My colleague and well-known China expert Donald Clarke sent me another ironic nugget from our friends in China. China’s Global Times has run a story entitled “Seven-Hour Wait to Vote; This Election Is Shameful.” Since I blogged on this disgrace myself, I would normally be heartened by the outcry, but coming from China, where citizens are denied the ability to choose their government, it is nothing short of absurd. It is right up there with the Iranian government calling for the investigation of the mistreatment of protesters in England.
The article proclaims “The U.S. claims to be free and democratic, but the rights of the people are far from guaranteed. It is increasingly difficult for a U.S. citizen to cast a vote and for that vote to be counted”
You know the best thing about authoritarian rule? No lines.
My favorite response online is:
ZhaoHanqingJason: What is a ballot?
then there is . . .
UncleDingdang: If it’s a shame for American voters to wait for seven hours, then what should it be for Chinese people to have waited for over 60 years?
Clearly the irony is not lost on the Chinese people.
Source: China Digital
Prof Turley, your observation on the inherent ironies is also relevant to our lack of authority to criticize other nations – for having thorough corruption, for having poor human rights records, for having war criminals hold high office, etc. We seem not to recognize the ironies that are apparent to a good part of the world. I believe one thing both we and China have in common is that we set the bar low.
EH…. I think you have a point…..
HELL even in Stalins Soviet Union they had elections. Of course, they did NOT have much choice, but they did have them.
EH:
we arent anything like China, at least not yet.
Well in a country where only 17 are permitted to vote you won’t have the same problem.
Elections don’t mean anything. Any wise person would know that.
The only time when they could serve a purpose is when you have 3 people on earth, starving with no food in sight, and a genie shows up and gives them only one choice between a ton of vanilla icecream, and a ton of apple pies.
Otherwise, elections only serve the purpose of given you the illusion that you are deciding your fate…
Oh, and by the way, congress has about 9% of favorable ratings, and if you conduct a surprise polling on a normal day, only a tiny percentage knows who their house representatives are…
We seem to disregard these fact as we keep swimming in our illusion.
Also, think a little bit about the racial divide in this past presidential election…. I try to sweep those facts under the rug. But they are disturbing. It shows you the main motivations people vote on. Never a reasonned process based a theoretical analysis of policy. Emotions dominate these events. “White” people that have no idea what kind of companies Romney owns vote for him out of fear that the country might be taken over by dark aliens. Black people are assuming that a black president will somehow protect them from bullying by a rising angry white mob….
These are far from this ideal prophecy called the electoral process.
Tanks waiting in line to vote …
Bron,
Are you sure…..
Former Paonia councilman Sid Lewis holds a protest sign in front of a tank owned by billionaire energy magnate and Paonia-area ranch owner Bill Koch.
Read more: ‘Tiananmen Sid’ faces down tank in Paonia’s Fourth of July parade – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_21014240/tiananmen-sid-faces-down-tank-paonias-fourth-july#ixzz2Be45geBB
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Tanks rumbling down the street in a parade doesn’t just happen in China. But why would Bill Koch own a functioning tank? Intimidation comes to mind.
Anonymously Yours 1, November 8, 2012 at 10:11 am
Bron,
Are you sure…..
———-
I’ll second that. From where I’m sitting….
What a laugh! China critizing us because people had to wait in line to vote.
Iran being concerned about the treatment of protesters in England is also a real knee slapper. Having said that, when the US. And UK put peaceful protesters in pens, pepper spray them, tase them and arrest them and subject them to intimidating and intrusive searchs it is hard for the UK and the US to claim a high moral ground. Is there a difference, yes, but only of degree. We really need to clean up ou act.
As for the lines, hey CHINA, at least we get to vote.
Hopefully the Chinese gov’t will fulfill my need for laughable propaganda that the demise of the Soviet Radio Moscow left unsatiated. I miss Radio Moscow. I hope the Chinese step up to the plate.
The last great one was Comical Ali out of Iraq. Ministers of Information of repressive regimes should aspire to be such fine orators.
I’m appalled @ this Chinese comment about our election. However, I’m not going to boycott Chinese food. Maybe I just won’t eat lo mein for a year.
bettykath: “But why would Bill Koch own a functioning tank?”
