First devastating societal blow in Late-Modernity (5)

Part 3. an unquestionable qualitative difference

By way of introduction let me first observe that, for the first time since the emergence of High-Modernity, Western governments have answered a pandemic by privileging peoples’ lives over the profits of capital. What is it that motivated such a political turning point ?

The origins of the Corona-virus are still unknown and I will not dwell here on the many hypotheses that have been put forth. My attention is focused primarily on how this health episode is affecting the economies and the governance of the different state actors around the world and how this is impacting geo-politics.

Having said that what impressed me most in this whole corona-virus episode was reading the words XI Jinping told visiting World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on January 28 :

"For the Chinese government people's safety and health always come first and the prevention and control of the virus are thus the country's most important tasks". 

I strongly felt that these words are implying that the Chinese government privileges people’s well-being over economic calculations and I vividly remember how my mind registered this as if it was a subliminal message addressed to the world… 

XI Jinping’s words appeared to me as a direct challenge to the traditional Western answer against pandemics which had always been to “let it burn down in silence” in order to preserve the interests of capital. The Obama Administration and its handling of the 2009 Swine flu was the last example of this approach. Here is how Wikipedia describes this health incident that originated in the US :

“ The 2009 swine flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic that lasted for about 20 months, from January 2009 to August 2010, and the second of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus (the first being the 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic), albeit a new strain. 

(…) The number of confirmed cases was approximately 1.6 million. However, some studies estimated that the actual number could be 700 million to 1.4 billion people—or 11 to 21 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion at the time. The lower value of 700 million is more than the 500 million people estimated to have been infected by the Spanish flu pandemic.  

The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the WHO is 18,449, though this 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths.”

The extremely high level of variation among estimates is a direct result of the “let it burn down in silence” political response. Testing was a banned word and without testing results the figures about confirmed cases and death counts had necessarily to be based on subjective factors.

But the fact of the matter is that the high rate of deaths of this pandemic of US origin was no less dramatic than the rates observed in the Corona-virus pandemic that broke-out in Wuhan. But why then did the Corona-Virus foster such dramatic political responses all around the world while this swine flu is barely remembered to even have taken place ?

3.1. A show of Western incompetence for all citizens of this earth to see

By mid-January the Chinese leadership was informed that the corona-virus was spreading fast and would take many lives. The country had been afflicted over the last months by multiple viral outbreaks (1) and so the thought must certainly have crossed the minds of the decision makers that this could possibly have been a bio-weapon. The US had already been openly showing that it was ready to do whatever it takes to diminish China’s economic clout :  trade war, Huawei and so on. The West had furthermore been deeply implicated in a propaganda campaign to vilify China’s system of governance with an eye on an eventual regime change operation :  Hong Kong, Xinjiang, South China Sea and so on. The misgiving of the corona-virus as a possible bio-weapon was thus not so far-fetched after all.

The lock-down of Wuhan and neighboring cities was an extreme decision and it was perceived as such by the entire world. Everyone thought that Western leaders had understood the extreme gravity of the corona-virus sickness and the expectation was that they would take action immediately. But no this is not how things turned out. Propaganda took center stage. The day after Wuhan was put on lock-down a new campaign of attacks started to fly accusing the so called ‘authoritarian character’ of China’s response. 

But because its relentlessness the propaganda ended up gluing XI Jinping words in the minds of Western citizens :

"For the Chinese government people's safety and health always come first and the prevention and control of the virus are thus the country's most important tasks"

When the virus reached their shores these words would come to haunt Western leaders. It soon became evident indeed that the West would be denied its traditional response against pandemics which had always been to “let it burn down in silence”. Any serious observer knew that the West would not want to be seen doing less than China and so “people's lives and health” was to appear for the first time as the top priority of Western governance even if it came at the cost of its economy. 

