Back to the Future?

Mark Twain famously remarked that "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Pithy and insightful, to be sure, but after reading an op-ed in today's New York Times, I suddenly think he's wrong. History really does seem to repeat itself.

After a much-ballyhooed junket of western journalists to the new Soviet Union in 1921, American reporter Lincoln Steffens famously remarked, "I've seen the future, and it works." The trip was a highly choreographed tour of the new country, designed to show left-leaning journalists the technologically advanced and prosperous USSR. The staggering bloodshed that characterized the country at that time -- the mass arrests, the secret police interrogation stations, the summary executions of tens of thousands of innocent people -- were conveniently hidden from Steffens and his credulous colleagues, who obligingly returned home and gushed about what they'd seen. (And from what I understand, Steffens filed the story that contains the now-famous phrase before the tour even arrived in the Soviet Union, which is utterly fitting.)

Decades later, we know better: 1921 was merely part of the unfolding drama that culminated in the 30s with the mass-starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants and the sprawl of the gulags. Steffens was certainly half-right: 1921 was a watershed year, pointing to a future that did in fact come to pass. But it was a dark future, ruled by totalitarian decree, where human life counted for little.

So you would think that, in 2008, when a massive, communist country puts on a dazzling display of state pageantry for all the world to see, western journalists wouldn't make the same exact mistake they made in 1921. But you would be wrong.

For behold Thomas Friedman of The New York Times and his slavish adoration for the fanfare of the Beijing Olympics: "China did not build the magnificent $43 billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work."

Frankly, I'd be more impressed if the Chinese could put on a meaningful democratic election, or refrain from censoring the Internet, or pull their troops out of Tibet. Not Mr. Friedman though; he was just so taken with all those amazing dancers and drummers and bullet trains, he simply couldn't be bothered about niggling details like human rights abuses.

Just look at the alleged Chinese virtues he chooses to praise: Planning. National investment. Concentrated state power. The same warm and fuzzy virtues that every monster since Lenin and Hitler has worshiped at the altar of human sacrifice. But weren't those fireworks just gorgeous!

Behold the power of ideology to trump rational thought or factual analysis. With seven years and $43 billion, the Chinese managed to create an amazing spectacle and Friedman goes all weak at the knees with sycophantic adulation. But in the same breath, he laments the time and resources America has devoted to preventing a repetition of the 9/11 attacks. Thanks to all that "concentrated state power," China has a whole lot of shiny new public infrastructure for its wealthiest cities, while rickety old America is falling apart.

Well, let's see. Just this past spring, a powerful earthquake struck rural, western China and killed about 70,000 people, largely because of poor-quality construction. Hurricane Katrina, by contrast, left about 1,800 dead. Three years later, the latter is still cited as proof of the woeful neglect of American infrastructure, while an exponentially more devastating catastrophe merited about a week of obligatory news coverage. But for twits like Thomas Friedman, the happy afterglow of the Olympics is what counts.

Why? What is it about the highly choreographed spectacle of thousands of anonymous dancers and drummers and other performers putting on a glittery party that so delights the Thomas Friedmans of the world? Is it the prospect of the faceless masses, each dressed exactly alike, marching in lock-step for the glorification of their country? Do they look at soldiers goose-stepping as they present the Olympic flag and see something good there?

I can't decide if the closing sentence of this op-ed is consciously echoing Lincoln Steffens 85 years later, or if it's just a sick coincidence: "I never want to tell my girls — and I’m sure Obama feels the same about his — that they have to go to China to see the future." Friedman frets that we'd better start teaching our children Mandarin. I would posit that we need to start teaching our children history.