to China. Visit Xiamen, visit Shenzhen, visit Tianjin, and visit Shanghai. Just go and come to your own conclusions.
All in all, different nations do things differently. The people in different countries think, act, and dress differently. I think it is best to appreciate the differences and relish in them, rather than try to change others to your own ideal.
I enjoy the differences.
So now, though all that I have experienced, I tell the reader that there are changes going on globally. There are shifts in power, and changes in dominance globally. These things will continue to play out over time. One can argue that I am wrong, but it will happen. How it eventually affects the reader will lie upon their thoughts that react to the persistent and eventual changes.
Chinese city of Wuhan. Look at all that water! Look at all the parks! (Image Source.)
Here are some links;
- General Impressions on China
- American Living in China – After One Year
- 5 Ways Living in China Has Changed Me
“I'm Chinese American, and honestly, this video reflects SO MUCH on my initial views of china when I first went as a tourist back in 2010 (all of my family moved to America, so my mom and i had little connections left in China). To be honest, I actually found China to be quite liberating from all the political mess in America. Most citizens don't care about international "politics" per say, but rather care about events. Like you said, they care less about the well-being of individuality, and more as a collective local community (for example, the richer gated communities in Beijing will support one another), much like the poorer communities there. People are also more open to understanding other views within reasonable bounds (except for bigots of course), as they want to hear/learn more about foreign ideas + experiences. Anyways, i really thank you for posting this video. I appreciate it :)” -ronzalpha
Musings on Liberty and Freedom
“Americans must stop convincing themselves that nothing is wrong and that the United States is still number one in the world…. The first myth to be dispelled: we are no longer the world’s largest economy when adjustments are made for purchasing power parity. On the basis of purchasing power (and not by converting everything into dollars), China overtook the United States at the end of 2014. At the end of 2014, China accounted for 16.48% of the world's purchasing-power adjusted GDP (or $17.632 trillion), and the US made up 16.28% (or $17.416 trillion) (Bird, 2014). The United States will continue to shrink if changes are not made.” -“Is The United States Still The Best Country In The World? Think Again” by Hershey H. Friedman at the Brooklyn College - Department of Business Management, and Sarah Hertz at the State University of New York (SUNY), Empire State College. June 24, 2015.
Most of my current belief circles around the principles of FREEDOM, LIBERTY, and being HAPPY, and WORKING towards PROSPERITY. These are all things that everyone in the world aspires to. And these things have become into sharp focus as I travel about outside the confines of the United States. That is simply because other nations are not as controlled, manipulated, and policed as the American people are.
This is how the American government works;
- First they break your legs.
- Then they sell you a wheelchair to “help you” at ten times the price.
- They then tax that wheelchair.
- They then regulate your use of that wheelchair.
- Finally, they assures you that without their help (the government) that you would not be able to get around at all.
- When you die, they tax your children for inheriting your wheelchair.
Forget what you, the reader thinks, about which is the best government. It really doesn’t matter as much as the behavior those whom occupy leadership positions within that government. In fact, if I were to be so bold, a kind and caring despot in a dictatorship is far preferable to that of a democracy where the leaders are all selfish, evil crooks.
It’s true when you really think about it.
It is the people who control the operation of the government, rather than the government type itself that influences the lifestyle of the people. Now, one would think that a democracy would be ideal. (Which is the non-stop drumbeat in America for the last four decades.) That way, we could (by majority rule – rule by herd), select who will run the government. But, my dear reader, please take note…
“The ability to choose one’s masters, is not freedom.” -Unknown
Stuck where we were Born
The reader should recognize that governments have formed over periods of time involving years, decades, and even centuries. We cannot select which government we were born into. What we can select, to some degree, is where we can migrate towards to achieve happiness.
Our selection of such a place to live is an important one. While there are many who desire to stay in their birth nation and change it to fit their desires, others decide to move towards nations where they can be free and happy. For some, happiness means safety and protection. (Such is the desire of many American women, and children.), while others happiness means freedom to just be yourself. (Which is my desire, and which is shared with other men typically.)
Ah… you DO know that men and women ARE different.
I see this every day. I see it in all people. Whether the person comes from China, or whether they are visitors from other nations who do business in China. We are all the same in regards to the basic traditional roles. Whether you come from Dubai, Cuba, France, England, Australia, or Iran it is a basic truth. Most people want to be left alone, and they want to make their own decisions at their own pace, and not answer to anyone. One of the most shocking, eye-opening experiences that I have had since I moved to China is how much freer the Chinese people are compared to Americans. This has greatly shocked me.
“Where you find the laws most numerous, there you will find also the greatest injustice.” -Arcesilaus (315-241 BC)
But, is being “freer” actually “better”?
Trust in the Government
My father, a life-long Democrat really didn’t trust the government at all. However, he felt that America was the best because our government (at least) listened to its people. We had “representatives” and ‘Senators” that would do what we asked. That that was, as he explained to me, one of the reasons why America was so great.
He would tell me that we were lucky that we didn’t live in some African “hell-hole” run by a dictator that forced people to do things. He explained to me that everything in the United States is voluntary. Even taxes were voluntary. He even pulled out a 1040 form that clearly said so on the top page. He explained to me that the only things that the government made us do were for our own best interests. For instance, like Social Security, seatbelt laws, prohibition on buying liquor on Sundays (this was Pennsylvania), and “no-fault” auto insurance. Only a dictator would force someone to buy something, or make them do something that they didn’t want to.
Only a tinhorn, dictator out of an African “hell-hole” would impose his views on Americans…
My Immediate Impressions
China is a huge place with a very long history. Naturally, you would expect countless number of good things and bad things. In fact, if one was to list all the positives, you could easily make a book thicker than the bible. However since there is so much anti-China propaganda about the present-day China, it may be worthwhile concentrating on only those positives relating to the present-day China, so as to counter some of the negative publicity. There are many positives in today’s China. However, the Western media has made it impossible for anyone to list these one by one without attracting serious condemnations from all directions. Not only is China portrayed as an evil, but incredibly even some of the positives in China are also turned into negatives by the media! Just consider the following examples (positives that were turned into negatives by the Western media): The West says China mistreats and suppresses its minorities... But China is the only country I know of that under its rule, the minority’s health, literacy rate, education level, and life expectancy have all improved dramatically. (In the case of Tibetans, even the wealth of the average person has also improved dramatically) The West says China carries out cultural genocide... But China is the only country I know of that under its rule, (1) the minority’s language is formally recognized, and all government documents that concern them would be printed in their languages, and all education is carried out in their languages. (2) All important minority festivals are formally recognized, AND public holidays are granted to celebrate those festivals. (3) All minorities are encouraged to wear their traditional costumes. AND government grants are provided to ensure these traditions are preserved. The West says China doesn’t share its wealth with others... But China is the only country I know of that, as soon as it has shrugged off poverty itself, it has immediately turned itself into a major foreign aids provider. The West says China is a hostile ambitious country... But China is the only major world power I know of that has settled land disputes by giving away large chunks of land in return for peace. The West says China was militarizing space... But China was actually one of the first 2 countries in the world to lead a campaign against militarizing space back in the 1980’s at a time when the West was supporting America’s militarization of space. (By the way, the anti-satellite missile was not a space weapon. It was designed to fight against space weapons) The West says China is the biggest carbon emitter... But China is actually one of the smallest carbon emitters per capita (and per capita is the ONLY realistic measure). And in any case, it is the demand, rather than the production that drives the carbon emission. So even if you close down all factories in China, carbon emission will not be lower because another poor developing country will have to be brought in to produce them. The demand is actually driven from the West.” -A comment found on Yahoo Answers
Since I moved to China, I have never had to show my identification, I have never been stopped for a body check, or gave my cell phone to the authorities to scan. I never had to have a urine drug test, or a background check, or a financial report. I never showed my driver’s license for anything.
When I order a beer, they simply just give it to me. (The last time I was in the United States, I ordered a beer in a Tex-Mex restaurant in Pennsylvania. Despite the fact that I had graying hair, and dressed like an older gentleman, the waitress insisted that I be carded. She said it was store policy. Why? Because in the USA, a restaurant can lose their liquor license for the slightest offense. No one wants to take the risk.)
That is freedom in America today.
When I want to smoke, I pull out a cigarette and smoke right there on the spot. (Try doing that in your work office in the USA, or in a restaurant, or even in your own car or truck.) In China, it is just A-Okay to smoke at your desk.
Sanity check: Check out your freedom… Light up a cigar at your desk at work. Ah, you laugh! Don’t be silly. “I’d get fired.” You say. And I respond. “Thank you; you just proved my point.” A place that allows you to smoke at your desk is FREER than a place that does not.
If I want to walk into a restaurant without a shirt on, or shoes, no one will stop me or say anything to me. Not only is this impossible to do in the USA, but there are often signs specifically stating so. In fact, one of the first things I noted, on a return visit to the USA, was the presence of these signs. Disgusting and disturbing. The second thing I noticed was that you had to PAY for Internet access.
What decade is the USA in? Jeeze!
If I want to bring my dog into the restaurant with me, no one says anything. (Actually, the waitress staff is often playing with the dog, taking selfies, and rubbing his nose. Oh, he’s a real chick-magnet.) No one cares. No one looks at me with disgust, or tells me to step outside. It just never happens; never.
Sanity Check; Check out your freedom... Bring your dog into a restaurant. Set him on the chair, and place an order. Can you do it without being asked to leave, or having the police called on you? A place where you can eat with your pet is FREER than one where you cannot.
Let me elaborate this point again. No fat American woman arches her back, sticks out her chin and says “Excuse me!” with disapproval. No policeman looks you up and down in any way. (They are too busy chatting with the pretty girls, or playing on their iPhones.)
Americans LOST our Freedoms – We just don’t realize it
No company demands that I fill out a W-2 form, sign up for a urine or background check, puts down a long list of dress codes, demands that I have a cell phone so that they can have 24 hour access to me when they want. I have never been asked (with negative consequences if you don’t comply) to “donate” blood, participate in fund drives, or donate my time to some special event during my “off hours”. These things are all unheard of outside of the United States.
In the USA, everyone drug tests their employees. (Image Source.)
Meanwhile in China…
In China, you are NOT compelled to buy or purchase anything or be forced to pay fees or fines otherwise. Of course, under President Obama you MUST purchase government health insurance, and pay into it monthly. Additionally, if you fail to buy insurance, you will be penalized financially.
You do not have to report your earnings every year to the government.