When the virus landed on Western shores it automatically was seen as a geo-political challenge and Western leaders did not want to lose that challenge. When all will be said and done it will become evident that it was the intensity of its anti-China propaganda that challenged the West.  Unfortunately for them things did not turn out as expected. The media was reporting rates that were growing ever higher than the Chinese rates. That’s when the initial propaganda campaign against China had to die out. Western decision makers felt indeed compelled to copy China’s response since even them had been observing that it had been so extremely successful. And in the eyes of the public, China’s success was putting to shame the answers of one Western country after the other.

  

Yes the initial anti-China propaganda died out because of the turning of Western public opinion against its own leaders. What had been depicted as China’s authoritarianism suddenly appeared to be something else altogether. It now appeared that China is privileging its own people over the profits of its corporations while the traditional Western answer against pandemics appeared suddenly as a neglect of the citizens’ well-being. So Western leaders were forced, often against their will, to prove to their citizens that their response was no less caring than China’s. But the clumsiness of their governance soon verified in the public’s eyes that they were radically incompetent and untrustworthy. Western authorities were suddenly feeling trapped.

The following list of statements shows that one national leader after the other was forced to align with the priorities expressed by China in order to avoid a popular backlash :
    • CN 2020-01-28:  "For the Chinese government people's safety and health always come first and the prevention and control of the virus are thus the country's most important tasks"  (2)
    • IT 2020-02-27: “Our economy is stronger than fear: Let’s go out for an aperitif”(3) The facts on the ground soon imposed another tone…
    • US 2020-01-21: “We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine” (4)
    • US 2020-02-27: “one day it’s like a miracle it will disappear” (5)
    • US 2020-03-  “It will go away. Stay calm. It will go away”
    • US 2020-03-31: “2 million people are being saved” (6)
    • US 2020-03-13: COVID-19 outbreak in the United States constitutes a national emergency” (7)
    • IN 2020-04-14:  “The value of your lives is supreme”(8) Modi was the one who imitated XI Jinping’s words to the letter… 

In matter of fact Trump is in the last months before an election that will determine if he loses the presidency or if he gets a 4 years reprieve. Understandably he was furious against China for having destabilized what he thought had been the greatest US economy ever. Once the death rates went up exponentially he knew that his administration response would be ridiculed if he did not succeed to slash the comparison with China’s response. Being thick skinned he thought that he could eventually free himself from the trap of popular judgment by scapegoating China for the responsibility of infecting the world. This was turning reality on its head but for Trump this had never been an obstacle.

That’s how the idea was born to unleash a brand new propaganda campaign that would put the blame for the responsibility of the Corona-virus squarely on China. But seen the turning of public opinion lately in china’s favor the scale of this campaign had to be overwhelming. The sound and furor buttons had to be turned to the maximum. And the answer had thus also to be an all out government response and even more an all out Western response. I describe this campaign in Part 1: 1. White House orchestrated propaganda campaign.

As I show, in Part 1, this campaign intensified unrelentingly before reaching a crescendo of pure societal madness like is observed in rare cases in history when societies lose it and fall in a collective frenzy like during the cultural revolution in China or like during the thirties in Nazi Germany. The present moment looks like such a moment for the US. But there is a difference in today’s societal frenzy with past examples. This time around the craze is not originating from a conflict between nations within the context of a common civilization. This time the conflict is sizing one civilization against another civilization. There is no doubt that the hysteria is mostly a US phenomenon but it nevertheless tentatively expands to Australia and also in varying degrees to Europe :

" US President Donald Trump last week indicated what some of those shadows might be, saying at a press conference that the US was investigating the origins of Covid-19 in Wuhan. 

