One of the most fascinating aspects of President Trump’s tariff attack on China has been the acceptance among so many Americans that China is now our official enemy or, if you prefer more benign imperialist terms, our “opponent,” “adversary,” “rival,” or “competitor.”
After all, wasn’t it just recently that our official enemy was Russia? Even when Trump was president the first time and through the Biden administration, the standard mindset of the American people was that it was Russia and Vladimir Putin who were coming to get us. The Russians were influencing the way Americans voted. They were conquering Ukraine on their way to worldwide conquest. “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!” It all brought to mind the Cold War decades when the Reds, including the Russian Reds, were our official enemy and coming to get us.
After the 9/11 attacks, our official enemy became the “terrorists” or the Muslims. “The terrorists are coming!” replaced “The Russians are coming!” That’s what generated the perpetual “war on terrorism,” the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, USA Patriot Act, the illegal telecom surveillance scandal, the illegal mass surveillance schemes, the TSA, official state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, and all the rest of the anti-terrorism measures to keep us “safe.”
Heck, I remember when Saddam Hussein was our official enemy. For eleven years, I had to hear every day, “Saddam! Saddam! Saddam!” Many American was convinced that Saddam was going to unleash mushroom clouds across America.
But today under Trump, China has been named as the new official bugaboo. And the mindsets of many Americans, especially Trumpsters, have seamlessly and effortlessly now replaced Russia with China as America’s newest official enemy. That helps these people feel okay about the economic devastation that Trump’s tariffs will inflict on the Chinese people. The idea is that we don’t need to care about them because they are the new big, bad enemy of the United States.
Permit me to issue a personal public declaration: While China might well be the new official enemy of Trump and his Trumpsters, along with the State Department and the U.S. national-security establishment, China is not my enemy.
In fact, I feel pretty much the way Mohammad Ali felt when he declared, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me nigger.”
Oh boy, did that make U.S. officials angry. Not only was it considered “treason” for an American to not accept an U.S.-designated official enemy as his enemy, the fact that it was a black man saying this compounded the problem a hundred-fold. They went after Ali with a vengeance, trying everything they could to incarcerate him and destroy his boxing career.
Oh yes, I fully realize that China is governed by a communist regime. As a libertarian, I dislike communism immensely. But that still doesn’t make China my enemy. I’m with President John F. Kennedy, who declared in his Peace Speech at American University in June 1963 that Americans and communist nations could exist in mutual harmony despite their ideological differences. Of course, it was that mindset that got him killed.
Moreover, it’s worth noting that the officials in the Chinese Communist Party are as unlikely to be adversely impacted by Trump’s tariffs as Trump will be by China’s retaliatory tariffs. The rich and the political elites don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to tariffs and trade wars. It’s the regular, ordinary citizens of both countries who will pay the price of the tariffs. It is regular, ordinary Chinese people who will be impoverished and bankrupted. I feel very bad for those people — as bad as I feel for the regular, ordinary Americans who will be impoverished and bankrupted by Trump’s tariffs.
Why do Americans so readily adopt the new official enemies that are declared by U.S officials? That’s where the success of America’s public (i.e., government) school systems comes into play. For twelve long years, the minds of American children are shaped and molded by an environment of conformity, regimentation, obedience, and fear. By the time they graduate high school, most Americans have no conception of what was done to them through the power of state indoctrination. Thus, when a new official enemy is decreed, they don’t think it is strange that their mind immediately reshapes and conforms by accepting the new official enemy as their enemy as well. This mental phenomenon brings to mind the constant array of shifting enemies in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Like the citizens in Orwell’s fictional nation of Oceania, many Americans are also scared to death to question or challenge what the Trump administration is doing for fear of what it might to do them.
Color me treasonous, but the fact is that I ain’t got no quarrel with them Chinese. They’ve never done anything bad to me. I wish I could say the same thing about the U.S. government. It has done lots of bad things to me, including destroying my freedom and privacy with its income tax, IRS, welfare state, monetary debasement, mass secret surveillance, conscription, out-of-control federal spending and debt, managed/regulated economy, drug war, national-security state, denial of due process of law, denial of trial by jury, foreign invasions and occupations, attacks on freedom of speech, tariffs, trade wars, sanctions, embargoes, travel restrictions, immigration police state, and much, much more. In fact, if truth be told, the U.S. government has proven itself to be the real enemy of American liberty and privacy.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.
