Yesterday and today, some of the Trump Administration’s and U.S. Congress’s most rabid China hawks are gathered at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to map out war plans against China. “War” is no euphemism. For this confab, sponsored by Liberty University’s Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty Center, China has become the enemy image, accused of fomenting a Mao Zedong-style “Cultural Revolution” in America’s cities, while deliberately spreading the coronavirus.
Among those peddling this dangerous rhetoric are madman geopolitician Steve Bannon, White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro, neocon “China expert” Michael Pillsbury, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-ARK), Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and several like-minded legislators. Sen. Blackburn reflected the tone of the discussion, charging in her remarks, reported by the Washington Examiner, that “the same Marxist philosophy used by the Chinese Communist Party is filling the streets of Portland, Chicago, and even a few blocks away from right where we are right now here in Washington, D.C.” Blackburn reportedly just issued a paper last week demanding a complete overhaul of U.S.-China relations.
Yesterday, speaker after speaker also blamed China for failing to stop the spread of the coronavirus at the beginning of this year and thus holding it responsible for the U.S.’s high unemployment, school closures and disruption to civic life—including violence exploding in many cities. Rep. Brian Babin of Texas added, “we’ve got just the beginnings of a cultural revolution going on here.” Fortunately, he said, the coronavirus had at least begun to alert the American people to the threat China represents. “If there’s anything that comes out of this pandemic, it’s the fact that we looked behind the curtain, and we have seen the barefaced adversary that wants to take us down and wants to supplant us as the No. 1 nation on the face of this Earth,” he said.
