Eating Dogs and Cats and the Sino-British Opium War
If Trump had half a brain, he would not assail immigrants for eating Pets; he would talk about Fentanyl deaths engineered by China and implemented through Mexico.
By David Gottfried
We all knew that Trump was a Sadist, but he seems to be a masochist too. He is ranting about immigrants eating dogs and cats, and he resembles some of the crazy old ladies I grew up with who were always screaming about human fingers thrown into the spareribs sold by the Chinks (They always called the Chinese restaurants “The Chinks”) and other appetizing delusions.
Actually, some of Trump’s horrific appraisals of modern American life are valid, but Trump is too immensely stupid, unfocused and emotionally volatile to articulate some simple facts and figures that lend credence to his portrait of an America hanging on for dear life at the edge of the abyss.
Over 70,000 Americans are dying of Fentanyl per year. Most of it is coming from Mexico. The source of this “medicinal” menace: China.
United States politics were rent by Vietnam which killed about 56,000 Americans in roughly ten years of fighting. Fentanyl is laying waste to more than 70,000 Americans per year. If we care about Americans dying as much as we did in the 1960’s, we should raise hell and turn our politics upside down until the fentanyl body count is appreciably lowered.
However, when some Liberals are advised of problems pertaining to crime and the seedy side of life, their eyes sort of glaze over. For them, real news is news about imperialist wars, high unemployment rates and any impingements on sexual expression. Some rich liberals, having a soft spot in their hearts for the days they were “slumming” in the East Village or San Francisco (always ready be bailed out with a tidy sum of money from Mommy), news stories about Crime just won’t do.
(I am sorry for trashing so many liberals – a few notes on me and liberalism at the end of this essay.)
Also, liberals don’t like to entertain anything which trashes the third world. Liberals often don’t believe in G-d. Of course, people very often need to believe in something, and the style masters of the New York Times and Company have advised the malleable, mushy minds of educated America (Some other time I will explain why being intelligent is very, very different from being an “intellectual.”) that they ought to laud and venerate the third world. Their dogmatic veneration of the third world makes them loathe to find fault with anything pertaining to China or Mexico.
Fentanyl and the Legacy of the British Opium War
Some people may allege that I am not sufficiently sensitive to the crimes of Western Imperialism.
I am very sensitive to those misdeeds. That’s why I am very troubled and worried by the prospect that third world people, filled with rage toward the West, have no interest in MLKish notions of reconciliation and brotherly love. Rather, I think they may want revenge.
The British made a mint selling opium to the Chinese. The Chinese, understandably, were not exactly pleased that millions of their people had been turned into addicts. The Chinese fought a war to stop the British importation of opium into China and the sale of opium to Chinese people.
The Chinese lost that war. The result: The Chinese had to give Britain the untrammeled right to addict their citizens and China had to pay an indemnity to Britain for having the temerity to believe that China had the right to protect its people from drug addition and its myriad miseries.
It is completely plausible that Chinese people really get their jollies from addicting and killing Americans with fentanyl. (America, in many ways, is one enormous “New England”) I agree with liberals in condemning the mass addiction of the Chinese induced by British malevolence. However, I deplore Liberals if they are too doctrinaire and steadfast in their belief that oppressed peoples are perpetually innocent to realize that the formerly oppressed might scheme and plot dreams of revenge.
If Israel can kill Hama and Hezbollah operatives in Damascus and Tehran with pinpoint precision, our agents should have blasted and bombed the leaders of those Fentanyl pushing killer cartels in every Mexican town where they have a haven.
If Trump had any brains, he’d attack Biden for not decimating those cartels. (And Biden can decimate Trump for ignoring the problem as well.)
A few words about multiculturalism and food
In school, I was consistently told that people in different cultures often have different tastes. I don’t dispute that. However, I was also told that all cultural traits must be respected. Why ? In ancient Carthage little children were chosen, at random, to be set on fire. They were sacrifices for the “gods,” slaughtered to ensure a good harvest. I don’t understand why I am supposed to curtsey before this custom like a woosie weakling of a liberal who is simply mad about the third world.
Incidentally, The New Yorker, an elite, progressive journal, reports that some restaurants in China specialize in the preparation and sale of roasted and fried rats, elegantly prepared in accord with the highest Chinese culinary standards. If some people eat rats, why is it so hard to believe that some people eat cats and dogs.
Me and my tortured relationship with Liberals
I agree with many liberal positions. In some ways, I am very far to the left, far beyond conventional liberal opinion. However, I am sickened by the disposition and emotional valences of so many liberals. I guess it started with a couple of very rich and obnoxious clients I once had.
He was a queenly protestant prince, and his MaMa, who seemed to be the incarnation of Elizabeth the First, considered herself the sterling apogee of liberal insight and excellence.
They were always telling me how much they despised the Bushes. Barbara Bush, MaMa always told me, did not wear her pearls properly. I didn’t understand precisely what the old bitch was talking about, but she seemed to say that in her youth in Connecticut, the Main Line outside of Philadelphia, and in the posh precincts where Jacqueline Bouvier came to the attention of Joe Kennedy, she learned how a proper young bitch was supposed to wear her pearls if she was a real debutante.
Then I heard liberals say more things about pearls and politics: I read an article on the Op Ed page of the New York Times written by Marueen Dowd’s female predecessor at the Times. She was writing about Ted Kennedy, and she said that when Ted Kennedy was good, he was really fantastic, “like a proper lady with every pearl in place.”
Somehow the Democratic Party, which had once been graced with the Stentorian Roar of Franklyn Roosevelt, the clipped, confident cadences of John F Kennedy, and the kick-ass. deep, deep gravelly voice of Al Smith – manly voices all of them – had been castrated into a poodle-like, petty petunia of a person whose chief interest in life was the proper way to wear pearls.
I agree with much of this... likely all of it. I tend to tell people that I'm a "rational pragmatist." ie: I dislike the authoritarian notions of the "law and order" cheerleaders but I also admit the need for a strong military and a competent and, armed as necessary, police force.
It seems odd that this makes "liberals" nervous. This seems obvious.
Have far too much experience with the fentanyl crisis with my addict child, I tend to focus my advocacy on rational healthcare policies and legal reforms than the source. My concern being that if not source A it will be source B and then source C, until such a time as we mitigate the "why" of the addict.
But it strikes me that we could put some diplomatic teeth (trade and money related) to cause the government to do the cracking down. I don't know the answer but we may not be able to take much moral high ground in this effort. At least not with a straight face.