I don't got your back

From the New York Times, 18 February, 2005:

"The People's Republic of China," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "is a country that we hope and pray enters the civilized world in an orderly way without the grinding of gears and that they become a constructive force in that part of the world and a player in the global environment that's constructive."

The hubris of this myopic fool continues to amaze me. China is the oldest living civilization on the face of the earth. It is a country with 3,500 years of written history -- and for most of that era China was outpacing the West in artistic and scientific developments; a country that, while slightly smaller in size than the U.S., boasts more than four times as many people; a country whose GDP has quadrupled since 1978 and is set to overtake our own within ten years; a country that now exhibits a sometimes alarming growth in nationalism; a country whose naval fleet will be larger than that of the U.S. within a decade; a country which Dummy Rummy writes off as if it were living in the Bronze Age. How very "constructive" of him.

Regarding Europe in 1914, historian Barbara Tuchman wrote that, "like the Visigoths for the later Romans, [Germany felt for England] a contempt combined with the newcomer's sense of inferiority." Germans at the time were, in the words of Thomas Mann, "the most educated, law-abiding, peace-loving of all peoples, [who] deserved to be the most powerful, to dominate, to establish a 'German peace'". Many Americans, Rumsfeld apparently included, now feel exactly the same way about their own fatherland. Though I doubt that an inferiority complex is to blame, the insolence of a smaller, newer country toward a potentially more powerful, older one could be viewed unkindly by future historians, to say the least. Look at what the end result of the German ego was.

Most people have had a friend at one time in their lives who liked to pick fights, especially if he knew his posse was behind him. I can't remember how many times in high school and college I would hear the phrase "You got my back?" right before one of my cohorts would yell something insulting and stupid to a complete stranger at a party or after a lacrosse game. Of course I defended my friends, but that was in a different time, when blind loyalty outweighed logic and reason. Not anymore. If my Secretary of Defense wants to insult other peoples and cultures, I can't stop him. I can, however, stick my hands in my pockets and declare myself uninvolved. The world is my country, you small-minded imbecile. If you continue with this "Old Europe" and "Uncivilized China" crap, don't look to me if, when you visit Asia later this year, you get the cold shoulder.



Your twin cobra fist notwithstanding, I doubt you can take on 1.3 billion offended people by yourself, even if you do have that village idiot from Texas behind you. If more of your "friends" called you out on your idiotic insults you might be saved some embarrassment, but I don't see that happening. I guess the moral of my story is this: if you run off at the mouth like a drunken frat boy, you have no right to complain to your peops if you catch a black eye.