16 ms·

The rise of the U.S., the rise of China

140 points by hunglee2 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
YouWhy 2y ago
What a great topic for a great blog. I wonder what this perspective can tell us about the new wave of Chinese expansionism, which becomes somewhat akin to the US's abandonment of isolationism and the resultant war with Spain (1898) and joining the two World Wars.
- fjdjshsh 2y ago
  The USA was never non expansionist: they either took over the native Americans or the Mexicans.
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    you can argue that the Monroe Doctrine was also a bit of expansionist policy, essentially warning all European colonial powers that the Americas was the U.S.A's sphere of influence.
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      the goal of the Monroe Doctrine was to keep the endless European wars, which at that time were not wars of nationalism but of monarchy, out of the Western Hemisphere. In North America, the French and Indian War and the American Revolution itself were aspects of larger monarchical wars taking place in Europe. it was a sensible doctrine in 1823, and we see 40 years later in 1864 the French under Napoleon III still attempted to install a Hapsburg as Emperor in Mexico.
      - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
        yeah I'm aware of the stated purposed of the Monroe doctrine, nonetheless as noble as it was it also functioned as saying the Americas belong to us, other colonial powers, and we will protect it. The definition of a sphere of influence is "a country or area in which another country has power to affect developments although it has no formal authority."
  - steveoscaro 2y ago
    That ended over well over an hundred years ago, and was when the country was explicitly in expansion mode. And “the Mexicans” in this context were an expansionist Spanish colonial empire too.
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      > That ended over well over an hundred years ago What do you mean by this? The Philippine War started in 1898 in Cuba, and began US world expansion. If you're dating expansion over the continent as overlapping with that (which you should) you're agreeing that there was unbroken expansionism. edit: and what does Spain's (or France's) empire have to do with anything? If I burgle the house of a burglar, it doesn't make me not a burglar. The question was whether the US was expansionist, not a moral judgement about the people who controlled the places it expanded to. You can't say that we weren't expansionist and also that they deserved it.
      - 0x457 2y ago
        > and what does Spain's (or France's) empire have to do with anything? If I burgle the house of a burglar, it doesn't make me not a burglar. To be clear it's not that you're in a burglar's house, it's that you're robbing the same place.
        steveoscaro 2y ago
        Yes thanks, that was my point, that it's not like the Mexican government had a clear moral argument to that land over the US. Both were break-away colonies expanding over native cultures.
      - thimabi 2y ago
        > The Philippine War started in 1898 in Cuba, and began US world expansion. That is not entirely true. The United States government and/or its citizens acting autonomously had global reach much earlier than 1898. Throughout the nineteenth century, American expansionism was seen in various Central American countries, Ecuador, Liberia and Japan, for instance. In some cases, like in Japan and in Brazil, America’s aggressive policies were thwarted. But it does not mean that there was not expansionism.
not2b 2y ago
A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with intellectual property. In the 19th century the US did not respect foreign copyrights or patents; smuggled British machinery was cloned to produce the American industrial revolution, and Charles Dickens was the most popular author in the US but he didn't get a dime from American publishers, who could just take and print his works. Likewise the Chinese often ignore foreign copyrights and patents, though not as much as the US did back then.
- _Microft 2y ago
  Something similar was said about Germany’s 19th century development: “No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?”, https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
- mytailorisrich 2y ago
  Yes and I believe that at the time the UK also restricted the emigration of engineers to the US so as to limit technology transfers...
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    The guy who developed the textile industry in the US memorized the drawings for the machinery before immigrating to the US. There was nothing for the export customs people to find.
- mmooss 2y ago