That’s correct. This requirement is absent from most other nations. Other people, elsewhere in the world NEVER have to report anything to their government. They don’t spend any time doing so. They don’t hire anyone to help them in the reporting effort. They don’t try to do the reporting themselves by purchasing “taxation software”. They don’t even buy stamps to mail a letter to the government. They are FREE to live their lives and not tell the government anything. WOW!
Imagine that!
You do not have to fill out forms to the federal government if you want to move large sums of money out of a bank. If you want $25,000 from your bank, you just show your thumbprint and get it. It is that simple. There are no forms to fill out. There are no questions. It is that simple.
(Just remember to bring a big bag or suitcase. The largest denomination in China is a 100 RMB note.)
It’s not just banks, but it is everything as well. You do not have to ask permission to cut down a tree in your yard, haul things with your car, dig a well, add a room to your house, or fly a flag. So many restrictions of freedom in America are simply not present outside the American borders.
Sanity Check; Check out your freedom... Buy a beer in the afternoon. Open it up and drink some. Then go to a mall or in and out of various stores holding the opened bottle in your hand. A place that allows you to consume adult beverages at will, is FREER than a place that doesn’t.
I most especially like the concept that if you buy a house it is yours. No government can tax it for any reason. When you die, no government can take it and give a portion to your children. No government can take it and tear it down to preserve the habitat of the endangered tiger-boob-dodo-fly. Finally, no government can require that you submit bank and real estate appraisals as part of your annual income. The concept that what you earn is yours! It’s wonderful! But, yet so un-American.
Anywho, I blog about this all the time(American bashing). I hate their laws, legal system and almost everything about America. I was raise and lived my entire life in NYC but has since moved back to my place of birth in the Caribbean. One will only know how bullshit America is when they actually visit other places on the globe. Americans segregate themselves to just America, and they’re unable to see true freedom. Here in the Caribbean(and almost the entire globe),I can walk around with 100 cans of beers and drink them unconcealed all I want to, and I don’t have to worry about BS tickets. Kids can go into liquor stores and buy alcohol, cigarettes, etc. Not that they use them, but let’s say I as a father cannot make it to buy some booze, I can just send my 10 year old son to do that. The list goes on and on. America falsely prides itself on freedom, but it has no freedoms compared to almost every nation on the glob. It’s like a guy bragging about having a huge dick, then when his pants come down, his 2 inches is exposed. That is America,hypocrisy to the 10th.degree. And one will only know that America has ZERO freedoms only when they begin to travel internationally. -SocialKenny
In America, what you “own” is actually owned by the Government. You are just a tenant. You pay the government rent. You don’t really own anything. You just have a name on a paper that permits you to live in a certain location as long as you pay your fees and taxes on time to the proper authorities.
The most appropriate protest sign ever. (Image Source.)
Chinese Taxes
“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell." -Former president Jimmy Carter (D).
Most Chinese enjoy a flat 3% – 10% tax on income with no other taxes, what so ever. In China, there is no 16% SS tax (8%+8%), no unemployment tax, excise taxes (except for cars), state taxes, federal taxes, local taxes, school taxes, inheritance taxes, taxes on gasoline, soda, beer, cigarettes, housing taxes.
They are very upfront and pragmatic about taxes. It is a (for practical purposes) flat tax (Officially it is not. It is graduated. However, for the vast bulk of Chinese people who work it actually is a flat tax. That is what matters, yes? How MOST of the citizens experience life in their country. You pay your share. There are no complicated rules that favor the wealthy, or a “protected” group of people. It is a minimal tax scheme that enables the people to subsidize their governmental programs and projects. This freedom from taxation has enabled the Chinese citizen to save money. This very freedom, in turn, enables them to invest into their own businesses and futures.
But, that being said let’s look it up oficially. While most Chinese (95%) pay a flat tax, the weathliest (5%) pay more in taxes. Yes…
Officially and Actually…
It is actually a graduated taxation scheme. (Brownie point for the Progressives in the audience.) However there is a difference between what is supposed to work, and what actually works in application. Thus, for all practical purposes, the vast bulk of people pay the 3% to 10% tax rate.
This means that for 95% of Chinese people pay this rate. At higher income levels, it becomes graduated and thus more complicated. Thus “officially” it is a graduated tax scheme, but for 95% of the population it is a flat tax scheme. I am trying to keep things honest with the reader. One can always delve in the nuances of a given situation, but often times ignoring the true impact as to who is affected.
This kind of camouflage is used to confuse the true nature of American issues. The News Media might spend the bulk of their airtime discussing political affairs that affect only the richest 0.1% of Americans, thus giving the impression that what they discuss affects everyone. Yet they quickly gloss over issues that affect the majority of people by using minimizing language.
“Tax cuts for the rich!”, the Progressive talking heads scream. “Oh, that is so unfair”, the observer shakes their head in disgust. Yet, whether it affects THEM is not really an issue, is it? What affects YOU is the real issue.
If the change or plan will not affect you, then why get so hot and bothered about it? (“ Oh, but you don’t understand, if they are helped, it will hurt ME!” OK. I’ll bite. How will it hurt you? How?)
In other words, to use American political lingo; the individual Chinese have a flat tax on their income for the vast majority of people in the nation. If your income is somewhere for the top 5 or higher it becomes graduated. You end up paying more because you make more. There are no complicated exceptions or deductions. They have no other taxation schemes. It’s a pretty straightforward system.
Super-Rich Chinese Want to Move to America
While most Chinese are happy to stay in China, there is a movement of the “Super-Rich” that want to leave China. These are not “just” millionaires, these are the enormously wealthy Chinese. China taxes them harshly. While in America, the Super-rich end up protected from excessive taxation.
That is also why many super-rich Chinese want to move to America and Canada; The tax schemes in the Americas benefit the super-rich. They do not like being singled out to pay much more than the rest of the nation.
China Tax Rates 2014; The tax on an individual's income is progressive. An individual's income is taxed progressively at 3% - 45%. The corporate tax rate for domestic and foreign companies is 25%. Small companies pay 20% corporate tax in certain cases. Hi-tech companies pay 15% corporate tax.
American on the other hand, not only have to pay a multitude of taxes, under different schemes and names, but if they reside overseas, must pay double taxes; firstly to the nation where they reside, and of course all the taxes to the US government.
“ ...in 2014, the IRS mandated all U.S. taxpayers with offshore accounts totaling more than $10,000 had until June 30 to file a new Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Form 114 or else be subject to a penalty of as much as 50% of their assets. The fact is most foreign banks do not want deposits from U.S. citizens. This is increasingly the case in traditional destinations, such as Switzerland and the United Kingdom, because of increased aggressiveness from the IRS and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Foreign banks are only willing to devote so much time and energy to courting American clients, and very few have the type of compliance department that can handle complex U.S. regulations and heightened scrutiny.” - The Tax Implications of Opening a Foreign Bank Account
Additionally, it should be noted, that many companies institute “creative” work-arounds so that the Chinese worker pays a very small amount of tax. This varies from having two incomes (a taxed income, and an “under the table” income) to permitting the salary to be broken up into different parts and put in other people’s names (obviously you must trust them). Therefore, what you might read on the Internet in regards to Chinese taxes is very misleading. If you are someone reading about Chinese taxation from some “official” think-tank or agency on the Internet, you can pretty much accept the fact that it is a fantasy and does not reflect reality at all.
Again, most of what you see and read in the United States is fake news.
Hemmingway in China. (Image Source.)
For the record, Americans pay more in taxes than food and clothing combined. That is just very sick and unhealthy. How in the heck did things get so far out of whack?
In China you can save money. You do pay taxes, but it is a straightforward amount that everyone in your tax bracket pays, and there are no exceptions at all. You do not have to report your income, and no IRS will ever audit you. All of this, the ease and simplicity of it all, is far easier on the shoulders. There is no stress involved at all.
How can this “flat tax” be implemented in China? Well, the answer is simple. China is run as a “Communist nation with Chinese influence”. Or, in other words, as an American Conservative entity. They implement “flat tax” solutions, and a “free market” business environment.
Work
“An analysis of government data released this week from the Pew Research Center reveals that in 2015, for the first time in more than 40 years, middle-income households stopped being the economic majority in America.” -Liz Dwyer quoted from Takepart.com December 11, 2015 7:26 PM
You are never free working for someone else. This is true regardless where you live or work. Once you are employed, you give up some of your freedoms in exchange for money. You lose various freedoms. They tell you what hours you work, and what you wear, and how you behave. They decide how long you can work for, and whether you are meeting their requirements for you. Your value is only what you can give them. You are never valued for your real and true actual worth. Instead your value becomes equal to the cost to replace you.
For purposes of understanding, perhaps we need to review just what work is. Work; what is it actually? What does the word “work” mean to a typical American who is “working” in the United States? What does it actually mean?
Over the years, Americans have forgotten what work is and have blurred the lines of distinction between the various forms of work and labor. Americans call themselves workers with a degree of freedom, but in reality, this is not actually the case. Many times, Americans are simply subsisting and are involved and engaged in other labors under the name of work, but which is truly something else altogether.
Let’s take a brief look at this interesting situation
Indentured
“I don’t think the issue of income mobility receives the attention it deserves. It is a foundational element for a well-functioning democratic society and provides evidence about the ability of an economy to provide opportunities for its citizens. While income mobility in the United States has been relatively unchanged, it remains well below several other nations. According to Stanford economist Raj Chetty, the probability of moving from the bottom quintile to the top quintile is 7.5 percent in the United States, as compared to 11.7 percent in Denmark and 13.5 percent in Canada—two countries with relatively high levels of intergenerational mobility. So effectively the chance of achieving the American Dream is not the highest for children born in America.” -Bill Dudley， President of Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
When someone withholds some of the money that you earned from you, you are not free. You are tethered. You are indentured. You cannot sever the work relationship without experiencing some kind of loss. (In the USA, because money is withheld, it is a financial loss.)
Thus, to efficiently labor to your contractual obligations, you must either accept the loss of financial income or labor in the hope of getting the loss recovered. Thus, one must work for the duration of your contract, and only at the termination of your agreement can one be free. (Although, most Americans do not work to work-contract agreements. They work at the behest of the company that can fire them, or terminate their employment at any time, for any reason. Most of the states in the USA are “right-to-work” states, and can hire and fire with impunity.)
