I am doing my best to buy stuff not made in China. US made is nice (the Losmandy mount; the Televue TV-85 I just bought); but countries that are either on our side (Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Australia) or no threat to us (my last dress shirt purchase was Ethiopian made).
Some things seem to be hard to buy from companies not in enemy nations. At the moment I am searching for a 2" eyepiece projection adapter; here is an example that I am sure is PRC. There will be a premium price; I can afford it.
Or do I need to find a machinist to make something like this and encourage him to try and sell them? The parts are a bit beyond my skill level. There is an outer tube 2.00" ID threaded at one end M48x0.75 female; a thumb screw (ideally compressing a brass compression ring to hold the eyepiece in place). and an inner tube 2.00" OD that slides into the eyepiece focuser. The whole assembly needs to be anodized matte black. The threading is the area that I cannot do.
I just cannot believe that there is not someone in Poland or Czechia who cannot make these. I am sure that they would sell for $100 to people who do not want to buy Chinese.
As I was tossing and turning last night, I realized that I can make every part but the M48x0.75 internal thread. I can probably find a machinist to do that last part. Cutting those threads, then ending it all out for black anodizing might not be too expensive if I make 10 of them. I might even find buyers for the other 9.
I was a Reagan voter. I served in the military, both in REMF and pointy-end-of-the-stick capacities. I used to be politically where you are today (pro-immigration, anyone can be an American, we're the greatest for force for good in the world, etc).
ReplyDeleteToday I have very different beliefs. I think we spread more evil than any other country. E.g., the insane pressure our foreign policy establishment imposes on other governments not just to normalize, but to celebrate LGBTQ. Another example: The Obama administration's encouragement, via Victoria Nuland, of the coup in Ukraine against a government that we and the UN agreed was lawfully elected. Hillary Clinton's "we came, we saw, he died" murder-by-proxy of Qaddafi (no great man, but infinitely better than what replaced him) is another black mark.
China isn't our enemy. American politicians (GOP and Dem) and corporations that exported critical manufacturing capacity to China are our enemies. The ruling class that imports a new electorate to displace more conservative, pre-1965 Immigration Act citizens is the enemy. Our rulers are essentially hostile looters.
Russia isn't our enemy. Establishment pols like Biden and Romney who got children and staffers placed on corporate boards in Ukraine as payment for approving the coup are the enemy. If we get into a war over Ukraine's borders, we'll be the bad guys because we provoked the conflict. And we provoked for the worst reasons: The center-left foreign policy establishment hates the remnants of Orthodox Christianity and social conservatism in Russia, and they want to profit themselves and their families by destablizing a region that cocerns Russia even more directly than Central America concerns us. (PS: Between us and Russia, who do you think is closer to being on the right side in Syria?)
You are mentally living in a world that looks like 1981. That world doesn't exist anymore. Please update your model of America so that it reflects what our country is *today*.
I support legal immigration that allows the best and most skilled to come here. China benefitted from a well-intentioned but ultimately failed idea: capitalism will free their politics. Russia is our enemy because they are fundamentally seeking expansion of power like China. This is a historic trend for both nations.
ReplyDeleteI support legal immigration that allows the best and most skilled to come here.
ReplyDeleteSomeone with a sense of civic duty towards the American republic should acknowledge that "best" is contextual, and necessarily includes not just the ability, but the active desire to adopt and preserve traditional American values. Asians, for example, may be highly functional in their own native countries, but they reject your vision of America (63% voted for Biden).
If your plan is to invite the brightest and best educated without analyzing how assimilation actually works in practice, then you're whistling past the graveyard.
China benefitted from a well-intentioned but ultimately failed idea: capitalism will free their politics.
American mega-corporations do not care even a little how free China is or isn't. Examples: Google sharing AI research with the Chinese government, but not the US government; the NBA silencing all player/owner criticism of China while supporting BLM and other anti-American organizations here at home.
Russia is our enemy because they are fundamentally seeking expansion of power like China. This is a historic trend for both nations.
"China historically seeks expansion" seems bizarrely mistaken to me. No idea what you're talking about, but maybe I misunderstand their history.
You have a better argument with Russia, but it has never been as expansionist as the British Empire and its American offspring. You do remember that we promised post-Soviet Russia that we wouldn't expand NATO to the Russian border? We helped depose a neighboring, lawfully elected, pro-Russian government. When did they do anything like that in our hemisphere? We're the expansionsists right now, not them.
Asians voted for Biden slightly more than who? White Americans?
DeleteAsians voted for Biden over Trump 63% to 31%. That is a crushing 2:1 rejection of our values. (The overall margin, including fraudulent "votes," was 51% to 47%.)
DeleteAccording to this analysis, Trump lost the majority of every non-white demographic in every state in 2016. Stop handwaving that off based on the hazy assumption that we'll just work it out some day in the indefinite future.
Your overriding desire to gamble away America's future on the dream of a color-blind, non-tribal republic is suicidal. Not suicidal for you, but for your descendants. I think I understand you because I used to believe as you do, but I adjusted my beliefs to accord with decades of political observation that taught me human beings are more innately tribal than I'd hoped.
