The Chinese got our technology and our factories and millions of our well-paying jobs; while as a result of the “Chines Exchange” we got the Asian Flu SARS and the 2019 novel Corona Virus. Globalization was a boon to China—and the top 1/10 of one percent of our big shots—the rest of us got the short end of the stick. When do our political leaders right and left get the point?
In 1972 -the same year of President Richard Nixon’s now infamous “opening to China” American author Alfred Crosby published a book on environmental history entitled: “The Columbian Exchange” . Crosby’s book documented the exchanges of culture, goods, animals and plants which were passed between Europe and the New World after 1492. Cosby named the process after Christopher Columbus. In the Colombian “exchange” European explorers came back to Europe with new plants such as corn (maize), potatoes, tomatoes, coffee(!) and tobacco (and many others) : while Europeans brought with them as introductions to the New World animas such as horses, pigs, chickens, goats, donkeys, and even the honey bee, to the New World. Sadly it was not only the critters they carried in the holds of their ships but also disease that European explorers carried with them. When they landed in the New World they introduced all the common communicable diseases of Europe and the west: the mumps, plague, small pox, chicken pox and malaria. Some claim western indigenous natives may have carried syphilis which was carried by European sailors back hometo the west. These western common childhood diseases often devastated whole tribes and communities of indigenous peoples who had no resistance to these common diseases. In those years of the exchanges the main impetus for the Colombian exchanges were —simple greed. Men could make a tidy profit if you had sole access to a new plant or new animal.
Well nothing much has changed.
Today we are still experiencing the fallout from an later cultural and economic exchange—this one between the USA and China—the “Nixonian exchange”. It was President Richard Nixon who got the brilliant idea in 1972, to normalize relations with China. Nixon saw his “opening” as a ploy to build leverage over the Soviet Union—At that time we were fighting what was termed a Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union. The objectives were to force concessions from the Soviets and —what was so brilliant about it —was that it would make a lot of American business men enormously rich. Again the motive was profits. US companies greedily eyed the potential profits which were right there before them in they could get access to the billions of Chinese consumers. Nothing much has changed since 1972 —our leaders and our business leaders are still bending over backwards to the Chinese—even givinging up technological secrets—just to get access to those 1.4 billion consumers (2020) which increase by a rate of 7 million more consumers annually .
Just as in the Colombian Exchange, the driving force for the Nixonian Exchange was profits and greed. Nixon and his scheming side kick Kissinger had no thought of long term consequences for the US worker. In 1972 who would have thought that the USA would eventually transfer its top technology, its know how and well-paying jobs of million upon millions of American workers to tiny villages in China and the eager low wage Chinese workers. Why? Because business owners,entrepreneurs and elites could line their pockets with gold by cutting labor costs, production costs, sell their product to billions of Chinese for enormous profits while continuing to hold market share in the USA in communities they abandoned to joblessness, empty rusting factories and hollowed middle working class. The massive disparity between righ and middle class we have here in the USA which Democrats so often point to—yeah its true. Bernie Sanders often states that the top 0.1% (1/10 of 1 %) owns more wealth than the bottom 90%. Well it is true. We have more multi billionaires than any other place on earth. How did it get that way? Most of it happened after 1972 and the Chinese Exchanve. You can credit Nixon and every Democrat and Republican administration since that time. They were all in on the robbery of the American middle class worker.
But the icing on the cake is that not only did they rob us of our jobs, steal our technology, threaten our military and naval superiority, and have plans to dominate the world—but they are continually sending us terrible deadly diseases as well.
While the Democrats are pointing at the perfidy of poor Putin—the real bad guys are the ones in China....they are “le perile jaune “.
And yes lets get sensible about these massive cruise ships we permit to operate from our ports which are nothing more than floating Petru dishes for human disease. Anyone who is foolhardy enough to board one is putting their health and life in jeopardy. They are a health threat (an abomination) to the ports and cities in which they dock to disgorge thousands of disease bearing tourists Again greed and stupidity motivate the supporters of these monstrosities.
Furthermore, we need better screening and interdiction and quarantine procedures at our busy (casual) airports in an age of potential deadly biohazards. This is now (an for the foreseeable future) an era when rapidly evolving incurable pathogens are likely to spread worldwide. Our trade practices and all too common air transportation (and passenger crowding) are ideal for opportunistic germs but make our nation highly vulnerable to the pandemics they generate.
Let’s not forget that Mexican-border wall either. We can not abide with “open borders” in an age when undocumented, unevaluated migrants and potential vectors of deadly disease can simply cross our border and enter vulnerable population centers at will. Though at this writing there is only a modest threat there that situation is likely to change. It is likely that illegal migrants desperate to enter the USA may carry incurable diseases like the novel Corona virus and other potential pathogens that have the potentially infect millions of our citizens.
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