Bernie: CIVILITY!! NORM!!

And sucdems say I’m too cynical in thinking that most first world “progressives” just want more shares of the imperial spoil.

my conspiracy brain tells me it's not actually aimed at average western readers. During this round of real estate downturn (which started in 2020) there's been some concerted effort both inside and outside china in the business/finance journalism to force the gov to pump out massive amounts of cash and bail out those loser-financiers (perhaps à la USA in oct 2008?). Instead, not only is the gov reluctant to do so, but they've also done the appallingly unthinkable of jailing many CEOs and board members (the gov has also, to my limited understanding of macroeconomics, refused to let those real estate firms declare bankruptcy before they actually finish those construction projects for which people have already paid the deposits and taken on loans). Anyway, there's probably a rather materially cynical reason for all this clamor of "Xi's intentionally letting the economy go bust"

Grew up in China and did college in US. First time I read about “mandate of Heaven” in English-language histories of China I had to look it up cuz I had no idea what they were talking about, even with guess work

When you try to sound like an intellectual but don’t even know how to write

I'm not an American so I can't vote in your stupid elections anyway

Lmao I’m glad i’m not the only one who loves to troll the lib yanks this way.

French aristocrat knights, c. 14th century: “how dare these English peasants shoot me with longbows!!! Where’s their chivalry!!!”

(Actual military history may vary)

Speaking from experience. I realized I was gay in high school in China and nobody around me from my teachers and classmates to my parents and extended family gave me any trouble — except the grand narrative on everyone’s mind was that, because I am gay, my future lay completely with the west, mostly cuz of this “western value” idea Chen seems to subscribe to. It was a big factor why I so eagerly moved the US and became an absolutely cringe Eurocentric lib till recently.

There’s perhaps something to be said about how queer people in non-western worlds might be assumed/pushed to identify with the western capitalist world that has middle-class-washed and hijacked the lgbt liberation movements. But this line of thought is always too close to home for me to rationally think about

Idk let’s do this with the military, I’ll just cancel my subscription and surrender whenever there’s a war, yeah?

ABBA = are bad bureaucracies all?

I used to have no idea why so many “rad” academics love their Arendt. Now I do.

The scary part is the combination of declining education and the increasing illusion that all knowledge is available a mere click away. Prefect recipe for media saturation & propaganda