Discuss: Looking Away from Beauty

Nah.  You are attributing too much family pop psychology to what is essentially STATE behavior with long-standing cultural overtones.  China is NOT going to leave Tibet alone, never mind give it independence, based in whether some human rights activists are pushy or not.  Nor will they permit political dissent just because activists take a gentler approach. All activists are doing is keeping the flame alive in hopes that critical mass is reached thru some combination of methods and circumstances. As it did in Apartheid South Africa, as it did for the English slave trade, etc.  Activists need for many things to go right to effect change - all they are really doing is keeping issues alive as best they can. But global issues at the nation-state level cannot be reduced to the level of family squabble.

If I can’t attribute my thinking then you can’t attribute the past of other countries because they are not China.

China is in the nation-state system with all the requisite obligations and perks that all states have. If the British and American empires did not have to answer to anybody in their heyday, they have had to since - or will do so eventually.  China too shall have to answer one day.  One can only hope it is before China’s political culture is imposed on us all.

I think an ideal subject matter for the next Michael Moore film would be the juxtaposition of the Beijing Olympics with two weeks at Gitmo. Self-discipline versus torture. Manufacturing ideal environments for setting world records versus sadistic environments designed to break the human spirit.  Going for the gold versus dwelling on suicide. Water sports versus water boarding. Celebrating the nation-state system with national anthems versus hip-hop and heavy metal pumped in around the clock. Possibilities are endless.

Maia (comment 14) makes really good points. The Olympics are pretty far from being pure and natural, and all the emphasis on nationalities can lead to dangerous nationalism.

The only thing “to do” in such a case has ever and always been a massive public appearance by large numbers of caring people in peaceful demonstrations of resolve to never again attend to the spectacle or buy any of the products advertised. The pressure on so many just to survive in this chimera called “globalism” is creating more misery and anguish than we can begin to grasp.  Most poeple only have enough energy left at the end of a day of the struggle to survive to crash and watch the gaudy false pretense of international unity in sports, and other junk-tv. 

  If the dream were to become real, and streets all over were filled with a resolute mass, we would have to confont the new phenomena of “free speech zones” which are no more than cages far away from any attenion of the MSM. If any could break free and get the message out, mass arrests and violence by authorities would be unleashed. We would then witness the brutality of the Brave New World Order in no uncertain terms.

I’d like to thank you for writing my thoughts out in your article, I can see that lots of people are noticing many flaws and I just don’t understand why… I do agree with you.