He said that there would be consequences if China was found to be “knowingly responsible” for the outbreak that has now killed more than 200,000 people around the world.
The British government also waded in, with cabinet minister Michael Gove telling the BBC last month that China had failed to convey the “scale, nature and infectiousness” of the disease. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined the chorus, calling for more transparency from China about the origin of the virus. “ (9)

What these statements show for all to see is that the loss of Western hegemony drives the servants of big capital holders into a fit of rage that they can’t any longer hide from the public. Alastair Crooke rightly qualified why this rage suddenly exploded :        

 “ The mask is off: Is this the point of inflection for the global order, when the western hyper-financialised system is unable to reform itself, refuses to reform itself – and yet is unable to sustain itself, as it once was? Will the system – so busily engaged in looking after itself – even notice that the world doesn’t believe in it anymore, not even one jot ? “ (10)

By the sheer incompetence (11) of their response to the virus Western governance systems seem indeed to have lost the trust of their citizens. The geo-political analyst Andrew Korybko qualifies this new reality in the following terms :

“  Fewer and fewer people believe Western officials and their media, which is the West’s own fault for confusing their targeted audience with the mixed messages that they disseminated about COVID-19 over the past couple of months. It was an epic mistake for them to underestimate their people’s intelligence by assuming that they’ll automatically forget who was responsible for this disinformation just because China was abruptly blamed for it. ... 

It’s therefore Western leaders and their media, not China, that are waging information warfare on the Western public. People are becoming more aware of this too, hence why they’re seeking out Chinese sources of information instead of Western ones. This scares their governments, though, since they fear that they’re losing their power to manipulate the population. As their desperation grows, it wouldn’t be surprising if they blame their disinformation victims just like they blamed China, which would only deepen society’s distrust of them. “ (12)

ValueWalk.com is a highly regarded, non-partisan site providing unique coverage on hedge funds, large asset managers, and value investing. This is how ValueWalk qualifies the communication of those in charge of the Western public governance with their subjects :

“  The mainstream News Media across the board (all of them) seem to be clearly under the control of an elite group of people (puppet-masters) in power (at levels above puppet governments in place) who are providing the narratives for media, which arguably are being employed to control the behavior of Americans using proven mind control methods based in well designed propaganda that is broadly distributed to develop a ‘herd’ mentality. “ (13)

The American game is so unashamedly in your face that the citizens of this earth feel like forced to watch the spectacle of the US manufacturing a herd mentality to control the mind of its citizens.  Metallicman is a US Aerospace Engineer by education. He then became a high performance jet aircraft pilot in the navy and later worked at MAJestic. After retiring he went to communist China where he now lives in peace like myself. Metalicman sums up the view of America from the outside. Here are his words about the show his country of origin is offering the world to see :

“ I read that Donald Trump wants the COVID-19 vaccine that is being developed in Germany. He wants it to be patented as an American product and limit it’s utilization to Americans only.  

Personally, I find this reprehensible. 

    •   Coronavirus: Germany says COVID-19 vaccine is ‘not 

    •    Trump offers ‘large sums’ for exclusive access to … 

  • German officials reject Trump’s attempt to buy coronavirus … 

    • Trump attempts to bribe German scientists into giving US … 

   • ‘Depraved’: Trump Reportedly Offered German Firm ‘Large …

Meanwhile, China is sending supplies and resources to any nation that needs it. Planes, boats and transports have been dispatched and are busy trying to help other nations during time of need. 

What in the world is going on? 

America - Selfish, self-serving, and demanding.
China - Helpful, compassionate, offering help. 

    • The Tragedy of Trump’s Foreign Policy
    • The Long-Term Disaster of Trump’s Foreign Policy 

Perhaps it’s time to step back and look at the bigger picture.
It’s a picture of what lies outside the shores of the United States. It’s a picture that does not resemble anything that any American media reports. This is true whether it is the Alt-Left, the Mainstream Media or the Alt-Right neocon publications“ (14)

Stephen M. Walt gives a good presentation in Foreign Affairs of what lies outside of the US shores. He writes the following :

“ Washington’s reputation for expertise has been one of the greatest sources of its power. The corona-virus pandemic may end it for good. (…)