Former Senator Tom Coburn had some very harsh words for Congress;
“Some of you may have read it (A report on the economic realities of Americans), some of you may not have, but it tells me where we are today in our country, And having been in 21 states the last year, and 15 already this year, and what I’m hearing, I’m hearing what Tocqueville described back in the late 1700s.”
Coburn cited Tocqueville observations that centralized power of
“small, complicated rules, minute and uniform” leads to the “will of man … not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided.”… “Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd,”
Many Americans do work in this role. In fact, I would say almost every American works under some form or variance of being indentured. When part of your pay is withheld from you, you are indentured to the person who holds that pay. This could be from your employer or the government or both, not to mention the costs incurred by attending a university.
As Americans, we have grown accustomed to having taxes withdrawn from our paycheck. We understand the need. Part of it is to maintain the roads, and post office. Part is to help the poor people. Part of it is a savings program for our retirement (Social Security). However, all of this is a lie. These are simply just excuses.
None of the money ever goes to precisely those reasons.
They all are collected and go into a large pool of funds that the Congress and the President can spend with as they choose. President Obama gave away seven billion dollars to South Africa to “improve” their national electrical grid. He gifted $100 billion to the UN, then he gave them yet another $500 million to fight climate change. He gave $7 billion to Kenya, for reasons that I am not clear on. He gave away 150 billion dollars to Iran under a most flimsy excuse. And, another $400 million in pure raw cash as well. Obama gave $221 million to the Palestinian Authority on the way out the door. He gave $500 million to the UN for “climate change”. He gave Mexico $75 million to build a wall on their southern border. He gave $90 million to Laos. He even gave George Soros $9 million dollars. Not to mention, the billions of dollars to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria.
You know, in my High School Civics class we were told that Congress, and not the President controlled how money was spent. I was also told that the government collects that money to help us Americans. Now it is the other way around. Isn’t it?
Anyways, how did any of this help Americans? I don’t know about the reader, but NONE of this many helped me or my family, or my extended family, or any of my friends in ANY way.
Not one single cent of the billions of dollars gifted to South Africa benefits me, my family or my extended family. It does not benefit my home state. It does not benefit my military. It does not help R&D to make America strong, and it does not provide America geo-political advantage.
It did not. He just gave it away…”because”. Within that one paragraph (above) is hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used to rebuild Detroit, fix the problems in California, lower the tax burden of many Americans, and refurbish our collapsing infrastructure. Yet it wasn’t used that way. It went elsewhere for other purposes.
Imagine you are 10 years old. You go mow the lawn of a neighbor for $10 dollars. When you finish, he pays you six dollars. He explains that he will “set aside” the $4 that he took, and he promises you that he will help your family get things done in the future. Maybe he will watch out the window to protect your sister. Maybe he can talk to your dad’s boss. He promises that if he sees a good deal or a store coupon, that he will cut it out and give it to you! He promises to keep all these promises and more, all as long as you keep on mowing his grass. The moment you stop, all bets are off, and he will terminate the agreement. In any event, you will never see the $4 that he withheld from you.
That is exactly how the USA is set up today.
"I have never, ever borrowed a penny. So I have zero credit record. No loans, no mortgage, nothing. Ever. When I had no money, I rented. I have an allergy to borrowing and a scorn for people who are in debt, and I don’t hide it. I follow the Romans’ attitude that debtors are not free people." -Nassim Taleb
You are indentured. The promised value of the $4 taken from you will go to zero if you break the work – labor agreement. You have two choices, agree or lose the promised value of the money so withheld. Withholding tax is, in its purest form, a form of indentured labor.
During World War II, Congress introduced payroll withholding and quarterly tax payments with the vote of the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943. The U.S. Department of Treasury describes tax withholding;
“This greatly eased the collection of the tax for both the taxpayer and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. However, it also greatly reduced the taxpayer's awareness of the amount of tax being collected, i.e. it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future.” -Wikipedia
I’ll bet! Up until this was passed, ONLY indentured workers had money withheld from their pay. When this legislation was passed it turned all Americans into indentured slaves.
Most Americans have money withheld out of their pay via a mechanism known as the W-4 and W-2 forms. These documents removes money from the employees pay and gives it to other entities for a variety of purposes. Make no mistake. When a worker has ANY money withheld from their pay, they are working under an indentured labor contract. This is how a person can determine if they are indentured or not.
Indentured workers have money withheld from their pay.
Americans tend to believe that it is fine and all right to work under this situation. They reason that it is because the Federal and the State government allow this, and the monies go to pay their taxes and other good deeds. This can be roads, mail services, police and other visible and obvious purposes. However, the fact is, dear fellow Americans, that not all countries do this. It happens in the United States all right. It is not normal. It is not moral. It is not right, nor is it just. (Remember that America had roads, a military that fought wars, the post office and street lights all functioning perfectly, before the passage of the Income Tax law. We DID NOT need the law to fund roads and bridges; the common dismissive argument currently used by statists…)
While Americans might argue that they are not working off a “boat passage” to enter a foreign country, therefore, they are not indentured, they are deluding themselves. The withholding of any money from one’s pay for whatever reason is a form of indentured servitude. The worker is NOT paid what THEY earn. The money is withheld from them and they become chained to the promise of its return or legalized justification for its withdrawal. So, yes, unlike being indentured to pay for boat passage, Americans are indentured as citizens.
If you want to be a USA citizen, you MUST become indentured.
This reminds me of the movie (and the book) “Dune” by Frank Herbert. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, head of House Harkonnen tells a new recruit that everyone must get implanted with a “kill switch” that will kill them at will. If you wanted to be a part of House Harkonnen, you had to be ready to give up your life. To be a citizen in the United States you must become indentured FOREVER to those who run the nation.
My dear reader, when someone takes the money you earn, and decides to use it in ways that you might not agree with, then you are indentured. You must work as a serf, for a fraction of your value while others determine what to do with your earnings.
Serfdom
“The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.” - Ron Paul
When the money you earn goes directly into food, housing, and weekly debts and necessities without anything left to save, you are not free. You are a serf. It is, at the very core, a system of enforced serfdom. You make enough to live on, but if you cannot work, you become a liability. That is what a serf is. That is the mechanism of serfdom. You make just enough to live, but [1] not enough to save or [2] substantially improve your standard of living.
- A measure of serfdom is a measure of one’s ability to save their earnings.
- If one cannot (realistically) save money, but they are employed (and are able to work), they are a serf.
A measure of how many American people are participating in a program of serfdom, measure the welfare and social service roles. This is an accurate appraisal of just which Americans are not able to exist without government intervention. (You cannot actually get welfare or food stamps if you have savings. Thus, this true measure can be used in this calculus.)
They (Those on these government programs.) cannot save, and they do not have enough money to eat, live and stay healthy. Any work that they have must be supplemented by the government. It is not a measure of the success of these programs to provide assistance, but rather a measure of just how many Americans live a life of servitude as a serf.
Last time I checked, in 2014, over 60% of Americans qualified for this category (Obama administration 2016).
Serfs are workers who are unable to save money.
It is indeed a sad state of affairs. I am not the only one waking up to this situation. Below is a quote from Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
“We foolishly thought we were “middle class” until we realized we were nothing but debt-serfs.”
Finally, and very interestingly…
Additionally, and of great curiosity, is the fact that medieval peasants had far more vacation days than the average American today. The peasant, although often toiling in fields with back-breaking labor, would only work about 150 days of the year, according to a report from Juliet B. Schor, an author and professor of sociology at Boston College. Peasants generally received anywhere from eight weeks to a half-year off. At the time, the Church considered frequent and mandatory holidays the key to keeping a working population from revolting.
“That house you live in, the car you drive, the small (or not so small) acreage of land that has been passed down through your family or that you scrimped and saved to acquire, whatever money you manage to keep in your bank account after the government and its cronies have taken their first and second and third cut...none of it is safe from the government’s greedy grasp. At no point do you ever have any real ownership in anything other than the clothes on your back. Everything else can be seized by the government under one pretext or another (civil asset forfeiture, unpaid taxes, eminent domain, public interest, etc.). The American Dream has been reduced to a lease arrangement in which we are granted the privilege of endlessly paying out the nose for assets that are only ours so long as it suits the government’s purposes. And when it doesn’t suit the government’s purposes? Watch out. This is not a government that respects the rights of its citizenry or the law. Rather, this is a government that sells its citizens to the highest bidder and speaks to them in a language of force. ” -Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute
So why do we often consider working conditions now better than ever before?
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into effect. The law initially limited working hours to 44 per week, which dropped to 40 by 1940. The passage of the act however, was not revolutionary. It was reactionary. Worker’s revolts and union strikes in the early 20th century had aimed to restore a standard of life that was taken away by the Industrial Revolution. Before the invention of the lightbulb and the growth of factories, workers enjoyed a fairly leisurely and balanced lifestyle.
Before electricity, workers were limited to how much they could work by the rising and setting of the sun. Then, workers were limited by the amount of hours they could spend in the office. In today’s digital culture, workers can meet deadlines and check in from around the world, no matter what time. In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2030, Americans would enjoy such great lifestyles that we would all enjoy more leisure than work time—which, at this point in history, seems very unlikely to happen.
I am not the only person who feels this way. There are many others, on both sides of the political spectrum. It is a problem. For more links on this subject;
- The “Gig Economy” is the new term for Debt Serfdom.
- Blain: “Millennials Aren’t Buying Cars Or Homes Because They Are Indentured Slaves”
- Property Taxes pave the way to Serfdom
- Are We Entering an Era of Postmodern Serfdom?
- Modern Serfdom
- Modern ‘Debt Serfdom’ vs. the Enviable Leisure Time of a Medieval Peasant
- Escaping Serfdom
- GM’s Cartoon Version of von Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”
- The Road to Serfdom and Modern Liberalism
- Hayek – Road to Serfdom – Summary
Slavery
“Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members.” – Former President Jimmy Carter
When you are told how to do your work, when to do it, how to dress when you do it, what to say and how to say it, you are not free. You are a slave to whatever that person promises to give you. A company might justify their policies, and the worker might agree to obeying the policies out of necessity, but the fact remains that they agree to participate in various elements of slavery in exchange for financial benefit.
Slavery is labor for another person, with very little in the way of compensation. It differs from serfdom in that serfs can often choose their clothing, and set aside small amounts of money and time for their own purposes. Slaves do not have this option. Their activities, free time, clothing and food are all regulated.
