Mr President, You Are the Personification of Ugly American-ness

Needless to say, everyone knows the term “Ugly American.” I used it often but did not really know when or how the term was coined. I decided to read up a little.

Apparently, the term was used by authors Eugene Burdick and William Lederer as a title in their 1958 fiction – a political novel alluding to Americans losing influence in Southeast Asia due to their failure to understand local culture. Ironically, the novel’s hero, Homer Atkins, is an engineer with black calloused hands, living in a dirt hut and collaborated with villagers to work on community empowerment projects. It seems Atkins is the very model that the authors thought America should send into the world. What a mission!

The book has inspired Bo Yang[1] to author “The Ugly Chinaman”. Before Xi Jinping became President of China, I had often the term to label – to the annoyance of friends who are proud of our Chinese heritage – earlier visitors from mainland China because they seemed to fit a certain behavioural pattern which I found obnoxious.

Yes, such description, whether to Chinese or Americans, is derogatory. But the two American authors’ intention, as well as mine and Bo Yang’s was harmless. All of us were just trying to correct behaviours that are sub-par with the generally acceptable norms. But with Joe Biden, I really mean it!

I always prefer to look forward – as long as a country can own up and move on, like what Germany has been doing after their defeat in World War II. Although I was pretty anti-America when it was fighting the Vietnam War and when George Bush used WMD as an excuse to invade Iraq, I did not harbour any serious misgivings about America – until Donald Trump became the president. I began to feel extreme contemptuous about America when his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began to hurl all sorts of lies and accusations at China.

Biden’s election did give me a false hope. But soon his pronouncements and actions disturbed me. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the meeting the Alaska meeting between China’s Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi and America’s Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. We all knew what happened to the schoolboy Blinken there.

Indeed, the atrocities and genocides committed by America’s pioneers against Native Americans as they expanded westwards and the regime destablisation efforts and wars they waged in the more recent times should have served as a strong reminder of their guilt and therefore the need to behave more responsibly in this new era. Instead, Biden is reviving hoodlumism of the worst kind to further hegemonize the world.

Since then, I have been in total contempt of America’s leaders! And as the days go by, I feel more and more convinced that there is a need for me to initiate some form of mass awareness to help non-Mainland Chinese see the true colours of America, i.e., the Ugly American-ness.

The mainstream media have been sold to adopt parrotism or ostrichism in about anything that is not favourable to America and its allies. I read them nonetheless – basically to see the extent of their fears and lies, but also to learn about the latest in the world of arts and sciences, which I must say they are good in covering.

It is obvious to me that Biden harbours a great deal of inferiority complex towards China’s President Xi. His repeated requests to speak with Xi is a manifestation of that complex, since they had not been talking beyond those obvious points each time they met. And after each meeting, he would go on to do something he thought would damage China further. His actions are all there for us to see; there is no need for me to repeat them.

But we can also see this: Old Joe does not dare to openly condemn or threaten China, an attitude which he often holds towards lesser mortals. His statements on China are always couched with caveats, even on his “resoluteness” to defend Taiwan.

I am no physiognomist, but his looks trouble me. Superficially he looks like an adorable grandpa. But look deeper, especially at the silly lock of hair behind his head, you can discern that there is reptilian nature in him – cold blooded and driven by an intuitive need to devour.  

To me, China aside, these two things alone epitomize this man’s lack of humanity: (a) His denial of the Afghans to their right to access its own foreign reserves is sinful, even though we do not agree with the Taliban, (b) his instigating role in the war in Ukraine. He was only interested to degrade Russia and make the entire Europe subjugated to America hegemony, regardless of the destruction and deaths there. Period.

But hitherto friends of America have realised, or are realising, Biden’s hypocrisy. The ASEAN leaders know how to dance with him without being taken advantage of, so have the leaders of most Latin American and African countries. Even Saudi Arabia, which was once a staunch and indispensable ally, has begun distance itself from Biden. And what’s Biden’s reaction? Many headlines in the mainstream media scream: Biden warns of “consequences” for Saudi Arabia after oil production cuts.

Just because Saudi Arabia refuses to go along with the old man’s suggestion!

This speaks volumes of Biden’s reptilian nature.

Does the Old Joe think that everyone was born only yesterday?

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[1]Kaifeng-born Bo Yang (1920–2008), like Lu Xun, tried to change societal behaviours in Chinese. Inspired by the book “The Ugly American”, he authored The Ugly Chinaman. Bo Yang was jailed for ten years by the Kuomintang government in Taiwan for his views.)