What the IP MAN movies can teach us about the New Cold War with China

I think I've said this before, but it is worth repeating in the current context: People who want a better understanding of China -- as the United States moves toward a more confrontational posture toward that country -- could help themselves a lot by watching Chinese movies.

I'm thinking particularly of the IP MAN series, starring Donnie Yen. You can find all four movies on Netflix right now.

The movies are fantastic martial arts flicks, so they're worth watching from that standpoint alone. But they are also loosely biographical, telling the story of a real Wing Chun master -- he was Bruce Lee's mentor -- and taken as a whole, they signify something about China's relationship with the west.

The first movie takes place in Foshan, China, around the time of Japan's 1937 invasion. The Japanese oppress the Chinese, Ip Man defeats a Japanese martial arts hotshot in single combat competition, and his countrymen are given the pride they need to defeat the aggressor.

In the second movie, Ip Man moves to Hong Kong -- ruled by the British, who are snarling, sneering colonialists. Ip Man defeats a gigantic English brute named Twister. The whole affair leads to a corrupt British officer getting his comeuppance.

In the third movie -- well, this one's a little different. Ip is still in Hong Kong and the story basically revolves around him proving the superiority of Wing Chun over other fighting styles. (Also, Mike Tyson is involved. Yes, it's ridiculous.)

But in the fourth movie, Ip Man goes to the United States, is treated as inferior by arrogant, racist Americans. Ip defeats the most arrogant American in single combat competition, and his countrymen in San Francisco find newfound pride.

You get it. It's a story of a proud Chinese man refuting the "weak man of Asia" stereotypes that justified decades upon decades of outsider incursions to demonstrate that Chinese are just as strong, and maybe even a little better, than the outsiders who have misjudged them. Some of this is propaganda -- movies don't get made in China without official sanction -- but it is also rooted in the last 200 years of Chinese history.

It's not just Ip Man. Chinese historical epics -- especially those set since the beginning of the 20th century -- are telling us a story.

• Westerners are big, bad, and haughty. “Ip Man 2” isn’t the only movie to depict white guys as oversized grunting meatheads. Check out this clip from “Fearless,” which is about the real-life martial artist Huo Yuanjia.

• If Westerners are bad, the Japanese are worse. It’s hard to find a Japanese man in these movies who isn’t playing the villain. No wonder: The Sino-Japanese war of the 1930s and 1940s is estimated to have killed at least 10 million Chinese civilians — some estimates range much higher. It’s safe to say that hurt feelings linger still.

So you wouldn’t expect “Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen” — a sequel of sorts to Bruce Lee’s “Fist of Fury” — to seem so triumphant: It ends, after all, with the Japanese invasion of China underway. But the closing moments are defiant, with Yen — him again — defeating a series of Japanese combatants and crushing the testicles of one particularly nasty officer, before disappearing to join the resistance.

• The Chinese are resilient, strong, and nationalistic in the face of such indignities. “Legend of the Fist” opens with Yen and his comrades winning a battle for the French against the Germans in World War I; “Bodyguards and Assassins” depicts fictionalized efforts to protect real-life nationalist Sun Yat-Sen from those who would do him harm.

In these movies, the setbacks for the Chinese against outsiders is always temporary. Nationalistic pride might go under cover, but it never disappears entirely. Even the worst defeats tend to be triumphs of the spirit.

Now: None of this is to say the Chinese government is good and Americans are bad, or anything so simplistic. The Chinese government is authoritarian in its treatment of the Uighurs and crackdown on dissent, and has even been murderous at times.

But it is also simplistic to go "America good, Chinese government bad." Not just because President Trump has his own authoritarian inclinations, but because in a conflict between America and China, the Chinese people are going to be factoring the ugly history of outside domination in their views of the conflict. They might not think that America is merely aiming for their freedom, but that America intends to limit their country's ambitions, and perhaps eventually to subdue them.

I'm not quite sure how understanding this Chinese view of history modifies American policy going forward, but I can't help but sense that it should. There's a real history here. It matters. You don't have to be a scholar to begin to understand that. (It helps, but not everybody has the time or interest.) All you have to do is watch a few movies.

Democrats should stop trying to get Kris Kobach elected

Some news:

Here's a description of Sunflower State, a "Democratic-linked" PAC, and what it's up to:

The super PAC, Sunflower State, formed on Monday and two days later launched its first TV ad, focused on Kris Kobach and Rep. Roger Marshall, two of the Republicans running in the Aug. 4 primary. National Republicans have expressed concern that Kobach — the former secretary of state who lost the 2018 governor's race to Democrat Laura Kelly — would put the seat in jeopardy if he becomes the nominee, while Marshall has attempted to consolidate support from the establishment in the primary.

