Sort-of on-topic read for this group...
I'm almost finished reading James Bradley's book "The China Mirage." Highly recommended.
Not a new story, but still a fascinating one: how Americans were bamboozled for decades by the idea that millions of ordinary Chinese people were just aching to become American-style Christians. And good customers for American business. Plus the larger story of how that belief hobbled U.S. foreign policy for decades.
And where did that idea come from? From the "China Lobby." Which mostly meant propaganda generated by the amazing Soong family, who could teach even the Bu$h clan a few lessons in grifting. That dynasty started with "Charley" Soong. Old Charley visited North Carolina as a young man and got converted by the Southern Methodists. He returned to China and made millions of dollars publishing Bibles.
Then there were the American missionaries, constantly pumping out fantasies about the Chinese people hungering for Jebus. Especially the son of one missionary, Henry Luce, founder of the Time-Life media empire.
The China Lobby ship really came in with WWII. Luce spilled barrels of ink promoting the corrupt and incompetent Chiang Kai-Shek as the True Leader of China. (Chiang was conveniently married to Old Charley Soong's youngest daughter.)
The wheels started coming off during the war, when FDR sent the obvious choice to China as a military advisor - Gen. Joseph Stilwell, who had lived in China and spoke Chinese.
Which unfortunately meant Stilwell could see right thru the mirage. He once told a reporter off the record: "The trouble in China is simple. We are allied to an ignorant, illiterate, superstitious peasant son-of-a-bitch." As you might guess, Stilwell was fired at the insistence of the Chiang gang.
Chiang probably wasn't illiterate. In just about every puff-piece Luce article, Chiang mentioned that he read his Bible daily.
President Harry Truman eventually had to deal with the Chiang-Soong clan and gave them glowing reviews: "I discovered after some time that Chiang Kai-Shek and the Madame and their families, the Soong family and the Kungs, were all thieves...they stole seven hundred and fifty million dollars out of the 3.5 billion that we sent to Chiang...that's the money that was used and is still being used for the so-called China Lobby...Every damn one of them ought to be in jail, and I'd like to live to see the day they are."
= new reply since forum marked as read
The author goes into some detail about Harry Anslinger's (FUCKING ASSHOLE!) reign of terror at the Bureau of Narcotics. Previously known as the Bureau of Prohibition. (They had to do SOMEthing with it)
Congress passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act in 1914 that criminalized cocaine and heroin, among others things. There was a clause in there that said that doctors could continue to prescribe heroin to their patients in an "act of compassion."
Anslinger didn't care about that clause. His agents went out and busted over 1,000 doctors in one day for (legally) prescribing heroin to patients. In Los Angeles, Harry's man (whose name escapes me at the moment), was actually being paid by Chinese drug lords who also wanted the legal administration of heroin shut down. So they got to control the black market.
That's the Chinese angle that struck me that sort of relates to your post.
So many times we have made something illegal (prohibition, cocaine, heroin, marijuana) and the gangs just move right in and take over. Consumption does not go down.
Good and frustrating book
