Fall and Halloween have ended and a cold November day in Midland dawns.
It is always the same this time of year as the first freeze up kills everything.
I think of Flanders at this moment and mud, misery and death for twenty-somethings.
My family served as soldiers. My, my, my generation, to echo the Who, saw Vietnam through Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, every night at six. Tet, Mekong and Hanoi all became part of our lexicon.
Jane Fonda went to Hanoi and broadcast the notion that the peasantry was just that, and the U.S. were “Imperialists.” Apparently, Political Science wasn’t her strong suit. I guess we play the cards we are shuffled. Kang Sheng would have loved her. (Siri: Kang Sheng).
China was the play and we fought a losing battle, while pumping oil out of the Gulf of Tonkin as fast as we could…they were French-owned fields… until nationalization. Hard to fight a guerrilla war.
There we sat, before our TVs, trying to determine who was on which side as Pavlovian signal switching was rampant. We won the war and beat the Japanese in the east, and saved the Chinese. The Rape of Nanjing still gives me chills.
Mao rose to power and you see the result. Would the Nationalists have been better? Who knows. Balances are hard to maintain as the centre keeps changing.
Our fights are old and have their roots in hegemony. Tea, silver, opium and guns are part of the mix.
China has a long memory and, since the lease ended on Hong Kong, Taiwan is looking good when you are hungry. Let’s not forget other borders as well, especially those we share.
Free-trade and open borders mean challenges, and whether it is Britain and Germany yesterday, or China and the U.S. today, the issues are the same.
Is this a cautionary story or one of hope?
Of course, it must be one of hope. We have no desire to send our kids off to wage war. Diplomacy must be intimately linked to force majeure.
It is a cold November day and I am knee deep in the mud of Flanders.
René Hackstetter, November 4, 2021.
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