For those of you who don’t think that slavery is the norm in an American corporate environment, then consider my experience. Delco Electronics told me that I was FORBIDDEN to drink beer on my weekends and holidays. Guardian Glass told me that I had to have my telephone on and free from use whenever I was at home, and if I went elsewhere for lunch, that it had to be no further than 5 miles away from the factory. Poulan Weedeater told me that they didn’t want me eating fish for lunch. GM insisted that I sell or give away my car and buy an American made car. You are never free if someone can tell you how to live your life outside of work hours.
Slavery is labor for another person, with little compensation.
Under this most simplified definition, we can see that the distinction between slavery, serfdom, and indentured service are all practiced in the United States to various degrees. The lines of distinction has been blurred over the years, and there is a great deal of confusion as to what these names actually mean. But functionally, and most accurately, most Americans fall into the three categories. Very few labor under their own terms and manage to do so successfully. (Perhaps the top 0.01% does so. However, theirs is an exclusive club, and entry into it is most formidable.)
“ Clinton was, however, generous enough to allow inmates from Arkansas prisons to work as unpaid servants in the Governor’s Mansion. In It Takes a Village, Hillary Clinton writes that the residence was staffed with “African-American men in their thirties,” since “using prison labor at the governor’s mansion was a longstanding tradition, which kept down costs.” It is unclear just how longstanding the tradition of having chained black laborers brought to work as maids and gardeners had been. But one has no doubt that as the white residents of a mansion staffed with unpaid blacks, the Clintons were continuing a certain historic Southern practice. Hillary Clinton did note, however, that she and Bill were sure not to show undue lenience to the sla…servants, writing that “[w]e enforced rules strictly and sent back to prison any inmate who broke a rule.” ” -Current Affairs , 06JUN17 “The Clintons Had Slaves”
Americans have forgotten that there was a time when most families had their own businesses and labored under rules that they (themselves) controlled. They wore the clothes that they chose and worked in an environment of their own choosing. In so doing, if they wanted to toil at their labors all day, they did so. If they wanted to smoke while they worked, take a noon nap, or drink while they were discussing business they did so. We have forgotten this reality, but it is never the less quite true. This should not be a shocking concept.
Smith's Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a dysfunctional government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.
As recently as three decades ago this was the norm. Watch old movies, or even not so old movies. Look at them. Watch the 1980’s blockbuster movie “Ghostbusters”. So what? Well, watch it. But, watch it with a critical eye towards the movie-viewers reaction to depictions of home and work life. Notice how the characters are [1] always smoking at work, [2] drinking beer during work, and yet work still got done. This wasn’t such a shocking thing to the movie audiences during the 1980’s. It was common place, and thus, no one was shocked.
Let me tell the reader; drinking during lunch hours was common at one time. That ended during the 1990’s, but it used to be very common. But today, after the slow creeping political correctness of government control over workplace behaviors, it has become shocking. Watch movies from 3, 4 or even six decades ago. Look how the work place is depicted. Compare that to your work place today. Who has freedom of behavior? Do you? Really?
“Perhaps the lack of quality journalism is related to the way the average urban Kiwi appears scared of speaking out – crazy in a country where there is freedom to speak your mind and it was the #1 thing we learned at school – to say what you truly believe, come what may. We Kiwis always stood up for what we believed in. Not today! There are whispers and mutterings in private, but people just don't speak out like they once did. As someone who refuses to shut up, I'm seen as a renegade and a danger to the status quo. No doubt I am seen as a threat. My feeling is that it all comes back to the fact that so many are mortgaged to the hilt and are petrified of speaking out and saying something that may cause them to lose their job, which in turn could mean they have no money, cannot pay their mortgage, lose their house and then their family and they are on the road to ruin. The strong, confident type has been replaced by meek weaklings afraid to open their mouth. A few times people have told me to ease up when I say what I think, but without a day job, a mortgage or a wife, I have nothing to lose. I'm still getting used to how things are today in modern New Zealand, but that hasn't stopped me from saying what I think. I just have to accept that even people who may agree are scared to say anything. That has taken some adjusting to.” -Stickman
Few Americans can say this today.
What is Freedom?
Prior to President Bill Clinton (D) smoking was an accepted part of American life. (Image Source.)
Over the years Americans have forgotten what the differences are between [1] working for someone else, [2] laboring as a free man, and [3] working as a slave or an indentured servant. The terms, and the laws have become so blurred that right now, most Americans still consider themselves free when they themselves do not exist in a state of freedom.
- If you are employed and must fill out a W-2, you are indentured.
- If you have less than six months of savings in the bank, you are also a serf.
- If you have difficultly changing the above two situations around, you are a slave.
Freedom is the ability to do what you want, when you want, and how you want without anyone telling you otherwise. Liberty is the ability to be free without government intervention.
Both the United States and China employ workers. But there is a significant difference in how they are employed. In China, the workers know that working for someone else is a temporary income solution. They do so to save money, and then start their own businesses later on. But that is different by a wide margin compared to the United States. In the United States one works towards a career. A career, mind you, is a lifetime of servitude by working for someone else. Americans today, work and labor, for the well-being of others. They exchange their time and efforts for money.
Thus, the Chinese are constantly starting new businesses. This can be a small restaurant, or a factory that makes buttons. In every case a group of classmates and friends would band together and form a company. They would share in its formation and share in its problems. That is why China seems to be advancing so quickly in comparison to the United States. The people work and strive for their own goals and purposes, and only work for others temporarily.
Americans go to college to become an indentured worker.
True and Real Freedom
“Well, 'They Live' was a primal scream against Reaganism of the '80s. And the '80s never went away. They're still with us. That's what makes 'They Live' look so fresh - it's a document of greed and insanity. It's about life in the United States then and now. If anything, things have gotten worse.” -John Carpenter
True freedom lies in establishing your own rules and finances.
True freedom is independence from the influences and restrictions placed on you by others. The best way to do this is through your own business. The Chinese know this, and that is why they are beating the heck out of the USA for new business start-ups. They save their money, and then with friends, they create their own businesses. In the USA, we have been taught that success lies in getting the necessary skills to work for someone else…
In 2016 Barrack Obama was the President of the USA. (Image Source.)
China has had centuries of errors, mistakes, corruption, wars, dictatorships and servitude. China has had a most tumultuous history. They know, by now, what is truly important. Survival of the family is their top and primary consideration. They don’t place their faith in government. They do not. They absolutely do not.
They place faith in their own abilities. They invest time and effort in education. They save their money. They obtain skills; network with friends and family, and create alliances. China is a nation of nerds. They work and study hard, and do so while saving money. At a critical point, they setup a company and then aggressively pursue the obtainment of a new market niche.
“Based on a comparison to multiple developed countries around the world, the U.S personal savings rate of 4.8% as of September 2015…”
In the USA, it is “every man for himself”. Many Americans consider themselves “independent” lone wolves. They believe that their success (if these is any) was due to them and themselves alone. They do not attribute it to luck, their social connections, or their partners. Many, who do not ascribe to this belief think otherwise. They believe that their work brought them to their current “successful life”. It is this belief structure, with a so-called benevolent government keeping everyone in line, which America aspires to.
Americans like to consider themselves as wolves working alone or in a pack. (Image Source.)
How, really think about it, just how can an American compete globally? You can’t. Instead you work as an indentured slave. Yes, how many Americans own (fully paid for) their house, car, furniture, their education? Really, how many? How many have enough savings to maintain their current lifestyle for six months without working? Not very many, I am afraid. Especially for a middle-class white American under a Democrat president. (Offended? Yeah, the truth stings, doesn’t it?)
"The liberals and the leftwing are mainly concerned with inventing new rights in the Constitution for 'victim groups' as defined by Identity Politics. These new rights, of course, cancel out rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights that was incorporated into the Constitution as Amendments. For example, the right of a preferred minority not to be offended cancels out the freedom of speech. While the government has destroyed habeas corpus and due process, the leftwing has destroyed freedom of expression. Together they have given us a police state." -Paul Craig Roberts
True freedom is the ability to say what you feel without censorship. It seems odd that I can experience this in China. However it is true. The only kind of censorship that the Chinese government makes is those whom are critical about the government. Otherwise they simply just leave you alone.
The PC chains that shackled Americans under the Obama Presidency is pleasantly absent in China. It’s wondrous.
“Who are these people? Where do they get off assuming the right to sit in judgment of everybody else? You know, why does everybody have to justify what they say, do, or think to these people? I resent this whole notion that there’s a bunch of speech police and propriety police out there.” -Rush Limbaugh on 21 December 2017
The Necessary Evils
“Congress [in implementing the Sixteenth Amendment] went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion.” “The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds.” “The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men.” “The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die.” -T. Coleman Andrews (He served as commissioner of IRS for nearly 3 years during the early 1950s. This was his statement made directly after his resignation.)
The ignorant might argue that taxes are needed to create roads, to finance the police and fire departments, and to provide social services for the common good. This is partially true. Actually, they are useful to create roads and infrastructure. They are not needed to do so. (Or else how can you explain the huge growth of American infrastructure prior to 1913?) The issue is really how much is needed? Roads? The USA collects enough taxes to pave the entire world (including the oceans) over, each day and still have money left over!
Up until 1913, Americans kept 100% of their personal earnings. Despite this, America still had schools, colleges, roads, railroads, streets, subways, the Army, the Navy, and Marine Corps (who managed to win 8 wars and fight one (the war of 1812) to a draw. Yet now, after the passage of the 16th amendment, the entire financial structure of the United States is in shambles. The value of the dollar has plummeted. American can no longer save, no one truly owns real-estate, or property, and the government controls everything.
In the United States, the government owns you.
It is true. They permit you to rent such things as a house or transportation, as long as you pay your dues, obey their rules and act as they see fit. Americans are not happy with this arrangement, but at least for now, they are starting to wake up and snap back a little bit.
“What you don't understand, leftist Bernie/Hillary/Obama person, is that you are endlessly prying your way into our personal lives – and we don't like it. We've had enough of your activist invasion into our interior private lives. We don't like your ideas imposed on us, your stupid bright ideas, the damn reckless Obamacare scars you've left on our wrists, the lethal cuts Hillary's forced single payer will impose. We don't like your overall cockiness. Your intrusiveness. Your victim cult crybaby legislation. Your nauseating me-first European socialist entitlement demands for more free stuff, from college to health care to pregnancy and sick leave to free child care. You represent everything that quantum physics warned us about: a dangerous black hole, an event horizon, an endless wind tunnel, a vortex of infantile and unworkable demands that someone else has to pay for because your undeveloped character cannot accept a world where effort is involved. You are a moral perversion, a virus to the individual who just wants to be left alone – but you won't leave us alone. You want to continue to extract from us and others who make a nickel more than you, because you are an amoral basket case.” -Andrew Solomon via AmericanThinker.com
So, here is a warning and a lesson to everyone who is confused about what freedom and liberty are. There is NOTHING in this world that is free. There is always a price to pay. Sometimes we don’t mind to pay. Sometimes, we are forced to pay because we inherited a mess left over from our predecessors. No matter. We now have to deal with the situation as it is presented.