  It seems like the usual status quo power and revisionist power conflict: [0] In every political system, the existing rules are created to preserve the existing status quo. Where do those rules come from? There is chaos and war (not necessarily kinetic; there are trade wars too), the war ends with a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability (as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting), and the signatories to peace create rules to maintain their desired outcome. Later a power arises for whom that peace isn't desireable. They are the revisionist power and want a change. Intellectual property rights are desireable for those who have a lot of intellectual property, the status quo IP powers. New powers might not have IP and don't find IP rights to be desireable. If the revisionist power is strong enough, then either the status quo powers accomodate them - perhaps a controlled IP transfer program for developing countries, in return for strong IP laws or openness to foreign investment within those countries - or there's war (again, not necessarily kinetic war - maybe lots of hacking and IP theft, for example). [0] "International relations analysts often differentiate between status-quo and revisionist states. Revisionist states favor modifications to the prevailing order: its rules and norms, its distribution of goods or benefits, its implicit structure or hierarchy, its social rankings that afford status or recognition, its division of territory among sovereign entities, and more." https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-607 https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/ac...
082349872349872 2y ago
TFA discusses exports, but doesn't seem to mention anything about ease of blockading ports; I guess the War of 1812 (or the midcentury CSA experience?) might have some evidence along those lines for the 19th Century U.S.?
contingencies 2y ago
China is nothing like the 19th century US. While it has invested infrastructure, the scale of its investment does not equate to the US - it vastly, vastly overshadows it. The nature of its infrastructure investment: centralist planning under socialist leadership, is also nothing like US robber-baron driven development. Modern China's urbanization has been nothing less than the largest human migration in history. The infrastructure went from the odd railroad with a few urbanized cities to fiber optic internet, 5G data, high speed trains and airports everywhere in the country within ~30 years. 1.4 billion people have cell phones, flatscreen TVs, instant messaging, e-vehicles and streaming movies. But now the bubble has burst. Growth has slowed. Factories are closing, or heavily automating with world-leading levels of technical integration, cutting headcounts. The educated youth are unemployed. International investment has dried up. Rumours abound that the party leadership is in crisis with factional schisms and high profile coverups, and the national pension fund has been emptied. Chinese with money seek to escape by moving their families overseas. The specter of the party looms over remnant private industry seeking a tax to aide its flailing coffers. Everyone recognizes the education system is terrible and seeks to send their kids overseas. A fledgeling venture capital industry, once buoyant, has seized, and while domestic remittance is ~free and ~instantaneous international financial remittance is heavily regulated. But everyone can watch the latest Hollywood, Bollywood or Chinese content. Wealthy young Chinese can obtain information from across the country in seconds and access drugs like cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine, and marijuana, drive Teslas or Ferraris and wield iPhones. Everyone in the cities has a VPN on their phone to get foreign content. AI's potential to accelerate further change looms large. How is this anything like the US in the 19th century, an era before even broadcast media? This to me seems a frankly ridiculous assertion. Modern China is nothing like anything that has ever happened before, in terms of technology, political ideology, or economy. At best, weak parallels can be drawn along constrained axes, but the big picture is totally unknown to history. I only hope for the people's sake the current situation can be resolved without civil war. And indeed such wishes should be extended globally, as in the current era, the UK, the US, parts of western Europe and even my native Australia could be said to have the socioeconomic preconditions for civil war. Let us not see another world war in our lifetime. Let us not be blinded by nationalism. Nationalism is an infantile disease: the measles of mankind - Einstein, who also incidentally, it should be highlighted, was himself a globalist-humanist and turned down the presidency of Israel considering Zionism a self-destructive political ideology...
janalsncm 2y ago
Very interesting article. The irony is, if not for politics I think many more Americans would be unsettled by the many ways in which China is becoming extremely advanced. As it stands today our instinct is to dismiss it. But I think these trends are too big to ignore.
- yazzku 2y ago
  Why is it unsettling?
  - burnished 2y ago
    A common refrain in american homes and schools is about american superiority over all other countries, especially their rivals like china.
    - rootusrootus 2y ago
