An Artist’s Goodbye

I have been writing for more than a year after being fired by KAZN for booking a local Republican House candidate. So far, I have less than 500 Facebook subscribers and less than 200 blog readers, not even enough to get myself in trouble if I had done this inside the Great Firewall of China. Since there were clusters of clicks from places like Russia (more than clicks from any other country including the U.S.), I don’t even know how many of those clicks represent real readers.

Thirty years ago, when I was really a kid, I could get my writings published easier. In today’s world, writer belongs to an endangered species, as people use accident and force to make decisions rather than reflection and choice (I don’t know how many people readily know where this is from). Those who do not read are used by politicians and clearly the victims (just not the way they think). Every time I read about the protests, either Occupy Wall Street or campus violence against certain speakers, I just wonder how long it would take for a Hitler to turn these angry young people into Sturmabteilung (or storm troopers).

In this environment, the poor naturally find it increasingly difficult to move up. They are trapped in this massive reactionary machinery including K-12/college and government, as they are turned into believers of equal income, rather than equal opportunity, and government-dominated welfare, vis-à-vis private charity. They refuse to ask the question why people would invest years and years of hard work into developing skills when there is no prospect of earning more, and refuse to learn about how the welfare system has broken and is breaking up their families (i.e., the government-mutilated economic force drives the poor and young women into having children out of wedlock).

Technologies have created such massive noise that people are limiting their intake of ideas to those that could be expressed with 140 characters or less, and turning their heads away from anything that requires further deliberation. Many of today’s kids cannot live without social media, from which they read junks sent by other like-minded kids.

They refuse to take on hard topics because they are taught that study should be fun and easy, and big-government (starting with the government education monopoly) should take care of everything for them. For all the writing I did for more than a year, I don’t think that I have changed one mind.

Besides the reading side, the publishing side has the same problem. For instance, The Wall Street Journal, which is by no means leftist and serves only the rich and evil, published an article about the game playing of China and Russia at UN against the American measures on North Korea, but its editors refused to publish anything to explain the more fundamental question why China hasn’t helped and won’t help America if Trump stays on the current path. As Guo Wengui put it in his National Press Club news conference, the probability of the Chinese cooperation is zero. (Yet, nobody asked why.)

On China, the accusation of the arrogance of the white elite has been around for a long time. In private sector, I have not seen any discrimination, because discriminating talent is the same as discriminating the money in everyone’s pocket. Even fools in the market would not do that. However, government with elite is always a different story. After studying this issue for a month, I have to agree. The blacks could write about the blacks, and the Arabs about the Arabs. But on China, you have to become a white elite to write about it. The trouble is: the white elite does not really understand China and misleads the American policy toward China and Asia at large to the point that nobody could identify the issues. (It reminded me that Reagan was advised by Anna Chennault, nee Chen Xiangmei, a Chinese with extensive experience in China. I don’t even know whether there is anyone advising Trump on China these days.)

Before Trump was elected, I had said that it would take another 20 years for this generation to be flushed out and set an example of the big government absurdities to make it possible for the next generation to elect another Ronald Reagan. Trump offered some hope although he got elected with his populist run (by taking advantage of the anger of the so-called blue collar white people). In the White House, although his policies are in the right direction, e.g., fixing the Obamacare which is clearly heading into fiscal disaster, and reducing tax although it is not clear where he is going to cut the spending (cutting tax without cutting government spending could not be claimed as stimulating the economy), it is not clear how he could push it through the Republican Congress.

It was political conviction and the ability to explain it to the people that allowed Ronald Reagan to push his tax cut through the Democratic House and Senate. My friend Jay Keyworth once told me a story. In a cabinet meeting, everyone, led by Jim Baker, Reagan’s chief of staff, tried to convince Reagan that he could not push his tax cut through the Democratic Congress. Reagan simply responded: Yes, I can, because I know that the American people want it. None of you is an American people. (Reagan meant that they were all elite.) Trump could not push through an obviously reasonable Obamacare reform through Congress because he was not sure whether he wanted to govern or stay a populist. Other populists, including jokers like John McCain and Rand Paul, came out to wreck his reform and allowed Obamacare to remain in force unaltered. Obviously, to them, politicking is more important than the wellbeing of the country.