Nothing is ever free. You will eventually need to pay a price.
Beware of free things from the government. (Image Source.)
The Federal Reserve
“The Gini coefficient (or index) is the most commonly used measure of income inequality. It ranges from 0 (a state of perfect equality) to 1 (where all wealth is held by one person, or a state of perfect inequality). Countries with the most serious problems of income inequality are Chile (Gini = .501), Mexico (.466), Turkey (.411), United States (.38), and Israel (.376).” -Quote from “Is The United States Still The Best Country In The World? Think Again” by Hershey H. Friedman at the Brooklyn College - Department of Business Management, and Sarah Hertz at the State University of New York (SUNY), Empire State College. June 24, 2015.
The Federal Reserve was created, along with the “Income Tax” during the imposition of the 16th amendment under suspicious circumstances during 1913. The Federal Reserve is a group of wealthy bankers who are not Americans and who have bled America dry for over a hundred years. They own us. They own everything. In fact, Americans don’t have any money, and it is just an illusion when one puts money in an American bank account.
“…the IRS may seize a person's bank assets if it discovers a pattern of frequent transactions under $10,000. Banks are required to report cash transactions over $10,000 and it's a crime if one tries to avoid that reporting by purposefully keeping all transactions below that amount.” -CNN Money
Up until the 16th Amendment, Americans saved, the dollar was stable, and the average man and family worked and were able to own what they bought. They could and would save money; invest in business; and pay for college without taking out loans from banks. They did not need to obtain loans. They did not need to borrow money to go to college. They did not need to obtain a loan to obtain transportation. They paid in cash. That all changed with the passage of that 16thamendment.
“...Numbers don’t lie. From 1790 to 1913, when the federal government existed without a Federal Reserve to print money and lend to the government whatever it wanted, the value of the dollar rose by 8 %. From 1913 to 2011, in the 98 years we have had a Federal Reserve, the value of the dollar has decreased by 93%." -Judge Andrew Napolitano
Decrease in the value of the USD since the adoption of the Federal Reserve.
Today, the value of a United State dollar, comparatively to that of a pre-1913 dollar is less than 0.03% in value. Less than 0.03%! Where did all the value, worth and substance of the American economy go? It had to go somewhere. Where?
"Anyone who claims to stand for free markets, free trade, and limited government but who attempts to defend the existence or importance of the Federal Reserve or central banking is a liar. Either you support free markets and freedom of pricing or you support central bank price-fixing and creeping socialism. There is no third way or middle road — socialism and the free market are mutually incompatible. A little bit of socialism in the form of price-fixing is like a little bit of gangrene, if left unchecked it will eventually infect and kill the whole." - Paul-Martin Foss via The Mises Institute
Now the United States has a situation where people, indeed even Senators, believe that American citizens should not be trusted with money. Instead the citizens should work and toil and give it all (every last bit of it) to the all-power central government. Then the government, in its benevolence, would hand out money to the people on an “as needed” basis. Those in government would then decide whom needed it and who did not. Here is a tweet from one of the top Democrat Senators; Nancy Pelosi basically repeating what was just explained;
Democrat Senator Nancy Pelosi believes that Americans are not entitled to the money they earn. Wow! 5,000 “likes”. Want to bet that most of the “likes” are from software bots? (Image Source.)
International Taxation
“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell." -Jimmy Carter. On July 28, 2015, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an afterthought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. This was his response.
Oh, the USA has taxes! My God, does the USA have taxes (including taxes on water). There are so many taxes and they under so many different names, and administered by so many different organizations that it is difficult to quantify just how much taxes Americans pay.
America taxes everything.
If there isn’t a tax on it, sure enough, some idiot (typically a Democrat) will propose that it be taxed. From purchases, property to tips, and even death. Americans are the only people in the world that have to report their income to the government no matter where they live.
Even if they haven’t lived in the USA for decades; even if they have a foreign employer, bank, house, life and pay foreign taxes, the United States wants it’s cut. Americans must tell the government what they have and what they are doing with it. Which pretty much says it all. You as a citizen own nothing. You are the property of the all-mighty American government.
Of course, it was a group of democrats that came up with this law, though it was passed by members of both parties. It’s called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is intended to ensure that the Internal Revenue Service obtains information on accounts held abroad by U.S. taxpayers at foreign financial institutions.Under the law, U.S. taxpayers are required to file if they held one or more foreign accounts totaling more than $10,000 over the course of a year.
To a school child, or a student, the idea of taxes doesn’t seem too bad. (After all, they know nothing of taxes. They don’t pay any. It isn’t until after most children exit college that they experience the full burdensome oppressive weight of taxation.) To them it an illusion or it is a kind of abstract idea. Certainly something that seems remote and not important.
Here's how I teach my children about taxes; I buy them an ice cream cone. I tell them that they have to pay taxes on it. I ask them if they want American or Chinese taxes. Then I eat the taxed amount.
But they are important. Americans pay between 65% and 80% of their income on taxes in one form or the other. Do not fall into the trap that the only tax is the Federal Tax.
It is most certainly NOT. Like the Atlantic Magazine or Liberal think Tanks would want you to believe. That is not REALITY.
“In 1913, the average personal income was $621. Only 2 percent of the population was liable for the [income] tax between 1913 and 1915. Eighty percent of the returns were filed by people involved in business; 17 percent were in the professions, 3.3 percent in agriculture, and 0.5 percent were laborers. Businessmen reported 85 percent of the income and paid almost 90 percent of the revenues. Given the level of incomes in those days, it was a tax aimed strictly at the richest people in the country. If the system were in place today, a single person making less than about $65,000* would pay no tax. A couple earning less than $86,000* would pay nothing. Incomes up to $430,000* would be in the 1 percent bracket. Someone would have to make $11 million* before paying the top 7 percent rate. In [2013] dollars, the exemptions of 1913 would be worth $65,000* for single people and $86,000* for married couples.” — Sheldon Richman
You only notice … truly notice how high you are being taxed, when you compare your income to that of a comparable worker in another country.
That is precisely why I am waxing on so aggressively on this issue.
It is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue. It is an American issue. Other nations, (and) in this case China, are not shackled or handicapped by excessive taxation. And because of this, their people can live and aspire towards great things.
"An increasing number of Americans appear to believe that having a U.S. passport or long-term residency isn't worth the hassle and cost of complying with U.S. tax laws," -Andrew Mitchel, an international lawyer who analyzes IRS data, told the Wall Street Journal.
Why can other people, in other nations save more? How can they travel, every year, to a different country? Why do they get a paid 4 or 6 weeks off every year? Why is their medical insurance so cheap? How can they afford a house, a summer house, as well as a house for their parents? Why can’t Americans do this?
This is not mere speculation. All of my Chinese, Australian, Russian and Brazilian friends travel globally every year. They all save money. They all eat well. They all have medical insurance and send their children to private schools, and they all earn far less than their American counterparts do. How? (Moreover, don’t chicken out with the propagandized answer that they only eat fish heads and rice, ride bicycles, and live in houses the size of refrigerator cartons. That is not the truth.)
The Chinese travel.
Every year most Chinese travel on group tours at least two times. I have friends that do far more often, like perhaps six times a year. I have one, Sara, who travels globally around one nation every three weeks. She’s young too. She’s only 24 years old.
The Chinese have money to spend on travel. (They also get from four to eight weeks off a year. Eat that, corporate America.) So they use the opportunity to do so. The Chinese believe that travel is a form of education and thus they support it enthusiastically. However, how many Americans travel internationally? Not many, I am afraid since less than 30% of Americans have a passport.
Comparatively, I would hazard a guess that 80% of Chinese travel internationally.
You cannot travel if you don’t have the money to do so. You can’t save money if a hefty portion of your salary goes into taxes. You just simply cannot.
"Enter 6 percent of the smaller of line 40 or the value of your Archer MSAs on December 31, 2015, including 2015 contributions made in 2016. Include this amount on Form 1040, line 58A or Form 1040NR, line 56B." -A Fine Mess
China has taxes. Of course they do. China collects excise taxes on vehicles. China taxes companies. The big difference is that they control where the taxes go. They allocate the resources carefully, and review the outlays to prevent fraud. Because they know that a lot of corruption takes place. But, they are doing things to keep it in check. Unlike the USA with a newborn baby owing the USA government $ 1.6 million just for being born on USA soil!
Real Freedom
“We have a tremendous lack of knowledge of (just) how far we have gotten away from the Constitution of the United States. Democrats and Republicans alike have taken us away from the original intent. You see, I believe in this document (just) as our founding fathers intended it (to be).” -Paul Broun
True freedom is messy, dirty and stinky. It is not neat and organized. The most organized and clean countries are Socialist like Norway, or communist like North Korea. In communist China, with all the baggage about being a single party run capitalist republic (it is really different than the communist state of the 1960’s under Mr. Mao), you get to experience true and real individual freedom.
True freedom is being able to go sit down in a restaurant with your dog, smoke a cigarette, order a beer at nine in the morning all without confrontation. (Commonplace in China, Iceland, and Thailand to name just a few places. Uncommon in repressive North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela.)
True freedom is working and keeping how much you make secret from the government, your neighbors, and the busybody down the street. (You don’t have to be Hillary Clinton to have this ability. It should not be reserved ONLY for the richest in the United States.)
True freedom is being able to go into a store and not worry that you are being observed by the police, recorded by the NSA, or monitored in any way.
True freedom is not having to take a urine drug test…ever. Ever. EVER.
E – V – E – R.
True freedom is not having to submit to questions WHY you did such and such on some date, or why you have so much money in your wallet…
Freedom is FREE. Is that really too difficult to understand? In a free country, no one questions you. No one.
