6 ms·

Assistant Dictator Book Club: America Against America

53 points by jseliger 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
est 3y ago
> but it’s still jarring that they each get more pages than, say, racial conflict. Even a barelly educated Commie could easily recognize "racial conflict" was "class oppression" in disguise. > he’s talking about capitalism and the Invisible Hand, which his Chinese readers aren’t necessarily familiar with k12 education in China makes the "invisible hand" theory mandatory.
- Vecr 3y ago
  It was written in the 1980s, I'm not sure what they had back then.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> That last paragraph really gets to the heart of Wang’s thesis in this book. > “We all thought America was this shining beacon of prosperity. It is indeed very rich. But somehow it also has all of these terrible problems. The wealth and the terrible problems coexist. This is concerning and we must study it further.” I too went through this realization. I think this is a very common phenomenon in many parts of the world. We watch the US and its prosperity from afar. Ever since we were kids. The reach of the US is so vast, we grow up a little bit american ourselves whether we want to or not. Through the culture it exports to us, we learn american values and ideologies. We learn to see the failings of our own societies through american lenses. Even recogizing some things as "failings" to begin with is proof that we have assimilated conflicting values of a foreign culture, american values. The US is a towering presence in the world, clearly it must be my nation's values which are wrong. In my country there's this saying "quem não deve, não teme". The innocent have nothing to hide or fear. People repeat it every day. People say this to my face without the slightest hint of discomfort. They post it on social media and receive likes. Today, in 2024, I saw a woman post this in reply to someone else on Instagram. On a lawyer's page, no less. On a post concerning legal matters. They do not think about it, they do not question it, they are not bothered by its implications in literally any way. It's a conversation-ending quip. To this day, I was never able to convince someone that there's anything wrong with it. They look at me like I'm stupid if I try. Maybe I disagree with my countrymen because I absorbed american values like privacy and the inviolability of the people and their integrity and that of their homes and correspondence, ideas like innocent until proven guilty in a civilized court of law. In light of these concepts, that saying is unacceptable. These conflicts with the values of my own people led me to yet another trap: thinking that american people are morally superior and that this somehow explains their wealth and their geopolitical and military strength. Americans are who they are because of such deeply held values, and we are not prosperous like them because we hold different values. They're on top right now. What's a teenager to conclude? They're right, we're backwards. At some point I believed americans would defend those values, their way of life, with their very lives if needed. That must be why they were so strong, they're willing to die for such things. For some reason I cannot imagine my people doing that. Americans were a different breed. They would depose their own government in armed insurrection if it betrayed those values. In fact they guaranteed themselves the god-given right of citizens to bear arms just to keep the authorities on their toes. Here the authorities are openly corrupt and they laugh at our helplessness, judges see themselves as gods and society recognizes them as such. Another saying: "doctors think they're gods, judges know". Can you imagine my disappointment when I discovered the internet and got a healthy dose of reality? Try to imagine how confused I was when I saw americans parroting tired lines like "I have nothing to hide", americans arguing for gun control and generally undermining all of those values that supposedly made them a great and free people. The years passed by and I saw the US government eroding their rights away like the oceans erode a mountain, and yet they did nothing. Even worse: they were not ignorant, they were not forcibly stripped of their rights, it wasn't the work of some conspiracy that took over the country via underhanded means and imposed these conditions on them. No, they debated all this, very much in public, and they willingly traded those values away for security despite the literal founders of their nation warning against doing so. Their resolve to maintain principles even when the price is high was tested and did not stand. All the government had to do was conjure up some boogeymen like communists, pedophiles, terrorists and drug traffickers and the americans accepted rule by fear. I have learned to respect my own people and culture a lot more since then. The american pedestal, forever broken. Just fallible humans, trapped in equally corrupt power structures. Just like me, like us. Much richer though, no doubt about that.