Over the past 25 years, ..., the United States has done a remarkable job of squandering that invaluable reputation for responsible leadership and basic competence. (…)

Then came COVID-19. Trump’s handling of the crisis has been an embarrassing debacle from the start—despite repeated warnings—but it was also utterly predictable. (…)

Once COVID-19 is over, Americans are likely to discover to their chagrin that other voices (Beijing, anyone?) are receiving more respectful attention. That’s not an omen of imminent disaster, but it will be a different world than the one Americans have been accustomed to inhabiting. At the margin, the broad contours of world politics and some important aspects of the world economy will no longer slant so heavily in the United States’ favor.

Can this situation be fixed? I don’t know. Cultural rot cannot be fixed by legislation, executive orders, or even jeremiads like this one. (…)

Looking forward, the possibility of fundamental political change is the only silver lining I can see right now. America hasn’t faced a crisis like this since the 1930s and 1940s, and it was in a better position to meet those challenges then than it is today. (15)

I think that Stephen M. Walt’s conclusion is right on the point. The US cultural rot has indeed reached epic proportions. Its society has indeed completely atomized. As I write elsewhere societal atomization means that a society has lost any semblance of cohesion and its reproduction over the long haul is thus threatened which means that such a society is only continuing to roll under the force of its inertia. But once its force of inertia is used up it is ready the smallest obstacle will collapse the societal edifice …  Only a fundamental political change could now avoid such a fate to the USA. But in its present climate of political madness it is difficult to imagine how the country could negotiate such a turning point.

3.2. an unbearable Chinese lightness surfing on the waves of chaos

By the end of January this year my subconscious explorations had firmed a narrative in my conscious mind about the societal outcome that the corona-virus is preparing for humanity. Until yesterday my searches had found nobody talking about anything approaching the scenario that now lives in my mind. I don’t normally talk about the subconscious discoveries that  my conscious mind reconciles with. That is why until now I have not written nor spoken about the subconscious narrative that firmed into my conscious mind. (16)

But this morning, May 6th, I accidentally discovered a text by Jon Rappoport that approaches a similar narrative albeit from a different angle :

“  The Chinese government would be pleased to contribute to nations locking down populations and closing out economic activity. Why? Because the result would be significant weakening of those nations—whom the Chinese regime views as opponents or potential satellites.

By “humbly acceding” to the authority and desire of the CDC and WHO—who always say they’ve found ‘a new deadly virus’—the Chinese government has helped engineer, in the freest and craziest and most powerful nation in the world, the USA, a massive lockdown similar to the one now ending in China.    

Who does all this remind you of? It reminds me of the ancient Chinese general and philosopher, Sun Tzu (6th century BC), who wrote the erudite and wildly popular treatise, The Art of War. “ (17)

Jon Rappoport speaks from the point of view of someone who takes sides and who discovers that his side, which is “the freest and craziest and most powerful nation in the world”, is being manipulated by “the Chinese dictatorship and its agents”. As such his imagination unconsciously drives him to conceive a nefarious plan by the evil other China to vanquish the good old West. I have no such attachment and so I observe what is taking place without feeling the need to issue a judgment. What follows is a short presentation of how things are playing out. This is the narrative I spoke about here above that I have been watching with great attention as it actualized in real life.

From the start of the outbreak China was fully cognizant of its societal capabilities to unite its people, to fight and economically protect it, and finally to rebound from the pandemic. From the get go President Xi Jinping had claimed loud and clear to the world that the people’s well-being came before economic considerations. By setting the stage so forcefully, for people’s well-being over economic considerations, China knew that the unrelenting Western propaganda, to demonize it, would force this idea in the minds of the citizens of this earth and it also knew that once the pandemic would reach Western shores it would force their systems of governance to follow the example of its own lock-down instead of letting the pandemic burn down as had always been their answer in the past.

