Yesterday I read an op-ed in the New York Times that was so unhinged and disgraceful that I won’t even link to it. I’m sure you can find it if you care to.
The thesis of the op-ed was that China’s communist revolution, now roughly 70 years old, had given Chinese women hope.
Presumably, the author didn’t mean the thousands of women who died during the Long March or the tens of millions of women who were murdered during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Did she mean the tens or even hundreds of millions of women who were subjected to forced abortions under the One Child Policy? Or the hundreds of millions of predominantly girls who were aborted?
Perhaps she meant the women who have died, locked into their factories, when the factories caught fire? Or the women whose fathers, sons, and husbands have been killed or imprisoned by the regime over the period of the last 70 years?
This is a definition of “hope” I find difficult to recognize.
What has given Chinese women hope, the ability to “dream big”, is the abandonment of the principles of the revolution including China’s 30 years of autarky, something that persisted until Mao Zedong’s death. There would be even more hope if the Chinese Communist Party were to loosen the reins it continues to hold but I’m afraid that’s too much to hope for.
Well you know, Hitler may have had a few peccadillos, but think about how many Jews he spared from the scourge of Type II diabetes.
The triumph of ideology at the paper of record.
Not many people know it but he was a terrific dancer.
Words failed me when I saw the column.