“Not all the rules are here to protect us.” — Neurons to Nirvana (via elote-princess)
No one asks “why”, or the follow up questions of “how”, “when”, “where”, or “with whom else”. In a free country you can live your life without reporting to anyone. In a free country, you can drive and not worry about a “sobriety checkpoint”, a “speed trap”, a “random drug test”, or any other violations of basic civil liberties. (For the non-Americans reading this, these are common phrases and names describing random American state and federal police checkpoints.)
I bring this up because Americans have forgotten what “freedom” actually is.
“I’m going to tell you what freedom is not. Freedom is not having burdens or responsibilities. It’s not having a job you must go to. It’s not having a girlfriend who is expecting you to call, or having a standing date with friends where your absence must be explained with an elaborate excuse. It is not having to give some type of prolonged notice to terminate a contract or job. It is not owning so many possessions that you need a storage unit. It is not having a wallet full of so many cards that your life turns upside down when you lose it. I’m reminded of my freedom when I’m on a bus to another city. All my possessions, my summer and winter clothes, my dress clothes and two extra pairs of shoes, are in the undercarriage riding along with me. No one knows where I am and no one cares. I’m going to a city I’ve never seen before as a complete stranger, with no obligations to see anything or visit anyone. I have no worries, no bills, and no tasks. I’m reclining on an old chair, but I might as well be floating above the street, with no string wrapped around my neck pulling me back to where I was. I could die on the autostrada, in between villages whose names I don’t know and which are not announced with pleasant signs, and it would take several days for anyone who knows me to find out. Or my bags could go missing and within a couple weeks I could easily have the contents replaced. This is freedom. I wouldn’t trade these bus rides, of having to answer to no one, for all the money in the world or for all the women in the world. I lay back, close my eyes, and let my thoughts and dreams go wherever they want, with no stress or anxiety disturbing them. There is no rush and there is no hurry. I am free. The whole world can demand something of me and I can laugh them off. My own government can take all my money from my bank accounts but they can’t find me on this bus. Maybe I will stay a while in my destination or maybe I won’t. Maybe I will invent a new identity with the locals I meet or maybe I’ll be me. Maybe I will get laid or maybe I will work. Maybe I will take a tram or maybe I will walk. I was not free when I lived beyond my means, when I depended on the income that the man would grace me with every two Fridays. But I started to spend less than my earnings, and over the course of years it has given me my freedom. The only person I have to answer to is myself. I can vanish tomorrow, and nothing will happen. If I never check my email, never answer my phone, if I just disappear—I’ll do just fine. If you can’t simply close your eyes, and say goodbye to the world, you are not free.” -Roosh
Americans today do not know what “freedom” is. Decades of social and cultural reengineering has “perfected” America. It is now a sterile wasteland where conformity reigns supreme. Smoking is banned or shunned. Drinking is limited to certain exclusionary areas, and then only within certain time periods. How you dress, act, behave, and even talk are regulated and even enforced by a PC crowd of “do-gooders”. This has become the norm.
The only ones happy in this environment are the rulers, and their enforcers. Oh, and the dumbed down ignorant masses that know nothing else (to compare against).
We have forgotten what “freedom” really is.
My Generation was free to live life just how we wanted to. (Image source.)
The Rewriting of American Culture
“Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.” — Frank Zappa
The rewriting of American culture has been nearly complete. Most Americans don’t even know what Freedom is. They believe it is safety, toll booths, ATM machines, or sanitation. They say that they are so happy the “America is free”. “Look at how smoothly the red lights change, and how clean the Post Office is.” They point to ATM machines and Starbucks as indicators of America’s greatness.
They do so in complete ignorance that all these things are commonplace throughout the world. They are not endemic to America in the least. And in justification of this, they continue in their belief structure and blindly follow the rules without questioning them.
This is all crazy. It is poisonous.
Only a fucking idiot would say that this is good for a society. It isn’t. To say that it is alarming is to minimize the seriousness of the issue. It is almost as if America has stepped on a bullet-train towards North Korean style progressive Communism. To make matters worse, the mainstream media acts as a cheer-squad promoting it, with SWJ’s clobbering everyone on the head that stands in their way. With fat hippopotamus BLM ready to scream and disrupt anything and anyone with their huge lard filled asses and amazingly pitiful IQ.
“The state-corporate programs of the past 35 or so years have had devastating effects on the majority of the population, with stagnation, decline and sharply enhanced inequality being the most direct outcomes. This has created fear and has left people feeling isolated, helpless, victims of powerful forces they can neither understand or influence. The breakdown is not caused by economic laws. They are policies, a kind of class war initiated by the rich and powerful against the working population and the poor. This is what defines the neoliberalism period, not only in the US but in Europe and elsewhere. Trump is appealing to those who sense and experience the breakdown of American society -- to deep feelings of anger, fear, frustration, hopelessness, probably among sectors of the population that are seeing an increase in mortality, something unheard of apart from war.” - Noam Chomsky
But, you know, everyone knows that America is exceptional because we have highways, fast food, ATM’s, and cell phones…
This is what America has become. (Image Source.)
This is what America has become. Is it good? Is it bad? I do not know. What I do know is that the accumulative thoughts and behaviors of mass groups of people can affect the reality that we all experience.
Americans think that nothing is wrong with taking a [1] urine drug screening (for employment purposes), or [2] submitting to random traffic stops (to catch DWI violators, or illegal aliens, or terrorists). Americans gladly [3] undress in public building to enter them (Putting everything in their pockets in public view, taking off their shoes, and coats, and allowing to be “patted down”.). They [4] show their ID to write checks or use a credit card! (In the rest of the world, you just use your credit card with a secret pin number of finger print scan.) Show their ID… Think about how Orwellian this all is!
In China you never have to show your identification.
In fact, most Chinese people leave their identification cards at home. This is a fact. All Americans [5] MUST carry their ID with them. This includes two forms of picture ID. Typically a driver’s license and a social security card. (If you do not, and the police question you, they have the right, by law, to detain you for up to three days to “investigate” you and your behavior.)
“People feel tremendous cultural condescension directed at them, and that their values are being smirked at, laughed at by the political and media elite…” - GOP strategist Steve Schmidt.
Americans point to having the largest military in the world as a sign of greatness. Even though it is largely redundant, unnecessary given the current political situation, and wholly antiquated given the current threat matrices involved. (As I write this, there is yet another “global threat” that Americans must fund. This time it is the ISIS. What will be next after they are vanquished? Russia?)
They point to the great accomplishments of the past; that we had landed on the moon some 50 years ago, that many people still yearn to migrate to the USA (Many do, but not the kind that provides economic advantage for the nation.), and that we (supposedly) have the tallest buildings in the world.
Too many activities—a growing number—have quietly transformed from rights that we quietly exercise at will into privileges requiring state approval. "As a general rule, until 1941, U.S. citizens were not required to have a passport for travel abroad," the National Archives report.
On a similar note, only about 5 percent of American workers needed licenses to do their jobs in the 1950s. And, "In 1930, only 24 states required a license to drive a car and just 15 states had mandatory driver's exams. South Dakota was the last state to begin issuing licenses (without exams), in 1954," the History Channel tells us. Those bureaucratic develMore and more of what we do depends on government permission".opments, all justified as improvements in safety and national security, put people increasingly under the thumbs of government officials and make us incredibly vulnerable to pressures and penalties that are entirely unrelated to our supposed transgressions. Get on the wrong side of a vindictive official or a mindless bureaucracy, and you're effectively subject to house arrest and an economic knee-capping. Such government control over vast areas of our lives makes it very difficult to pretend that we're free. Free people don't fret that they may lose government permission to work and travel. -Reason extracted from "More and more of what we do depends on government permission."
Only in America, will companies, banks, rentals, real estate, police, and government agencies process full background checks on everyone. (The reasoning is that it is quick, low cost and “easy” to do. But no-one dare mention that it flies directly in violation of the need for a person to maintain privacy and dignity in their life. This, at least, is still recognized in Europe.)
This only happens in the USA.
Only in the USA will you be questioned why you have a cigarette lighter, and where you work. You will be asked why you are traveling, and for how long you will be gone, as well as where you will stay there. That never happens in other countries. It never happens… well, maybe in North Korea… But, in Communist China, it never happens.
In the USA, most Americans must have a Social Security Card, a picture driver’s license, a bank debit card, and an ACA “Obamacare” insurance card. You can argue that it is needed. But, if so then why do people in the rest of the world not need to do this?
Why can they exit their house without an ID? Why can they go to a store and buy a beer without having to prove that they are of legal drinking age? Dudes, I hate to tell you this, but that is NOT freedom. Those are just links to the shackles around your legs, and the handcuffs around your wrists. These kinds of actions and activities are not sustainable in the long run.
In China, if I want a beer, I call up the local 7-11 downstairs and have them bring me up a case. It is hand carried to me. No one ever asks me for my ID. I can pay in cash or use Kangeroo or E(r)-Le-Ma. They are never questioned by the police why they are carrying beer (a regulated substance), and are never stopped for the violation of some law or obscure rule that just happens to be selectively enforced that day.
My generation could drink at will without concern. (Image Source.)
Remember that only 75 years ago, Americans did not need to carry any kind of identification at all. They did not need to, nor were compelled to; carry any kind of identification on them. It was only the military that had to carry identification. Civilians never had to.
“The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitudes.” -Aldous Huxley 1931
We are now ruled by the velvet-gloved, technologically savvy, militarized iron fist of what Bertram Gross termed “friendly fascism” or fascism with a smile. Under fascism, the government (As the reader goes through this list, think about all the policies put in place by President Obama.):
- Is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process).
- Assumes it is not restrained in its power (this is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism).
- Ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy (now known as “the Washington swamp”).
- Emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism through its politicians.
- Has an obsession with national security (IRS, DHS, NSA, CIA, and DHS).
- Constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies (ISS, terrorists, and now Russia!)
- Establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.
- The various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment (this is over criminalization).
- Becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.
- Uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.
- Is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.
Compare that to America today where, as economist Jeffrey Tucker rightly observes;
“Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized. Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect.”
Fascism thrives by hiding behind the entertainment spectacle that is partisan politics. As Tucker points out,;
“It’s incorrect to call fascism either right wing or left wing. It is both and neither… fascism does not seek to overthrow institutions like commercial establishments, family, religious centers, and civic traditions. It seeks to control them… it preserves most of what people hold dear but promises to improve economic, social, and cultural life through unifying their operations under government control.”
In this way, American-style fascism is deceptively appealing. It appears friendly.
The news media covers the entertainment and political trivia. The basic forms of government remain intact. The legislators remain in session. There are elections. Consent of the governed, however, no longer applies. Actual control has finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.