China’s lock-down was an absolute necessity to beat the virus in its Wuhan epicenter in order to cut its spread to the whole country and to the rest of the world. But the lock-down also acted as a trap for the Western 1%. Its societies had indeed no real capabilities to beat the virus once it eventually reached their shores.

The West had historically always answered pandemics by letting them burn out. That’s what Obama did in 2009 and 1010. But with Covid-19 the West had fallen in a Chinese invisible trap. It thought that it could take the measures China did despite the lack of popular support for its governments and despite a weakened economy that had still not left the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008.

Governance capabilities implies capable decision makers and a popular culture that is receptive to the implementation of their decisions. Decision makers in China rise to their positions after multiple selection processes that span over decades among a party membership of some 100 million. In such a process only the best and the brightness reach the top and the population respects them for their capabilities. Western democratic systems select decision-makers not for their abilities but for the pleasantness of their image in the eyes of the voters and as a result Western decision makers are no match for their Chinese peers. Popular culture is a second handicap in Western governance capabilities. In China and in East-Asia popular culture is receptive to the implementation of political decisions by the brightest. Such a popular culture does not exist in the West and decisions are debated, contested, and are finally not being followed by a large portion of the citizens.

The results of handling the corona-virus are now starting to come in and there is no other way to qualify these results than it being a Western debacle that will drastically reset the geo-political reality once coming out of Covid-19. Some among the most serious observers are slowly starting to awake to this reality and see China rushing in the lead…

Big capital holders knew fairly well that the “everything economic bubbles”, of the “Great Recession”, were already starting to pop up before Covid-19 reached Western shores. So when the Corona-virus landed they thought that it would act as an opportune blind-screen that would allow them to control the popping while invisibly redistributing the remaining societal wealth into their own pockets. They surely are filling their pockets (CARES act anyone ?) but “We have come now to the point where an entire class of society has been designated “expendable” and this unfortunately signals a new era reminiscent of the European dark age of serfdom.

Coming out of Covid-19 the world will be another place. No doubt about that. The Western economies will reset by burning the fat of prior “hedonic and inflation adjustments” (18) and other manipulations of statistical figures. The economic reality will end up being trimmed to a semblance of its past self but at a far lighter weight. Told otherwise Western economies will shrink dramatically and the majority of their citizens will be paid at the levels of third world countries’ slave wages… In the meantime China’s economy will have grown substantially and its debt levels will gradually burn down to a fraction of what they are today. What awaits us on the other side of Covid-19 is another world that the West will have to adapt to or perish.

In my personal way of approaching reality I view the Chinese strategic move, to counter the corona-virus, as a “wu wei move” in its ‘Chinese traditional culture’ understanding. Wu wei means “non action as in Tai Chi when a practitioner deflects the force exerted by his adversary to make him crash on the ground. The practitioner does not spent one iota of his own energy but his competitor crashes under his own effort and he is exhausted. Force is not part of the equation. What counts in a wu wei move is the constant focus on the way of nature.

In a world where the winner takes all the future, that awaits us on the other side of Covid-19, shall be painted largely by China. And the future that China has in mind is a Community of Nations that shares, a Common Destiny steeped in a shared holistic worldview, that will help the community dream and then build an ecological future for its children. Building such an ecological future for its children will be like composing and executing the symphony of humanity. In such a vision the shared holistic worldview is the determinant factor that could glue the minds of all in a common project.

3.3. what is really going on here ?

Speaking, about the incompetence of Western governance or about an unbearable Chinese lightness, is merely stating facts but it teaches us nothing about how we came to such facts nor about where we go from here. To answer these questions I will have to make a detour through the notion of individualism and then through the notion of the cultural continuum. I hope that after that detour the process, leading to the incompetence of Western governance or to the unbearable Chinese lightness, will become visible to all.

