Daniel I’d like to engage what you have said, truly. That’s my goal. So let me start by getting the bile out of my mouth. Please excuse. Let me tell you why its there.

Daniel I hear what you are saying, every day of the week. Its not new. You are right, millions do think what you say. No one has said it (to me) as well as you, or in such a nuanced way. If they had I might not have the bile in my mouth.

Since the Tibet crisis broke on March 14, I have been living this 24x7. Many of us who spent 30 years of our lives involved in Himalayan stories are now minor go-to-guys for new and old media. I am doing radio interviews and writing op-eds and editing other people’s op-eds and so on.

Whether on the radio, (http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_080402k.cfm), or while responding to comments at other blogs, http://www.jewcy.com/post/chinese_communist_party_propaganda
or while involved in the comment war on one front of the Youtube Sino-Tibet war http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZMyHq7cQeE

I keep hearing variations of the point you raise.

Your question is more nuanced and refined. You at least are not denying the genocide of the Party—see work of Michael Parenti. Do a Youtube search. He is an old leftist, who once thought Stalin was wonderful, then thought Mao was wonderful, and most recently said Slobodan Milosevic was not really responsible for genocide in Serbia. Anyone who tries to talk about Tibet, he kicks around, saying that China liberated the Tibetan slaves. He gets away with this though he has not been to Tibet, even though he constantly throws up historical lies. Because so few people know enough Tibetan history to understand what trash he is spouting. Many people who approach me with your argument set it up by saying that Tibet was not invaded, that there was no genocide and that the Chinese Communist Party is wonderful.

Some Chinese do not even bother with any of that, their blatant nationalism is more purely expressed. Like this “strong rule, we r strong, so... u can bound to shut da fuk up, b/c we Chinese have da right to put a dick in ur ass any time we want to.” No matter what you think of US sins, you might want to take a look at a few things, like this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tok1QYHfXHU&feature=PlayList&p=BF1003A467897800&index=0

So, I am not sure you are up to speed with the level of Chinese nationalism that the Party is actively encouraging, to prop up its rule. Through propaganda. That’s one thing. But then the other, is that I appreciate you do not stoop to the “US is Terrible, so lets excuse China” stuff either…

Since you do not do that Daniel it makes this easier. I don’t have to wade through that mud—and that’s where my bile comes when you raise this topic. Please excuse the forgoing prelude.

You make it easier to answer your question when you say up front “Obviously, I believe in the Tibetan cause…” Too many of the people I speak with dismiss the Tibetans.. what they have suffered is dismissed—because they hate what the US has done in Iraq so much. Some are so blinkered that they deny that China even invaded Tibet.

You are keeping it simple, one pointed. The point you raise as I understand it is this. Since the US government is so terrible, in so many ways, why don’t we fix our own problems first. I have a couple of answers for you.

First, I agree with you. It’s a good idea. Lets do that (also, not first, but also—I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time). We do need to clean up our own mess. We do have a lot of problems that we need to fix, in America, as well as ones that we have allowed to be created, in our own name- -because of our incompetent government—around the world. We would have more legitimacy to face China now, if it were not for Guantanamo and Iraq. If we were not tied down in this war in Iraq we would have more ability to deal with The Chinese Communist Party now, on all sorts of levels. All that is true. Our government has weakened our legitimacy, you are right.

Americans have been struggling with this for centuries. Its nothing new. Imagine the plight of African American soldiers going off to fight Hitler, and coming home to racism. They fought Hitler even though they knew what they would face at home on their return. This hints at part of the answer…. As a nation, even as we struggle to re-gain control over foreign policy, and clean up the messes our incompetent government is making…. Even so, we have to address the most pressing global problems as well. You raise the Global Warming issue as one of them. I add the Chinese Communist Party to the list.

One of the greatest aspects of the United States is that we do have a self-correcting mechanism. Our history proves it. Even though our government (and collectively our consumption…) does impose many terrible things on the planet, still, because we are not ultimately controlled by a dictatorship with absolute propaganda control, we as a people are able to slowly create a more perfect union. We can listen to our better angels. People who try that in China, or under Stalin, or under Hitler, were shot. But Americans stand up and fight the good fight, over and over, in every generation. Even though some of us are shot for doing so. Still there is enough essential strength within our democracy that its self correcting nature rises. There is always some wiggle room here. Whether its Upton Sinclair fighting the robber barons for clean food, or African Americans home from WWII fighting for Civil Rights…. Whether it was intellectuals fighting to convince average Americans that the Spain mattered, in the 1930’s, and was worth risking our lives and security for…

We are an amalgam. Let me say it again. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We must. We have done it over and over. Its never that we are perfect and others are terrible, or that we have some moral mandate because we are such good democrats. Even though we are incompetent democrats, still we have duties abroad, and at home.

Not every nation has been able to do manage this. Chinese who lived under the terror of Chiang Kai Sheik, during the Chinese Civil War, and the Japanese Invasion…. By 1950 they were so tired of his self-serving lies and corruption, his dictatorship, (despite the façade of democracy he varnished on things) that they said “Even the Communists cannot be worse that this bastard.” So they let the Communists take over. The people lost the will to fight them anymore. And the democrats were so corrupt, so weak, the army they created was hollowed out by corruption from within….so the Communists took over China. And ever since the Party has jailed or executed anyone who challenged their dictatorship.