The British Empire, the Russian Empire and the Chinese Empire are all historic entities. As close as America ever had to an empire was the Philippines. U.S. corporations had no grand plan for China but making money. The foreign policy elites had a grand but failed strategy.
ReplyDeleteThe Soviet Union: Cuba, and through Cuba, Nicaragua, attempts in Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico.
China: much of the western population of non-Han Chinese; Tibet.
The British Empire, the Russian Empire and the Chinese Empire are all historic entities. As close as America ever had to an empire was the Philippines.
DeleteThe American empire today topples governments through astroturfed "color revolutions." Revolver, which you apparently read a fair amount, has published and linked to many stories that explore the phenomenon in depth. We rule our empire through proxies.
The Soviet Union: Cuba, and through Cuba, Nicaragua, attempts in Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico.
I credit you with arguing in good faith, but it's astonishingly weak to equate Bolshevik and Maoist ideological states with "Russia and China's historical trend." Solzhenitsyn once made an observation something like, "the communists who conquered and ruled Russia often tended in early days not to be actual Russians," which is accurate afaik. Will try to find the exact quote.
Reagan and other conservatives always said we regarded the Russian people as friends, but their communist rulers as adversaries. Here you are today rejecting that conservative view and arguing essentially that Russians are America's eternal enemies.
It's not my place to demand answers to questions, but you really should address how provocative it is for us to help overthrow Ukraine's elected government and then move to add them to NATO, contrary to our pledge. Knowing the Americans who pushed this (Obama, Hillary Clinton, center-left State bureaucrats), how can you believe it's innocent? It's strange that you can imagine the same people who organized a stolen election here would care at all about real democracy abroad.
U.S. corporations had no grand plan for China but making money. The foreign policy elites had a grand but failed strategy.
DeleteLet me give you a glimpse of our foreign policy elites. You can decide for yourself how representative it might be.
I had a high school friend whose dad was a "senior" analyst somewhere near top of CIA's org chart. The analysis he was most proud of, the paper that made his name, was an argument that Mao was awesome and China was lucky to have been ruled by him
Another guy I know personally, same employer as above, worked directly to arm Syrian rebels against Assad. His view of American conflict with Russia and China is pure power politics. He explicitly believes it's our "empire" (his word) vs theirs, and we need to dominate them for that reason alone. My favorite part of this is that his favorite political publication is Jacobin, a quasi-Marxist anti-American rag.
These are the people directing and implementing that "grand but failed strategy." If you and I and everyone like us vanished tomorrow, they would cheer.
I agree that much of our "elite" hates us.
DeleteI do not think Russia is an eternal enemy. Immediately after the Soviet Union collapsed Russia looked like it was headed the right direction.
I am not sure what you mean about the Ukrainian government.
I am not sure what you mean about the Ukrainian government.
DeleteRevolver article (16 Aug 2020):
"Of course, the principal figure associated with this Orange Revolution in the US Government is none other than Victoria Nuland, who served as President Obama’s point person on Russia during the Color Revolution in Ukraine.
"'Nuland was a year into her role as Obama’s assistant secretary for Europe. She had been in Kiev, frantically working behind the scenes to put in place a new governing coalition in Ukraine as it teetered on the brink of revolution against its Russia-backed leader, Viktor Yanukovych. [Politico]'
"Nuland took the extraordinary step of personally speaking to the mass of protesters organized against the Russian-backed President Yanukovych.
"'Nuland’s highly symbolic appearance in the square came a day after Secretary of State John Kerry issued a strong statement, expressing the United States’ “disgust with the decision of Ukrainian authorities to meet the peaceful protest … with riot police… [CBS News]'
"'Peaceful protest' sounds mighty familiar, doesn’t it? That’s because organizing mass demonstrations against a target government and criticizing and provoking that target government into cracking down on said protests is part and parcel of the Color Revolution playbook.
"Careful observers of recent events will note that it is no coincidence that this is precisely the playbook being run right now in Belarus."
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This is how a former CIA employee who became a Romney advisor wound up on Burisma’s board of directors in Ukraine along with Biden's son, who has no apparent purpose other than to launder money and influence for his dad.
I do not think Russia is an eternal enemy. Immediately after the Soviet Union collapsed Russia looked like it was headed the right direction.
DeleteThis is backwards. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin commenced a mass selloff of state assets to billionaire oligarchs at penny-on-the-dollar prices. Would have been fine if it had been an orderly, rational effort to privatize industry, but it was nothing like that. I haven't read through the details, but apparently he acted under influence/advice of benevolent Harvard "experts".
Putin, as bad as he may be in some ways, was right not to let Russia turn into a billiionaire pirate oligarchy, which is what we're becoming.
KGB officials and other political officers played a big part in the buying. I suspect the corruption of the Soviet system was so big that there was no way to do it right. The Soviets constantly prattled about creating "True Socialist Man" (concerned only with the common good) but created the opposite (a society focused entirely on self at the expense of others).
Delete