Individualism

Individualism has brain washed all Westerners into believing that free-will produces the outcomes that are going to emerge in the future. But this vision is nothing else than an ideological belief in what is basically nothing else than an illusion. We, for sure, are not conscious about the ideology nor about our believing in it. These have been imprinted in our subconscious minds over the long haul of many many generations. But what is important to remember here is that individualism is not something innate to the human condition. It is something that was cultivated societally.

The cultivation of individualism in the West starts with a rupture, or a separation, from the traditional tribal communal vision of self. In this tribal communal vision of self the individual sense of worth, or of happiness, was not derived from the individual self but from the community. What this means is that individual happiness arose  – or from the act of giving to the others,  – or from feeling as if the individual was being one with the community. In such a communal vision trust was paramount and societal cohesion was at its maximum which is the reason why the tribal model of society was able to reproduce over the span of tens of thousands of years.

Individualism is an act of separation of the individual from his community. It results as a consequence of an ideology that marks a rupture with the societal order. Individualism, as we know it in Late-Modernity, is the result of a gradual process that went through 5 phases in time :

    1. After the consolidation of the first institutions of power, starting some 5000 years ago, the men of power and their families started to cultivate the idea of a differentiation between themselves and the masses of individuals under their authority. In this first phase individualism affects only the men of power and their families
   
    2. After having been consecrated the official religion of the Roman empire Christianity used a mental trick to detach the folks from their tribal communalism. That trick consisted in engaging them in the illusion of entering into a direct communication with the Christian God. After hundreds of years this practice had solidified in the minds of the individuals the illusion of a personal self that is separated from the others. By the end of this phase individualism affects all the individuals
   
    3. Starting with Early-Modernity the self which had been cultivated by Christianity encountered ‘the reason that is at work within capital’. The few merchants who converted to the belief in ‘the reason’ were rewarded with richness, or the possession of gold coins, that could buy whatever material possessions. But in this process their personal self transformed into an egoistic self also called an ego. At this early stage of Modernity the transformation of self into ego affected only a minority.
   
    4. Material possessions soon unleashed social envy and after some 5 centuries this social envy had metastasized in the minds of those in the universities who then expanded ‘the reason’, from its materialist application inside capital, into a systematic application to everything under the sun. This is how the ‘reason at work within capital’ expanded its materialist substance to rationalism as a philosophical system. By the end of Early-Modernity the transformation of self into ego affected a growing minority
   
    5. Rationalism molded the working of the minds and gave rise to the scientific method. This helped to systematize material productions which as a result grew exponentially and the resulting exponential offer of goods needed to be satisfied with a counterpart in term of an exponential demand. Consumerism answered that need by spreading an ideal of life centered around the infinite satisfaction of the self by material possessions and services like the web. That’s when the self of all transformed into ego. Consumerism and egotism gave rise to hyper-individualism and the atomization of societies.

   
At the close of these 5 stages of evolution the notion of individualism has brain washed us all into believing that our free-will produces the outcomes that are going to emerge in the future. But in matter of fact this vision is an ideological construct that was built by a minority who had stakes in the 5 stages of societal evolution that grounded the 5 stages of individualism. But who were the people composing this minority who had stakes in these 5 stages of societal evolution ?

The men of power used men of knowledge to reproduce their imperial institutions of power over the many generations. In the case of Rome, for example, emperors, their nobility, and their families associated with the hierarchy of the Christian church in order to glue the minds of their citizens so as to increase the societal cohesion that was considered necessary to reproduce the institutions of power over the generations. This gave the first 2 social components of European power :  the aristocracy and the clergy.

In the footsteps of the crusades the Western European aristocracy and the high clergy discovered luxuries in the Middle-Eastern markets that they wanted to acquire to furnish their palaces and mansions. After initial plunder long distance trade imposed itself as the system satisfying their desire for possession. This gave rise to a first phase of capitalism that economic historians qualified as commercial capitalism. This phase starts roughly around the 12th-13th centuries and lasted till the start of the industrial revolution in the second part of the 18th century. Long distance merchants acquired fortunes that they used to build palaces and mansions for all to see. These long distance merchants formed the backbone of the 3rd component of European power :  the bourgeoisie or what later would also be called the capitalist class that since Early-Modernity would compete with the aristocracy and the clergy to ensure its centrality in European power. The industrial revolution would conclude their consolidation of power and this consolidation gave rise to what we now commonly call democracy.

