One of my maxims is that the only way you create a nation or a tribe or a race is by fighting a war. It is not true that people "of one race" -- whatever that "social construction" means -- are naturally united whereas a multiracial society is naturally divisive.
"Nowt o' the sort!" as they say in The Secret Garden.
Now here is the Zman on Taki's saying that the Chinese are naturally united, because they are 90 percent Han.
The great chain of causality begins with biology, then culture, with institutions being culture-specific. Asian societies are biologically homogeneous. China proper is almost entirely Han. Their culture of conformity is mostly the result of being a unified people.
OK. So how come China keeps having its Time of Troubles in between dynasties? How come the Chinese willfully engaged in a civil war from 1921, when the Holy Roman Communist Party was founded, and 1949 when the son of a rich peasant, Mao Zedong, took power in Beijing.
And incidentally culturally appropriated the backdrop of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen, its Gate of Heavenly Peace. There are five gates, by the way, and only the emperor gets to go through the center one, peasant.
So the Chinese are all Han and therefore united. So why did Mao decide to do his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution? If the Chinese were all united and stuff? Why bother, old chap?
So here is my philosophy, again.
You create a people -- whether a tribe, a nation, a class, a labor union, by fighting and winning a war, because the experience of a war unites all the men that served and fought in the war. It's instinctive in men.
Women, on the other hand, do not unite in that way. But they do unite, as they did during COVID, by all being Good Little Girls and wearing masks and keeping social distance and crossing to the other side of the street when someone is walking their dog in the opposite direction. Let's say that women unite for a season in order to be safe.
But once the war is ended then normal politics resumes, and division appears again. Doesn't matter if it is feudal politics where the various barons and counts and dukes all conspire against each other and occasionally besiege each other's castles, or court politics as in the days of the absolute monarchs, or democratic politics where politicians divide the electorate with promises of more spending for the educated class and the underclass and lower taxes for the middle class, or neighborhood politics where the women all complain about each other with "I can't believe she said that."
Once the war is over, then the tribe begins to divide up again. Period.
So the reason why China is united and we can all talk about them being 90 percent Han is that normal politics has not resumed, what with the current single-party rule under President-for-life Xi Dingping.
But it will. I seem to recall that the southerners in China call the northerners wheat-eaters and the northerners call the southerners rice-eaters. I think that these are supposed to be insults, but not being Chinese, I wouldn't know. But, don't forget, there are plenty of dialects in China, from Mandarin to Cantonese. And I seem to recall from the delightful Crazy Rich Asians that the Chinese are as tribal as anyone. And snobbish? You betcha. But look at the Map of Chinese dialects: "China is a large and diverse country." Who knew?
No. No go. All tribes are fake tribes, gussied up to take men to war. And as I say, the tribe of the lower class is the ethnic group, the tribe of the middle class is the nation, the tribe of the educated class in the global educated class.
Notice that the preferred political division of our current ruling class, called "antiracism," posits a division of America between the "oppressed peoples, their allies, and white oppressors."
Notice how there are three lies in the Allyism manifesto.
Lie 1: The so-called "oppressed peoples" are in fact the lower class that is particularly privileged by the rulers with diversity and inclusion and welfare-state loot and plunder.
Lie 2: The so-called "allies" are in fact the ruling class -- oppressors by any other name -- that uses the notion of "oppressed peoples" as a political formula to justify its power.
Lie 3: The so-called "white oppressors" are just ordinary middle-class whites that don't have any particular political power with which to oppress people. They are people that the rulers can cancel in a New York minute as "racist" if they step out of line.
I think that my concept that all tribes are "fake tribes," gussied up in war, is a profound and liberating concept.
Because, you see, in my vision of the good life, if people naturally accept that different classes have different tribes, then the educated Gentry happily lives in its global community of high-minded educated priests all over the world. But the educated class benevolently allows the Commoners to live and wive and thrive in their nations, because in its wisdom it understands that the natural tribe of the middle class is the nation, and the poor dears will never grow out of it. The middle class benevolently allows the Subordinates to live in their ethnic enclaves, but encourages the Subordinates to come out of their ghettos and join the middle-class world of responsibility and trust whenever they are ready.
What a world that would be.
For now, we should start erecting the bleachers so we can watch the Chinese people quarrel among themselves once the Emperor Xi no longer rules a one-party state.
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