Posts Tagged ‘Xi Xinping’
On current thugocrazies and the slow hard road to a bonobo world
Canto: So how will this Ukraine horror end?
Jacinta: How does any thugocracy end? I recently heard one pundit saying that most – I can’t remember if he said dictators, autocrats or some other euphemism for thugs – die violently, but this is bullshit. Stalin, Mao, Leo Victor (aka Leopold I, ‘Emperor’ of Belgium) and Suharto are just a few such thugs who died peacefully without ever having to account for their crimes. Some are still worshipped today by many.
Canto: Good point, and I was amused to hear that Putin was much exercised by Gadaffi’s ignominious death, watching several times the video of him being roughed up.
Jacinta: He could’ve added the video of the Ceausescus’ shooting, but that was before his time I suppose.
Canto: His time in power, yes, but a cautionary tale all the same. But getting back to my original question, with Putin not backing down and no nation apart from Ukraine willing to fight against his troops, he can’t realistically lose, while at the same time, he can’t realistically create a puppet state there that has any chance of surviving.
Jacinta: Yes, he’s in a bind and he surely knows it. I’m tempted to say ‘it’s clear that he miscalculated’, but that would make me sound smarter than I am. So I’ll just say it looks as if he has miscalculated badly, and surely he must be wondering what to do next, since continued bombing, shelling and slaughter will only lead to a pyrrhic victory at best, but more likely an exhausting and costly campaign for his invading force, and disastrously long-standing sanctions which will cripple the Putinland economy and looks like accelerating the European move from Putinland gas to renewables.
Canto: There are arguments that some of the attempts to isolate Putinland (for example blocking Facebook and other social media) are playing into Putin’s hands, because he doesn’t want his people to have any contact with the WEIRD world – they might get ideas above their station. But look at the companies blocking or getting out of Putinland – Ikea, Adidas, Starbucks, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Disney, Netflix, Apple, Toyota and many more apparently. This will change middle-class life drastically.
Jacinta: But others, including many Russian dissidents and exiles, believe this is playing into Putin’s hands, as it’s reducing the WEIRD presence in the country, a source of opposition. I suppose this means that Putin and his thugocracy will have to produce effective enough local alternatives – as the CCP thugocracy has largely managed to do. But China has a much healthier economy than Putinland, and with all the economic difficulties Putin’s fellow thugs are facing, I’m not sure they’re going to be able to pump much energy into local brands.
Canto: Which raises the question of just how much all this sanctioning is affecting the Putinland economy. Many who know about the situation are trying to leave the country. Sadly, these are the relatively wealthy who have contacts overseas and know how to get their money out of the country. Those who rely on cash must surely be most affected, but I must admit that economics isn’t my strong suit. By the way, can you lend me fifty bucks?
Jacinta: What’s also interesting is that it’s bringing more attention at last to Putin’s behaviour in Syria, Georgia, Chechnya and other places. And to Putin’s putrescence in general. For example, I wasn’t entirely aware of his fear and loathing of powerful women – though of course it doesn’t surprise me. I’d vaguely heard a story of his attempt to intimidate Angela Merkel by means of a dog, because he’d heard of her having a phobia about dogs, but I didn’t connect it at the time to misogyny, and then of his loathing of Hilary Clinton, apparently for no other reason than her womanhood. He was obsessed with ensuring that she wouldn’t become US President – it seems his sabotaging campaign might’ve been more anti-Clinton than pro-Trump. Of course we’re unlikely to ever know whether his animus or his destructive activity with respect to the 2016 Presidential election was the key to her ‘loss’. In fact she won the popular vote, and I’ll never understand why that doesn’t win a democratic election. How can it be democratic otherwise?
Canto: Good question. So Al Gore won the 2000 US election. Democracy seems less democratic than it seems. Anyway, instituting the bonobo world would ensure little Vlady’s emasculation. Why’s it taking so long?
