Details
Article
Senior Editor of Foreign Policy magazine, returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Humanity in Action Senior Fellow and Truman National Security Project Fellow David Wertime, along with Isaac Stone Fish and Melissa Chan published an opinion piece in the Washington Post. They report on their fears and concerns about the Trump administrating, citing China as an example of what could happen to the United States. The authors explore the consequences of departing from party rhetoric and the effects it has had on freedom of speech and press in China. They conclude that Americans cannot resign themselves from politics in order to go on with their daily life as this will only further oppression.
“In today’s climate, many Americans perceive our own system as broken, too. Some have even stopped imagining a more perfect union. We offer our experience in China to show how bad things can actually get, and as a call to safeguard what we have. China’s tradition of political oppression can feel almost invisible in everyday life, but in reality, it means that most citizens must silently forswear certain zones of happiness — such as the power to stir one’s countrymen to imagine a new political reality or to minister to their spiritual needs. Their country and the communities it contains are inevitably diminished as a result. But that fate is not yet ours. Nor does it ever need to be.”
Read the full article here.