Dusk

China is falling apart before our eyes, veiled though they may be.

Waves of violent civil unrest are sweeping across the country as migrant workers by the millions are increasingly finding themselves out of work due to declines in manufacturing. The Chinese people, not unlike the rest of the world, are also financially weakened from massive price inflation, caused by both monetary policy and a biosphere gone far awry. The country is experiencing the worst drought in decades and unprecedented flooding simultaneously. These climate anomalies are partially caused by the massive damns built along the Yangtze River to generate hydroelectric power, which have drastically altered natural ecosystems. This is decreasing generation output from the damns, which only compounds the energy problems they're already facing from a decline in coal extraction - causing the price of coal to rise while the government keeps the price of power fixed. This has brought about massive blackouts across major population areas, a harbinger of bad news for an already slowing manufacturing sector. This can and will only lead to decrease in output, trade imbalance, GDP decline, and further economic contraction.

But here in America we seem to want to make China out as the bad guy, the boogie man, the up-and-coming global superpower. We bested the Germans, destroyed the Russians, & slaughtered the terrorists, but we still have this huge military that needs an enemy, and China is a convenient target. There are an awful lot of Chinese people, they talk funny, they're Commies (although not really), and THEY TOOK OUR JOBS! Just look at these ads.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFsqkI5gg84]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSQozWP-rM]

This is an attempt to paint the picture of a dominant, unified, prosperous, hegemonic China that has the United States under its thumb, when the truth is quite the opposite. The people of China are not dissimilar from those of Greece or Spain or Egypt or Ireland or Syria. They have had enough of widespread blatant government corruption. They have had enough of watching a very few get fabulously rich while they struggle in squalor. They have had enough of religious oppression and economic malfeasance. And they are aware, just like many other impoverished peoples around the globe, that we, the United States, are a large part of the cause of their strife, their anguish, their futility, and their distress. The actions of our Wall Street banks, to which we gave the keys to the kingdom, directly and with purpose caused their monetary woes for a nice profit. And yet we have the righteous indignation to hold malice towards them for taking our jobs, for prospering in our despair, and for burgling our American Dream.

That politicized picture is testament to a nice piece of advertising by the "Fair & Balanced" cable news networks (both self-professed and not), but it is just another in a long line of loads of crap force fed to us via the clicker.

The truth of course is that the CEO's of formerly "American" but now "Multinational" companies and the traders (traitors) on Wall Street caused China's financial mess just as they caused ours.

They are the ones who sent this plague of corporatized industrialized slavery around the world. It wasn't the Chinese who "took our jobs" - lending to some vague propagandized visual of an Asian man literally snatching them from underneath us while we were out to lunch.

They are the ones who's salaries have increased by outrageous orders of magnitude profiting from their institutionalized global slave trade while we have lost our jobs, our homes, our savings, our futures, and our dignity.

They were the ones who saw the American worker, empowered through unity (the stem of the term "Union" that we've somehow grown to loathe) as an adversary to be conquered, and decided to move their operations elsewhere to further bolster that all-important bottom line.

They are the ones who show no regard or respect for our communities, our local economies, or our individual prosperity, and certainly no remorse over their destruction.

They are the ones who made possible Bopal, Chernobyl, Texas City, Hinkley, & Deepwater Horizon, and then tried their best to wriggle out of any blame for their hubris.

They are the ones who have morphed our once just and fair legal system into one that encourages bribery through political contributions, requires corporations to maximize profits by any means available, and equates cash with speech.

They are the ones who continually and aggressively foster the ever widening inequality we so clearly see throughout the world - and particularly here at home.

Best articulated by the Dropkick Murphy's, "...our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job, and with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed."

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU5Fx2WqNkE]

The Chinese workers, along with the Indian, Taiwanese, Filipino, Mexican, Honduran, Hatian, (et. al.) ones, have been just as used, abused, manipulated, and discarded as American workers. They, like we, were offered the "American Dream" - the ability to invest their own hard work in a better future for themselves, to provide for their families, and to own their small piece of the world. Those principles were codified by the founders of our nation as inalienable rights, not as lofty ambitions, and the same greedy fucks that sucked the wealth and spirit out of us have done the same to them.

Historical precedent and common sense demonstrate that it is much easier to get people to do your bidding, regardless of the costs, if you can make them believe that eventually it will work out in their favor. But the Chinese version of the American Dream is not different than the domestic one in that it is exactly that: a dream. In the words of George Carlin, "You'd have to be asleep to believe it."
And I'm certain some will read this and think "At least it's China and not us."

But it is us. The only real threats are ones that effect all of us equally. In a world where every economy, every ecosystem, and every life are inextricably tied, there is no Chinese problem, no Greek problem, no American problem. There is only a human problem. Our human problem is that the people we've long allowed to run the place are doing it very badly - to the continual detriment of the overwhelming majority and for the obtuse benefit of a fraction of a percentage.

Thomas Jefferson once said, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

I cannot think of a more eloquent or succinct way to articulate what has become of America than that. Unfortunately, through globalization it is also what has become of the rest of the world. We are necessarily all in it together now.

China is the only economic engine still powering the global economy. It is the only domino left between what is left of industrialism and the post-petroleum abyss, and it is clearly toppling. Now all we can do is sit back and watch dusk descend on the Empire of the Sun, and prepare as best we can for nightfall.