That’s a shocking view of Chinese people that I’ve not experienced, recognized in their literature, or the two weeks on Viking River Cruise tour. I read about their black vans picking up criminals and summarily executing them.....before all the China groups shut down on MSN and the news outlets disappeared...I was researching for our trip in 2012. My focus was the ancient civilization, but of course I was sort of aware of issues with their modern society. Poor turning on rich, students turning on teachers, ignorance running rampant against intelligence.....because it can with a little motivation, as Mao clearly proved. It was a bit of comfort to hear our guide say that Mao, had he died sooner, would have become a God to the China. So, at that moment concern for the people, who they had become, relaxed. We saw people at their best because it was Children’s Day and people were happy, the day was beautiful. The Forbidden Palace was awesome....until looking inside the chamber windows, I noticed so much dust that it looked like it hadn’t been touched since The Last Emperor movie was filmed there. Our guide over the two weeks merely mentioned the ancient history and mostly discussed modern annoyances with misguided world opinions, especially poorly informed and restrictive immigration policies of Americans....he had been denied. Nothing beats being there, but two weeks there on tour, no matter how many books you’ve read or movies you’ve seen, doesn’t give much of a clue about their real culture, but it was enough. Enough to think that these people didn’t build the Great Wall or the Forbidden Palace any more than today’s Egyptians could have built the Pyramids. The glorious past? Not by the ancestors of these people. Aliens. Our people today, couldn’t create this country, either. The founders must have been aliens. Knowing that isn’t really the case for any country and that ancestors were smarter than we give them credit for....we, smart as we are, can’t figure out how they did things with what we’ve dug up and scientifically examined. Religion is an effective way to control for their own good, large masses of people, to comfort and sustain them. Confuscious, and especially Buddha have had immeasurably positive effects. However, China’s one child policy has destroyed the work ethic and produced generations of self absorbed useless citizens because parents raise them as precious objects of their affection. It’s going to take a while for that to change, but change it will. I’m sorry they have to experience this self inflicted misery, but our hyphenating American, multicultural divisions are no picnic, either: Cain Hope Felder, a Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Howard University and supporter of Afrocentric ideas, has warned Afrocentrists to avoid certain pitfalls listed below, but this is what usually happens and upsets me about many racial discussions with Blacks and American Indians, Mexicans, and Locals in Hawaii. —-Demonizing categorically all white people, without careful differentiation between persons of goodwill and those who consciously perpetuate racism. —-Adopting multiculturalism as a curricular alternative that eliminates, marginalizes, or vilifies European heritage to the point that Europe epitomizes all the evil in the world. —-Gross over-generalizations and using factually or incorrect material is bad history and bad scholarship. They may be pitfalls but they are being hammered into the discussions, anyway, all over the social media. And then there’s you, so adamant that the government must fall instead of citizens taking back control of it through the means provided in the Constitution.

I have been there, twice: brief couple of days after the China trip to visit my daughter and two grandsons and a more lengthy three months for when my granddaughter was born. Husband spent several years of his memorable youth there as an Air Force dependent and it was his memories that encouraged our son-in-law to accept a position there for three years. Daughter absolutely loved it. After being mugged by six yelling for his money, son-in-law, a formerly fearless mountain of a man learned what sufficient numbers can do. Grandsons still speak words my daughter doesn’t understand, so it’s a secret code for them they learned in school. According to their housekeeper, she had to learn three languages for survival, Taiwanese, Chinese, and English. She was deported back to the Philippines shortly after daughter returned to the States. Daughter blended, but I got the same hate-you-people looks there as in Hawaii where I’m also a white minority whose ancestors did wrong by their ancestors. Husband blended, always more fun to be part of the dominant culture. I have no trouble with the racist attitudes because they’re temporary; I’m going home to states where everyone is American instead of some ethnic origin, so long as they pay taxes. Were it grinding away at me daily without relief, I’d be whining about it, or challenging America’s concept of itself like some of our minorities. People who grew up in families, school systems and communities that teach them everyone is just as good and no one is any better are the easiest to talk with for me. New Jersey is like that of necessity given all the immigrants flowing in through New York and slaves through underground railroads from the South. Skin color was the least of my worries in school, but the click of a Puerto Rican switchblade —-that got me through the halls between classes in record time. Religion is a comforting place for people who don’t want to deal with the real world.....and it teaches some good survival skills for large numbers of people who can only engage so much reality before being traumatized. Jesus, etc. explains everything for them.

Aren’t you just waiting for the day when hospitals simply harvest organs rather than ask? My husband had $18,000 worth of care in an hour; they didn’t expect him to live. They shot him full of drugs I couldn’t pronounce to save his organs, pressured me to allow them to harvest, knowing from his driver’s license he was not an organ donor. I had to definitively tell them that he was adamant about that, convince them! I stayed with his body until the coroner wheeled him away. I was an organ donor for many years, but he never was. Not sure respecting wishes is going to last when so much money is to be made.