Opinion | The US Congress is an unhinged, dangerous bubble
By Tom Fowdy
It has been no secret that following the return of the US Congress to business following the summer holidays, there had been a "China week" scheduled. Led by fanatical Republican leader, Mike Johnson, now a self-proclaimed "Reagan Republican", an avalanche of anti-China bills had been firmly lined up for voting. By the time I woke up on Tuesday morning, by the evening of Monday in the US at least six of those bills had already passed, deliberately fighting shots at all angles of US-China economic cooperation, and moreover being cheerled by the absolutely deranged "Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party", a McCarthyist setup that has absolutely no serious knowledge or understanding of anything pertaining to China, only seeking to spread fear, conflict and hate.
The variety of bills passed include a new attempt to indiscriminately ban all DJI drones in the US as a "national security threat" (there is no evidence of this whatsoever), a process to close down Hong Kong's Economic and Trade Offices in the US, a suspending of biological cooperation between Federal government agencies and Chinese counterparts (which is low hanging fruit for lab leak conspiracy theorists), renewed attacks on Chinese made electric batteries, a congressional veto over any new US-China science and technology agreements (interpret that as a no), new sanctions frameworks aimed at China's "Military-Industrial complex" and one to be put in place in the event of a Taiwan contingency, and then an "Anti-malign influence fund" for the US State Department.
For me, I can only stress in reaction to this that I despise the hotbed of sheer ignorance, opportunism, abrasiveness, and vulgarity that constitutes the Congress of the United States which is little more than an unhinged, dangerous bubble that has absolutely no regard for anything, or anyone in this world, that includes the people of America itself, who even despite being deceived by the diatribe of anti-China propaganda, must be sick and tired of its callous ways. I say it, and I mean it, that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, about this body that has any kind of redeeming qualities whatsoever, and its institutional design seems to turn its members into ravenous wolves who are only interested in pushing deranged talking points.
When I look at American politics as a whole, I only see a dirty game. Do not pretend that it is Donald Trump who has "robbed" it of integrity, because that is a false rendition that assumed it once had it in the first place, it does not. This has created the absurdist argument or assumption in elite discourse that individuals such as Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are somehow upstanding moral citizens and that Trump somehow disgraces their "honorable" names. It is funny how misleading that can be, because in reality, the US political arena, especially Congress, is defined by a culture of mass hysteria that dramatizes and exaggerates effectively everything, trading insults, smears, personal attacks and degrading of character on a scale unparalleled to the rest of the world. American politics after all is somewhere where even a run-of-the-mill centrist politician like Kamala Harris is somehow a "Communist."
While I also dislike the often-nauseous self-righteousness and posturing manifest in British politics, the fundamental point is that it is a lot more dignified and respectful, but the US game has none of this, nor is everything an extremity. I'd like to think that in spite of everything, we British are quite pragmatic. However, the sad truth is that when the United States decides it has an "enemy", Washington D.C whips itself up into a frenzy and promulgates mass hysteria from all angles, and there is simply nothing you can do to stop it. That is because even beyond the absolutely toxic nature of inter-party politics, U.S foreign policy is an unchallengeable monolith that largely exists beyond public debate and thus it is "bipartisan", hence Republicans and Democrats are very much the same, thus every single China-focused vote passes, largely without objection.
This after all, is the same US House of Representatives who invited Benjamin Netanyahu to speak and gave him a standing ovation just weeks after he was recommended for an arrest warrant by the international criminal court, having killed tens of thousands amidst uncritical US backing. Trust me, the sheer callousness of America's congress, and the US political machine at large, knows no boundaries. It is a gravely immoral, cynical, unpleasant and vehemently dishonest institution that does not advocate any of the values that the country professes to promote.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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