      Is that perception why everyone online constantly shits on America and proclaims that every other country is superior? For as much as people like to accuse Americans of being "'Merica, fuck yeah!" the truth sure looks like it is mostly other countries with the arrogant attitude.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        Capacity for self criticism is part of what lets America reïnvent itself.
      - dingnuts 2y ago
        yes and it's deeply ironic that you just quoted an American film which was satirizing that attitude twenty years ago! if anything I feel like Americans have become extremely self loathing in the passing generation since the release of Team America: World Police
        r14c 2y ago
alephnerd 2y ago
It's a well written article, but a lot of it appears to be based on a flawed interpretation of Yuen Yuen Ang's "China's Gilded Age". Ang's argument is that there are 4 types of corruption - Petty Theft (eg. policeman takes a bribe), Grand Theft (eg. a Governor embezzles from the state pension fund), Speed Money (eg. business pay bribes to speed up processing of a permit), and Access Money (eg. pay bribes to get access to the bureaucracy). Ang's thesis posits that China's comparative ability to somewhat temper Speed Money corruption was the primary driver for China's economic growth (eg. via SEZs and allowing foreign corporate structures to leverage Hong Kong). This is not meant to be treated as a positive though. Ang points out that China still has an active problem with Access Corruption due to the chumminess between regulators and politically connected firms which can lead to systemic risks (eg. Evergrande Crisis): "China provides a sharp illustration: by enriching capitalists who pay for privileges and rewarding politicians who serve capitalist interests, access money perversely stimulates transactions and investment, which translates into GDP growth (Ang 2019; Ang 2020, chapter 5). Yet this does not mean that access money is “good” for the economy—on the contrary, it distorts the allocation of resources, breeds systemic risks, and exacerbates inequality. The harm of access money only blows up in the event of a crisis: for example, America’s first great depression of 1839 (triggered by risky public financing and state-bank collusion) (Ang 2016, chapter 7; Wallis 2000, 2001), the 1997 East Asia financial crisis (Kang 2002), and the 2008 US financial crisis (Baker 2010; Igan, Mishra, and Tressel 2011; White 2011; Fisman and Golden 2017; Fligstein, Brundage, and Schultz, Forthcoming)" - "Unbundling Corruption: Revisiting Six Questions on Corruption", Yuen Yuen Ang 2019 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3481412 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3481412
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  was the "spoils system" the XIX equivalent of "access money" in the US? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
  - 2y ago
anonymousDan 2y ago
Anyone who thinks Chinese science isn't catching up extremely fast is dreaming. In my own area accepted papers at top conferences from china have gone from a negligible amount to about 50% in the space of 15 years. It's only a matter of time before the top prizes mentioned will follow in my opinion.
- throwaway14356 2y ago
  their papers are much more likely to find real world application too
- itsthecourier 2y ago
  What's your area?
- refurb 2y ago
  As a scientist this isn't my experience at all. With a few exceptions, most of the claims coming out of Chinese reserach is immediately suspect. For decades claims were irreproducible or the work not of high quality. It's certainly improved, and there are a few institutions that produce high quality work, but they make up a few percent of the total coming out of China. No doubt the quality will continue to improve, but no more than any other developing country.
  - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
    The number of papers from Chinese teams getting accepted into the top international journals paints a different picture. Chinese scientists are now publishing more papers in journals like Nature and Science than American scientists are. Those are journals with very difficult peer-reviewing and editorial thresholds.
    - refurb 2y ago
      Counting papers in top journals isn’t a great measure. While top journals do have high standards, not all papers are equal. I got published in a Nature journal but my paper was not groundbreaking by any means. You have groundbreaking research and you have “we made a slight, but important modification to an existing technology”. In my area of physical sciences, the big breakthroughs are still coming from the US and Europe.
savolai 2y ago
I would love to see a similarly detailed article juxtaposed with the detailed environmental effects of each phase in history. What crucial choices were made to get us here, what would we have needed to have done differently? What surprisingly good policies may have also emerged? Where was old times better than current environmental awareness? It seems warped to talk if these only as success stories.
stonethrowaway 2y ago
We used to talk about this but people shot us down as racists and didn’t grok what was happening in front of them. Played right into that fiddle.
maryjohnwine124 2y ago
[dead]