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  'If you have nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear' is said all over the world in different translations and variations on the theme. And usually by people who have absolutely no idea of the far reaching consequences of their conversation stopper.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    > said all over the world Not in america. In america, people understood. In america, people did have an idea of the far reaching consequences of those words. Americans literally founded their nation on ideas born from understandings just like this one. How could they not understand? If you uttered such words in america, they would laugh at your barbarity. And they'd defend to the death your right to freely speak such barbarous nonsense on top of it. That's what I thought, once.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      If only.
- spookie 3y ago
  I wouldn't translate that phrase as such, it's more of a play on the word "deve". Therefore, "must" or "owes". The meaning, in my view, is more akin to: "he who fulfills his obligations and does not owe anything can live in peace because he has no creditors or anyone who demands reparation or compensation". This may pass as the same at first look, but it's more about doing what you've set out to do, rather than not worrying about what you haven't done. The key factor here is the verb "dever", it is about action not the lack thereof. (edit: clarifications) Source: European Portuguese native speaker
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Your detailed translation is correct. "Owes" is the verb used. In Brazil, that saying is often uttered in reaction to any resistance to government, police or legal activity. It's as though brazilians expect others to completely and willingly submit themselves to their microscope for inspection if the slightest doubt about their honesty is ever raised. Only someone who is not afraid would do so, and that way innocence is proven. Failure to do so implies you're afraid and therefore guilty. In other words, in Brazil everyone owes the government something. Even if it's just an explanation. It can decide to come and collect on that debt at any time. When the government comes knocking, it's up to you to prove that you're debt free and if you can't you deserve what's coming to you. That's how this society thinks. People think like that even though there are laws to the contrary. Police thinks like that. Government officials think like that. Here the government is too incompetent to determine whether you're alive or dead. So they make it your problem by making you prove that you're alive. Every year, my parents need to go to some government agency and literally prove that they're alive. If they don't, the government marks them as dead and cuts them off from their pensions. I pointed out to them the inherent indignity of this little yearly ritual. They did not understand what I was getting at. It's just how stuff works. Besides, how will the poor government figure out who's defrauding them? Clearly the only choice it has is to assume that everyone is defrauding it and force the innocent to prove their innocence or be punished with loss of benefits which are their right.
tivert 3y ago
> Reading this book, I found myself confused by the existence of Studies Programs. My college had a China Studies program and one or two others, I think Middle East Studies. Most professors in these programs were white (or black, or whatever - just not necessarily Chinese or Middle Eastern). They would read lots of Chinese texts, visit China a bit, and come back and have opinions on the Chinese National Character. Wang is doing the reverse, and China clearly appreciates his service. It's pretty interesting to read an account of a foreigner doing "cultural studies" of your own culture. On the one hand to see what interests him (and what light that sheds on his own culture), but also to learn to take with a grain of salt some of the things our own "cultural studies" people say. > But why? What’s the point of such people? Why don’t we just hire a Chinese person (maybe an immigrant, if we don’t trust the ones still in the PRC) to tell us what the Chinese National Character is? Why do we sent smart Americans to China to figure out what it’s like? There are literally over a billion people who already know that! Honestly, a Chinese person (for instance) won't look at his own culture with the same eyes as an American, and there's some value to that American perspective for an American audience. This is a kind of translation task that seems intrinsically hard: you need a foot in both worlds, but one of those feet will inevitably be planted more firmly on one side than another.