Fear tactics still grab votes or American conservatives would stop using them.
Since America’s 2010 midterm elections are being held in November, the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) ran a political video designed to exploit fear of China.
Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool most of the people some of the time and some of the people most of the time…”
Evidently, the CAGW decided they could fool some of those people in time to make sure they vote against Democrats.
New York Magazine ran a piece, Is this Really the Best Political Ad This Year, which proves why it is dangerous to be a democracy instead of a republic.
Ben Smith of POLITICO writes, “This slickly-produced new ad from Citizens Against Government Waste … attacks spending in the Mandarin-speaking voice of a gloating, future Chinese professor.”
The sad thing is that millions of Americans believe these distortions.
According to the PEW Global Attitudes Project, 36% of Americans view China with an unfavorable view.
It is no secret that Rush Limbaugh is a Sinophobe and has between 14 and 30 million listeners (depending on who you read). Glenn Beck has about two to three million.
In fact, the people that Rush and Beck appeal to must be some of the voters the CAGW is hoping to influence.
The National Center for Educational Statistics shows us that forty-three percent of Americans read at or below basic, which means 93 million votes could be influenced through fear of China.
After all, the illiterate and semiliterate are the easiest voters to fool and that’s why they shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Learn more at Democracy, Deceit and Mob Rule
______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
iLook China 
Hey Lloyd,
I am glad you posted about this video. It’s important to talk about it in all circles.
I am still not convinced that illiterate and semiliterate peoples should not be allowed to vote. It would potentially be one more thing that would alienate the lower economic classes. They get the worst education it seems. Maybe I am wrong and there is research to support illiteracy spreading through the classes, but it doesn’t seem likely.
Health care reform and other social programs are in response to a lot of the problems the lower income citizens are facing each day. If they were not represented by a vote, would they be represented as much at the government level, or would we go backward to the days when they were ignored by the government.
Poor people are easily fooled by specific types of messages, but rich literate people are fooled by money too. One could easily argue that this last economic crisis is an example of a whole nation of money hungry intellectuals fooling themselves with a message of “balanced risk” when it came to mortgage backed securities. Smart people are handling these issues, so we can just trust it is okay.
Several democracies/republics of sorts have implemented full scale health reform without crushing their economy. Even if we don’t do anything, the systems we have in place will crush us.
Also, while studying at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, I had two Chinese professors who spoke to us the same way as this professor. They misunderstood America the same way we misunderstand them. They were arrogant about China’s position in relation to American debt. They said Americans just sit on their couches and eat all day. We are all lazy (Even though we work longer work days than most nations). Even the man who will most likely be the next president of China said we are people who have “full stomachs”, possibly inferring that we are coaching the TV football game with our bag of chips in hand. (It’s the easy route of just giving back what you have been given. They hit me with this tool, so I hit them back with the same thing).
It’s disheartening sometimes when I see both sides doing the same thing to each other. Americans are talking to the world on websites like Facebook, while Chinese citizens are talking to each other on QQ, but neither are talking to each other nearly enough. We don’t share the same mediums to even present our points of view and have meaningful discussions.
We don’t know each other and therefore we fear each other. The U.S. has arrogant professors too. What’s so damning about that scenario? Such anectdotal evidence is no reason to start boxing up a nation of billions or millions based on the behavior of the few.
I think we need a common platform or medium for the citizens of both nations to grab onto that would be popular enough for a good chunk of our citizenries to have constant and deeper discussions. However, I am uncertain how comfortable the PRC would be with that strategy at this given time.
Jeremie, you make a great point with examples that show how stereotypes exist on both sides of the Pacific. Many Chinese that have never visited the US have developed stereotypes of Americans while the same is true of Americans that have never visited China. Most Sinophobes in the US are afraid of and hate China due to stereotypes.
If China drops the Net Nanny (Internet censorship) too early, which may happen when they are ready, many who are not ready for culture shock may react.
An example was China loosened restrictions for travel out of the country. Then millions of middle class and wealthy Chinese became international tourists flying to America, Australia, Japan, Europe, etc. then returning home because that is where their nice home is and the job that pays them enough to be part of the middle class.
The fact that millions of Chinese are visiting the world as tourists and going home is evidence that living in China isn’t as bad as many in the West believe. If life was that bad, why not stay in Europe or America?
It’s possible that China’s Net Nanny will remain in place as those travel restrictions did until the last few years. Then after China has improved the lifestyles of most of rural China, the censorship may vanish.
Once most of China does not live in poverty, there will be no reason to worry about those people wanting to leave for the US or Europe believing they will have a better life there.
Is it possible that the censorship is a defense to keep people from wanting out or demanding change that might create chaos and anarchy?
As for the illiterate in America voting, studies show that many do not vote anyway.
In fact, In 1980, 80% of college educated adults voted, 59% of those with four years high school education voted 43% of those with a grade school education voted. Source: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/voting_patterns_in_america.htm
From what I’ve been reading, this voting pattern hasn’t changed much. “For the 2000 election, just about 105 million people voted – similar to the 1996 figure but still only about 50% of registered voters.” Same source as above.