Idiots

Idiots:

Here is a fellow who speaks kindly of those who have shown little cause to merit the kind words.

But don’t worry about the forcibly displaced, Yglesias admonishes us, because, “[w]e spoke to one retired couple who was given four apartments—they live in one and rent out the other three to families who’ve either moved out to Cha’an from the central city or else moved to the area from less prosperous regions of China. The town’s current party boss said he was given five apartments.” Klein’s coverage on the website of the Washington Post was equally credulous. He informed his audience, “A conversation with some residents revealed that they didn’t just get one free apartment in the new building. They got four free apartments, three of which they were now renting out. And medical coverage. And money for furnishings. And a food stipend. And — I’m not kidding, by the way — birthday cakes on their birthdays. Sweet deal.”...

Lenin famously referred to Western sympathizers of the Soviet Union as “useful idiots.” Anyone familiar with Yglesias or Klein’s oeuvre recognizes that they are hardly “idiots,” however. That’s what makes their credulousness so strange and disturbing.

I lived in China, from 2000-1. In a spirited tour, one might miss the fact that people are being forced from their homes, and their homes being destroyed in the next instant. Perhaps that is unimaginable to them, given their own context. Yet it is the case. (The report errs in suggesting that dao means destruction; what it means is "movement," or "way," in the sense of Daoism, the philosophy of the road, of constant change. Destruction is simply the implication of movement; your home is about to move.)

I saw families huddling beneath tarps strung from the last remaining wall of a toppled home. The PRC is ruthless, whether or not it is wicked. It is amazing that these "progressives" do not see, and cannot know.