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wharvle 3y ago
  One of the most celebrated-in-America works on our national character and form of government is precisely one of these cases of a foreigner providing an outsider’s perspective—and one sent by his government to investigate the US, even! Alexis de Tocqueville‘s Democracy in America The entire field of comparative politics tends to be a lot of this sort of thing, naturally, and is typically credited as beginning in Aristotle’s Politics, which is mostly a work of comparative politics, specifically.
- illuminant 3y ago
  > Honestly, a Chinese person (for instance) won't look at his own culture with the same eyes as an American, and there's some value to that American perspective for an American audience. This is a kind of translation task that seems intrinsically hard: you need a foot in both worlds, but one of those feet will inevitably be planted more firmly on one side than another. I call this the "kungfoo panda" effect. There are many examples of artworks produced by outsiders which captures a culture in a way only an outsider sees (such as Bev Doolittle). Insiders may be desensitized by familiarity.
novolunt 3y ago
[dead]
jacquesm 3y ago
Every time I see another submission by you it makes me happy. Thank you.
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
Oh those wacky and silly Chinese!
Animats 3y ago
That's fascinating. Huning is the Chinese de Tocqueville. That view from Iowa in the 1980s is useful. He notices how weak the US political parties, as organizations, are. They were once far stronger, especially in big cities, where political machines outlasted individual candidates. But that had run down by the 1980s. Partly because of television. Once candidates no longer depended on the party to promote them, parties became far less important. Parties don't really pick candidates any more. The self-organizing thing is significant. That's very Iowa, where farmer co-ops are still politically important. The leadership in China is absolutely terrified of any form of self-organization. People coming together in a group to make something happen is usually illegal. He clearly liked the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and was impressed that it was free back then. It was free when I was a kid. It's US$26 to get in now. US$15 for kids.
- gwd 3y ago
  > Parties don't really pick candidates any more. But that was specifically because of changes in how the primaries worked, correct? I'm not sure exactly what went into that, but there's a pretty good argument that the current primary system has contributed to polarization.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Interesting, it feels to me like the parties do pick the candidates (in the Democratic Party at least). They obviously don't pick directly (and they work hard to maintain the perception that they are neutral on primary candidates), but between super delegates, debate entry rules, and media coordination (such as airtime and exposure), it's pretty stacked in favor of the candidate preferred by those in popwer. And that's before there's any direct coordination between the party and the candidate[1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/24/debbie-wasserman-schultz-resigns-dnc-chair-emails-sanders https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/24/debbie-wasse...
yorwba 3y ago
Compare also Tanner Greer on the same book: https://scholars-stage.org/wang-huning-and-the-eternal-return-to-1975/ https://scholars-stage.org/wang-huning-and-the-eternal-retur...
dartharva 3y ago
Why is this post flagged?
porkbeer 3y ago
Being shocked there are regulations on chemical levels in food tells you a lot about china's ecological horrorshow. But quips aside, I find this almost charming to see iowa as such an alien land. Makes me wonder what Dvorak saw to write the New World Symphony after a similar visit.
porkbeer 3y ago
Why was this flagged?

