Trump In China, Haters Delight - Egg Foo Young, Chop Suey, And How Was I To Know? They All Look Alike

President Trump landed in Beijing yesterday (5.13.26) to fanfare, ceremony, and high expectations.  With him were thirty of America's top businessmen, the most influential leaders of the tech and information revolution in the country if not the world.  This was a delegation of import, weight, and influence, and it made clear that the President was bringing the captains of the new industry not only to advise him, but to show the Chinese that America was a world tech power and that concluding a favorable economic and political agreement would be in China’s interest.

 

As soon as the trip was announced, Trump haters raised a ruckus. Crony capitalism, they shouted, a Jewish cavalcade of stars, an adolescent-minded buffoon sent on a man's errand, a fool who thinks egg foo young is the jewel in the crown of Chinese cuisine, an idiot who said that he was unsure who to shake hands with 'since Chinese all look alike'. 

Maggie Flynn was well-armed for her anti-Trump screeds.  After saturating herself with every bit of damaging evidence that the trip was only in Trump's self-interest, and concluding that he was simply paving the way for post-Presidential deals for himself and his family, how could any reasonable person doubt his treachery?  

He had corralled the big men of Silicon Valley and strong-armed them to come on the China trip, threatening them with sanctions and federal investigation if they did not comply. With The Gang Of Thirty in tow, he set off on Air Force One. 

Of course he was in it to make money but for America. What else was there?  China held all the cards.  They held a whopping big piece of America's debt and could pull the plug at any time, thanks to the trillions in foreign currency and gold they held in reserve.  They, in a short space of time had become a world economic and military power, and thanks to Confucianism, their Mandarin empires, and a long history of racial and social unanimity they were strong, unified, and impregnable. 

As much as the American president at home was rolling back the worst of the divisive, corrosive, and damaging Leftist woke agenda, the country was still a side show of freakish identity politics - a clown show, the venality of Congress reeked with smarmy self interest, and the nation had lost its moral ethos.

Trump was going into the Chinese negotiations behind the eight ball and with not much of a leg to stand on.

Yet, who better to try than Trump, a man who made his living out of threat, intimidation, coercion, quid pro quo compromise, and favorable deals.  The best man to have in a card game where an opponent has all the cards - a card sharp, a bluffer, an intimidator - and Donald Trump, billionaire victor of the most brutal battlefield in the world, New York real estate, is just the man Americans should want at the table. 

 

And yet, but not surprisingly the Left wants him to fall on his face, to shame himself and the country, make ludicrous, outrageous statements far beyond the pale of diplomacy and making backroom deals with Chinese oligarchs.  

'Jews', said the haters.  There was no better sign of the international Jewish conspiracy than this stable of of Jews Trump was bringing along with him.  Icons of high tech? Yes, but in a conspiracy with Jewish bankers and financiers in collusion to establish a sub rasa power cabal of unimaginable proportions. The military alliance between the United States and Israel was no more than a cover for the expansion of world Zionism for the benefit of the Jews and the President of the United States. 

Maggie snarled at her husband who wished the President well.  'So do I', she said, but meant not a word of it.  The sooner the fool was exposed as the bigoted, capitalist tool that he was, the better.  She was as glued to the television as Nixon haters were in the days of Watergate, watching for, hoping for the stake that would be driven into the heart of the vampire of the Oval Office. 

She flipped channels and surfed the web.  CNN and MSNBC were not enough, BBC was too compromising. Commentary, The Nation, Politico, and the Daily Kos went straight to the point - the moral corruption of the President and his sycophantic family - but they too pulled their punches; so she went deep web and found arcane sites barely visible but untamed in their exposure of the President as man in the clutches of the international Jewish conspiracy, an autocrat in waiting, a bulldozing enemy of the people.  

The comments heard in Maggie’s neighborhood - a universally rock solid progressive enclave - were not surprisingly anti-Trump but this time their scorn and bilious hatred was completely unhinged.  'How will he know whose hand to shake', they laughed.  'All Chinese look alike'.  

