I just finished reading Qiu Xiaolong’s Red Mandarin Dress, a detective story set in post-Mao China. The book well portrays the dilemma of an honest policeman in a corrupt and authoritarian system.
Tomorrow is 6-4 Day, the day in 1989 that China started its pivot to totalitarianism. It took decades to happen but now we are facing an existential threat.
Our current situation seems like a replay of Weimar Germany in the 1920s.
The German nationalists and socialists were fighting it out and often just completely lying and tearing apart their opponents. But in the meantime, the Nazis and Communists were preparing to seize power.
The Nazis said the Jews were racially attacking the Aryans. The Communists said that they were the true liberals on race. The anarchists wanted to violently destroy any authority, Left or Right. What could mild democrats do?
The democrats threw up the weak Weimar Republic which was destroyed. The ideologues were much better organized, knew no bounds to their tactics, and smeared their opponents.
I have also just finished (again) Alan Furst’s The Foreign Correspondent, which imagines living in Europe as the Nazis rise to power.
No, it is ridiculous to think this applies to Trump. And the BLM leaders are not Communists in liberal clothing. We are actually better off.
Most African American leaders are astute and often rise to greatness. Most Whites aren’t racists except by the most outlandish intellectual gymnastics. I am optimistic.
Call me a weak Weimar democrat or a hopeful Chinese democrat preserving what he can.
First, we should never forget what greatness African Americans have contributed to this country and to religion specifically. They have earned the right to be heard.
Second, White Americans should be secure in their great contributions. But they do need to refresh and explain again what is valuable for a new generation. Not defensively.
Third, we need to gather the great wave of the economic, social, religious, and cultural capital of Hispanic, Asian, African, European, Middle Eastern Americans, and others into a mighty tide of renewing democracy in America.
True, the Dems and GOP will have differences, and there is no final settlement in a democracy.
But we can let each other to take some of the boards out of our eyes, and let a thousand new ideas of A Better Democracy clash and renew.
What do you think? Do you have game?
