All Posts Tagged With: "Efforts"

What was probably and hopefully a random act of violence by a troubled individual, put a damper overnight around the world but especially in the US and China for the victims and their families. Doubtless the family and friends of the attacker are aghast with regret for his actions.

This reminds me that mankind continues to have limits short of perfection, by any name, for reasons that will probably remain a mystery to me, but there is no mystery or question that conflict is part of our flawed character. The best efforts of an unopposed, authoritarian government in China which gave up communism for capitalism in order to try to improve the lives of their billion plus population, was unable to prevent this individual assault nor prevent the world from knowing about it now that they have begun their withdrawal from feudalism.

The Chinese government is not shackled by the kind of over ballyhooed “constitutional rights guaranteed” in our history by our constitution, in the words of hypocritical or at least misleading if not dissembling players on the public and private stage in the US. Don’t accuse me of anything, pay attention. I am proud of the US for it’s short role, in years, in human endeavors, all the while recognizing it’s many many imperfections and failures to live up to it’s ideals expressed in the constitution and in our rhetoric so much of the time. Proud, not prideful.

I am also proud, or better, thankful for recent Chinese governments for their conversion to capitalism and their best efforts to date, and understand that every Chinese citizen has every right to be proud of their country despite all that can rightly and severely criticized now and for much of their long 5,000 year history. All governments are made up of human beings inflicted with our varied human nature.

The US has been an active world wide player, for good and evil, mostly for good, at least from our perspective, for most of our short history. Various Chinese governments have spent most of their time horsing around the many smaller, feudal “countries” inside of their diverse territory, making most of their enemies inside of their own changing borders, while the US has many enemies outside of it’s borders. And given the human condition at the heart of this article, like the US, China will also become worthy of envy and the target of hatred, accumulating plenty of unavoidable enemies, not necessarily earned.

Let’s all hope that China succeeds in developing a society that always chooses to compete internationally in the Olympics and on the battlefields of capitalism. A version of democracy which we would favor in the US may or may not emerge in China or elsewhere soon, including in those energy enabled countries, those sitting on and exploiting gas and oil resources for export, so let’s hope capitalism becomes a permanent olympic sport everywhere.

It may be the only common interest that maintains any control on any form of hate driven terrorism that has become a popular export in some parts of the world and which seems now to have a permanent spot on the world stage.