*
Guns are phallic symbols, yes? Maybe the wealth isn’t sufficient compensation?
That was an interesting article you linked to bettykath, he apparently collects stuff and has more than one military vehicle.
Betty Kath,
It is one of his reserve escepe methods. Has never neard of anti-tank missiles or tank mines either.
Darren,
You’re a sweet guy, but sometimes that is not enough.
Radio Moscow is a strawman, I belive, even if it lived today. But have you tried RT? It’s claims are less than laughable.
The long lines appear “mysteriously” in places where Republicans could not think of any other way to win.
Their rejection of science was a rejection of the methods that would have given them a more clear view of what was happening.
Things that those who embrace solid science could see coming.
The world got to read and see the Republican voter suppression efforts during this election cycle; they also got to read and see that it did not work because it really pissed off a lot of people who made a determined effort to overcome the restrictions and vote. That said, I think what the Chinese article was really alluding to was a message to all self-righteous types who are always telling the rest of the world how to run their own Country and systems. We should just keep our collective mouths shut and continue to make our “points” by our example…like those determined voters.
I’ve only looked at RT twice. I’ll look into it more.
Justice Holmes,
I agree with you that we need to clean up our act. The US is moving more and more to an over-criminalized, philosophically bankrupt parody of what it should be. But I disagree with your dismissive attitude towards a “matter of degree”. All societies are only a matter of degree. None are perfect, not one can be perfect (whatever standard you our I use as perfection notwithstanding). I will acknowledge that you did not use perfect, not your word but mine tied to a matter of degree.
A matter of degree is a very meaningful standard to judge liberty.
“That said, I think what the Chinese article was really alluding to was a message to all self-righteous types who are always telling the rest of the world how to run their own Country and systems. ”
I assume you’ve kept your mouth shut about Franco’s Spain (if you’re old enough), Pinochet’s Chile, the Junta’s Argentina, Pol Pot’s Cambodia or even Myanmar today. I’ll leave out the African continent for brevity. If you want to stick with your point and say that you have no criticism, or that criticism would be “self-righteous” even if you do, I’ll go with that. A Communist regime “alluding” in your statement is ludicrous.
“The world got to read and see the Republican voter suppression efforts during this election cycle; they also got to read and see that it did not work because it really pissed off a lot of people who made a determined effort to overcome the restrictions and vote.” Which lead to a 51-48 popular vote, hardly meeting the it “pissed off a lot of people” unless you think Romney would have won otherwise. My feeling on this is that it’s a tempest in a teapot. I’ve seen claims of voter suppression, but there seems to be lot of subjectivity in that claim because it smacks of cognitive dissonance. My major thrust on this would be, to avoid any tu quoque, is that it is endemic to a political system. I’m old enough to remember the voter fraud issues of both Kennedy and LBJ, the usual suspects being Texas, Illinois, and Massachusetts (White in his “Making of the President” series goes over this).
Taking it OT but I think germane to my point, when you demonize one party to the point that they are “the bad guys” you lose perspective to the point of insularity. Both parties throughout the 20th Century have done really bad things. The 1924 DNC is affectionately known as the “Klanbake”, and no it wasn’t solely because of the South, the third wave of the Klan had its tendrils throughout the US; at the same time the Republicans had Klan scandals in at least Indiana and possibly California and Oregon. FDR was the President that started J. E. Hoover on spying on domestic dissidents (1937 IIRC, and no it wasn’t just the GA Bund, but all including his political opponents). Woodrow Wilson was by far our worst President on civil liberties, he had something like 75 newspapers shut down for sedition, warned many others, while arresting by various estimates 50,000 to 175,000 using the Sedition laws (US pop. approx 104 million in 1919). Neither he nor FDR were disposed to “civil rights” (I use scare quotes only because to me civil rights is civil liberties).
It was Truman that desegregated the military in 1948, and Eisenhower started it for the nation in 1954 after Brown v. Board of Education . Plessy v Furgeson in 1894 was decided by a SCOTUS heavily Democrat, IIRC. And no I haven’t forgotten Nixon’s Southern Strategy, but it’s impact is overblown compared to history previous.
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