Yet the most crucial ingredient for fascism to succeed in America is that the majority of the people would have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary for the government to assume greater powers in order to keep them safe and secure, whether it’s by militarizing the police (Done), stripping them of basic constitutional rights (Done), criminalizing virtually every form of behavior (Done), or spying on their communications, movements and transactions (Done).
When you really drill down to what the various presidential candidates believe about the issues that will impact the future of our freedoms long-term—war, surveillance, civil liberties—you’ll find that most of them support the government’s position, which conveniently enough, profits the corporate sector.
This is not freedom.
It is despotism, and when the votes have all been counted, “we the people” will be the losers.
I know that this is offensive to all “red blooded” Americans. But there is validity in what I am opining upon. Do not get caught up in the gut revulsion and horrid nauseous throw-back response. Don’t go screaming back at what I have written with a blanket attitude of disgust. Think about my points. Perhaps I am mostly wrong. Perhaps my belief is colored by my experiences.
But listen to my points.
Get a passport and visit other countries and compare their lifestyle, household savings, to your own. Just do it yourselves. Compare by experiencing, not by reading government propaganda.
"You may know society is doomed when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you; [and] when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice." -Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged", 1957
Do not believe me. Do not take the statements that I am making at face value. Get a passport and see for yourself. You decide. Don’t listen to my opinions and accept them blindly. Go see for yourself.
You, the reader, should get a passport and see the world. Then you come to your own conclusions. How come China has better roads, trains, bridges, infrastructure, internet, and phones than the USA does, and yet only collects a mere tiny fraction of taxes from the people? How can this be so?
Why, according to the American mainstream media, taxes are needed for roads and bridges…
Political Correctness
"The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." - Conclusions to a study titled "Testing Theories of American Politics," and it was published by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page in the journal Perspectives on Politics, issued by the American Political Science Association in September 2014.
One of the most dangerous things that is going on in the United States today is “Political Correctness”. This is the fear of speaking your thoughts and ideas for fear that it would offend someone. This is a recent phenomenon that began during the Clinton Presidency and grew up to dangerous proportions during the Obama Presidency. In fact, it is beyond Orwellian (“Right think” anyone?), but it is the direct opposition of the 1st Amendment to the United States constitution. It is currently thriving on college campuses all over the United States.
“First of all you have to ask yourself, why is there political correctness? The only answer is because you’re afraid to say what you honestly believe. Well, what a fucking shame that you can’t say what you believe in America. This place stood for that at one time.” -Kurt Russell
At America’s colleges and universities today, a movement is arising, (apparently) undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. This is a wholesale, large scale, invasion of political correctness that is being implemented in the United States.
And, what happens when PC runs rampant and everyone can get an education? What are the consequences? Consider;
“But the primary incentive for flight had to do with the caliber of students I was required to instruct. The quality of what we called the student "clientele" had deteriorated so dramatically over the years that the classroom struck me as a barn full of ruminants and the curriculum as a stack of winter ensilage. I knew I could not teach James Joyce's Ulysses or Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain since they were plainly beyond the capacity of our catechumens – mind you, all old enough to vote and be drafted. The level of interest in and attention to the subjects was about as flat as a fallen arch. The ability to write a coherent English sentence was practically nonexistent; ordinary grammar was a traumatic ordeal. In fact, many native English-speakers could not produce a lucid verbal analysis of a text, let alone carry on an intelligible conversation, and some were even unable to properly pronounce common English words.” - David Solway on American Thinker.
This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of micro-aggression’s. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe that only the most qualified person should get the job.”
I pause at this with incongruity. Boy, will these students be surprised when they leave the protected shores of the university and enter the “real” working world.
The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That’s partly right, although there are important differences between what’s happening now and what happened in the 1980s and ’90s. That movement sought to restrict speech (specifically hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives.
The current movement is largely about emotional well-being.
More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.
Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Micro-aggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a micro-aggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence. Or let’s not forget and omit that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse. After all, we need to be careful so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works. We don’t want to risk a “trigger” resulting in a recurrence of past trauma.
What nonsense!
“In his novel 1984, George Orwell imagined a future world where speech was greatly restricted. He called that the language that the totalitarian state in his novel created “Newspeak”, and it bears a striking resemblance to the political correctness that we see in America right now. According to Wikipedia, Newspeak is “a reduced language created by the totalitarian state as a tool to limit free thought, and concepts that pose a threat to the regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality, peace, etc. Any form of thought alternative to the party’s construct is classified as ‘thought crime.’” -Infowars.com
Luckily “political correctness” is primarily an American phenomena. When you leave the shore of the United States people will tell you what they think about you, and they will not care one iota if your feelings are hurt in the process. The Chinese, or course, will always be polite…
…But they will not tolerate nonsense.
Today, America possesses under-currents of nonsense that affect and alter the ways that Americans interact with each other. Americans are polite and cautious, even timid. But that is not an effective communicative tool in the world of business and politics. As a result Americans find themselves, often, at the tail end of a business deal or operational situation.
If you want to know why the Chinese are so successful in business; and why the Wenzhou Chinese are so successful look at what they do that Americans don’t do. There is no such thing as political correctness with the Chinese.
Here’s a nice narrative concerning this experience;
True story; When I was in China, I would periodically employ young interns to perform basic tasks for us in exchange for work experience. Once, around Christmas time in 2016 I told my Marketing Manager to set up and send out some Christmas Cards to our current client base. To do so, she pulled in a couple of interns that were working for us at the time. They were from the New England area and attended a college in Rhode Island. They were, and maybe still are, completely politically correct. While they were doing this, a period of confusion ensued. Apparently, the young interns had a real problem with having Christmas Cards saying “Merry Christmas”. They thought it was racist, bigoted and was not inclusive of all people. I couldn’t take it anymore and I stepped in. (Not something that I normally do. I tend to delegate in a “hands off” manner. They reported to my Marketing Manager.) I interrupted the lively discussion and time stopped. No one questions the boss. I just stood there for a second, while they all stood there with jaws dropped. (The boss does not interrupt, and it is significant when I do get involved.) This is China, after all. I told them in no uncertain words that [1] at our company we celebrate Christmas and not a generic holiday. I [2] pointed out that all of our customers were in Christian dominant nations that [3] we were operating in a communist country, where they themselves celebrated Christmas. [4] In China you can buy Christmas trees, [5] buy Christmas decorations, and most [6] business offices were decorated with Christmas trees. Every Chinese [7] knew who Saint Nick was, and [8] everyone also said “Merry Christmas” to each other. [9] Moreover, they did this in English, no less! She gave in inaudible gasp.(Ok, maybe I am being dramatic. But she was taken back.) Yes, I told her. [10] The name “Jesus” is not a bad word. It is part of our culture. (Again, the dull look of incredulity in her eyes spoke volumes.) I then told them that political correctness creates an isolation bubble that is toxic, and if maintained in a business environment would cause exclusionary behaviors. Businesses cannot not afford that. As such, our company would not participate in such nonsense. Then I told them. “Deal with it. Make it happen . I want results in three hours.” I then went back into my office. Sufficiently rebuked, the staff generated Christmas Cards and completed their task.
I am a human, and it is my right to be a dick, if I select to do so. I am also their boss, and I am fully responsible for the well-being of the company and relations with our clients. If our clients were in predominantly Muslim nations, I would wish them happy Ramadan when the instance arose. However, it is pretty unlikely that that will never happen. All Muslim-majority nations are always in various stages of conflict and turmoil.
Dudes, you gotta know your history!
People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again. I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 25, 2017
And…
MERRY CHRISTMAS!! pic.twitter.com/xa2qxcisVV — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 25, 2017
The tweets were in response to an ongoing argument there is a “war” on Christmas, and that people are encouraged to say “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas. However, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released right after the 2017 Christmas season, more than 75% of Americans believe the issue was “made up for political purposes” rather than a real substantive issue.
America, at one time, stood for the ability to say whatever you wanted. Being able to “speak your piece” was one of the most cherished core beliefs of Americans. Americans could say whatever they wanted.
They could also worship whatever they wanted. They could do whatever they wanted. It all changed when egotistical “busy bodies” took the reins of power and “fundamentally changed” America into their image of perfection. Which is a place where people are afraid to talk. It is a place where people are afraid to worship. It is a place where people are afraid to be themselves.
“We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.” — Michelle Obama, May 14, 2008
Being afraid to say “Merry Christmas” is a horrible, horrible situation. I do not care if President Obama and his wife promised to erase American traditions, and replace them with progressive values. I think it sucks. I know what freedom is, and it is not what the Progressives want us to believe it is. A person who is free is never afraid.
A person who is FREE is never afraid.
Here’s a shout out for FREEDOM!
Here’s to the freedom to speak your mind without fear! (Image Source.)
The war on Christmas propaganda “machine” is in full engagement. From college and university campuses to the mainstream media, all are working to remove all vestiges of tradition from America. Heck, even disputing that this is going on gets you labeled as a the-filled racist. You can read about the attacks on this truth, here, here, here, here, and here. hey! If it wasn’t true, then why are the reactions so harsh?
I’ve found, throughout my life, that the harshest responses to a statement or an argument are those that are driven by emotion. Further, an emotional response is always associated with a personal belief or conviction. Obviously there is something here for the interns to act so oddly about a traditional holiday, and for the American media to go so bat-shit loony over it.
The mainstream media is particularly busy. Their stories get progressively more ridiculous each season. Here’s one from of the main players in mainstream media CBS, and their article titled “‘Christmas Tree Syndrome’: Doctors Issue Health Warning For Real Tree Owners”. Ah, the comments are precious! (Update 6MAY18 all the comments have been taken down. Ha! I guess that the couldn’t take what people actually thought about the story, the news media and the reporter.)
- “‘Christmas Tree Syndrome’: Doctors Issue Health Warning For Real Tree Owners”. Written by Stephanie Stahl on December 18, 2017 at 11:41 pm.
Americans watch the news that is completely filtered, and the information that is presented to Americans are always false. Americans are constantly being manipulated for one reason of the other. So, I completely urge Americans to look at their life and China in a new light. Here is an interesting video regarding this;
- CHINA is one of the SAFEST COUNTRIES on EARTH
So is America Better?
