Had China behaved like a normal democracy, they would have asked for and received help immediately from other states who have the expertise to limit the damage from this new virus.
Wuhan, China
But since China is the farthest thing from a 'normal democracy', the worst possible scenario came out of this. A deadly pandemic that has attacked the world and is still growing. Possibly worse than the illness is the dreadful economic impact. Sadly I think it is this impact that will affect far more people than just the illness alone. When the world is racing to stand still, when people both wealthy and poor stop working, when students stop learning, when our elderly and sick are stuck in isolation for an untold time period, when life savings disappear in mere weeks and when people are literally losing their minds, we are in serious trouble.
And again who must we thank for all of this? China.
But wait. China on her own is not solely to blame. We are also guilty. Because we opted to buy their products that albeit were of cheaper quality but cost us less. Wealthy businesses and entrepreneurs all followed the same mantra. Make it in China. With their slave labour and government interference in private business (they give them subsidies), they obviously have an unfair advantage in keeping their costs down. How many times have I heard Kevin O'Leary on 'The Dragon's Den' (an interesting show where wealthy business people listen to all sorts of entrepreneurs pitch business ideas) lecture the guests on making the new products in China...
To save $20 dollars years ago, we chose a Chinese made TV over the US made one. Of course that had a domino effect. The less American products we bought, the fewer sales the US companies had, the more they had to raise the cost. Until finally they gave up and closed shop or worse, moved production to China. That last move was one of desperation. I guess the CEO's went for short term gain. Even they must have known that in time the Chinese would copy their products that were being made for them in China and eventually would sell them directly to the West and put these American businesses out of business.
So greed won us over. Now we are paying the price. We should have thought this through a little deeper. Had Nazi Germany started building cheaper TV's using slave labour (ie. 6 million starving Jews and others) would we have bought them?
This concept of digging deeper is so important. So many of us read a headline or heard a rumour and run with it. Instead of spending a little bit of time to research the facts, we seem to love to parrot ideas that others have parroted to us. That's why I was worried when Obama got elected president. Based on limited research on him, like his love of Communism, his love of Arabism and his hatred of America (amongst other things) I had every right to be worried. That's why I was worried when Bernie Sanders came on the scene. When some of my friends thought that simply based on his 'great idea' that Bernie had in offering free education for all, I dug a little deeper. Without much difficulty I was able discern that there was no way in hell for Americans to afford this without destroying their economy.
Many ideas from the left, on the surface, might sound great. Sure in a perfect world where all people are good, where all people are in good shape, healthy both physically and economically, maybe open borders might work. But obviously this is a dangerous dream. When various political leaders say they have Israel's back, dig a little deeper. Focus far more on what they do rather than on what they say.
Unwarranted attacks on President Trump right now fall into this category. I certainly understand that many people don't like him. I think that most simply don't like his personality or more likely they don't like the persona that the Leftist media has portrayed in him. But now is not the time to attack him. If you want to remain healthy, beat this virus and regain your wealth, we must support him and his administration's efforts to win this war. I know it's easy to find fault with every little thing he said or might have said. Hopefully those that hate him, can wait until after this war is won before they continue to attack him.
Back to China and what they've done to us with the spread of the corona virus. We must absolutely hold them to account. Likewise we must hold our political leaders and business leaders who have also helped China to succeed, to account as well. And lastly we must hold ourselves to account. China is a very large and powerful adversary with nefarious ambitions. They have already threatened to withhold medicines to us, which are mostly produced there. This is no less an act of war.
If we learn anything from this terrible situation, I hope that we isolate China and other nefarious states like them. And make them pay! On a more general note, we must learn to dig deeper before we react.
In good health,
Leon
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