140 points by hunglee2 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

What a great topic for a great blog. I wonder what this perspective can tell us about the new wave of Chinese expansionism, which becomes somewhat akin to the US's abandonment of isolationism and the resultant war with Spain (1898) and joining the two World Wars.

fjdjshsh 2y ago
The USA was never non expansionist: they either took over the native Americans or the Mexicans.
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  you can argue that the Monroe Doctrine was also a bit of expansionist policy, essentially warning all European colonial powers that the Americas was the U.S.A's sphere of influence.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    the goal of the Monroe Doctrine was to keep the endless European wars, which at that time were not wars of nationalism but of monarchy, out of the Western Hemisphere. In North America, the French and Indian War and the American Revolution itself were aspects of larger monarchical wars taking place in Europe. it was a sensible doctrine in 1823, and we see 40 years later in 1864 the French under Napoleon III still attempted to install a Hapsburg as Emperor in Mexico.
    - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      yeah I'm aware of the stated purposed of the Monroe doctrine, nonetheless as noble as it was it also functioned as saying the Americas belong to us, other colonial powers, and we will protect it. The definition of a sphere of influence is "a country or area in which another country has power to affect developments although it has no formal authority."
- steveoscaro 2y ago
  That ended over well over an hundred years ago, and was when the country was explicitly in expansion mode. And “the Mexicans” in this context were an expansionist Spanish colonial empire too.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    > That ended over well over an hundred years ago What do you mean by this? The Philippine War started in 1898 in Cuba, and began US world expansion. If you're dating expansion over the continent as overlapping with that (which you should) you're agreeing that there was unbroken expansionism. edit: and what does Spain's (or France's) empire have to do with anything? If I burgle the house of a burglar, it doesn't make me not a burglar. The question was whether the US was expansionist, not a moral judgement about the people who controlled the places it expanded to. You can't say that we weren't expansionist and also that they deserved it.
    - 0x457 2y ago
      > and what does Spain's (or France's) empire have to do with anything? If I burgle the house of a burglar, it doesn't make me not a burglar. To be clear it's not that you're in a burglar's house, it's that you're robbing the same place.
      - steveoscaro 2y ago
        Yes thanks, that was my point, that it's not like the Mexican government had a clear moral argument to that land over the US. Both were break-away colonies expanding over native cultures.
    - thimabi 2y ago
      > The Philippine War started in 1898 in Cuba, and began US world expansion. That is not entirely true. The United States government and/or its citizens acting autonomously had global reach much earlier than 1898. Throughout the nineteenth century, American expansionism was seen in various Central American countries, Ecuador, Liberia and Japan, for instance. In some cases, like in Japan and in Brazil, America’s aggressive policies were thwarted. But it does not mean that there was not expansionism.

not2b 2y ago

A parallel that was not mentioned has to do with intellectual property. In the 19th century the US did not respect foreign copyrights or patents; smuggled British machinery was cloned to produce the American industrial revolution, and Charles Dickens was the most popular author in the US but he didn't get a dime from American publishers, who could just take and print his works. Likewise the Chinese often ignore foreign copyrights and patents, though not as much as the US did back then.

_Microft 2y ago
Something similar was said about Germany’s 19th century development: “No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?”, https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
mytailorisrich 2y ago
Yes and I believe that at the time the UK also restricted the emigration of engineers to the US so as to limit technology transfers...
- WalterBright 2y ago
  The guy who developed the textile industry in the US memorized the drawings for the machinery before immigrating to the US. There was nothing for the export customs people to find.
mmooss 2y ago
It seems like the usual status quo power and revisionist power conflict: [0] In every political system, the existing rules are created to preserve the existing status quo. Where do those rules come from? There is chaos and war (not necessarily kinetic; there are trade wars too), the war ends with a political settlement which satisfies enough participants to create stability (as all wars must end; otherwise people keep fighting), and the signatories to peace create rules to maintain their desired outcome. Later a power arises for whom that peace isn't desireable. They are the revisionist power and want a change. Intellectual property rights are desireable for those who have a lot of intellectual property, the status quo IP powers. New powers might not have IP and don't find IP rights to be desireable. If the revisionist power is strong enough, then either the status quo powers accomodate them - perhaps a controlled IP transfer program for developing countries, in return for strong IP laws or openness to foreign investment within those countries - or there's war (again, not necessarily kinetic war - maybe lots of hacking and IP theft, for example). [0] "International relations analysts often differentiate between status-quo and revisionist states. Revisionist states favor modifications to the prevailing order: its rules and norms, its distribution of goods or benefits, its implicit structure or hierarchy, its social rankings that afford status or recognition, its division of territory among sovereign entities, and more." https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-607 https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/ac...

