Fareed Zakaria is a CNN serial plagiarizer. (Read “Fareed Zakaria Plagiarizer.”) Like another CNN offender, online onanist Jeffrey Toobin, Zakaria is always forgiven and brought back from literary purgatory, to inflict mediocrity and derivative insights on viewers who’re none the wiser.

The neoliberal Zakaria recently broadcasted a “television special, China’s Iron Fist.” He joined neoconservatives in calling China “The most serious competition the United States has ever faced. The Chinese are doing AI, biotech, hi-speed rail – the industries of the future.”

I watched the broadcast. It was the simplistic, angels-and-demons story-line, that proceeds from the premise that America is an oasis of freedom and happiness, whereas in China, which has become quite the middle-class, materialistic, consumerist society, all yearn to breathe free … in America, naturally.

Well, the Han Chinese, who constitute 94% of China, rather like their nationalistic, monolithic  (at least compared to the US) country.

What I most hate about the Chinese culture is its contempt and abuse of the natural world, critters included. But I couldn’t be bothered with the American foreign-policy elite’s sinophobia, which seems to be a distraction from the fact that the Chinese ruling class generally acts in the national interest; whereas American ruling elites act in ways so antagonistic to the people’s welfare as to constitute treason.

In any event, China, warned Zakaria, is becoming less western. The West being the best, such a trend is condemned. Well, the always low-key observations of The Economist make more sense:

“China’s leaders still want investment and technology from the West, but they think it is in decadent decline and are decoupling from Western norms and ideas.”

They have a point, no?

* Image courtesy The Economist

American conservatives believe they live in a country whose general sensibility is far more conservative than that of the rest of the world. As a naturalized American, I persist in telling my friends they are wrong. America is a most radical, revolutionary, Jacobin-flavored place. The Yankees have won out.

Not in dispute is that Radical America failed the Libyan state (read “Libya, A War of The Womb“)!  Failed Libya, as in supervised the removal of its leader and the ensconcing of forces of … you know the rest. Democracy.

Qaddafi kept migrants away from Europe’s shores. He, in fact, predicted that Europe’s demise would follow closely on his. (Read my “The Curse Of Col. Gadhafi“.)

European leadership has better, more conservative, instincts than America’s. The EU had adopted a ruthless system to repel migrants floating across the Mediterranean. They turn them over to “efficient and brutal” Libyan militia, euphemized as the  Libyan Coast Guard. The End.

Now that the EU must collaborate with tough Libyan militia that rose after Gadhafi’s removal, to keep migrants away—US journos and pols are furious, retaliating big time. The confluence of American interests want to pry European borders wide-open. Trust me: Most of the American Deep State and phenotypical State at the pentagon (even Republicans) are firmly behind the radicals.

READ: “Europe’s border agency under fire for aiding Libya’s brutal migrant detentions
The E.U. pays for almost every aspect of Libya’s often lethal migrant detention system, an investigation found, including the boats that fire on migrant rafts.”

There goes European immigration enforcement, courtesy of the USA.

NEW ON HARD TRUTH: In “With Friends Like Gen. Mark Benedict Milley, America Doesn’t Need Enemies,” David Vance and myself marvel at the institutional tolerance in the United States—among spineless Republicans, especially—for Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

In the dying days of the Trump presidency, Milley is alleged to have contacted the Chinese to promise them he’d give them plenty notice if the United States were to attack them. Azimuths and all, presumably.

Finally, pundits are using the “T” word; pundits, but not Republicans on Capitol Hill.

WATCH:

OR, LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE TO THE HARD TRUTH PODCAST:

Sure enough—and this is so very curious—Fox News has shelved the Milley breaking-news story, on its website and in live reporting. As David and I were had predicted, the GOP and its TV appendage would back-down.

NEW COLUMN, “No, Lara Logan, Only Simpletons Think Afghanistan Is Simple,” is currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Townhall.com, CNSNews and American Greatness.

And excerpt:

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson appears in thrall to Lara Logan’s political observations—to her “philosophical” meditations, too. Alas, Logan is no Roger Scruton.

You might have heard Logan claim, recently and repetitively, that everything in the world is simple. “Everything is simple,” she keeps intoning in her appearances on Fox News.

Applied to the fiasco in Afghanistan, Logan’s Theory of Simple is that, considering that America is omnipotent, whatever occurs under its watch is always and everywhere planned and preventable.

Ridiculous and wrong, yet Tucker, whom we all love to bits, giggles in delight.

“They want you to believe Afghanistan is complicated,” lectured Logan. “Because if you complicate it, it is a tactic in information warfare called ‘ambiguity increasing.’”

“So now we’re talking about all the corruption and this and that,” she further vaporized. “But at its heart, every single thing in the world… always comes down to one or two things …”

Logan likely recently discovered Occam’s Razor and is promiscuously applying this principle to anything and everything, with little evidence or geopolitical and historic understanding in support of her Theory of Simple.

Occam’s Razor posits that, “the simplest explanation is preferable to one that is more complex,” provided “simple” is “based on as much evidence as possible.”

A nifty principle—and certainly not a philosophy—Occam’s Razor was not meant to apply to everything under the sun.

Misapplied by Logan, why? Primarily because Logan’s explanation for America’s defeat in Afghanistan—that the United States threw the game—is hardly the simplest explanation, despite her assertion to the contrary.

The simplest explanation to the US defeat in Afghanistan, based on as much information as is possible to gather, is that, wait for this: America was defeated fair and square. As this columnist had argued, the US was outsmarted and outmaneuvered, in a mission impossible in the first place. …

… READ ON. NEW COLUMN, “No, Lara Logan, Only Simpletons Think Afghanistan Is Simple,” is currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Townhall.com, CNSNews and American Greatness.

UPDATED (9/28): Afghans have hereditary disorders due to marriage between relatives.

Good genetic stock, @Steve_Sailer: In #Afghanistan, prevalence of cousin marriages is about 46.2%… Hereditary disorders might be one of the fundamental causes of the high mortality. #FoxNews celebs tripping over one another to bring Afghanistan here.?https://t.co/eenEWmfm92

— ILANA Mercer (@IlanaMercer) September 1, 2021