Empires may fall

       Last night I watched a documentary on Amazon titled "One Child Nation" , made by a young woman from China who has become an American. In the movie she learns how China's one child policy ,which was in effect from the seventies till 2015 ,affected her own family. An aunt gave birth to a girl, then managed to give the child over to a baby broker who sold her cousin to an orphanage, who in turn sold her to a western family seeking to adopt. The aunt felt she had no choice . If she raised the girl she would never have the  honor of raising a boy. Many other female babies were not so lucky. They were left to die in public spaces and by the sides of the roads.
     The penalties for not complying with the One Child policy were draconian. If you attempted to have one more child than the state  permitted you would be chased down ,arrested ,hog tied, and brought to the midwives whose responsibility was to abort surplus babies and sterilize the mothers. They did the job efficiently and without mercy, sometimes delivering live children that they would suffocate.
      Even the filmmaker's mother defends the policy, saying that before it was implemented there wasn't enough food for everyone and China could never have raised itself out of crushing poverty without that policy.  Everyone in this long chain of evil from local Communist party officials, to midwives, to baby brokers, to the mothers themselves said the very same thing to her microphone " we had no choice ". One person reminded her that all of these actions were to protect the collective. Individuals acting for themselves destroy the collective and after that you have nothing.
    That's one way of thinking. It's not mine of course. Many  equate individualism with selfishness. Many believe collectivism is always preferable, and that capitalism is exploitation. Few of them bother to notice that our innovators and entrepreneurs are rarely selfish people themselves, or that even if they were it does not stop the businesses or innovations they have created from benefiting us with better jobs, more choice, better products and lower prices. If that's selfishness, give me more of it!  Producers are not selfish. Takers are. That's not a paradox. It's to be expected.
     What else can be expected? Maybe that the ruling party that forced millions of abortions and sterilizations upon it's people over decades would not have much of a problem arresting and detaining  doctors and journalists in Wuhan while they were spreading the message that a deadly new virus was passing from person to person in that city. The actions the CCP took in December and January were aimed primarily at covering up news they were uncomfortable with rather than informing the world about the danger that was coming it's way and cooperating with international virologists and epidemiologists who may have been instrumental in containing the threat at a time when that was still possible. By the time party officials took containing the virus as seriously as containing knowledge of the virus ( January 23 ) it was already too late.
     Considering the enormity of the offense I expect China to pay a high price for its perfidy. You cannot have a nation with the disdain China has for human rights on the fast track to becoming the worlds leading superpower. That would be disastrous. Something had to give ,and it already has. Japan is bringing it's industries out of China and back home again, the U.S. ,Australia, and the E.U. will likely follow. Boycotts may follow. I've highlighted two examples of that disdain. If I had space enough I could list dozens more.
      The CCP may not survive the backlash. Without a market to sell their goods outside of China their much vaunted economic growth is headed for a grinding halt. President Xi could loose his job. The party that has ruled China since 1949 , responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, could find that karma is a bitch. That's worth celebrating. The Chinese people deserve better.
       The Covid-19 virus and it's knock on effects is the most significant event in history since the second war war. There are consequences. There are lessons to learn.  I've learned this at least from my own experience, that our lives have been built on assumptions, and most of those assumptions no longer hold true.  It's time to for a major rethink. Empires are falling. Let's not join them.

Reform or revolution

    Like a lot of you I've been watching the riots every night on television, in my living room. When I look out at the protesters and the criminals who hide out among them I see ,not so much misery, but a lot of miserable people. That's somewhat understandable. After two months of lockdown emotions are subject to swings, most of them downward.
     For such miserable people they do seem to be having the time of their lives. Nothing rewires the circuitry of boredom and underlying discontent half as well as facing a phalanx of riot police shields ,catching the sting of tear gas in the air, and listening to pepper pellets whizzing past your ears. If the police charge into the crowd, so much the better, it's you and your brothers and sisters against the fascist armies of Donald Trump, the Proud Boys, the defenders of confederate statues and Jim Crow. Now what could be more exciting than that? Is there a better cure for that ennui you need to scratch but can't quite reach? Ennui is not a rash, except metaphorically in this case. It's French for boredom and yet it means more. It implies an deeply routed discontent. The only cure is excitement, a major break from routine. And still they're not much of a cure . They only distract and allow you some passing relief. The ennui is deeply routed afterall. Real relief occurs only when you face real problems inside yourself, but that's hard work that most of prefer to shirk. It's no coincidence that the rioting tearing apart our cities is happening now, after these months of lockdown and after so many unmanaged ,undiagnosed, untreated personal issues have had time to reach a boiling point.
      I'm not saying that demonstrations in behalf of Floyd Brown, or calling for greater accountability and reform in law enforcement are illegitimate. I'm not saying they can't perform any useful purpose. I'm saying that that is not what we're seeing . Why was the officer who's now been arrested for kneeling on the neck of Floyd Brown still a cop after a long record of abuses to the public. It's not because he was popular with other policemen. That's really unlikely. No one has more to loose than the good cop from having bad cops on the street. Good cops overwhelmingly out number the bad ones but a police force will be judged on the basis of the worst conduct of its worst cops. There's nothing cops would rather see than all the bad apples driven out. Systemic racism, really? Why tilt after imaginary dragons and monsters when there are actual systemic disfunctions that need to be dealt with like the ones that keep bad cops on the force? The local chapter of the policeman's union might a good place to start.
     That the protests we've seen up till now are not asking these questions is an indication of another agenda at work despite the importance of real reforms called for by this and other incidents. The calls for the police to be defunded and disbanded and prisons to be closed is not going to happen. Society as a whole has not lost it's mind as the more radical of the protesters have. There are anarchists at work in these protests. They have planned them and trained for the confrontations with police, the destruction of their vehicles, and all the sideshow that occurs at night. Their disdain for the institutions of law and order is equal to their disdain for capitalism. The businesses they destroy are not collateral damage in their war on cops ,it's part of the point. What do they have to offer in place of the institutions that sustain us? Not much. Maybe they'll get around to that after our cities are a smoldering ruin and the economy looks little better.