A totally unscientific, non-empirical quantification of our safety
Last week, I got a text from my mother telling me to stock up food and water before the election. It was not what I expected to be told a week before the US election. Actually, my first thought was, "What are they saying about us on the Murdoch-owned telly in Australia?" Australia took its lockdown seriously, after all. When I spoke to my family about two months ago, they described empty stores, strict restrictions to two members of the same family going out to shop within a specific distance from home and only one person allowed into the supermarket. That sort of thing would send Americans into conniptions if it happened here. Riots would actually happen if this managed to last longer than a few weeks.
Comparatively speaking, an election doesn't step on quite the same freedom buttons. You see, out here, people like the choice to get sick if they want to. It's the choice, not the logic, that counts.
It later came out that my mother got all this from a video sent to her by an aunt. My mother didn't send me the video because it was in Cantonese and I wouldn't understand it anyway. She got that somewhat correct. I would understand about a third to half of it at best, and would be frustrated my ear for the language is progressively getting worse because this sounds like an excellent social science-y case study. Also gave me more advice about filling our tub with water and any buckets we had because someone might try to spike the water supply.
In strange parallel, I've spent the past couple of years watching several prongs of mainland China's propaganda machine as it tries ever more tone-deaf experiments in authoritarian dictatorship. There's the police state-ghetto they've built around the Uighurs (fascinating from a social science standpoint; genocidal from a human rights standpoint), the crackdown on Hong Kong (there is no sugar-coating this, it's a hostile takeover by an alien entity), the horrifying build-up of militarised islands in the South China Sea (based on an utterly preposterous "historical" claim that has no standing in reality) and perhaps the tentacle most relevant to the discourse at hand-the PRC's spin on COVID-19 being somehow a foreign invention and that the US is a failed state with a populace gone out of control.
Everyone I know has some opinion on the first part, but I take offence to the latter bit. The locals aren't out of control. Most of them are actually quite civilised. The odd sprinkling of libertarian armed militias are an unfortunate post-apocalyptic emanation of American culture. Also, the US is not in a post-apocalyptic state (again, opinions differ), the militiamen just take their role-playing very seriously. Now, the truly fascinating social science-y case studies are actually the people who show up at Trump's revival tent rallies. As someone who is fascinated by why people adhere to cults, the thrall and wonderment of participants follow a strangely familiar cadence.
Which brings me to the cult of personality being built, reinforced, but not always successfully around President Xi Jinping. He has all the powers and mandate the Orange One wishes he had but doesn't have because it's a totally different political system and habitat. This ties into the propaganda machine I have curiously read about on and off. It is entirely plausible, given all the variables we've seen already in play, that the PRC's propaganda arm would try to insert itself into the US Presidential Election to sow doubt about the stability of the state. They're clearly not the only government trying to influence the conversation. A video in Cantonese warning viewers about potential rioting after the election reeks of mainland Chinese interests. I am old enough to remember when emigrating from HK before 1997 was a big deal. The PRC has not shied away from trying to co-opt the Chinese diaspora in its intrigue but I think here we are looking at a more parochial concern. In the past month, some of the brave young people who demonstrated in Hong Kong's streets have made the news as either emigrants dissenting abroad or having failed to escape HK before it's too late. Currently, China is engaged in tit-for-tat battles with at least the US, UK, Canada and Australia-all popular emigration destinations for HK denizens.
It's one thing to convince a population in thrall-and the PRC has if nothing else done extremely well for itself to control the flow of information in and out, as well as reinforce absolute loyalty in its citizenry-but quite another to reach out to people who have the distance to grow a perspective. I'm sad, honestly, that my Chinese diaspora relatives are being caught up in these tentacles even if I'm not remotely surprised. I can't exactly talk a big game about Malaysia, as the control of information there shadows and aspires to what the PRC can achieve. I lived and grew up in that propaganda machine. Even a light touch from a big brother government is insidious as it makes you start conversations already suspicious the other side has an ulterior motive. The ulterior motive in this case is usually within, not without.
