Dissecting an American Conservative Spin Master – Part 4/4

November 7, 2011

Did you know Dennis Prager wrote on Creators.com that, “Consider the facts (I’m surprised he used this word): Tibet, at least 1,400 years old, is one of the world’s oldest nations, has its own language, its own religion and even its own ethnicity. Over 1 million of its people have been killed by the Chinese, its culture has been systematically obliterated, 6,000 of its 6,200 monasteries have been looted and destroyed, and most of its monks have been tortured, murdered or exiled.”

All of Prager’s emotionally driven claims such as “killed, obliterated, looted, destroyed, tortured, murdered or exiled” have been proven wrong, but most of Prager’s Parrots are not interested in the facts. I say that Prager owes China an apology.

In fact, Tibet was not a nation until 1911 when the British convinced the Dalai Lama to declare freedom from China, after having been ruled by China since 1279 AD during the Yuan Dynasty, then the Ming Dynasty starting in 1368 AD and last the Qing Dynasty until its collapse.

All the “facts” are there for anyone willing to trust the experts and sources such as Sir Robert Hart (1835 – 1911) and a piece written for the October 1912 National Geographic Magazine by an expert Western trained medical doctor named  Shaoching H. Chuan, M.D. that happened to spend two years in Tibet starting in 1907 after the last Qing emperor ordered him there to deal with a cholera epidemic.

In addition, Prager forgot to mention that there are more than sixty spoken languages in China and one written one. China has 56 minorities and each has its own language as the Tibetan minority does.  It’s been this way in China for more than 2,000 years.

In fact, by not mentioning America’s native minorities, it is my opinion that Dennis Prager is a hypocrite and deceitful.

North American native tribes and nations were free and governed themselves for more than ten thousand years (much longer than the 1,400 years he claims Tibet governed itself before 1950) before Europeans arrived and drove them from their land.

If you visit Native American Nations, you will discover how many spoke their own languages and many still do — the only difference is today native Americans live on reservations and the US Department of the Interior is responsible for the administration of programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians.

One example is the Navaho Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the United States, which is in Arizona. The Navaho Nation covers 27,425 sq miles (71,000 km2) with a population of about 174,000.

The Navajo Nation, like Tibet, is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory within the United States.

Another example is the Cherokee Nation, which had its own written language developed early in the 19th century by a mixed-blood Cherokee called Se-Quo-Yah, so the Cherokee Nation would be considered educated, literate and capable of governing itself as an equal, independent nation.

However, this did not stop the United States from breaking treaties and waging war with the Cherokee Nation to exploit the natural resources of their land.  It’s called conquest and anyone that studies history knows this is a natural part of the evolution of all species including man.

How is this situation different from Tibet and China? Native Americans had their own religions too and were not allowed to practice them by the United States, while China allows Tibetan Buddhists to practice their religion within a semi autonomous territory, which is administered by a CCP government agency similar to the US Department of the Interior.

Another fact that Prager conveniently left out of his opinionated rant of an essay is that after 1976, China rebuilt many of the Buddhist temples in Tibet that were destroyed during Mao’s Cultural Revolution when religions in China were banned and the entire population suffered.

Today, there are seven-major religions in China including Christianity and Islam.


Rush Limbaugh, the host of the number-one conservative talk-radio show, explains how talk-radio works.

Michael Orion Powell writes, “Prager is a good example of what happens when a commentator ties himself to one side of the political spectrum permanently.” By Seattle standards, Michael Powell calls himself a conservative, but by actual conservative standards (as defined by talk show hosts such as Dennis Prager), he says he is a raving liberal.

In addition, decades ago, I too listened to Rush Limbaugh and then deserted him for Dennis Prager.

I eventually fled Prager too, after I questioned his emotionally driven opinions and compared them to the facts of experts discovering that he was often wrong and misleading.  Now that I’m an ex-Prager Parrot, I guess that makes me a leftist-liberal prone to hysteria that fears death even though I support the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms (weapons such as rifles and pistols).

So, we either trust the emotionally-driven opinions of conservative talk show hosts such as Dennis Prager (with a major in Middle Eastern Studies and History who also studied about Russia), or trust 1,500 of the world’s most distinguished senior scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in science.

And the truth is, there is a chance the experts could be wrong about Global Warming, since it is only a theory supported by facts, but are we willing to risk ignoring them as Prager and his Parrots argue?

Return to Dissecting an American Conservative Spin Master – Part 3 or start with Part 1

View as Single Page

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top right-hand side of this page and then follow directions.

About iLook China


The Politics of Fear – Part 5/5

September 18, 2011

The prescription that leads to a successful “noble or big lie” is keeping people semi-literate or illiterate so it is more difficult to recognize the “Politics of Fear”.

However, what is literacy and how do we define it? There are no universal definitions and standards of literacy. Unless otherwise specified, the most common definition is the ability to read and write at a specified age.

In addition, literacy is learned, while illiteracy is passed along by parents who cannot read or write, and in 2003, 5% of Americans that read Below Basic did not graduate from high school, 44% spoke no English before starting school, 39% are Hispanic/Latino adults, 20% are African-American/Black adults, 25% are age 65+ and 21% have multiple disabilities.

But, at 18, many of these illiterate people are eligible to vote and votes can be influenced with little and BIG lies—especially when the voter reads at Basic or below, which is more than 40% of the population of the United States.


Manufacturing Consent: Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

NCES.ed.gov says that in the United States, “14% of the people read ‘Below Basic’, which means no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills; 29% read at the ‘Basic’ level, which means these people can perform simple and everyday literacy activities; 44% read at the ‘Intermediate’ level, which means they can perform moderately challenging literacy activates, and 13% of readers are ‘Proficient’, which means many of these readers can perform complex and challenging literacy activates” and are the most difficult to fool.What is more shocking is that compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. is doing well.

