AN OUT-OF-COUNTRY EXPERIENCE

I’m in a place so bizarre that one of the folks I’m with describes being here as an out-of-body experience.  The internet is not allowed for anyone in the country (save for the ruling elite), and we are not allowed to have cell phones – so we are simply cut off from the rest of the world.

Yesterday (9/20), I ran into a British guy who had just arrived.  Any news about the US? I asked.  "This tremendous scandal of Romney’s has exploded," he replied.  I sighed.  He explained: "He was caught on a secret video telling a group in Florida that 47% of voters think they are ‘victims’ who the government has to take care of, so they will vote for Obama no matter what."

I was befuddled.  "Why is that a scandal?  That’s the plain truth," I stammered.  He shook his head.  "Your press doesn’t think so.  All your papers and television are treating his words as so outrageous that his campaign may be dead, that Obama’s reelection is now assured."

With that, I realized that my own country is on its way to becoming as crazy as the one I’m in.  Call it an out-of-country experience.  So I wrote this up, put it on a thumb drive, am giving it to a friend who’s leaving today and will email it to Miko for posting on TTP.  Hope this works, as I’ll be here until the end of the month and you won’t hear from me again until then.  

Where "here" is, I cannot say, as doing so or talking about it would be jeopardous until I’m gone.  And in any regard, no one in America cares what’s going on in this place, not now with the live-or-die fate of our nation at stake little more than six weeks away.

That Brit fellow brought with him an English edition of the Chicom newspaper China Daily from Beijing.  It was filled with stories demonizing Japan, dredging up accounts of "Jap" WWII atrocities in China to whip Chinese into a nationalist frenzy over 8 tiny uninhabited rocks in Japan’s half of the East China Sea.

There is no record of any Chinese in history ever living on the Pinnacles (Senkaku/Diaoyu Islets); the Chicoms’ claims they have been part of China "since ancient times" or that Japan ceded them to China in treaties after WWII are utterly bogus.  For a discussion and a map, see Standing Up To China from September 2010.

Yet Beijing is actually threatening war with Japan over control of the rocks.  It can’t just be over suspected oil and gas around them, for the East China Sea gas fields that have been discovered are far away in the sea’s half that Japan recognizes as China’s.  There is no real reason whatever for China to risk actual military war with its main trading partner over rocks that objectively mean nothing.

Which means the real reason is the rocks are being used by the Chicoms as a distraction.  War against a foreign devil is perhaps history’s most time-honored distraction for a government in trouble.  Thus the Chinese are telling us that their economy is in far worse shape than most anyone thinks.

The prospect of war between the world’s second and third largest economies is only one sign of how things are unraveling on a global scale.  The Arab Spring has seasonally changed into the Arab Winter.  The Moslem Brotherhood has taken over Egypt. Islamists run Turkey and are about to in Morocco and Tunisia.  Syria is a charnel house.  Zero can’t even prevent our Ambassador in Libya from being murdered by Al Qaeda. He’s clearly on the side of Palestinian Nazis and not Israel’s.

Which is why Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli government despises Zero so viscerally.  Israel is under existential threat from a soon-to-be nuclear Iran, and Zero shrugs his shoulders.

There are violent anti-American riots across the entire Moslem world, which Zero blames on some movie no one has seen, not the Moslem crazies.  We are retreating from Afghanistan – our soldiers who died there died for what?  Iraq is aligning itself with Iran and against us – that’s what thousands of American soldiers gave their lives for?

Europe is coming apart.  Catalonia with its capital of Barcelona may secede from Spain.  Germany has capitulated to all of Europe’s guilt-mongering beggars demanding Germans bankrupt themselves so the moochers can live on permanent welfare.  Greeks gave up working for a living long ago.  The economies of Italy, Spain, and France are disintegrating – and the only solution offered by the mandarins in Brussels is more socialist rules and regulations.  That and unlimited printing of paper euros.

Our economy is disintegrating because Zero’s solution is the same as Brussels’.  The European disease is anti-capitalism.  It’s truly extraordinary how deeply embedded in Europe’s soul is the peasant/aristocrat hatred and contempt for making money, for creating wealth.  The peasant because he thinks he can’t as he’s not smart enough; the aristocrat because he didn’t earn his inherited wealth and despises those who do.

This disease of anti-capitalism is what infects the American Left and Zero in particular.  For America to elect a self-made centimillionaire businessman who is proud of his earned wealth and won’t apologize for it would be the most humiliating rejection of the Left’s sense of purpose and identity. 

For America to have a government that celebrates success in business and tells Euroweenies to shove their envy up their peasant/aristocrat noses would cause mass schizophrenia in Brussels.

For America to have a president who tells the truth to Palestinians – that they don’t want peace, and as such they will be treated like Kindergarteners until they learn to play nice with others – and tells the Moslem world that protecting speech that’s offensive to it trumps Moslems being offended, would cause Moslems to realize that America is the strong horse.  Moslems, Osama Bin Laden noted, will always follow the strong horse, not the weak one.

Will Romney prove to be the strong horse?  Maybe.  We don’t know.  What we do know is that he could be – and what we do know for sure is that Zero can’t be, for he is the weak horse.

The global unraveling we see is presently only a portent, a glimpse of what’s to come.  It will accelerate into something unimaginably bad if Zero wins.  A failed America has horrific consequences for the rest of the world.  A successful America, proud of its success and confident of its founding values, has immensely beneficial consequences for both peace and prosperity – globally.

Being where I am – a nuttier, more totalitarian place doesn’t exist on our planet today – gives you a perspective on what’s at stake on November 6 like nowhere else.  It hits you like a ton of bricks.  The stakes don’t get bigger than this, not in our lifetimes.  No hyperbole, this is for all the marbles.  It’s a soul-wrenching experience to realize this in full.  An out-of-country experience.

America – our America in any recognizable form – will live or die 46 days from now.  So it’s do or die, live free or die.  As John Wayne would say, "Saddle up!"  It’s time to ride.  Nobama 2012.