Jacinta: We’re obviously not getting the message across. And since Merkel’s retirement, there aren’t any women, unfortunately, that are bestriding the world like a colossus. New Zealand, Taiwan, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova, Kosovo, Greece, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Georgia, Ethiopia and Gabon, where women hold Presidential/Prime Ministerial positions (though some of them merely honorary) are all no doubt admirable nations, but in the horrible Realpolitik world we inhabit they’re minnows, easily ignorable by the thugocracies of China, India, Russia and the macho Middle Eastern oil-o-crazies. Why wasn’t I born a bonobo?
Canto: Well, as we speak, Putin’s forces are surrounding Kiev, and the most sickening things are happening. Ukrainians are clearly putting up stiffer resistance than expected, but with little outside support other than money and best wishes, they can’t be expected to hold out against a Svengalian thug with massive cannon-fodder reinforcements at his disposal, not to mention the nuclear option.
Jacinta: So, if he manages to strangulate Kiev, and to kill Zelensky, what then? That’s his aim, presumably, but given Zelensky’s profile, what good will it do him? He doesn’t want to believe that macho thugs are out of fashion (sort of) in the WEIRD world, but his economy is quite dependent on that world.
Canto; Well, worse things are happening elsewhere in Ukraine. The people of Mariupol, in the south, are trapped and under heavy fire from Putin’s forces. It’s been the most bombarded city in Ukraine, apparently. In the east, Kharkiv is holding out pretty well, even though war crime-type activities have been carried out there by Putin.
Jacinta: Yes Mr Pudding has a lot to answer for, and if we could bring him to justice, what a shock it would be to the Xi Jinpings, the Ramzan Kadyrovs, the Lukashenkos, the Orbáns, the Mohammed bin Scumbags and so on, in a world that will become, I fervently believe, increasingly bonoboesque. And when it does, we will look back on Putinland, the CCP, the Middle Eastern thugocrazies and so on and so forth, and think, ‘how could we have sunk so low? How could we have reached such a level of stupidity as to let these male apes run roughshod over our children and our future, when it’s screamingly obvious that we, women, should be the leaders?’ And history will be written from a bonobo-influenced female prospective, inevitably, a future perspective, pointing out the pointless male thuggeries of the past, remembering the victims, female, male and children yet to decide, yet to have much of a life. I’m sorry, I’m imagining a future almost beyond nations, beyond nationalist brutalism, and beyond maleness. Women are our future – we have to grasp the nettle.
Canto: I think you’re right, but perhaps you’re just before your time. We have to play out the last gasp of male ascendancy – and I’m not suggesting that Putin’s last breath, which hopefully happens soon, will be that last gasp – far from it unfortunately. But we have a long, hard battle to fight against misogyny. Look at the Taliban. Look at Iran. Look at the CCP – their politburo has never had a female member in the seventy years of its existence. Even the USA has never had a female President, and women have a horribly hard road to hoe in the male province of politics even in democratic countries. Australia has had one female Prime Minister, and she was subjected to more vitriol than any male PM in Australian history – I would have no hesitation in claiming that to be a fact.
Jacinta: Slowly but surely wins the race. Sadly for me, it’ll more likely take centuries rather than decades, but think of the progress made in a relatively short time. We couldn’t become university professors a century ago, never mind major political or business identities. Obviously our fantastical leadership qualities are likely to shine within democracies rather than the thugocratic alternatives – which are the only real alternatives to the WEIRD world, and they’re always male. The Chinese people – and I’ve met so many of them – deserve far better than this horrific CCP thugocrazy. Clearly the dictator Xi can’t last forever, and the Chinese people will hopefully not tolerate the country bumbling from thug to thug, and if we keep moving in a bonoboeque direction elsewhere, Chinese women will make themselves heard more and more within the country, before it’s too late for the already-decimated Uyghurs and other proud minorities.
Canto: Yes it amuses me that their oligarchy is called the Chinese Communist Party, an exquisitely meaningless name. They may as well be called the Soggy Bottom Boys Party, but humour has never been their strong suit. That’s thugs for you.