As a conclusion on individualism let’s observe that outside of Europe, and its geographic extensions which is what we refer to as the West, individualism has never gained the same kind of systemic character that it acquired in the West. This differentiation is the primary reason why the campaigns by the West to convert other parts of the world to its system of belief and governance can not possibly work. It is going against the nature of societal evolution.

The cultural continuum

These 3 social groups have powered the societal evolution of Europe and financed the ideological construct of Western individualism and of democracy. But this has been realized inside the framework of a cultural continuum as it materialized a given cultural context.

What do I mean by cultural continuum ?

    1. each civilization institutes axioms from which its system of thought is derived. Civilizations originally arise as the foundation of the ideation of empires but with time they can expand into different political settlements :  – or through political divisions of the original empire (European states), –  or through adoption by neighboring states (Japan adopted most aspects of the Chinese civilization that it adapted over time to its local context).
   
    2. Each polity or state adopts a worldview in order to glue the minds of the citizens around a common understanding of reality. A worldview can be a religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam,…) or it can be a philosophical system (Confucianism, Taoism,  Buddhism, …). Worldviews are societal constructs, derived from the axioms of civilization, and they evolve very slowly over time by assimilating ‘replicating cultural memes’.
   
    3. The citizens of each society live their life in the present along the lines of given behaviors and beliefs. The total sum of all behaviors and beliefs within a society in the present is its culture in the largest sense of the word. This implies that the economy, social relations, knowledge formation and so on are all part of the daily culture of a society. Cultural memes that replicate over time can then eventually be assimilated in the worldview.
Axioms of civilization + worldviews = the cultural continuum and the cultural continuum materializes the cultural context of the present. I wrote the following in “What is going on ?” about the cultural continuum as it manifests in one’s particular cultural context :

“  As the reader might imagine the cultural context, as presented here, is the most determinant factor shaping the behavior of nations. And it is also without any possible doubt the most determinant factor explaining the perception by the West of what it sees as China’s ‘other-worldliness’.  

So let’s examine one by one the 3 parameters of the cultural context as they address the formation of the conceptions of what reality is all about in China and in the West and more particularly these perceptions and further conceptions about ‘the other’. “ (19)

Western incompetence or the unbearable Chinese lightness are facts that emerge not from the will of decision makers but as a result of their countries’ cultural continuum as it manifests in their particular cultural context. I explained more in detail how this whole process works in “What is going on ? Part 2. the cultural context forces human thinking and actions” (see note 19). 
_____________

Notes

1. China had suffered a spate of viral outbreaks, during the last months, that rattled policy makers :
    • recurring bouts of H1N1 local clusters have been breaking out over the last few years and the country was on edge
    • African swine fever an incurable disease has wiped out nearly half of China’s pigs in 2019 and the country was forced to import large quantities of pork… 
    • Covid-19 had started sometime in early December 2019 or earlier

2. “President Xi welcomes WHO's participation in coronavirus control” on CGTN 30-Jan-2020. Then comes this video.

3. “Democracy, Dictatorship, Disease: The West Takes Its Turn With Coronavirus” in the WSJ b y Yaroslav Trofimov. 2020-03-08.

“ Nicola Zingaretti, leader of one of the two main parties in Italy’s government coalition and head of the Lazio region, which includes Rome, posted on Instagram a photo of himself clinking glasses with other people in a Milan pub. ‘Let’s not lose our habits, we can’t shut down Milan and Italy. Our economy is stronger than fear: Let’s go out for an aperitif, a coffee or a pizza,’ he urged “.