As it turned out Mao was a greater murderer and worse a dictator than Chiang had been. And oddly, since Chiang had always hidden behind the pose of democracy, (in part because of America’s flawed support of him) ultimately democracy triumphed in Taiwan…. Where Chiang’s forces fled to.

So there is something powerful about even a façade of democracy. And something inherently wrong in the purposeful imposition of dictatorship. There is a difference between a failed dictatorship and an incompetent democracy.

Once you have lived overseas half your life and watched a few revolutions, seen a few people shot in the streets, seen Chinese, Indians, working class Americans, Nepalese and Tibetans living with grace despite poverty…. There is something in the checks and balances we have in the US, despite the many flaws of our nation, which you come to respect.

I may be wrong. Perhaps America, as you say, must clean itself up before it can do anything else. Perhaps we are so tainted by the corpororati’s dictatorship over our foreign policy that we have lost the power to do good in the world. But that’s not what my guts tell me. I have spent more of my life in Asia than in America. I lived for decades without a refrigerator, car or television. Lived for years at a time without electricity. Spent as much time walking from village to village, as many Americans have spent in a car.

But I cannot forget the voice of one old woman in Nepal who said, in anger, “We are poor because you are rich.” I do not agree with her, in some ways, but I do respect the power of her belief. I love that old woman; I understand too damn well why she feels that, and it pains me to think she has good reason to feel that. And there are millions of people in Asia, Africa and South America, who agree with her completely. The reality of America’s consumption has become obvious to the billions of people who now live on a dollar a day. I have lived in their huts, carried water on my back from the village well side by side with them. So if you are tempted to dismiss my response as yahoo Americanism, please don’t.

So I came home to America a few years back because of the war clouds I see on the horizon. China is part of that coming war, but so is our level of consumption. I felt then, and feel now, a duty to repay some of what was invested in me—by the public school education I got here in this country as a kid; and by the peasants of Asia who raised me up. There must be a way for America to create wealth again, to create products again. There is more to American than just importing cheap shoes; shoes made cheap because the Chinese communist party does not allow its people to form free trade unions. Part of our engagement with China must be to enable the people of China, to show our respect for them. Rather than to let our corporati leaders use the Party as our comprador's.

Daniel, if you are right, then we are in trouble, deeper trouble than you realize.

An old Tibetan man, as he led me through the ruins of a monastery he was forced to help the Chinese blow up during the Cultural Revolution, talked to me. “If you are ever free to tell people, speak for us. The old days before China invaded, some of that was bad. No one wants to go back to that. But we hear the Dalai Lama has promised that Tibet will have democracy one day, that he does not want to bring back the old system. So if you are ever free to tell them, speak for us. We were poor before, but when the Chinese came we starved to death. The worst Tibetan government in Tibet, is better than the best Chinese Government.”

He looked at me to see how much of this was getting through to me. “Look at the marks on my wrist,” He said. “Where do those come from?” he asked, “They are from the Chinese. You are free to speak. We are not. Speak when you can!”

I feel a duty to speak out for the people in Asia who have been generous enough to speak to me; I feel an obligation to remind depressed and somewhat jaded Americans about the essential ideals of America. None of what we face is as simple, or as impossible, as people on either side of the Asia/America Bridge seem to think it is. I am a bridge person. I have tremendous respect and love for people on either end of the bridge. There is strength in America and in Asia.

Americans can walk and chew gum at the same time. So can Asians. The emergence of democracy there is as important as its rebirth in America. There is a lot to do here. There is a lot to do in the world. Working with the friends of democracy in Asia, we can do both. Just because the American corporati has besmirched the good name of democracy, that’s no reason to lose sight of the nature of the American ideal.

'At the same time, we have been the worst contributor to climate change and the biggest impediment to international protocols such as the Kyoto Accord that sought to address climate change. Our irresponsible actions in response to climate change over the last decades may turn out to be, by far, the largest "genocidal" decisions ever made, '

It seems that we are all guilty, as a global society, for climate change.

'World carbon dioxide emissions are expected to increase by 1.9 percent annually between 2001 and 2025. Much of the increase in these emissions is expected to occur in the developing world where emerging economies, such as China and India, fuel economic development with fossil energy. Developing countries’ emissions are expected to grow above the world average at 2.7 percent annually between 2001 and 2025; and surpass emissions of industrialized countries near 2018. '

'The U.S. produces about 25 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels; primarily because our economy is the largest in the world and we meet 85 percent of our energy needs through burning fossil fuels. The U.S. is projected to lower its carbon intensity by 25 percent from 2001 to 2025, and remain below the world average .'

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html

It seems we should be focusing on not cutting down anymore tropical rainforest.

'The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth’s equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change.’

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/deforestation-the-hidden-cause-of-global-warming-448734.html

 It seems there is some hope -

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/million-acres-of-guyanese-rainforest-to-be-saved-in-groundbreaking-deal-801239.html

Interestingly enough, today CNN and several other networks reported that China, not the US, now leads the planet as "worst polluter."

The distinction between China and the USA, when it comes to pollution and enviornment, may be arbitrary.

Adam Elenbaas

And the Washington Post seems to think that Tenzin Gyatso is the 16th Dalai Lama!

haha That makes me smile.