Hey, Jackie, up your nose with a rubber hose!
Posted on 04/18/2009 11:25:42 AM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
He’s from Hong Kong isn’t he? So he started out under British rule and got famous before HK was returned to the ChiComs.
[snip]
Speaking fast with his voice rising, Chan said, "If I need to buy a TV, I'll definitely buy a Japanese TV. A Chinese TV might explode."
Mr. Chan apparently doesn't realize that these two statements are connected. Controlled people have no reason to care about their work; it's not "theirs".
“He’s from Hong Kong isn’t he? So he started out under British rule and got famous before HK was returned to the ChiComs.”
Yes he started out in Hong Kong; even got beat up by Bruce Lee. He was born in Hong Kong but attended a Chinese drama school where they were not taught to read or write.
“He takes his work as Ambassador for UNICEF/UNAIDS very seriously and spends all his spare time working tirelessly for children, the elderly, and those in need.”
He supports the UN, nuff said.
Actually, China had a fairly good system for much of its existence: Confucianism. This involved a ruling class that was well educated, passed examiniations, etc. Certainl better than a ruling class that is brutal and uneducated.
Sure, there was injustice. But there is plenty of injustice in the U.S. And for the most part, it left the Chinese fairly free. They have always had an entrepreneurial spirit, and have taken to business everywhere they go outside of China because it’s a part of their culture.
Mao did a lot to destroy the Confucian spirit, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they got it back again. For one thing, China considered itself to be the center of the universe and for that very reason was not terribly interested in conquest much beyond its borders. It was rather like ancient Egypt, which lasted for thousands of years with fairly few ambitions for conquest. Orson Scott Card refers to this phenomenon as a “center civilization,” content with what it has and not prone to expand.
We would do well to hope that Mao did not succeed in wrecking that attitude—something that waves of conquerors were unable to do. But Mao may have finally done it. I hope not, because the last thing we need is an aggressive and imperialistic China.
“”I have seen this myself as well with Russians, who through centuries of rule by either Mongol Khans and Russian Tsars, psychologically need a “strong man” at the head of the country like Stalin or Putin. They accept nothing else, even if its means a brutal dictatorship””
Peasant mentality
Oh yes, it’s ALWAYS ‘THEY’ who need to be controlled...
Hey Jackie, whaddya think of you and YOUR family being lumped in with those who should be ‘controlled’, hmmmmmm???
-Oh no! Can’t have that! You meant the COMMON, LITTLE people, ehh Jacko?
Peasant mentality
"Tight swaddling is said to be in widespread practice in Asian countries, including China, as well as in Turkey, the Middle East, central Asia, Russia and indigenous cultures in central, south and North America."
Coincidence?
Hey, Jackie, up your nose with a rubber hose!
With logic like this, maybe Jackie Chan needs a psychiatrist more than a dictator.
Jacky Chan — another POS who needs to be converted to Soylent Green—
—to feed the hungry massses, you understand...
Jackie is one messed up dude. I think he’s taken too many shots to the head.
Easy for you to say when you’re a multi millionaire celebrity, Jackie. So much for him.
Hell, who didn't?
To try and understand Chan’s remark from a western point of view is ridiculous. In a manner of speaking, China is a world’s away from the western idea. It can be as alien as if he was a Klingon talking to other Klingons.
To begin with, China does not idealize the individual, as does the western world. That is, a person’s family, often their extended family, is more important than an individual member of the family. If a person does something good or bad, it is to their family’s credit or blame.
Second, in Chinese history, whenever there was a lapse of control, the resulting chaos was horrific and bloody. Most recently was the Cultural Revolution, which amounted to nationwide mob rule. But further back was the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war about the time of the US Civil War, except China’s civil war the the second bloodiest conflict in human history after World War II.
Both of these events are well remembered. The Chinese government was almost paralyzed with fear at the Tiananmen Square revolt, because when they looked out their windows, they thought it was a repeat of the Cultural Revolution, that many of today’s Chinese leaders personally suffered, while their families were butchered.
And this is also why the Chinese government so brutally suppresses the Falun Gong. Because in them they see the reflection of the “Son of Heaven” in the Taiping Rebellion, a charismatic man who called himself “Jesus’ younger brother”, and whose revolt killed as many as 25 million Chinese.
Even the concept of democracy itself, in China, is confusing to many Chinese.
When you ask the typical American what democracy means, he or she will usually equate it with “freedom and liberty”. However, the truth of the matter is that those are just pleasant side effects of democracy.
The *real* reason that democracy is so powerful is because it is vastly more efficient than any other system of organization. (Importantly, at a given level, democracy needs to be fine tuned as republican-democracy, to maintain its level of efficiency.)
And despite the Chinese, or Jackie Chan’s fear of “freedom and liberty”, equating it with “chaos”, the truth of the emergence of democracy in China has begun in an almost silly way.
Television game shows. Extremely popular throughout China, they introduced the Chinese public, down to the rural peasants, to the simple concept of “voting”. The most fundamental principle of democracy. And it made sense to everyone who saw it, as a better way of doing things.
Soon, whenever a local communist party minor functionary showed up at a farm to issue orders, one of the farmers, thinking of a better way of doing something, would chime in “Hey! Let’s vote on it!”
And though a lot of functionaries stomped their feet and demanded to be obeyed, the smarter ones listened to the farmers. And soon it was noticed that by doing things the better way, everybody, even the communist supervisor, did better.
That sort of lesson is never forgotten. And so, despite what Jackie Chan thinks, democracy is beginning in China, but instead of chaos, what is resulting it prosperity.
Freedom and liberty will come in their time, but democracy will always win in a head to head battle, even if they have to call it something else.
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