His parade of high-tech entrepreneurs was nothing less than Robber Barons redux - a collusive billionaire cabal of men with no restraint, all marching together to engineer an AI takeover of industry, destroying the working man and his unions, creating financial instruments that beggared those of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling, and Bernie Madoff, deployed data centers in the heartland sucking energy and water, and helped engineer a two tiered American society - they, the billionaires, and everyone else. 

'Where's the egg foo young?', they chortled, 'and the chop suey?', imitating the President, a man who had not one sophisticated multicultural bone in his body and was bound to make a fool of himself in front of the world.  Yes, it would be embarrassing, but if it hastened the end of this bottom-feeding goon the better.

The Chinese politburo, reviewing the state of affairs in America had a good laugh over the No Kings rallies, the march of the transgenders on the National Mall, the hoopla over former slaves who were touted as the world's best and brightest hope, and the campus political frenzy which eroded any ethos of learning and academic excellence. 

Kowtowing to a race of racist pigs', Maggie’s neighbors said, referring to the Chinese Han hegemony.  'Tell it to the Uighurs', they said, unaware of the Muslim fundamentalism of the region which as everywhere else in the world threated civil order and social unity.  Trump wants to join the international cabal of dictators, Putin, Xi, and Trump, in an unholy alliance of soulless Machiavellian ambition, they added.   'Down with Trump', these otherwise recondite neighbors shouted.  

This China charade was the last straw, the neighbors agreed.  Destroying the federal bureaucracy in an attempt to distort and finally eliminate democratic, popular rule was one thing; sending SS Storm Troopers into American communities to round up and deport peaceful asylees was another, but this...this blatant, outrageous international collusion was more than they could take.  The guillotine was too good for this pretender, this usurper, this morally deformed creature. 

Maggie panted, breathless with the anger and hatred which had overcome her.  She stood there, open-mouthed, trembling, and lost in feverish apoplexy.  

She slowly made her way back home, but it - in all its quiet suburban charm - now seemed out of place.  Trump had defiled it, had corrupted it, had robbed it of any decency.  'What's a mother to do?' 

She rummaged through the medicine chest to see if any of her husband's hip replacement Oxycodone pills were left over, accidentally knocked the Tylenol and witch hazel into the sink, scrambled on the bottom shelf for that familiar brown plastic CVS container, and finally found them, a bit past their expiry date, but who was counting.  This day could not continue as it started. 

Trump didn't seem so bad after two Oxy, nothing did actually, so why not top it off with a stiff drink. 'I know it's a no-no', she said, 'but what the fuck', and with that she headed off into never-never land as happy as could be. 

The Success Of A Simple Man In Troubled Times - The Vacancy Of The Dull, Danglers On The Bell Curve

Doug Brandon was a simple man.  Born and raised in the shadow of the Tuscaroras to a simple family, he never lost his stolid approach to life.  'Hard work is all there is' said his father, echoing that philosophical vacancy that had characterized the Brandons for generations, a kind of unschooled nihilism which sheltered the family from the hardships of poverty and isolation.  They had been dealt a bad hand from a stacked deck, but took life as it came, the good with the bad, days sunny and stormy. 

As such Doug was never filled with unrealistic expectations or vain hopes. Someday he would leave Barkerville and make something of himself, but that something would be necessarily modest and down to earth. 

Doug was not the brightest boy in his class by any means, and he managed to make his way with some effort through the grades, ending with some distinction as the top mechanic at Lewiston juncture high school.  Dougie, as his parents knew him, was good at fixing things, especially small motors - outboards, lawn mowers, hedge trimmers - and he worked summers alongside Bill Baxter of Baxter Repair Service.

 

Baxter suggested two years at Lewiston Community College where the discipline of a technical education would stand him in good stead.  He could move from small motors to large ones, and perhaps one day he might find himself on an airline maintenance crew. 

He did as Baxter suggested - the college's fees were nominal and no strain on his family's modest budget - and he graduated with a technical diploma that was indeed his union card for employment, even in down times.  He applied for an apprenticeship with Southwest Airlines which serviced Lewiston, was accepted, and after a few years was a bona fide airline mechanic. 

