This week, Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, took advantage of a new meme to make an old point that is gaining new importance: “You can’t make us China if we China ourselves first.”
The idea, which goes back at least to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s infamous 2010 China-for-a-day daydream, is simple enough: The Chinese seem to have figured out how to harmonize technology with unity, resulting in massive growth for the people and massive privilege for elites; can’t we take a cue from Beijing and do that too?
The solution there is to overthrow America with a new, digital-age America, one that borgs up the country and its people just as much as China and the Chinese, but in our own unique way.
The joke is that, of course, Friedman didn’t really want to become China; he wanted to have his American cake and eat it too, and so does just about everyone else who looks over the sea with envy at China’s apparent mastery of political reorganization on digital-age terms. Because the quickest way to become China is to let China remake us in its image, and well …
The wishcast takes on a different tenor: If only our elites could “pull a China” here, all on their own! But here, the obstacles morph too. It’s sinking in that we’re not very good at becoming China, and for this, our elites are happy to blame the American people, who are proving harder to pacify than expected, and time is running out. […]
– Read More: www.theblaze.com
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