Seeking the Soul.

And so we come to see that the Founding Fathers while not, technically, Chinese, nonetheless shared many of the most becoming hallmarks of advanced thought with the Morning Suns of China’s Cultural Revolution, viz paranoia, obsession, hysteria, grandiosity, frenzy, and like that.

What would account for this trans-temporal, trans-cultural congruence of mental and emotional different able-ness?  We turn to our betters for guidance on matters of this heft and the Better immediately at hand is Professor Gordon S. Wood, he of The Idea of America.  In one of the passages excerpted previously Professor Wood advances the hypothesis of “a revolutionary syndrome.”  It is observed that this is a tentative advance by Professor Wood.  He “leaves it in the air,” he “throws it out there,” I say he does not engage in further elucidation on this hypothesis.  It is further this observer’s observation that the word “syndrome” itself is often attached by Betters to airy things thrown out there without further elucidation because they don’t know what the hell they are.  Thus Human Immunodeficiency Virus was originally called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome before epidemiologists knew better. A syndrome is a set of observed things that are grouped together in the observer’s mind.  Professor Wood observes revolutions and tweety birds and groups them together and calls them a syndrome.  Unless the Founding Fathers were Chinese I do not have a better idea.

In this imperfect observer’s imperfect education on the soul syndrome it has been observed that human behavior and misbehavior do not know the bounds of time and culture.  They are bounded only by our species able-ness and we are able.  Every species of kindness that a Chinese has exhibited an American has too, and every species of cruelty.  All advanced thought, all…whatever. This sameness is fundamental and it is a grievous annoyance to this observer. If annoyance were a crime it would be a felony--capital annoyance—to find similar species of fowl in the heads of Thomas Jefferson and Song Yaowu.  I so find.  

It doesn’t end there.  Chinese and Americans, and Swedes and Muslims and Zulus, are different--the whole zoo is filled with specimens of our species who are manifestly different, viz: those people live here (point to map); these others live there. Those are different places. They say “ni hao,” these others say “what’s up.” Those who say “what’s up” bleach their teeth.  Those who say “hej” sing Dancing Queen. These are fundamental also—I hold these truths to be self-evident. 

It seems with behavior and misbehavior and thought and mis-thought it’s a matter of proportion. You take the same ingredients and mix them in this way and you get a soufflé. You mix them that way and you get an American…omelette. So Chinese and Americans (and etc.) have “turned out” differently.  One has a people’s republic, the other has people and a republic but--you can’t fool me--those are different. I don’t know what Zulus have.  I prefer what Americans have but then I’m American, like Thomas Jefferson.

The dominant public occurrence in America right now, and certainly for this "news cycle," is the acquittal of Casey Anthony of any degree of unlawful homicide in the murder of her two-year old daughter Caylee.

Seeking the Soul of America.

The Declaration of Independence

---

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Seeking the Soul of America.

                                                               Nice man.

Premise


"The Americans were not an oppressed people;" (27)


"When the ideas of the Americans [i.e. the Founding Fathers] are examined comprehensively, ...one cannot but be struck by the predominant characteristics of fear and frenzy, the exaggerations..."(47)


"...the paranoiac obsession"


"The ideas of the Americans seem, in fact, to form what can only be called a revolutionary syndrome."

"The grandiose and feverish language of the Americans..."


"The hysteria of the Americans' thinking..."


Conclusion


“What [the Americans] expressed may not have been for the most part factually true, but it was always psychologically true.  In this sense their rhetoric was never detached from the social and political reality;”   L

What is this nice man talking about?  The American rhetoric was not true (for the most part) “factually”  (like, “really”).  He just said that.  It was NOT TRUE.  Period there. 

But, he says it WAS true… in their HEADS.

In their heads.   He's already established that there were tweety birds flying around in their heads--they were paranoid, obsessive, hysterical, frenzied (Were the F.F.'s Chinese?  Oh my god.)---that was the “reality” in there. And “in this sense” they were detached from reality. 


Yes they were.

Oh yes they were.

Yes they were, nice man; you are w-r-o-n-g.  Period there. 

                                                                       

                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                         Bad book.

The Soul of China

                                                                   
China today is not real. That movie is not real.  The Beijing Olympics were not real. Their prosperity is not real.

"Chinese do not think for themselves, Ben," a Beijinger said to me in 2008. That is real. That is the reality that has produced all the modern unreality in China. Chinese do not think for themselves, they obey.  They were the reddest reds--because the maximum leader said to be that way.  That's how China, and individual Chinese would survive, he said.  Then a new maximum leader said "to be rich is glorious;"  he said for China to survive it and its people must become the opposite, capitalists, fascists.  And Chinese obeyed. 

I do not think that anything is so ingrained in China's soul nor anything explains Chinese behavior as a people so well as this felt need to survive, an impetus so primordial that it is called an "instinct." An instinct requires no thought. 

Soul as survival produces contradictory behavior: Chinese were communists to survive; they are capitalists to survive. Chinese live to survive: not a tautology; to commit suicide during the Cultural Revolution was the gravest political error. It was a betrayal of the Revolution. One had to live through the persecution, the pain, for China; for China to survive. 

Chinese die for China to survive.  Bian Zhongyun walked to her school on August 5, 1966 knowing that she would be killed. She said goodbye to her husband that morning; She washed her body the night before so that it would be found clean after death. 

Chinese killed the innocent to survive: 交换孩子使食物, “Swap child, make food.”  

The question that has haunted a generation of Chinese females is how the students of the High School for Girls attached to Beijing Normal University, the best and the brightest in China, "good girls," how did they become responsible for "the first casualty of the Cultural Revolution?"  Because they saw a threat to Mao Zedong's, and hence all of China's, survival. There were "counter-revolutionaries,"  "rightests," "capitalist roaders," those from "black" families, who were attempting to stage a coup d'etat and oust Mao, and they were everywhere. Bian was from a "black" family. She was killed, made a "sacrifice" in Weili Ye's words, so that Mao and China would survive.

And then they went back to being good girls. 

It was absurd, bizarrely absurd--and no less criminal--wasn't the whole Cultural Revolution? Liu Shaoqi, the president of the country, the author of the book, "How to be a Good Communist" was ousted by Red Guards and ultimately killed...because he was a "capitalist roader."  Aren't labels like "absurd," "contradictory," even "criminal," the product of  analysis, of thought?  "Chinese don't think for themselves, Ben."  

China today is a Potemkin village. One steps through the doorway and right into thin air. I defy any serious China watcher, any scholar, to say, "China will never go back. They have given up communism for good." China is no more capitalist today than it is Swedish and if the maximum leader, like the dictator of San Marcos in Bananas, tells the people of China that they are to speak Swedish and wear their underwear on the outside in order to survive, they'll do it.