If you missed this Tom Friedman column in The New York Times (yes, we know they aren’t always great), you should read “From WikiChina” because he captures just how crazy things are these days. A few highlights:
His question: “What if China had a WikiLeaker and we could see what its embassy in Washington was reporting about America?” and he goes on to say that ” … maybe it would read like this”:
“Things are going well here for China. America remains a deeply politically polarized country, which is certainly helpful for our goal of overtaking the U.S. as the world’s most powerful economy and nation. But we’re particularly optimistic because the Americans are polarized over all the wrong things …
They fight over things like” we are not making this up” how and where an airport security officer can touch them. They are fighting” we are happy to report” over the latest nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia …”
“Americans just had what they call an election. Best we could tell it involved one congressman trying to raise more money than the other (all from businesses they are supposed to be regulating) so he could tell bigger lies on TV more often about the other guy before the other guy could do it to him. This leaves us relieved. It means America will do nothing serious to fix its structural problems: a ballooning deficit, declining educational performance, crumbling infrastructure and diminished immigration of new talent.”
“The ambassador recently took what the Americans call a fast train” the Acela” from Washington to New York City. Our bullet train from Beijing to Tianjin would have made the trip in 90 minutes. His took three hours” and it was on time! …”
“… we at the embassy find it funny that Americans are now fighting over how exceptional they are. Once again, we are not making this up. On the front page of The Washington Post on Monday there was an article noting that Republicans Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are denouncing Obama for denying American exceptionalism. … They don’t seem to understand that you can’t declare yourself exceptional, only others can bestow that adjective upon you.”
” …By the time the Americans do get out of Afghanistan, the Afghans will surely hate them so much that China’s mining companies already operating there should be able to buy up the rest of Afghanistan’s rare minerals.”
“Most of the Republicans just elected to Congress do not believe what their scientists tell them about man-made climate change. America’s politicians are mostly lawyers” not engineers or scientists like ours” so they’ll just say crazy things about science and nobody calls them on it. It’s good. It means they will not support any bill to spur clean energy innovation, which is central to our next five-year plan. And this ensures that our efforts to dominate the wind, solar, nuclear and electric car industries will not be challenged by America.”
“Finally, record numbers of U.S. high school students are now studying Chinese, which should guarantee us a steady supply of cheap labor that speaks our language here, as we use our $2.3 trillion in reserves to quietly buy up U.S. factories. In sum, things are going well for China in America.”
Thank goodness the Americans can’t read our diplomatic cables …”
