I would guess that about every Whitaker Online reader
has seen every episode of the television series
"Connections." It is the sort of thing we would
enjoy.
Last week, I talked about how everybody always
has to tell you, again and again and again, that
the Chinese invented paper, gunpowder, and printing
before it appeared in the West. I also pointed out
that the population of China has consistently, for
millennia, been equal to or greater than the total
white population of the earth, so the idea that
at one time or another they came up with things
does not shock me out of my seat.
In other words, this constant parroting of a very
limited list of Chinese inventions, which is considered
the height of anti-racism here, could not be more
patronizing to what anti-racists clearly consider
to be the poor little yellow people.
But I believe that "Connections" had the most patronizing
moment for the poor little yellow people that I
have ever seen -- and that's saying a LOT.
James Burke had just breathlessly informed us,
for the hundredth time I'd heard it that year, that
the Chinese invented printing before the West did.
He then got that constipated look on his face,
the look of Sincerity and Seriousness all Brits
get when they are about to intone something from
the Gospel of Political Correctness.
Burke then went into the fact that, while China
came up with a lot of stuff, what happened next
was the very opposite of "Connections." In the East,
things got invented and then died out. In China,
printing was invented and forgotten. In the West
it made revolution after revolution. In China, gunpowder
was, so to speak, a flash in the pan, but again
it uprooted the old order in Europe. The mechanical
clock was invented in China long before it appeared
in the West, but it disappeared, too.
I was astonished he brought this up, as it is the
basis of the assumption, by both racists and anti-racists
in the West, of Oriental inferiority.
So Burke, the expert on "Connections" which makes
the West so revolutionary, got that Politically
Correct constipated look on his face and explained
the entire history of the Far East from a PC point
of view.
Burke took an old Chinese stamp, which represented
-- guess what? -- the invention of printing by the
Chinese before the West had it. By the way, did
you know the Chinese had printing before we did?
Anyway, Burke took this stamp which showed the
Chinese invention of printing, and stamped a single
word, "Tao."
He explained that the only reason the entire Orient
had stagnated, including Korea, Japan, Mongolia
and all the rest, was because one Chinese philosopher
had written one book. This book, Burke announced
with that constipated frown, told Chinese that they
must forever follow Nature. Tao means "the way,"
Burke explained, and that one book totally got rid
of the whole idea of connections in the East and
caused the stagnation of everybody who has epicanthric
eyefolds and lives in Asia.
As far as I can tell, I am the only person who
was completely shocked by the fact that a grown
man would say that.
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