Rick Perry and the China Conceit

In the early days of US-China diplomacy, Henry Kissinger confessed an improbable admiration for China’s Premier, Chou EnLai (Zhou Enlai), an adopted son educated in France who become the legacy link between the Long March and the Maoist communist takeover and the marvel of state-run capitalism that China has become.

Chou moved China forward; Perry wants to move the US backward, not only in science but in its economic policies, calling social sercuity a Ponzi scheme, attacking the Federal Reserve chair while he balanced Texas’ budgets on the same stimulus funds he condemns. Perry has no admiration for those who hold different views and even has distractors among his own party. Imagine him on a state trip to China.

What Perry does seek to move forward are the kind of jobs and economy that Chou was so determined to move China away from four decades ago. Though harsh conditions, low wages, few benefits, restricted opportunities for advancement, limits on knowledge and ideas, and strong social regulation, he seeks to create in the US the feudal work farms that even China abandoned. Institutional conditions exist for shredding jobs and Perry will not address the underlying causes.

He relishes the labels and slurs with which he smears his opponents. His approach is not “do what’s best,” but win at all costs, by rentlessness and well funded attacks. He caustically dismisses issues that have complexity and subtlety; he goes for easy solutions with popular appeal, not based on reasons but on defending an America fighting a lost cause, even as it sees its legacy slipping away.

Strangely, his candidacy is buoyed by his anti-establishment views–by those who will tell you Perry never lost an election. His God fearing frontier justice translates to some as toughness, but he is a retrograde politician who speaks against progress and the social contract as risky, unwise, wimpy, and as largess to the undeserving.

Today, he couldn’t win an election in China with his outdated, anti-progressive views. He shouldn’t win one in the US either.