I Should Be Running Things

Of course it's normal to be anti-China - "we're in a trade war, which could lead to a real war, China's ripping us off!, China is looking to take over the 21st century etc etc etc" - but from what I can tell Ezra Klein is the only one asking "why?":

I think one reason the administration felt it was safer to retrench to something that could be described more as a trade war with China is that a bipartisan consensus has hardened around China. Trump set this into motion in his 2016 campaign, but then Democrats embraced it, too: China is a rising power, and we’ve made a terrible mistake in letting them rise. We are in danger of being a falling power. China ripped us off. They took our manufacturing jobs. They addicted us and our allies to their cheap labor and their cheap goods. And China doesn’t just want to be rich. It wants to rule.

I’m not going to tell you this story is entirely wrong. It’s not. 

But I will tell you that I’ve been surprised and alarmed for years now by how this new, much more hawkish and angry consensus has hardened. How hard it has become to question.

I get nervous when it becomes clear to me that we’ve chosen a new foreign enemy in Washington and that the politics on both sides no longer really allow for contrary voices or understandings. And so I’ve been concerned by the trends in China policy for a while — not because I think China is a pure or good actor, but because I think the politics have aligned around hostility and escalation in a way that can become self-reinforcing.

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), "besides succinctly pointing about 15 years ago that the Chinese are woefully human like the rest of us, didn't you have the same question about Israel back in 2007 that Klein does about China today?"

Sigh. Yes I did, faithful readers, YES I did:

I wonder if the Israeli/Hamas fighting of the last week will lead some of us to wonder why we're so unequivocally pro-Israel. Now, I'm not saying if we should or shouldn't be. But it seems odd that of all the many, many things politicians in Congress argue about, Israel is not one of them - it is taken for granted that of course your stance will be pro-Israel if you're running for office. It's a no-brainer; how many times have you read about a politician being told if he's not pro-Israel he/she is committing "political suicide"?

Meanwhile, we can't get anyone to agree on healthcare, or education, or Social Security. We can't even get everyone on the same page when it comes to SAVING THE PLANET. Yet Israel, for some reason, is not open to debate. All of our...READ MORE