Jacinta: Yes, talking of humour, I’ve not yet heard from Mr Pudding about Elon Musk’s demand for Mano-a-mano combat. He’s such a coward, when it comes down to it….
References
The boy in the White Palace 1: admiring Rachel Maddow
Canto: I can’t really keep my mind off the situation in the USA, because I know it’s of historical significance, while at the same time the bloke that’s causing all the trouble is the last thing I want to occupy my mind with. Any advice?
Jacinta: I know the feeling – it is mesmerising in a ghoulish way. So let’s start a new series, and take it right to the end of this tragic-comedy. We’ll call it The boy in the White Palace, and we’ll take it to whatever awful place it leads. Of course there are always heroes as well as villains. Take MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow – I just watched a brilliant piece of TV reportage from her. It should win a medal – though to be fair she manages this sort of thing quite often, so I shouldn’t just single out this piece of work. It started out by mocking another of the boy’s moronic but very typical appointments – this time to an obscure (to us) body called the Commission on Presidential scholars – a body of smart people to ‘select and honour the Presidential Scholars’, presumably some academically bright young people who deserve a scholarship. This time a donor to the juvenile crime-machine and writer of Trump-boosting finance BS called George Mentz, aka ‘Magus Incognito’ (I kid you not) has been appointed.
Canto: Haha yes, and he also sells bogus certificates to prove you’re a finance guru like him – must be an ‘only in America’ kind of deal. And they talk about Ukraine as a corrupt country? Je ne comprends pas.
Jacinta: Yeah, and this Ubermentz bloke is also one of them book-writin types, and here’s a title: Success magic – the prosperity secret to win with magical spiritual power: how to grow rich, influence people, protect your mindset & love yourself like a warrior using timeless abundance secrets. And most of that is capitalised, but not in a good way. I should be careful of what I say here, though, as he’s a member of the Illuminutti and might smite me with his flamin sword. But this set-up by Maddow beautifully introduces the shallow incompetence of the administration, which she then further illustrates with something much darker, relating to China.
Canto: Yes, and this is introduced by sound-bites of the thumpin great boy during the 2016 campaign going on – and on – and on – about China.
Jacinta: Right, which we don’t actually hear, coz we always keep the mute button handy while watching the cable news so we don’t have to hear la voix d’horreur.
Canto: Yes, though Colbert’s voix de trompette is a sweet melody to my ears.
Jacinta: So, just as the Ubermentz financial guru has been rewarded by the Great Reader in the White Palace for his impressive swathe of Illuminutti books, and of course his generous donations to the cause of ‘Nya nya nana na’, an expression which fully captures the philosophy of the boy’s administration, so has another great writer of profound books on China, with thought-provokingly grandiloquent titles such as Death by China: confronting the dragon – a global call to action, and The coming China wars. This warrior’s name is Peter Navarro, and, as Rachel points out, his appointment as some kind of special adviser on Chinese affairs, though he’d apparently never been there, doesn’t know the language and has never formally studied the topic of China and its economy, is a reward for, again, fully endorsing the White Palace’s nya nya nana na philosophy.
Canto: But it’s surely true that you can’t allow China to become the global economic bully that the USA has become, and the British Empire before that, etc. En it?
Jacinta: There are good bullies and bad bullies, apparently, according to some – mostly Americans. Anyway, so this Navarro bloke has become a White Palace courtier, with the ear of the boy-king, and this helps to explain the trade war that the boy has embarked on, at the expense of various apparently dispensible farmers and factory workers, and business operators in both countries.
Canto: Massive bailouts are going to US farmers at the moment – no worries about the deficit – and I note the economy in general’s on a downhill slide…
Jacinta: Navarro has also shown the same dodgy tendencies as the Ubermentz and his boy master, in sometimes pretending to be someone else – but of course that’s nothing compared to his advice about tarrifs, which the poor clueless boy eagerly laps up. So Rachel has set up this story of crazies in the White Palace…
Canto: Ra Ra Rasputin…
Jacinta: And she’s sort of darkening the tale as she goes, so next she moves to the impeachment thing.