“…can be found in John Quincy Adams's "Jubilee" Address;oveliberty2, delivered, by invitation of the New York Historical Society, in New York City in April 1839. That Jubilee Address magnificently explained the reasons for the Framers' choice of republic over that of a democracy. If you want to have handy for constitutionally-illiterate Progressives who may call this a "democracy," then you want to read that Address. Today, in 2018, when confronted with a decision between individual freedom and slavery, otherwise known as liberty and tyranny, Americans who prefer freedom must be armed with ideas and principles which are "self-evident" and plain. Otherwise, they cannot fend off the onslaught of the "counterfeit ideas" of Progressive ideologues. When America's Founders and Framers of their Constitution wanted to convince ordinary farmers and citizens of the merits of a written "People's" Constitution to limit the powers of those to whom they entrust the powers of government, they published and circulated 85 essays, known as THE FEDERALIST.” -loveliberty2 comment
So, to answer the question; is America better than China, I will have to disappoint.
I do not know.
I really do not know. In my life, and in my circumstance, I think that it is better in certain ways certainly. But I don’t really know if it is actually better overall.
Most Americans that I know of are quite happy to pay their taxes every April. They kind of brag about how easy it is. All they do is buy some tax software, or hire a person and it gets done. They also tell me that it doesn’t matter to them about smoking and drinking because that part of their life is long behind them. They tell me that they don’t really care if they need to carry their papers with them everywhere they go. They just leave it in the wallet, and forget about it. They think that I am just being a little bit foolish and silly.
They tell me that taking a urine test before starting work at a company is just a little thing of no consequence. You do it once and then forget about it. The same can be said about TSA screening at airports, and all the different kinds of roadblocks and police stops. I am told that it is necessary to be able to live in a “free” country. I am told that we need taxes to pave our roads. I am told that we need all this surveillance to keep us all “free”. I am told that without the FDA that everyone would die from the unregulation of medicines and food.
I am told that all that talk about banning guns is just talk, that nothing will ever come of it. I am told that things are far better today than they were a century ago; with child labor, race riots, and white privilege. I hear that everything is far more convenient today, with the internet, home computers and cell phones. This convenience has ended up making America the greatest nation on the earth. You just have to pay a small and trivial price for that freedom. It’s just a tiny amount, automatically deducted conveniently, from your paycheck. All these other things like rules and regulations about rainwater restrictions, woodstove banning, and banning of lead are needed because we now live in the 21st century. They are all obsolete just like the pocket watch, and the superfluous pocket watch in a pair of bluejeans.
It’s a big thing to me, but maybe I’m just making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe…
There are many things that I do miss about the States. I do miss eating a hotdog and having an ice-cold beer out of a keg at an afternoon baseball game. I do miss cruising around in my GTO and listening to BTO, and partying with my friends. I do miss going out into the woods and finding a stream to get some nice “brook trout”. I miss hunting, especially bow hunting. I miss my Walter P99. I miss watching a football game with my friends on a Sunday, going swimming at the local club, or just going “mudslinging”. I miss diners, and a nice cup of coffee on a cold blistery winter day. I miss these things, and truthfully I haven’t been able to do any of them since I left. I miss that terribly.
I really do.
However, I have picked up other activities. I now eat out much more than I did before. I eat well, and have many Chinese friends. Beer is good, cheap and cold. The Chinese do know how to party, and it is glorious. We go to KTV’s and sing our hearts out. Maybe I could one day be a Country and Western singer…LOL! Late night BBQ is the norm, and you know, nothing beats roasted chicken on the grill. The cigars, whiskey, and people are all awesome. The girls are fantastic here, and they do know how to take care of us boys.
So overall, I can’t say that China is better than the USA. I can only say that it is different. And, I suppose that different is good because that is how we grow.
Summary
Now that I have opined about my thoughts about freedom, Liberty and China, I’d like to summarize it all. Because there are many people who are just like the frog sitting in the nice warm water. They can see that the water is getting warm and uncomfortable, but they are afraid to leave it. Why? Well it is because being outside the water is really terrible. They know. They have been told this.
I love the United States, but the way the United States is today is not the freedom loving world that I grew up in. There are so many things that I love to do, that are now much harder to do. In fact, I would dare say that America today; more closely resembles the Communist regime in Bulgaria (in the early 1970’s).
The mere idea that I, of all people, need to explain this point is disturbing to me.
Now I live in China. China is really different. However, in many ways it resembles what America was in the 1970’s. You have many freedoms in China today that are way beyond the dreams of most Americans. These things that I like and enjoy are what appeal to me.
But, I am considered awfully strange.
The things that I like are not what appeals to most Americans. (Like most Americans thinking that Michelle Obama being one of the most attractive woman in America, or that we need higher taxes and more, more, MORE regulation.) So you can really say that I am out of step with most Americans. I am really, really odd.
I just want to be left alone with my beer, my dog and the family.
So, you all can pretty much ignore what I have to say. What makes YOU happy is all that matters in life. I am happy, and I have read that many people are very happy back in the States with Obama and all that. So, with that being said you need to move to where you are happy. You need to do what makes you happy where you are happy.
Take Aways
Well, what can we summarize about this rant?
- China is not run in a traditionally Communist manner, it is run by Chinese “Free Market” Conservatives.
- America is run like a socialist nation. It is similar to an African version of Bulgaria.
- Comparatively there are more “day to day” freedoms in China than in the USA.
- Freedom means that you do not need to ASK to do something.
- The reader can light up a cigar at their desk at work to test how free they are.
- Most Americans think that Michelle Obama represents true female beauty.
- BBQ chicken tastes really good with an ice cold beer.
- Liberty is the freedom to be yourself even with there is someone who is offended.
FAQ
Q: Is China free?
A: The popular narrative is that it isn’t. The way this is determined is whether or not they have democracy and popular elections. Yet, the United States is not a Democracy either. It is set up as a Constitutional Republic that has become an oligarchy.
Progressive liberals, in the United States, argue that China is not following the true Marxist ideals, and needs to be “improved”. They offer incentives to push China in directions that they find favor with. These incentives range from trade advantage to financial rewards.
American Conservatives argue that China is communist and must change it’s government to be more democratic. They offer the threat of war, and trade restrictions to force China to become more like a member of the American geopolitical sphere of influence.
Q: Is America free?
A: The popular narrative is that it is. The way that this is determined is if there are popular elections, and the elected officials actively represent the people who elected them. However, studies have shown that this has not been the case for many years.
三人成虎（sān rén chéng hǔ）, or “three people can turn into a tiger,” warns that a repeated rumor can become fact, or at least believed by the public at large.
America is an oligarchy. It is run for the wealthy elite globally. These are the 1%.Those who are not wealthy fall into three catagories. They are either serfs, indentured, or fully enslaved. They represent the vast bulk of Americans. They represent 90% of Americans. The remaining 9% are the monied elite who work as pawns in support of the oligarchy.
For the vast bulk of Americans, America is NOT free. There are restrictions on just about everything a person does. Their money is siphoned away in thousands of little ways. The Bill of Rights is not protected, and functionally, Americans have no rights at all.
Q: What is better China or America?
A: America, to me was the best in the 1970’s. We had earth-shoes, bell-bottoms, the Eagles, cars that had power, and cheap beer. Then, after the Clinton, and Obama years, it went straight downhill. Over the years, the busybodies have been allowed to gain power, and tell other people how to live their lives.
None of the elected officials defends the Bill of Rights, and as a result, many Americans have functionally lost their rights.
During this period of time, China has been moving away from the tyrannical socialist policies of Mr. Mao. Instead, China has embraced Republican-style “free market” policies, and the result is that many people in China are living a pretty nice life. Today, China is a pretty nice place to live.
Compared to the United States, Chinese have more savings, own their own homes, own their own cars, and own their own furniture. Americans don’t; they rent. The Chinese do not mortgage away their child’s education for a questionable future. American’s do. Many places in China are constantly under improvement with parks, and public works constantly under construction. When was the last time that the reader seen a new park being constructed? A set of new trees aligning the roads, or a town that pays workers to plant flowers, bushes and shrubs? The only new construction in America is related to wealthy people, and banks.
The only new construction in America is related to wealthy people, and banks.
You know. There is a saying in China that us expats use. It goes something like this; “You know, there is rich, there is RICH, and then there is CHINA RICH.” The point being that even the (so called) “rich” people in the United States have no idea of the power, lifestyle and way of life that the wealthy people in China has.
And it is attainable. It really is.
All this being said…
However,… I am a just simple man. I think that freedom is a place where I can take my dog, drink a beer and smoke a cigarette all without being hassled.
Real Freedom in France. (Image Source.)
I can do that anywhere in China; including the high-end restaurants. You simply cannot do that in the USA. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself. That is the sanity check for freedom. The sanity check is this;
- Go to a restaurant.
- Take your dog and put him on the chair next to you.
- Order a cold beer, and drink it.
- Take out and smoke a cigarette.
A measure of your freedom is the reaction of others to how you live your life. A measure of your freedom is the reaction of others to how you live your life. Yes, let me say it one more time; A measure of your freedom is the reaction by others on how you live your life.
It is not about the political structure. It is not about the rich people. It is not about the fashionable people and the toys they play with. It is about you, and how YOU can live your life and do so with your preferred lifestyle. It is that simple.
Q: What is the big difference between America and China?
A: In America, busybodies are allowed to dictate how others should live their lives. In China, busybodies are killed.
It is a fundamental difference in viewpoint. In America, anyone and everyone can tell everyone else what they cannot do. That is called “freedom of expression”. (Which is strange in that no one is permitted to tell people what they CAN do. That is forbidden.) At least this is what America has evolved into. It has evolved to a point where you cannot do anything without offending someone.
In China, there are a very strict and exacting set of rules that everyone must follow. Failure to follow the rules will result in punishment. The only people who can make the rules is the government. If you try to make your own rules, you will be treated as a busybody and punished.
America used to be set up like this. Now, in the United States, the laws are considered “guidelines” instead of rules. These are guidelines that are subject to change at will. After all, you have the 9th Circuit Court reinterpreting laws to fit what ever progressive agenda is on the table.
China won’t have any of that. A rule is a rule. A law is a law. There is no room for negotiation. If you break a law, you will suffer the consequences. Which, can be very harsh.
In China, busybodies are killed. (Image Source.) Of course, not everybody thinks this is a good idea. Other people want China to be “progressive” and be easy on busybodies.
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Notes
- First draft 30MAR18.
- Revised 12APR18.
- SEO Check 3MAY18.
- Updated with quote from Reason. 25JUL18.
- Added MP4 embedded files 13AUG18.