Essays in Idleness

Mister Trump, the president of a neighbouring country, likes to win. This is his reputation, and it is enhanced by his public enthusiasm for winning, and the fact that he frequently wins. One might almost call him an embodiment of American optimism.

Now, as it becomes more apparent that the danger of the Red Chinese Batflu was overstated, he should be coming into his own. Having correctly anticipated that Americans (also Europeans, Asians, Africans, Brazilians, &c) would be panicked by irresponsible media reports, fed by the interests of massive and incompetent government bureaucracies, he took decisive action — in effect launching a “Green New Deal” overnight. Most other countries followed his lead, after smearing him a bit. The Natted States Opposition Party (so called because it is opposed even to itself) likewise followed the lead of “other countries,” i.e., smearing Trump and then doing what he said.

Unfortunately, he was “played” by the Red Chinese. Their masters had shut off all of Hupeh province (currently spelt “Hubei”), in response to a virus spreading from a bio-research lab that the French and Americans had designed and largely paid for in the conurbation of Wuhan. (This contested fact is no longer deniable.) The Communists stopped all road, rail, river, and air traffic to other locations in China. But through the latter part of January, they intentionally left international flights operating, so that the contagion would spread to, chiefly, Europe and America. Tens of thousands of travellers — anyone rich enough to leave Hupeh — half-knowingly fled abroad.

This was an unambiguously murderous act, by the successors of the butchers of Tienanmen.

So that when Mister Trump began stopping these flights on January 31st, it was already too late. The Xi Jinping Batflu had been seeded. And thanks to the interference being run by the corrupt World Health Organization (still denying that the virus was transmissible to human beings), it would take many weeks to discover what the Chinese government already knew, and showed that it knew by its actions. Fortunately, the virus, product of reckless experiments with bats from the caves of distant Yunnan, was not as lethal as it could have been. Ten-thousands have died when it could have been ten-millions.

The world economy is now crippled. Perhaps gentle reader has heard. This is a natural consequence of putting most of the planet’s population under house arrest. The electorates of the West are still convinced that the medical threat equals that of the Black Death, or the Spanish Flu; but this is wearing off.

Time now for Mister Trump to win by “reopening the economy” — which necessitates letting people out of their houses (or out of their dovecotes, in the case of the cities). Paying them to stay home soon proves as unsustainable as the Green New Deal, and almost as insane. Simply starving them to death is not politically viable. That Mister Trump was acting consistently in good faith (albeit coloured by his gigantic ego), I am convinced. As I say, he was played — along with the whole Western world. Had they been given true information from the outset, they could have taken effective action when the Chinese did.

Those with a broader sense of current history, might observe that Nixon and Kissinger made a grave mistake by their “opening to China.” But that was an argument I lost nearly half a century ago. China should have remained in isolation, until the demonic Maoist regime had collapsed. Here, however, I must not try to lure myself into the bottomless history of lost causes.

*

As Confucius would say (not to be confused with Xi Jinping), “Don’t hop on the long chariot.” This is among my mottoes from The Book of Songs, and the moral is, “Don’t concern yourself with the sorrows of the world. …

“You will only cover yourself with dust.”

It is the advice I’ve been neglecting in recent Idleposts.

Or put this another way: “The World Cannot be Fixed.” I know this sounds like a highly unsuccessful James Bond movie title, but it plays well in the cinema of my own mind.

The “long chariot” is the world of policy, or politics, where we are endlessly trying to fix the chariot: to keep it moving, or get it moving again. But the world doesn’t work on policy. In the broadest sense, it works on prayer; if I may define prayer so broadly that it includes ancestor worship. Its principles are those of celestial mechanics. It doesn’t go anywhere. Rather, it turns.

And it will continue turning. It didn’t stop when it was told to stop, and since it is already moving, it cannot be restarted, either.