The self-serving, corrupt political class that has plundered America wants us to get worked up about China

From:
China – A Paper Tiger
Hu Jintao's visit showcases American cluelessness about China
(AntiWar.com) -- by Justin Raimondo --

The utter hypocrisy, economic ignorance, and general all around cluelessness of America’s political class – never very far from the surface — was on full display during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington this week.

There was Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Sinophobe, hectoring the Chinese leader over his country’s human rights record – when her own country openly practices torture, spies on its own citizens, and has murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in a series of wars of "liberation."

There was Paul Krugman, economist-in-chief of Bizarro World, explaining to us that Chinese subsidies which keep their exports affordable for US consumers are supposedly hurting us – when actually the opposite is the case.

And there were the neocons over the Weekly Standard, pointing to the "boundless" military ambitions of the People’s Liberation Army and the alleged threat from Beijing – this from a magazine whose editor has proclaimed that the goal of US foreign policy ought to be "global hegemony"!

Are these people deaf to their own absurd utterances? My guess is they just don’t care: after all, to whom are they answerable? Only their financial patrons, the various special interests that fund their careers, so making fools of themselves in sight of the whole world – the world outside the sealed cocoon of official Washington – is no big deal. The shameless – by definition – are immune to embarrassment.

The "Yellow Peril" is a convenient scapegoat for politicians and their partisan followers eager to divert popular anger toward a foreign – and non-white and non-black – scapegoat. Oldsters will recall another yellowish peril, Japan, which supposedly threatened to upend American economic supremacy by flooding the market with cheap goods – and we all know how that turned out.

Japan was supposed to be the wave of the Asiatic future, a future that never came – and the myth of China, the Sleeping Giant Awakened, is but the second act of a fundamentally false fear...MORE...LINK