To my last post on Tibet, I get this reply from Kelsey at DakotaWomen, directed at the medium rather than the message.
Speaking of discussion, can I just say how not a fan I am of comment-free blogs? Comments are a chance to actually have a dialogue about an issue. Not everything deserves its own post and the 'point-counter point' style seems like a poor way to work out the finer points of an argument. Instead of a conversation, we're forced to yell at each other from opposite sides of a gorge. Would it be a stretch to suggest that the commentless blog is indicative of exactly what's wrong with our democracy? Probably. But it's still annoying.
I might point out that almost all of my posts appear on both the SDP website, and the Keloland page where Madville Times appears. The latter does have a comments section. But I do not agree on the point. Kelsey and I obviously are reading each other's posts, and responding in turn. I don't see why this is shouting, or why the "gorge" between blogs is really broader than the one between current and older posts. Readers visiting our blogs day by day will see each item in turn, while they might miss a conversation going on at the bottom of a post that appeared days ago.
As for Cory's "great response," at Madville Times, I confess that its greatness is not evident to me, not because I disagree with it but precisely because he spends a lot of his space arguing points that I had explicitly conceded: that there is good reason why Israel attracts more attention than Tibet; that this does not justify the utter neglect of Tibet, of which both the left and the right are guilty; and that the enormous trade between the U.S. and China makes it a lot harder to bring real economic pressure on China than it was, say, on South Africa.
On other matters, Cory is easily confused. I said this: "It is perhaps excusable if I prefer to criticize the other side." I was being honest there. Each side finds it easier to criticize the other side than to criticize itself. That, Cory, is why political controversies between opposing parties are considered good for democracy. No doubt you are always even handed, or perhaps it is just that the Left is so morally pure that it never has to make such confessions.
Another confession that I can make is that the Left is better at such things as launching economic boycotts than the Right is. I pointed out that the boycott of South Africa was a great achievement. The Right opposed it, on the grounds that it was likely to bring to power a regime allied with our enemies and, if ANC had turned out to be as radical as it often looked, its government might have been more oppressive and more murderous than the White Supremacist regime. As it turned out, the Left was right and the Right was wrong.
But the boycott of South Africa worked because a lot of nations were in on it, and that happened only because the economic interests involved were reasonably small, for everyone but the South Africans. China is another matter. I have no idea what Cory means when he says that "The right has power that will work against China." I would point out that the right is not in control of either house of Congress. Cory imagines that the U.S. could unilaterally cut its imports from China in half and bring the Chinese economy to a halt. Maybe in a video game. Cory says this:
If we cut our consumption of Chinese goods by half (and given that 30% of consumer spending is discretionary -- i.e., stuff we don't need -- I think we could do it), we could bring the Chinese economy to a screeching halt.
Cory is quite sure he knows the interests of Wal-Mart shoppers better than they do, but I would take a good look at the five gallons of milk and six boxes of cereal in that woman's cart just ahead of you, and the single mother scanning the items who had no job at all until Super Wal-Mart opened up. All these people might know something about economics that Cory doesn't know, but perhaps he boycotts Wal-Mart and doesn't have to look at them.
In the real world, any American government that tried a unilaterally boycott on Chinese trade would hurt so many domestic interests that it would certainly be forced to back down. And other countries would then cut lucrative deals with China. The French and Germans were selling weapons under the table to Iraq during the embargo. You think they wouldn't do the same against an American boycott of China? Maybe these things are deplorable, but they are real.
Something else that is real is that China has real power in the world. No one had to be afraid of South Africa (well, no one but her immediate neighbors). The Chinese would regard any such boycott as an act of aggression, and they would respond in ways that might well draw the region into a major crisis. Perhaps Cory is ready to put on his General Patton helmet and yell: "bring it on!" He will get more conservatives on his side than liberals, but not many of the former.
None of this is to say that we shouldn't try. Maybe Cory can become the leader of an international boycott movement against China. But first he will have to get the Left interested. So far it isn't, and that was my main point. I don't think there is much we can realistically do about China in Tibet, but we ought at least to keep the issue alive, even when people are not being flattened. Both the Left and the Right have failed to do this. The Right does not push for action at least in part because of the economic realities mentioned above. The Left, with its animosity toward global trade and its fondness for protectionism, clearly isn't moved by economic reality. Cory's opposition to China is well-informed and honest so far as I can judge, but it just isn't widely shared on his side of the isle.
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