Dear People’s Republic, Or should I call you, China? I am writing to you on the eve of your 70th birthday. 70, what an age. “For a man to live to 70 has been rare since ancient times,” the poet Du Fu wrote in the eighth century. You have outlived many kings and countless men, and you have lasted longer than every other state that has espoused the hammer and sickle.
One of the worst aspects of the internet enabled 24/7 news cycle is the giant memory hole embedded within it. That is to say, if the latest information - David Stockman for Antiwar.com Original
July and August 1966, the first months of the ten-year Cultural Revolution, were the summer of what Andrew Walder, a sociologist at Stanford, calls “The Maoist Shrug.” Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife, told high school Red Guards, “We do not advocate beating people, but beating people is no big deal.” A few weeks later Mao himself heard a report about a mass meeting in Beijing at