The story, however, is not about Doug's career, but about the particular psychological configuration which got him through troubled times.  Being a dull, uninspiring man of limited intelligence and insight, he was able to weather the storms of a difficult economy, social dislocation, and the radical shifts in political ethos which were affecting the country. 

Now, the character of the Washington-based political opposition to the current president is well-known. In a canny but so far ineffective campaign to discredit him as a racist, homophobe, misogynist, and capitalist tool, the political left hammered away at him for over a decade.

Lawfare, impeachment, smear tactics, innuendo, and fear-mongering were all tried but failed.  However for very action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and because of the ad hominem assault on the President, the country itself became angry, divided, harshly and reflexively critical, and unquieted. 

Lewiston was small city, like many in the country not known for anything in particular, but still a reasonable place to live and work.  The county of which it was the seat was growing, and a number of major firms opened plants there.  Hankook Tires, for example, moved in thanks to a deal with Doug's community college which promised to train prospective workers if the company would hire them. 

All well and good, but Lewiston could not avoid the divisiveness, racial conflict, and social disturbance affecting the country at large. As a matter of fact, it became the locus of the most aggressive, often violent protests against the President's radical agenda.  The press took notice, and its concerted efforts to rid Washington of this menace to democracy, were well-publicized. 

Although the protests in Lewiston were seen from the outside as unified and a true political collective, they were anything but.  Black Lives Matter holdouts in one corner, angry white, deeply progressive women in another, and organized labor in a third.  These factions were constantly at each other's throats and each angrily assertive about their interests. 

The protests became routine, police barricades and crime scene tape common.  Arrests were made and talk was heard about the deployment of the National Guard.  Things went from bad to worse as a militant group firebombed a military depot causing little damage but giving the restive, angry Left the visibility it wanted. 

Doug had been approached on a number of occasions and asked to join this or that faction; but he politely demurred.  There was nothing in him - not in his character, personality, background, or life - that was suited for such a political activism.  To be brutally honest, although Doug could rivet and repair, he was as dumb as a stone.  Only thanks to his natural affinity for screws, bolts, wrenches, and hammers was he able to manage as well has he did.  Other than that he was as clueless as the day he was born. 

A co-worker at the airport, a union man angry at the administration's moves to make airport maintenance a right-to-work zone, tried to enlist Doug in his activism; but Doug, unsure what right-to-work was - the fact that he had a good job was all he knew - and constitutionally unable to parse the simplest articles of democracy, again refused.

 

When the protests threatened to shut down the airport, Doug's co-workers became more insistent on his support. Doug again thanked them but no thanks, and returned home to wait until the dust cleared so that he could go back to work. 

'What's up at the airport, hon?' his wife asked one afternoon. 

'Not much', Doug replied.  The sirens of police cavalcades down Egbert Avenue were heard day and night, but Doug slept well.  

Now, this was not from a practiced, educated stoicism or a survivalist reaction to violence.  Beyene Wolde-Gabriel, a co-worker from Ethiopia had survived the civil wars, the brutality of the dictator Mengistu, the pogroms, midnight hangings, and street mayhem by keeping his head down, a partisan of no cause but known as a quiet supporter by all.  

Such political courage and savvy was foreign territory to Doug who had trouble placing Ethiopia on the map, and as far as the territorial struggles with Eritrea and the Somali terrorists who had joined forces with both sides, he was one hundred percent ignorant.  In fact, if his co-worker had taken the time to explain the situation, his words would have gone in one ear and out the other, passing through the complete vacancy of Doug's mind. 

 

That vacancy, as little as Doug could appreciate or even acknowledge it, was what kept him afloat in troubled times.  Conrad in his novel Victory wrote about Heyst, a refugee from civilization, preferring a life of incessant wandering, devoid of attachments and commitment to entanglement.  Graham Greene in The Comedians and The Quiet American wrote about the same calculated indifference in his main characters, a kind of existential stoicism. 

All these characters are drawn into concerted action, to engagement, and to entanglement with good and bad ends; but Doug had none of their calculated indifference.  He was too ordinary, too vacant for any such ideas.  He stayed outside the fray because life propelled him that way.  He didn't so much resist his co-workers' pleas for engagement, but simply demurred.  Not the path of least resistance, nor the easy way out, but a simple complaisance, the congenital aspect of his dullness. 