082349872349872 2y ago

TFA discusses exports, but doesn't seem to mention anything about ease of blockading ports; I guess the War of 1812 (or the midcentury CSA experience?) might have some evidence along those lines for the 19th Century U.S.?

contingencies 2y ago

China is nothing like the 19th century US. While it has invested infrastructure, the scale of its investment does not equate to the US - it vastly, vastly overshadows it. The nature of its infrastructure investment: centralist planning under socialist leadership, is also nothing like US robber-baron driven development. Modern China's urbanization has been nothing less than the largest human migration in history. The infrastructure went from the odd railroad with a few urbanized cities to fiber optic internet, 5G data, high speed trains and airports everywhere in the country within ~30 years. 1.4 billion people have cell phones, flatscreen TVs, instant messaging, e-vehicles and streaming movies. But now the bubble has burst. Growth has slowed. Factories are closing, or heavily automating with world-leading levels of technical integration, cutting headcounts. The educated youth are unemployed. International investment has dried up. Rumours abound that the party leadership is in crisis with factional schisms and high profile coverups, and the national pension fund has been emptied. Chinese with money seek to escape by moving their families overseas. The specter of the party looms over remnant private industry seeking a tax to aide its flailing coffers. Everyone recognizes the education system is terrible and seeks to send their kids overseas. A fledgeling venture capital industry, once buoyant, has seized, and while domestic remittance is ~free and ~instantaneous international financial remittance is heavily regulated. But everyone can watch the latest Hollywood, Bollywood or Chinese content. Wealthy young Chinese can obtain information from across the country in seconds and access drugs like cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine, and marijuana, drive Teslas or Ferraris and wield iPhones. Everyone in the cities has a VPN on their phone to get foreign content. AI's potential to accelerate further change looms large. How is this anything like the US in the 19th century, an era before even broadcast media? This to me seems a frankly ridiculous assertion. Modern China is nothing like anything that has ever happened before, in terms of technology, political ideology, or economy. At best, weak parallels can be drawn along constrained axes, but the big picture is totally unknown to history. I only hope for the people's sake the current situation can be resolved without civil war. And indeed such wishes should be extended globally, as in the current era, the UK, the US, parts of western Europe and even my native Australia could be said to have the socioeconomic preconditions for civil war. Let us not see another world war in our lifetime. Let us not be blinded by nationalism. Nationalism is an infantile disease: the measles of mankind - Einstein, who also incidentally, it should be highlighted, was himself a globalist-humanist and turned down the presidency of Israel considering Zionism a self-destructive political ideology...

janalsncm 2y ago

Very interesting article. The irony is, if not for politics I think many more Americans would be unsettled by the many ways in which China is becoming extremely advanced. As it stands today our instinct is to dismiss it. But I think these trends are too big to ignore.