53 points by jseliger 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

est 3y ago

> but it’s still jarring that they each get more pages than, say, racial conflict. Even a barelly educated Commie could easily recognize "racial conflict" was "class oppression" in disguise. > he’s talking about capitalism and the Invisible Hand, which his Chinese readers aren’t necessarily familiar with k12 education in China makes the "invisible hand" theory mandatory.

Vecr 3y ago
It was written in the 1980s, I'm not sure what they had back then.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> That last paragraph really gets to the heart of Wang’s thesis in this book. > “We all thought America was this shining beacon of prosperity. It is indeed very rich. But somehow it also has all of these terrible problems. The wealth and the terrible problems coexist. This is concerning and we must study it further.” I too went through this realization. I think this is a very common phenomenon in many parts of the world. We watch the US and its prosperity from afar. Ever since we were kids. The reach of the US is so vast, we grow up a little bit american ourselves whether we want to or not. Through the culture it exports to us, we learn american values and ideologies. We learn to see the failings of our own societies through american lenses. Even recogizing some things as "failings" to begin with is proof that we have assimilated conflicting values of a foreign culture, american values. The US is a towering presence in the world, clearly it must be my nation's values which are wrong. In my country there's this saying "quem não deve, não teme". The innocent have nothing to hide or fear. People repeat it every day. People say this to my face without the slightest hint of discomfort. They post it on social media and receive likes. Today, in 2024, I saw a woman post this in reply to someone else on Instagram. On a lawyer's page, no less. On a post concerning legal matters. They do not think about it, they do not question it, they are not bothered by its implications in literally any way. It's a conversation-ending quip. To this day, I was never able to convince someone that there's anything wrong with it. They look at me like I'm stupid if I try. Maybe I disagree with my countrymen because I absorbed american values like privacy and the inviolability of the people and their integrity and that of their homes and correspondence, ideas like innocent until proven guilty in a civilized court of law. In light of these concepts, that saying is unacceptable. These conflicts with the values of my own people led me to yet another trap: thinking that american people are morally superior and that this somehow explains their wealth and their geopolitical and military strength. Americans are who they are because of such deeply held values, and we are not prosperous like them because we hold different values. They're on top right now. What's a teenager to conclude? They're right, we're backwards. At some point I believed americans would defend those values, their way of life, with their very lives if needed. That must be why they were so strong, they're willing to die for such things. For some reason I cannot imagine my people doing that. Americans were a different breed. They would depose their own government in armed insurrection if it betrayed those values. In fact they guaranteed themselves the god-given right of citizens to bear arms just to keep the authorities on their toes. Here the authorities are openly corrupt and they laugh at our helplessness, judges see themselves as gods and society recognizes them as such. Another saying: "doctors think they're gods, judges know". Can you imagine my disappointment when I discovered the internet and got a healthy dose of reality? Try to imagine how confused I was when I saw americans parroting tired lines like "I have nothing to hide", americans arguing for gun control and generally undermining all of those values that supposedly made them a great and free people. The years passed by and I saw the US government eroding their rights away like the oceans erode a mountain, and yet they did nothing. Even worse: they were not ignorant, they were not forcibly stripped of their rights, it wasn't the work of some conspiracy that took over the country via underhanded means and imposed these conditions on them. No, they debated all this, very much in public, and they willingly traded those values away for security despite the literal founders of their nation warning against doing so. Their resolve to maintain principles even when the price is high was tested and did not stand. All the government had to do was conjure up some boogeymen like communists, pedophiles, terrorists and drug traffickers and the americans accepted rule by fear. I have learned to respect my own people and culture a lot more since then. The american pedestal, forever broken. Just fallible humans, trapped in equally corrupt power structures. Just like me, like us. Much richer though, no doubt about that.

jacquesm 3y ago
'If you have nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear' is said all over the world in different translations and variations on the theme. And usually by people who have absolutely no idea of the far reaching consequences of their conversation stopper.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > said all over the world Not in america. In america, people understood. In america, people did have an idea of the far reaching consequences of those words. Americans literally founded their nation on ideas born from understandings just like this one. How could they not understand? If you uttered such words in america, they would laugh at your barbarity. And they'd defend to the death your right to freely speak such barbarous nonsense on top of it. That's what I thought, once.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    If only.
spookie 3y ago
I wouldn't translate that phrase as such, it's more of a play on the word "deve". Therefore, "must" or "owes". The meaning, in my view, is more akin to: "he who fulfills his obligations and does not owe anything can live in peace because he has no creditors or anyone who demands reparation or compensation". This may pass as the same at first look, but it's more about doing what you've set out to do, rather than not worrying about what you haven't done. The key factor here is the verb "dever", it is about action not the lack thereof. (edit: clarifications) Source: European Portuguese native speaker
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Your detailed translation is correct. "Owes" is the verb used. In Brazil, that saying is often uttered in reaction to any resistance to government, police or legal activity. It's as though brazilians expect others to completely and willingly submit themselves to their microscope for inspection if the slightest doubt about their honesty is ever raised. Only someone who is not afraid would do so, and that way innocence is proven. Failure to do so implies you're afraid and therefore guilty. In other words, in Brazil everyone owes the government something. Even if it's just an explanation. It can decide to come and collect on that debt at any time. When the government comes knocking, it's up to you to prove that you're debt free and if you can't you deserve what's coming to you. That's how this society thinks. People think like that even though there are laws to the contrary. Police thinks like that. Government officials think like that. Here the government is too incompetent to determine whether you're alive or dead. So they make it your problem by making you prove that you're alive. Every year, my parents need to go to some government agency and literally prove that they're alive. If they don't, the government marks them as dead and cuts them off from their pensions. I pointed out to them the inherent indignity of this little yearly ritual. They did not understand what I was getting at. It's just how stuff works. Besides, how will the poor government figure out who's defrauding them? Clearly the only choice it has is to assume that everyone is defrauding it and force the innocent to prove their innocence or be punished with loss of benefits which are their right.