There is a bell curve for everything, and intelligence is no different.  Lack of intelligence, grouped at one asymptote has many expressions.  From the persistent dysfunction of the ghetto where generation after generation intermarries within a confined, uninspired gene pool, to class dullards, clueless adolescents, one-issue politicians, minor criminals...the list is endless.  Most of these sub-par individuals cause harm, lesser or greater; but those like Dougie whose lack of brains is expressed only as vacancy, cause nothing, and in so not-doing, survive the worst of times. 

The novel Being There by Jerzy Kosinski is a satire on American politics where a simple man of limited intelligence is taken as a genius.  Chance the gardener, used to talking about the lifecycle of plants, bushes, and trees in the simplest, organic terms is thought to be speaking in brilliant metaphor, and rises up in the political world thanks to the credulousness and intellectual myopia of his handlers. 

No one ever found or recognized the advantages of vacancy in Dougie Brandon.  He just carried on, head down not out of political savvy but habit, hands always busy, emotions always on an even keel. 

Yes, Doug was as dumb as they come, and not one salient, interesting, or provocative thought ever entered his head, but such dumbness is often overlooked, rarely singled out as a positive aspect of diversity. 

The Dougies of the world are everywhere, and most lead lives of remarkable dullness - impossible to be around because of their mental immobility, they are thudding bores.  Worse even than Del Griffiths, says the Neil Page character in the movie Planes, Trains & Automobiles about his boring co-passenger. 

'I could sit through hours, days, and weeks of insurance seminars with a smile on my face. "How do you do it?" my fellow conferees ask. "Because I spent a week with Del Griffiths"'. 

Dougies are suburbanites, office workers, bank tellers even professionals - occupation is no disaggregating filter.  The hopelessly dull are everywhere unaware of their own boundless vacancy.  At least for Dougie it was a survival mechanism.  For all the rest just an empty stare.

Wind In His Hair - A Bike Lane Prophet Cycles The Great Outdoors, Dopey And Without A Clue

Doug Burnett was an ordinary man - born and raised in a coal town to a pharmacist father and a second grade teacher mother, he was well-behaved, dutiful, and an obedient student.  He couldn't make heads or tails of anything past arithmetic, so he repeated a grade or two, but since there was nowhere else to put him, he moved up and out, and one day found himself at Montgomery College, MK as it was known because of the fourth-grade level of its students. 

The college was a congenial place where there were no unrealistic expectations about Harvard or academic excellence, just a pleasant holding pen for those who would never make a mark, but would just fit in nicely. 

Doug muddled through his two years - MK was a junior college - and was anxious to get on with life, but he had no idea about what or how, so he took a job as a stock-and-errand boy at his father's pharmacy in Chillicothe, cleaned dusty bottles of chloroform and peptides in the storage room, waited on the occasional customer, and had no more ambition than a split-level, a wife, and two children.

Circumstances being what they can be, capricious and unpredictable, Doug found himself in Washington, DC thanks to a chance meeting with the representative for the Second Congressional District of Ohio.

Now, Doug was not a youth of any pretense, and had no thoughts about democracy, contribution, or investment; but when approached by the august member of Congress who invited him to join his staff as an intern, he readily agreed. 

He had no idea whatsoever what the job entailed let alone the role or importance of a member of Congress, but he had been brought up to respect his elders, so acceptance was simply the only right thing to do. 

He had been singled out not because of his intelligence, political savvy, or social appeal, but because he was a working class voter from the eastern half of the Congressman's district and would do well as a poster boy for his rural poor constituents. 

 

Doug was a faithful amanuensis, little more; and when the Congressman finally retired, Doug found himself out of a job.  With few qualifications but willing and able; but with a good recommendation, he joined Scientists For Social Responsibility, a non-profit group organized around 'planet health' a catch-all ethos which gave them cover to advocate for environmental protection, climate change, and social responsibility. 