According to the latest International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), between 19% and 23% of American adults performed at the top levels for each of the three literacy scales: document literacy, prose literacy and quantitative (number) literacy. Sweden is the only country that scored higher. People that are literate and read often are harder to fool.

Yet, many Americans are being left behind. The same survey found that between 21% and 24% of U.S. adults performed at the lowest level. Source: Education-Portal.com

The state of literacy in America explains why neoconservative voices such as Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck may influence millions of listeners and talk to them as if they cannot think or reason.

In fact, Rush Limbaugh often says on his neo-conservative radio talk show that he will do the thinking for his audience so they do not have to, and his audience may be as large as 30 million—which is a large number of votes to influence.

This also may explain why ABC World News started their piece about China’s first aircraft carrier with, “the U.S. government directed a pointed question at the Chinese military: Why would you need a warship like that?”

Since China is now the world’s number one energy consumer and the second largest economy, why not, if it is in China’s national interest to have an aircraft carrier?

In addition, if Brazil, France, India, Italy, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand and Britain all have one or more aircraft carriers, why can’t China join that club?

How is this a threat to America, which has twenty aircraft carriers?

What we have is simple language for simple minds to generate fear and control public opinion. If you read the ABC World News piece, you will notice they don’t mention the other countries that have aircraft carriers or how many the U.S. has.

Return to The Politics of Fear – Part 4 or start with Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.


Every Vote Counts

October 28, 2010

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.


Triumph in Chile Leads to Criticism of China

October 20, 2010

On the “media menu” in America, there is “Hypocrisy” listed near the top of the front page, and it is cheap.

In a New York Times piece of China Cheers Rescue Halfway Around the Word, we learn that the state owned media in China has been covering the rescue operation to save 33 miners in Chile.

How the New York Times turned good news in Chile into a criticism of China is another story.

If you read the entire piece in the Asia Pacific section of the NYT, go to the bottom to see what I’m talking about.


Rush Limbaugh Lies

In the conclusion to the piece, David Barboza, the reporter, quotes someone identified as Mr. Guan, the poet and blogger, who wrote a few lines of verse about Chile’s rescue on the Web, “What the government (of Chile) did warms our hearts. They didn’t suppress the truth, they didn’t secretly pay anyone money, they don’t make irresponsible statements, they don’t forgive those who should be responsible for it. And they don’t laud themselves with clichés.”

If the NYT didn’t make a point that this was aimed at China, anyone could make a case that the same verse is about the media in America.

 


Glen Beck Lies

 

Have you listened to people like Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck or read Ann Coulter or how about lies and deceit in political campaign Ads?

In fact, who is Mr. Guan, the poet and blogger? I used Google Blog Search and Google and came up with zero. Did Barboza fabricate Mr. Guan?

The United States Department of Labor documented 1,546 average deaths for all mining fatalities and 81,341 injuries between 1936 to 1940 in the U.S.  Between 2006 to 2007, they reported 69 deaths and 11,800 injuries.

 


Ann Coulter Lies


Then “In one of the most scandalous crises in workplace safety in the United States, over 10,000 coal miners have died needlessly from black lung disease (from the inhalation of coal dust) in the last decade.” Source: Chesapeake Climate

In addition, the NYT made no effort to mention that there is evidence that China is eager to lower the number of coal mining fatalities as reported by Internet Marketing Strategy for Business.

More research using Google shows that fatalities in mines are a global problem. I found a post in All Africa.com about South Africa’s high mine fatalities.

However, what did David Barboza, the New York Times reporter do? He dug up a poet called Mr. Guan. The truth is that the media in America is free — free to lie.

See more about Unbalanced Reporting 

______________

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. 


Building the Rest of China’s Republic

October 15, 2010

I’m looking at a site, American President, An Online Reference Resource, and this site has divided the history of the U.S. into eight eras and lists the presidents of each era.

The Early Republic (1789 – 1829)
The Jacksonian Democracy (1829 – 1854)
Sectional Conflict (1853 – 1881)
Gilded Age (1881 – 1897)
Progressive Era (1897 – 1921)
Depression & World Conflict (1921 – 1961)
Social Change & Soviet Relations (1961 – 1989)
Globalization (1989 – )

In Democracy, Deceit and Mob Rule, the embedded YouTube video mentioned that Woodrow Wilson was the first president to refer to the U.S. as a democracy.

By the time President Johnson left office in 1969, America was no longer a Republic. The transition was complete and the democratic mob ruled leading to Political Correctness, Rush Limbaugh and the Self-esteem Generations.

To avoid becoming a democracy, China should consider adding a lower house of Congress as in the U.S.

All eligible voters, who do not belong to the Communist Party, would elect the representatives in the lower house and the upper house would be the National People’s Congress, which would be elected from within the Communist Party as it is today.

Since legislation in the U.S. must be approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the president, this would allow the Communist Party in the upper hosue to kill unpopular or destructive legislation from the lower house and the other way around.

That way, the mob rule of a democracy would be avoided.

Since in a Republic, no mature citizen has to vote as in a democracy, it would be wise if China defined who the eligible voters outside the Party would be.

I suggest people only be allowed to vote if they have a high comprehension level that helps understand the issues.

As has been seen in the U.S., with its falling literacy rate, many in the population cannot understand the political issues and don’t vote or use misleading information from politically biased people like Rush Limbaugh to decide for them.

Of course, a democracy ruled by the mob would cry foul, but a republic is ruled by the elected officials—not by the majority as in the U.S.

______________

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.