Tortured by the American Dream

“Yes, the communist government in Beijing prevents free elections and free speech, continues to persecute religious groups, and has a record of pirating music and software as well as other intellectual property. But according to a recent study by the Council on Foreign Relations, China has also changed 2,600 legal statutes to comply with World Trade Organization rules.”
--CNBC's Larry Kudlow defending the Chinese government's woeful record on human rights.

A sad and bitter thing has happened as result of our rapprochement with Communist China. It began with a desire to counter the Soviet Union whom the Western oligarchy feared-- less as a potential existential threat posed by their long range missiles and nuclear arsenal-- than as a challenge to global capitalism.

Ironically, it was none other than President Carter who wooed the Chinese into our capitalist fold, despite having made human rights the centerpiece of his foreign policy. Indeed it was good old Jimmy Carter who restored formal diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China and then granted it the Most Favored Trade status.

Republicans of course had howled about Carter's hypocrisy. Although a Sinophile himself, having worked in Beijing as U.S. trade representative, Bush I blasted the president's decision. "China has now seen just how easily we can be pushed around." Of course, once in office Bush rushed to renew China's MFN status even as they were cleaning the blood from Tiananmen Square.

So what has been the result of this lassez-faire attitude?
For China it has meant spectacular growth at the cost of gaping inequality. To be poor in China means living hand to mouth or toiling in prison. For the USA it has meant the ruin of half our cities, the demise of labor and the near extinction of the working middle class.

But the greatest price has been the erosion of our optimistic nature. Good Americans, lawyers, doctors and psychologists among them, are no longer ashamed to carry out torture. Most will blame the shift on 9-11 but I think the cause springs from someplace even darker and deeper. In our gut we know that we have sold our ideals to the dog-eat-dog logic of free-market totalitarianism.

We know because the evidence is there every day in our sewage-laden streams and our soured soil. In China the aping of our mindless pursuit has their urban survivors literally choking on air.

The last ironic twist to the story may be that China herself, having finally woken up to the fact that the beguiling road to success is a physical and spiritual death march, does the merciful thing and like the stingy German banks, ends our self-destructive habit of easy credit. Only then perhaps we will find the courage to face our tortured American Dream and see it perish--replaced by a more inspiring hope for the planet.