tivert 3y ago

> Reading this book, I found myself confused by the existence of Studies Programs. My college had a China Studies program and one or two others, I think Middle East Studies. Most professors in these programs were white (or black, or whatever - just not necessarily Chinese or Middle Eastern). They would read lots of Chinese texts, visit China a bit, and come back and have opinions on the Chinese National Character. Wang is doing the reverse, and China clearly appreciates his service. It's pretty interesting to read an account of a foreigner doing "cultural studies" of your own culture. On the one hand to see what interests him (and what light that sheds on his own culture), but also to learn to take with a grain of salt some of the things our own "cultural studies" people say. > But why? What’s the point of such people? Why don’t we just hire a Chinese person (maybe an immigrant, if we don’t trust the ones still in the PRC) to tell us what the Chinese National Character is? Why do we sent smart Americans to China to figure out what it’s like? There are literally over a billion people who already know that! Honestly, a Chinese person (for instance) won't look at his own culture with the same eyes as an American, and there's some value to that American perspective for an American audience. This is a kind of translation task that seems intrinsically hard: you need a foot in both worlds, but one of those feet will inevitably be planted more firmly on one side than another.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wharvle 3y ago
One of the most celebrated-in-America works on our national character and form of government is precisely one of these cases of a foreigner providing an outsider’s perspective—and one sent by his government to investigate the US, even! Alexis de Tocqueville‘s Democracy in America The entire field of comparative politics tends to be a lot of this sort of thing, naturally, and is typically credited as beginning in Aristotle’s Politics, which is mostly a work of comparative politics, specifically.
illuminant 3y ago
> Honestly, a Chinese person (for instance) won't look at his own culture with the same eyes as an American, and there's some value to that American perspective for an American audience. This is a kind of translation task that seems intrinsically hard: you need a foot in both worlds, but one of those feet will inevitably be planted more firmly on one side than another. I call this the "kungfoo panda" effect. There are many examples of artworks produced by outsiders which captures a culture in a way only an outsider sees (such as Bev Doolittle). Insiders may be desensitized by familiarity.

novolunt 3y ago

[dead]

jacquesm 3y ago

Every time I see another submission by you it makes me happy. Thank you.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

Oh those wacky and silly Chinese!

Animats 3y ago

That's fascinating. Huning is the Chinese de Tocqueville. That view from Iowa in the 1980s is useful. He notices how weak the US political parties, as organizations, are. They were once far stronger, especially in big cities, where political machines outlasted individual candidates. But that had run down by the 1980s. Partly because of television. Once candidates no longer depended on the party to promote them, parties became far less important. Parties don't really pick candidates any more. The self-organizing thing is significant. That's very Iowa, where farmer co-ops are still politically important. The leadership in China is absolutely terrified of any form of self-organization. People coming together in a group to make something happen is usually illegal. He clearly liked the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and was impressed that it was free back then. It was free when I was a kid. It's US$26 to get in now. US$15 for kids.

gwd 3y ago
> Parties don't really pick candidates any more. But that was specifically because of changes in how the primaries worked, correct? I'm not sure exactly what went into that, but there's a pretty good argument that the current primary system has contributed to polarization.
freedomben 3y ago
Interesting, it feels to me like the parties do pick the candidates (in the Democratic Party at least). They obviously don't pick directly (and they work hard to maintain the perception that they are neutral on primary candidates), but between super delegates, debate entry rules, and media coordination (such as airtime and exposure), it's pretty stacked in favor of the candidate preferred by those in popwer. And that's before there's any direct coordination between the party and the candidate[1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/24/debbie-wasserman-schultz-resigns-dnc-chair-emails-sanders https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/24/debbie-wasse...

yorwba 3y ago

Compare also Tanner Greer on the same book: https://scholars-stage.org/wang-huning-and-the-eternal-return-to-1975/ https://scholars-stage.org/wang-huning-and-the-eternal-retur...

dartharva 3y ago

Why is this post flagged?

porkbeer 3y ago

Being shocked there are regulations on chemical levels in food tells you a lot about china's ecological horrorshow. But quips aside, I find this almost charming to see iowa as such an alien land. Makes me wonder what Dvorak saw to write the New World Symphony after a similar visit.

porkbeer 3y ago

Why was this flagged?