Although unspeakable, today’s white elite on China also live in the general intellectual environment where intellectuals suffer fundamental confusion together with unbearable yet unavoidable boredom, resulted from their exhausted endeavors in the intellectual cul-de-sac. Like the Romans, they are so suffocated by boredom that they need with urgency some disruption, any disruption. At the same time, to them, they want to crush any Voltaire who dares to speak freely. But ultimately, I think, to their disappointment, nobody could bury today’s democratic civilization by simply brainwashing or out-breeding. They could not repeat the feast, not in this 20-year window. I have not used the racial phrase “western” civilization, which sounds at least to my ears like “white” civilization, because of the development of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and the like. In short, today’s white elite want China or Islam to overpower America (both as political powers).

If my 20-year assessment is correct, I am too old to contribute to the turn. Although a believer of the butterfly effect, as the physics of it is obvious, I have to admit that I subscribe to a higher philosophy, i.e., it is annoying for anyone to try to teach someone who do not wish to learn. The only proper way for these people to learn is through the natural punishment caused by their mistakes, for it is wrong to teach the young people that they need to hunker down to learn a skill vis-à-vis only do things that are easy and fun. The only proper way to teach them that lesson is to let the economic force do it. If Trump actually put up the tariff as he has promised to appease his base, the only proper way is to let the entire U.S. economy go down, really sending the income of the blue-collar white people to the gutters, for that is the only way for them to recognize that Trump, just like Obama, is only using them for vote. They don’t care about their future.

Only then, we shall see a Reagan who speak freely of his beliefs; only then, we shall see faithful Democrats voting for Reagan. At one point, I had thought that the problem is that people at certain places were not alerted to the thought. Guo Wengui’s National Press Club event proved that they don’t want to learn, at least not from a Chinese. It is clear that the arrogance of the white elite, supported by what the elite media call the lost generation, rule America these days. It is economics’ job, not writers’, to show them that they are wrong, because however wrong is the policy toward North Korea and whatever disaster it causes, even with a nuclear disaster, it is not enough to make these white elite to wipe that arrogance off of their faces.

For me, I have always liked art, which, like law, does not need mass market. With today’s technologies, middlemen are also unnecessary. In law, a lawyer only needs a few clients who believe in justice alike. For instance, I would never become Guo Wengui’s lawyer, because I am never 100% confident in any case, for I don’t know how it is possible. The good thing is that a lawyer can only handle so many cases to remain sane. In art, an artist only needs a few clients who believe in beauty alike, because an artist’s output is limited.

After so many experiences in life, I probably could say that I can make money in any field, because all businesses are ultimately the same, i.e., an intellectual pursuit of quality, sufficient to beat the competitors in cost-effectiveness ratio (mind you, not cost alone). However, general business is always a number game, unlike the pursuit of law with real cases, or art driven by individual creativity. Looking back, out of all of my endeavors, I have always enjoyed that element not related to the numbers. (Here, “intellectual” is used in its original meaning, not how the elite use the word.)

John Ruskin said, “Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts—the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last.” For a long time, I have been beefing up my basic drawing and painting skills, as well as that of working with wood and other objects. Sooner or later, if I ever want to give my art a chance, I have to devote some time to it to push it into the creative realm.

For the limited spare time that I have, it is not possible for me to write and do art at the same time. If I shut down public writing, which has few readers, I can devote enough attention to my artistic undertaking. There is another reason for working on something like writing or art. Alan Greenspan uses calculus exercises to keep his mind sharp, but I have done so much math in my life that those calculus exercise problems are stale for me. In the words of a lawyer friend, I have spent too many years working on equations that go from one end of the wall to the other, I need something different. For old age, art is less toiling yet more mind-stimulating, compared to either math or writing.

Even if nothing comes to it, being an outcast artist is infinitely more attractive to me than being a grumpy old outcast writer. At least, there is poetry attached to an outcast artist. Additionally, many outcast artists had their works recognized later, but few writers managed to do so.

To my handful of faithful readers, please pay attention to the future collection opportunities of my art.

Let others think about politics and economy. I am going to work on the timeless.

By Pujie Zheng

Pujie Zheng is an attorney in Los Angeles.

First published on October 14, 2017

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