Canto: Oh shudder, I hate that.
Jacinta: Yes, she takes us through the whole Ukraine stuff, the White Palace call to President Zelensky, the whistleblower, the dodgy release of the call summary, which the poor wee boy thought would be exonerating, then the confused reactions of his courtiers and Republican supporters, and all the rest. Above all, Rachel reminds us of how the boy recovers his equanimity and serves up his much noted nya nya nana na response to reporters, by assuring them it was all perfect and very nice, and if these Ukrainians were honest people they’d start a major investigation into my main rival, and China, if you’re listening, can you too help me get re-elected?…
Canto: It must be so boring for the laddie to have to go through another one of them dumb elections – but then he does get to go on all those campaign junkets and shout ‘lock up them dems, nya nya nana na’ to his little stone heart’s content.
Jacinta: Well that’s all in the uncertain future, but the nya nya nana na approach does seem to have left his many loving supporters in Congress a bit flummoxed – though some of them just come out and say, ‘nothing I’ve heard so far is impeachable’, which just creates more flummoxedness among those trying to report all this to a flummoxed populace.
Canto: And then they brought out that actor, the one that acts as the Chief of Staff, and he admitted that there was a quid pro quo (which is some weird Latin term for extortion, apparently), which he kindly explained was normal government procedure. Now some people say that he fluffed his lines, but I don’t agree, because it was exactly in line with the nya nya nana na policy of the boy king…
Jacinta: That’s true, but not everyone’s as smart as the boy, so the actor tried out a few different lines the next day, which left everyone even more flummoxed than their previous flummoxed state. But something Rachel picked up on from the actor’s earlier media gig was that he dodged a question about the boy’s deeply fascinating remarks about how China should investigate the Bidens…
Canto: Yeah the boy wants all of us to investigate the Bidens, I wonder why that might be – but actually I seem to recall some reporting that this was already raised in Beijing, which apparently flummoxed even the inscrutable Mr Xi…
Jacinta: Ah yes, you’re stealing Rachel’s thunder… Yes, in June, before the Ukraine call, the boy-king brought up the Biden thing with Xi, whether in an extortionate way we don’t know, but it’s very likely, given the boy’s MO, that he might’ve tied digging up BS about the Bidens with some new trade deal. Anyway, that’s another one of those ‘hidden’ calls that’ll probably never see daylight again, but incredibly, the Chinese did provide some info on Biden – who knows what, but I don’t see why the Chinese would hesitate to provide a bit of BS if it was in their own interest – it’s not as if that government has to worry about being caught out.
Canto: I’m not sure if the boy has to worry either, since he has a barmy army to back him up.
Jacinta: Well that’s to be seen I suppose. So the Chinese did provide something, because some White Palace delegate to China admitted as much, but he has since clammed up, apparently gotten to by the boy and his spivs. Meanwhile news has come out that trade assistance was being with-held from Ukraine, over and above military aid and a meeting with the Great Boy himself to publicise the relationship for the Ukrainian people. So, yes, extortion is the right word alright. But to return to the wonderful Rachel, she brings back this Peter Navarro, slayer of China, for the grand finale. Having raised the serious issue of nefariously self-serving dealings with two countries, at least, she ends with an excerpt from a CNN interview with this Navarro imbécile, which frankly makes you want to extinguish his lights with a fisticuff. The interviewer, Jim Sciutto, asks a simple question, ‘Did you raise the issue of the Bidens in your talks in China?’, and l’imbécile comes out with an obviously obfuscating and very aggressive rant about journalistic scuttlebutt. Truly a tour de farce, gift-wrapped by a genius of TV journalism.
Canto: Yes, admirable indeed, but the boy and his spivs aren’t listening, and neither is a vast proportion of that strange land’s populace. But we’re listening and watching way out here in Oz, and I have a great tale to tell next time.