wot, fisticuffs?

As if to vindicate my recent mention of legislative violence, there was a little fracas in the government today about the in-power-party’s proposed budget of around $18 billion for American weapons. I haven’t been following this case; the most extensive explanation I’ve heard was from a couple of protesters who were handing out leaflets across the street from my house (okay, I admit there are benefits to living near major landmarks). “Extensive” unfortunately does not mean “coherent”—the people who were talking to me seemed dissatisfied with basically every aspect of the current government, and having started talking about how the ruling party was ripping them off and lying to them on one issue would then immediately think of another issue about which this was also true and start ranting about that. I don’t know if this sounds familiar. I can sympathize with the position—“incoherent” doesn’t necessarily mean “wrong”—but find it difficult to retell. So aside from mentioning that these people were convinced that the unreasonably high price tag was a sign that various middlepeople were taking a scoop for themselves, I will look at one of the leaflets they gave me.

“Taiwan stands on the front line of the Pacific for [the benefit of] America and Japan. We ought to turn to America and ask for protection money…weapons should be offered free of charge. Not to mention that internationally, maintaining the status quo is the dominant trend—does Taiwan just want nuclei (weapons), and not want pants (people’s livelihood)?”

Nuclei and pants are a pun in Taiwanese (I’m not sure what the tones are in Taiwanese but I’m pretty sure both of these are kho-ah; in Mandarin they are hezi and kuzi, and different tones). One of the things that the protesters were upset about was that all this money was going to pay America—for outdated weapons, they claimed—when the cost of education and health care and everything else in Taiwan was rising. “Maintaining the status quo” means that Taiwan shouldn’t make any moves toward formal independence, and buying weapons to protect against an attack from mainland China suggests that someone may be considering giving mainland China a reason to attack. These are all old standards. What I really liked about this flyer was the idea that Taiwan is on the front line for the US and Japan. I have to say I am kicking myself for not asking the guys I was talking to what they thought Taiwan was on the front line of, given that the Cold War ended several years ago and the US hasn’t had any formal adventures in east Asia for quite a while now. Are we still containing Communism?

I think they would have had an interesting response—one of them at some point well into the conversation started yelling at me to go home and tell Americans that we can’t just go blundering all over the world invading people left and right, and that we have to get rid of our current president, and that everyone is starting to hate us and we are generally behaving very badly and it’s going to come back and bite us in the ass. He made me promise to convey this message to the people of the United States, so hear ye hear ye. This was more anti-American sentiment than I have heard in the entire time I’ve been here put together, so I was pretty impressed. It’ll be interesting to see if he is a fluke or a weathervane. This is by far the most pro-American place I’ve ever been to (including America), so it would really say something about America’s standing in the world if we managed to make even the people here start hating us.