Short story: We're fine. The supermarket is full of goods and unhurried. People actually wear masks in SF and use hand sanitiser. I'm not rushing to sit down at a restaurant yet, but that's kind of happening. The news is the exploitation of gig delivery workers and their ridiculously rich overlords, as well as the casualties of our extremely saturated restaurant scene.
Comparatively speaking, an election doesn't step on quite the same freedom buttons. You see, out here, people like the choice to get sick if they want to. It's the choice, not the logic, that counts.
It later came out that my mother got all this from a video sent to her by an aunt. My mother didn't send me the video because it was in Cantonese and I wouldn't understand it anyway. She got that somewhat correct. I would understand about a third to half of it at best, and would be frustrated my ear for the language is progressively getting worse because this sounds like an excellent social science-y case study. Also gave me more advice about filling our tub with water and any buckets we had because someone might try to spike the water supply.
In strange parallel, I've spent the past couple of years watching several prongs of mainland China's propaganda machine as it tries ever more tone-deaf experiments in authoritarian dictatorship. There's the police state-ghetto they've built around the Uighurs (fascinating from a social science standpoint; genocidal from a human rights standpoint), the crackdown on Hong Kong (there is no sugar-coating this, it's a hostile takeover by an alien entity), the horrifying build-up of militarised islands in the South China Sea (based on an utterly preposterous "historical" claim that has no standing in reality) and perhaps the tentacle most relevant to the discourse at hand-the PRC's spin on COVID-19 being somehow a foreign invention and that the US is a failed state with a populace gone out of control.
Everyone I know has some opinion on the first part, but I take offence to the latter bit. The locals aren't out of control. Most of them are actually quite civilised. The odd sprinkling of libertarian armed militias are an unfortunate post-apocalyptic emanation of American culture. Also, the US is not in a post-apocalyptic state (again, opinions differ), the militiamen just take their role-playing very seriously. Now, the truly fascinating social science-y case studies are actually the people who show up at Trump's revival tent rallies. As someone who is fascinated by why people adhere to cults, the thrall and wonderment of participants follow a strangely familiar cadence.
Which brings me to the cult of personality being built, reinforced, but not always successfully around President Xi Jinping. He has all the powers and mandate the Orange One wishes he had but doesn't have because it's a totally different political system and habitat. This ties into the propaganda machine I have curiously read about on and off. It is entirely plausible, given all the variables we've seen already in play, that the PRC's propaganda arm would try to insert itself into the US Presidential Election to sow doubt about the stability of the state. They're clearly not the only government trying to influence the conversation. A video in Cantonese warning viewers about potential rioting after the election reeks of mainland Chinese interests. I am old enough to remember when emigrating from HK before 1997 was a big deal. The PRC has not shied away from trying to co-opt the Chinese diaspora in its intrigue but I think here we are looking at a more parochial concern. In the past month, some of the brave young people who demonstrated in Hong Kong's streets have made the news as either emigrants dissenting abroad or having failed to escape HK before it's too late. Currently, China is engaged in tit-for-tat battles with at least the US, UK, Canada and Australia-all popular emigration destinations for HK denizens.
It's one thing to convince a population in thrall-and the PRC has if nothing else done extremely well for itself to control the flow of information in and out, as well as reinforce absolute loyalty in its citizenry-but quite another to reach out to people who have the distance to grow a perspective. I'm sad, honestly, that my Chinese diaspora relatives are being caught up in these tentacles even if I'm not remotely surprised. I can't exactly talk a big game about Malaysia, as the control of information there shadows and aspires to what the PRC can achieve. I lived and grew up in that propaganda machine. Even a light touch from a big brother government is insidious as it makes you start conversations already suspicious the other side has an ulterior motive. The ulterior motive in this case is usually within, not without.
Short story: We're fine. The supermarket is full of goods and unhurried. People actually wear masks in SF and use hand sanitiser. I'm not rushing to sit down at a restaurant yet, but that's kind of happening. The news is the exploitation of gig delivery workers and their ridiculously rich overlords, as well as the casualties of our extremely saturated restaurant scene.