At the very least, they wasted their energy huffing and puffing about China, while they should have kept their eyes on their own homes. (A lesson not lost on HH folks, who are keen to keep a watch on China).
At the apparent, their own “liberalism” against China showed why Trump won. Their stereotyping of China and Chinese people paved way to Trump style stereotypes and fake news and “post-truths”.
HH has warned them for years. They chalked it up to “Chinese nationalism”. Now they see the same tactics turned on them in their homeland in US and in Europe.
Our old pals breaking down on Trump:
Charles Custer: https://twitter.com/ChinaGeeks/status/796226287975223296
America you absolute idiot. What the fuck have you done.
FOARP:
What the inconceivable looks like
PekingDuck.org
I feel a sense of China fatigue (silent since August 2016) (Maybe more of a Democracy fatigue?)
Melissa Chan: https://twitter.com/melissakchan/status/797951438601199616
There’s a reason why foreign correspondents who’ve spent time in China/Russia are aghast. This isn’t some abstract thing for us.
Reply: Michael Collins@CollinsLowland
@melissakchan@Daniell30653742 where were the journalists BEFORE he won?@Fahrenthold@kurteichenwald were exceptions to invisible press.
@melissakchan@ChinaGeeks Do tell? What are they thinking…
The 2 replies to Melissa Chan were especially pointed:
Where were the “journalists” BEFORE Trump won?
Perhaps Melissa should have stayed in US, staging sit-ins against any political candidates who mocked and intimidated journalists?
Perhaps Charlie Custer should have made a film about Trump cheating ordinary people and elderly?
Perhaps FOARP should have went to Iraq and track down some “renditioned people”.
Perhaps PekingDuck should have met up with Snowden and talk about “crackdowns”, “surveillance”, and “exile”.
The evident silence of accounting for one’s responsibility in the HH critics is deafening. The reason however, is very simple. They didn’t pay heed to the warnings, because they simply didn’t believe it was possible, because they didn’t really understand their own societies.
The ultimate reason is even more simple and ironic: Post-Truth was Pre-Truth. Others ignored the Truth, because They themselves ignored the Truth of their own societies.
Post-Truth is where one purposefully lie in the face of Truth,
Pre-Truth is where one JUMPS into an assertion of Truth without bothering to examine all the facts.
On the balance, there is very little difference between the two, because a Post-Truth Liar almost always maintains an assertion of Truth via his lies.
Trump and his supporters are both Post-Truthers and Pre-Truthers.
In the rush to garner media ratings, the Liberal journalists do invariably engage in the mad dash for the Pre-Truths, splashed across sensationalized headlines, innuendos, unnamed sources, rumor mills, and conspiracy theories.
Then, is it any wonder that a Celebrity showman like Trump would do the same, well into when the Post-Truth lies are maintained?
Why then is a surprise to the “journalists” when Trump turns his Twitter rants of half-lies and conspiracy BS on NY Times?!
If Trump is a “journalist”, he might claim that he’s being persecuted by the big Media Corporations and their stooges?! (And Trump was a frequent Fox News guest).
Not to defend Trump, but he is the inevitable consequence of an adversarial Democratic system with little to no accountability to the actual Truth. Truth is sacrificed, because Democracy is not a meritocracy that holds Truth to have value. Equal Rights are afforded to Lies and Truths, then no Truth has any value.
The “system” must be respected, even if the people running it have no respect for it. Then, even “respect” loses all meaning and value.
*
Looking back, I did not predict Trump, but I did predict a “Cultural Revolution” in the West. Only I didn’t realize how fast it was going to come. PekingDuck rather publicly mocked me for what I wrote about CR, only to demonstrate that it didn’t really know CR as well as it should. (Another piece of Pre-Truth in HH critics).
Looking back (as with the 20/20 hindsight of Charles Custer’s “completely preventable” High Speed Rail disaster in China), Trump was FAR MORE completely preventable. There is nothing new about such a person in politics, especially American politics.
So next time an HH critic starts off with another Pre-Truth or Post-Truth about China, ask him or her, “Where were you when Trump was getting elected??”
alanking says
It has been obvious to me that the western media are really versions of American Pravda. The sad truth is the original Pravda of the Soviet Union is long gone. The western versions managed to fool people longer as the lies of Pravda were too obvious, while the western versions were smarter, where they used to only mix in occasional lies amidst more truths. However in recent years, thinking they now have a monopoly on “truths”, they label black as white and peddle lies as truths, in the end, they fooled themselves along with any one who still do not think they are, like the pravda, just propaganda machines. But at least by now more people realize them for what they are.
pug_ster says
Months ago I said the word “western propaganda” in various forums and people would make a joke about me. Now not as much. Maybe people are getting resigned to the fact that there is really a western propaganda out there.
N.M.Cheung says
It’s not just the pre-truths and post truths, but the fake news cram out from Macedonia for click bait and dollars. While the major media like NYT were drilling on meaningless emails and supposed conflict of interest of Clinton Foundation while Trump is getting away with sexual assault and FBI was helping him. The fake democracy of electoral college may be traced to slave owning states afraid of real democracy, yet they claimed it was historical and nothing can be done. Recently there was an article in NYT claiming China doing demolition work in Tibetan area and suppressing religion, which was debunked by Chinese media. Anyone looking at the picture from NYT with any sense of fire hazard of wooden houses stacking on top of each other should wonder why demolition wasn’t done earlier.
N.M.Cheung says
Reference to the news of Oakland warehouse fire that killed more than 30 people and the article about Tibetan community in Szechuan. Those wooden illegally constructed houses stacking on top of each other will suffer the same fate as that warehouse where artists flee high rent and illegally occupied fire hazard cited by city officials. Now questions are asked why fire and safety code was not enforced, and if they did will be charged as harassment of low income artists. And if those Tibetan wooden shacks started a fire and resulted casualties it will be charged that Chinese officials are indifferent to the welfare of Tibetan people.