4. “ Trump says he trusts China’s Xi on coronavirus and the US has it ‘totally under control’ “ on CNBC by Matthew J. Belvedere. 2020-01-22

5. “Is This Timeline of Trump’s Coronavirus Responses Accurate?” in Snopes by Dan Evon. 2020-03-18.

6. “Trump’s new coronavirus argument: 2 million people are being saved” in Politico by Meredith McGraw. 2020-04-01.

7. “Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency” in Whitehouse.gov 2020-03-13.

8. “ ‘The value of your lives is supreme’ " :  Modi extends India’s nationwide Covid-19 lockdown until May 3 as country tops 10,000 cases “ on RT. 14 Apr, 2020.

9. “ Coronavirus infects China-US relations as blame game over pandemic intensifies “ SCMP by  Shi Jiangtao and Wendy Wu. 2020-04-27. 
    • “ GOP memo urges anti-China assault over coronavirus “ Politico by Alex Isenstadt. 2020-04-24.

“The National Republican Senatorial Committee has sent campaigns a detailed, 57-page memo authored by a top Republican strategist advising GOP candidates to address the coronavirus crisis by aggressively attacking China.

The memo includes advice on everything from how to tie Democratic candidates to the Chinese government to how to deal with accusations of racism. It stresses three main lines of assault: That China caused the virus “by covering it up,” that Democrats are “soft on China,” and that Republicans will “push for sanctions on China for its role in spreading this pandemic.”

    • The Republican memo: “ Corona Big Book “ by O’Donnell & Associates. 2020-04-17.  

“  China did this to us:
          • The Chinese Communist Party caused this pandemic. They arrested doctors who tried to warn us. They covered up the number of deaths. They lied and pretended the disease could not be transmitted. China bought up the world’s supply of face masks and medical supplies, and then stopped exports out of the country when we needed them.

          • China is not an ally, and they’re not just a rival --they are an adversary and the Chinese Communist Party is our enemy. For decades, China has stolen millions of our jobs, they’ve hacked into our networks, and they’ve exported plagues and fentanyl to the United States. At home, China forces women to have abortions, they send religious minorities to concentration camps, and they arrest Christians. “

    • “ US-China row over WHO sees G20 leaders summit called off at last minute “ SCMP by Zhou Xin and Echo Xie. 2020-04-25.

10. “ Eyes Wide Open: Will the ‘Masters of the Universe’ Notice No One Takes Them Seriously Anymore? “ in Strategic Culture by Alastair Crooke. 2020-04-06

11. "Coronavirus: A Theory of Incompetence" by Yves Smith in Naked Capitalism
"The United States and the European Union Have Failed the Audit of Pandemic" in Strategic Culture by Martin Sieff. 2020-04-09

12. “Blaming the Victim Is the West’s Latest Infowar Tactic Against China” in Global Research by Andrew Korybko. 

13. "What Is ‘Operation Mockingbird’?"   By Value Walk

14. "American foreign policy is a complete and absolute failure and it will generate hardships for Americans in the future.” by Metallicman March 23, 2020

15. “The Death of American Competence” in Foreign Affairs by Stephen M. Walt. 2020-03-23.

16. If you are interested about how subconscious narratives are being reconciled in the conscious mind please see Posts 230 to 236 on my blog.

17.  “COVID: The Chinese regime, Sun Tzu and The Art of War” No More Fake News by Jon Rappoport  2020-04-14

18.  “The Illusions of Hedonics” Mises Daily Articles by Antony P. Mueller. 2005/07/29.
“The Quality Adjustment Method: How Statistical Fakery Wipes Out Inflation” in Executive Intelligence Review by Richard Freeman. 2000-10-27.
“The trouble with GDP” The Economist. 2016-04-30.

19. "What's Going On ?"  See Part 2. the cultural context forces human thinking and actions. (Page 31 to page 109).