Doug understood none of the ideas proposed, but was happy to do good; and was a loyal and hardworking member of the team.  

One of the propositions of the group was to encourage dedicated bike lanes in urban areas.  Cars were polluting interlopers and their rampaging takeover of roads and highways needed to be stopped.  Scientists for Social Responsibility intended to be at the forefront of the biking New Age, and Doug, coming as he did from a rural, undulating, bike-perfect region, was asked to be a part of the Bikes Are Our Future team. 

They bought him a bike, took him with them on casual rides on the C&O towpath, and urged him to go farther up the trail to the Cumberland Gap. 

He had only ridden a fat-tired Schwinn in his boyhood so was unused to the 21-gear hi-tech two-wheeler he was given, but quickly took to it.  Riding up the same kind of hills he had struggled over on his bulbous Schwinn was a dream.  If this was climate change advocacy, he was all for it. 

The mystique of cycling escaped him - as simple as he was, there was no vision or epiphany in it. It was simply pedaling, sometimes hard up, other times light and repetitive, nothing more.  When he sat at the Old Ebbitt Grill with his colleagues over a beer, he was lost when the chat turned to mountain vistas, expansive prairies, farm houses and cows in pastures.  

He had taken to biking as a matter of duty - if his organization was all in for bikes, so would he be - but he found nothing particularly uplifting or elegiac about it. 

As a matter of fact, bikes were a pain in the ass. Driving from here to there in Bethesda was slow, interrupted, and interminably blocked because of the presumptive Rulers of the Road, dedicated bike lanes, and the inevitable accidents.  

'Perhaps I'm missing something', Doug said, not giving bikers their due, not appreciating the particularly heady, transformative experience of rushing down a mountain pass, wind in the hair, guided by the natural winds, inclines, and vistas of the open road. 

He gave it a go, joined a weekend biking group that headed north to Poolesville, stopped for beers at a local tavern, then cycled home for dinner.  All without anything more than traffic, impatient drivers, potholes, and dreary, endless trees. 

He gave urban biking a try as well, cycling from his suburban home to his downtown DC office; but that was a gantlet, a medieval joust, a mudwrestling ugly tour better left to others. 

Perhaps because Doug was so limited, so simple and unpoetic, so straightforward, practical, and nose-to-the-grindstone, he decided to chronicle his biking experiences as a kind of clinical record. At first he did it to illustrate his organization's vision and principles, then as a down-to-earth account of the order of biking.  Whether he understood it or not, whether he got or didn't get the essentiality of the open road, it was his duty to paint the picture. In the end, as dull and prosaic as it was, it became his raison d’etre - which of course everyone needs regardless.

 

His chronicle, his biking memoir, his record of traipsing Appalachia and suburban Maryland was the most horrendously boring saga imaginable.  It was a story of gear ratios, brake linings, torque, tire resistance, and ball bearings and nothing more.  A tedious recollection of bike trips in the most predictable places, a soggy, watery saga of nothing but grinding up and down the hills of Western Pennsylvania and points west. 

Why he ever bothered, why he even tried was a mystery.  Why would this man of limited means, desultory intelligence, and without a drop of insight, creative vision, or personal feelings ever think that it would be of interest let alone be inspiring?.

Such is the nature of true belief - febrile, airy, satisfying, and overarching.  It matters not to the believer whether or not his ideas have currency or relevance; or whether his passion and obsession will encourage other to action.  He speaks, promotes, insists because righteousness is hardwired and absolute. 

No one of course paid any attention to his wandering, incoherent, fantastical memoir.  Not only did few care about biking; not only were most people pissed that their civil rights were being infringed upon by the unhinged two-wheeled few, but the fact that some actually believed the absurd idea of a biking heaven . It was a consignment to a Barnum & Bailey side show. 

Doug - Dougie to his diehard friends - never quit, and in all forums, informal dinners, roundtables, conferences, and on streetcorners he hammered on about bikes, bike lanes, and bike heaven.  His old friends tolerated it all but waited for the day that he and Mary Beth took up their residency in Avalon Quarters retirement village, but even there anyone within earshot thought the old man queer and ready for the glue factory.