“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
-Sun Tzu
These days, using the word “virus” preceded by “Wuhan” or “Chinese” will get you banned from Twitter or Facebook, dissed on MSNBCCNNCBSNBCABCRT, pilloried by the authors of the 1619 Project, and their newsprint co-conspirators, and denounced by the Chinese Communist Party.
This is not merely Trump derangement syndrome, it’s an attack on free market and limited government ideals conducted by opportunistic water carriers for the Chinese State. And there is a movement to call the Chinese “state capitalists” rather than communists. “State capitalism,” is a label intended to introduce a sliding scale where authoritarian central planning is morally and philosophically indistinguishable from free markets, private property and individualism.
Kimberly Strassel at the WSJ makes the point.
Coronavirus Vindicates Capitalism
Gated, here’s a slice:
The left is never apt to let a serious crisis go to waste, as we see with its daily use of the coronavirus pandemic to bash the Republican administration. The bigger danger is the efforts it is already making to exploit the panic for its longer-term goal of destroying U.S. capitalism.
Socialist Bernie Sanders led the charge last Sunday in his Democratic primary debate with Joe Biden. Bernie rolled out his usual themes, this time through the virus lens. The pandemic “exposes the incredible weakness and dysfunctionality” of the U.S. health system, he said; the cure is centralized, socialized care. Americans can’t get the drugs they need because “a bunch of crooks” run drug companies, “ripping us off every single day.” The virus exposes the “cruelty and unjustness” of an economy that allows “big-money interests” and “multimillionaires” to profiteer off “working families…”
[T]he federal and state governments are playing crucial roles in coordinating resources, imposing public-health measures, and keeping the public informed. But the single biggest mistake so far came from the government. The feds maintained exclusive control over early test development—and blew it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s failure delayed an effective U.S. response, and the private sector is now riding to the rescue…
Anyone who thinks this would be happening in a socialist America is smoking something. Government doesn’t have anywhere near the money, the speed or the creativity to stay ahead of a crisis like this—and the Trump administration deserves credit for embracing its private-sector partners. The business altruism on display is partly the usual American spirit, but it has been encouraged by free-market policies that have underwritten three years of economic boom and put companies on a better footing to confront hard times. And the profit motive and competition liberals detest remain the beating heart of the resourcefulness U.S. companies are now bringing to bear.”
Meanwhile, there are those who object to the Western wing of the CCP’s moral relativist brigade. I made an objection yesterday.
The CCP has floated a conspiracy theory that the US Army seeded the virus in Wuhan. This amounts to starting a branding war with Donald Trump (H/T Scott Adams), which was a big mistake. It’s why Trump insists on calling SARS-CoV-2 the Chinese virus. He’s got the MSM saying it over and over and over.
China seems to be fighting the last propaganda war, which would have been against Obama. They forgot to read far enough into The Art of War:
“Of old the expert in battle would first make himself invincible and then wait for his enemy to expose his vulnerability.”
-Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu didn’t call his book “Art of the Deal.”
Here’s some more on how that branding tussle is playing out.
Axios doesn’t even mention how important Trump’s ban on flights from China was, but that conclusion will leap out at you:
Timeline: The early days of China’s coronavirus outbreak and cover-up
“China is now trying to create a narrative that it’s an example of how to handle this crisis when in fact its early actions led to the virus spreading around the globe.”
Even the Atlantic Monthly felt compelled to note the CCP perfidy. This whole thing is made well worth reading because the magazine has been a Chinese apologist:
Atlantic Monthly tries to clean up its reputation as China’s water boy (they supply several links to themselves in this article to demonstrate):
“But is this a time for blame? Yes, it is. Accounting for responsibility when a disaster happens—particularly one likely to devastate entire countries, leaving thousands dead—is not beside the point, particularly as Chinese officials move to take advantage of the crisis and launch a disinformation campaign claiming that the U.S. Army introduced the virus.
Well before the new coronavirus spread across American cities, the Chinese regime was already rather creatively trolling U.S. publications, expelling American journalists, and “weaponizing wokeness” over anything it perceived as critical of China’s role in mishandling the epidemic. To hear Chinese spokespeople use the language of racism and prejudice is somewhat surreal, considering this is a regime that has put more than 1 million Muslims and ethnic minorities in “reeducation” camps.”
As I noted yesterday, we even have people calling China’s medical system “extreme capitalism.” This Orwellian delusion must be resisted.
Saying “state capitalism” is “weaponizing wokeness.”