yazzku 2y ago
Why is it unsettling?
- burnished 2y ago
  A common refrain in american homes and schools is about american superiority over all other countries, especially their rivals like china.
  - rootusrootus 2y ago
    Is that perception why everyone online constantly shits on America and proclaims that every other country is superior? For as much as people like to accuse Americans of being "'Merica, fuck yeah!" the truth sure looks like it is mostly other countries with the arrogant attitude.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      Capacity for self criticism is part of what lets America reïnvent itself.
    - dingnuts 2y ago
      yes and it's deeply ironic that you just quoted an American film which was satirizing that attitude twenty years ago! if anything I feel like Americans have become extremely self loathing in the passing generation since the release of Team America: World Police
      - r14c 2y ago

alephnerd 2y ago

It's a well written article, but a lot of it appears to be based on a flawed interpretation of Yuen Yuen Ang's "China's Gilded Age". Ang's argument is that there are 4 types of corruption - Petty Theft (eg. policeman takes a bribe), Grand Theft (eg. a Governor embezzles from the state pension fund), Speed Money (eg. business pay bribes to speed up processing of a permit), and Access Money (eg. pay bribes to get access to the bureaucracy). Ang's thesis posits that China's comparative ability to somewhat temper Speed Money corruption was the primary driver for China's economic growth (eg. via SEZs and allowing foreign corporate structures to leverage Hong Kong). This is not meant to be treated as a positive though. Ang points out that China still has an active problem with Access Corruption due to the chumminess between regulators and politically connected firms which can lead to systemic risks (eg. Evergrande Crisis): "China provides a sharp illustration: by enriching capitalists who pay for privileges and rewarding politicians who serve capitalist interests, access money perversely stimulates transactions and investment, which translates into GDP growth (Ang 2019; Ang 2020, chapter 5). Yet this does not mean that access money is “good” for the economy—on the contrary, it distorts the allocation of resources, breeds systemic risks, and exacerbates inequality. The harm of access money only blows up in the event of a crisis: for example, America’s first great depression of 1839 (triggered by risky public financing and state-bank collusion) (Ang 2016, chapter 7; Wallis 2000, 2001), the 1997 East Asia financial crisis (Kang 2002), and the 2008 US financial crisis (Baker 2010; Igan, Mishra, and Tressel 2011; White 2011; Fisman and Golden 2017; Fligstein, Brundage, and Schultz, Forthcoming)" - "Unbundling Corruption: Revisiting Six Questions on Corruption", Yuen Yuen Ang 2019 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3481412 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3481412

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
082349872349872 2y ago
was the "spoils system" the XIX equivalent of "access money" in the US? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
- 2y ago

anonymousDan 2y ago

Anyone who thinks Chinese science isn't catching up extremely fast is dreaming. In my own area accepted papers at top conferences from china have gone from a negligible amount to about 50% in the space of 15 years. It's only a matter of time before the top prizes mentioned will follow in my opinion.

throwaway14356 2y ago
their papers are much more likely to find real world application too
itsthecourier 2y ago
What's your area?
refurb 2y ago
As a scientist this isn't my experience at all. With a few exceptions, most of the claims coming out of Chinese reserach is immediately suspect. For decades claims were irreproducible or the work not of high quality. It's certainly improved, and there are a few institutions that produce high quality work, but they make up a few percent of the total coming out of China. No doubt the quality will continue to improve, but no more than any other developing country.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
  The number of papers from Chinese teams getting accepted into the top international journals paints a different picture. Chinese scientists are now publishing more papers in journals like Nature and Science than American scientists are. Those are journals with very difficult peer-reviewing and editorial thresholds.
  - refurb 2y ago
    Counting papers in top journals isn’t a great measure. While top journals do have high standards, not all papers are equal. I got published in a Nature journal but my paper was not groundbreaking by any means. You have groundbreaking research and you have “we made a slight, but important modification to an existing technology”. In my area of physical sciences, the big breakthroughs are still coming from the US and Europe.

savolai 2y ago

I would love to see a similarly detailed article juxtaposed with the detailed environmental effects of each phase in history. What crucial choices were made to get us here, what would we have needed to have done differently? What surprisingly good policies may have also emerged? Where was old times better than current environmental awareness? It seems warped to talk if these only as success stories.

stonethrowaway 2y ago

We used to talk about this but people shot us down as racists and didn’t grok what was happening in front of them. Played right into that fiddle.

maryjohnwine124 2y ago

[dead]