The ad is engineered to drive conservative voters toward Kobach. A narrator in the ad calls Kobach "too conservative" because he "won't compromise" on building President Donald Trump's border wall or on taking a harsher stance on relations with China. By contrast, the ad labels Marshall as a "phony politician" who is "soft on Trump."

I think this is bad politics -- see Liam Donovan's tweet above. Being too-smart-by-half, tactically, could end up biting Democrats in the butt.

But it is also bad for democracy. I'd rather see a Democrat win the US Senate seat that Kobach is vying for, but if we're going to get a Republican -- and remember, Kansas hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate in forever --  I'd like it to be the least-bad Republican. I don't love Roger Marshall, the establishment GOP pick for the race, but he's not Kobach, whose ambitions need to be nipped in the bud. It's more difficult to nip them if Democrats egg him on, or put him over the top.

Rather than try to game the system, it's better for us all if we can work to put the best candidates possible in office. 

The easiest prediction I've ever made about Donald Trump

Even if he wins in November, he will claim the vote was rigged against him. How do I know? He's done it once already.

Coronavirus Diary: Cabin fever

Here is how I deal with the stress of being stuck mostly in a small house with a kid who hasn't seen his friends in four months:

I go to Sonic every day at noon and order a large iced tea.

I sit there for an hour in the family minivan, more or less, but basically until I've finished eating all the ice in the cup. 

It gets me out of the house. I can sit in the shade for an hour, socially distanced. I can get away from the people I am around all the time. And it gives structure to the day. 

I'm sure there is a better way of getting these benefits than sitting at Sonic every day. But it seems to be what I am capable of right now.

No, Democrats are not going to bring about a socialist utopia

Steve Pearlstein offers up a list of Democratic priorities to rein in the business community if they take control of government -- go read it -- and it sounds really expansive. "To the business lobby, they represent a nightmare scenario," he writes. "But whatever your view, there can be little doubt that in the short and medium run — the time horizon of most investors and corporate executives — these policy changes will reduce the profits of businesses and the incomes of those who own them."

I'm skeptical. While Democrats as a group are as progressive as they've been in awhile -- and Joe Biden is following suit -- it's also true the party has been mostly on-board the train that has produced greater inequality in America over the last generation or two. If Democrats take the Senate, it will probably be Chuck Schumer -- no enemy of high finance -- who shepherds the party's agenda through that chamber. Business interests may not get everything they want from Democratic governance (and if history is any guide, they'll pout and scream about socialism the whole way) but in all likelihood they'll still be doing pretty well. 

Abolish Trump or Homeland Security? Why not both?

Juliette Kayyem argues that, in Portland, Homeland Security isn't the problem -- it's Trump:

Seemingly desperate to goad Democrats into a fight over law and order, the White House has deployed federal law-enforcement agents from the Department of Homeland Security to Portland, Oregon, ostensibly to protect statues on federal property from vandals. Agents from Customs and Border Protection and other branches of DHS are wearing military fatigues, snatching demonstrators from the streets, and even attacking protesters who by all accounts are peaceful. The Constitution did not contemplate the mobilization of federal assets to fight a war on graffiti. Never having requested the president’s help, local and state politicians in Portland are outraged. Yesterday afternoon, Trump announced an expansion of the program to a number of other cities to “help drive down violent crime.”

These events offer a reminder of how much discretionary power every American president exercises—and why voters shouldn’t give the job to someone whose instincts are fundamentally authoritarian.

The only thing that needs to be abolished is the Trump administration. When the president is bent on using executive power for purely political ends, the specifics of the executive-branch organizational chart do not matter.

She's right on one point: A president bent on abusing his power is going to abuse his power. Trump couldn't use the military, ultimately, to achieve these ends -- so he turned to DHS instead.

But she's also wrong.

The framers of the Constitution got a lot of things wrong, IMHO -- we don't need the Senate -- but they did embrace an underlying thought process that was smart: One way to prevent a president from abusing his powers is to limit the tools he has for abuse.

With respect to Kayyem's (I'm sure) honorable service, the Department of Homeland Security was always particularly ripe for abuse by an authoritarian-minded president, from its name on down. I pointed out this week how one DHS agency, Customs and Border Patrol, is pretty much rogue to begin with, and offered some possible solutions.

The underlying idea is to limit the agency, both in terms of manpower and authority. "Trump and his cronies would surely look for other ways to crack down on protesters," I wrote. "He will abuse any power he has, and claim powers the Constitution doesn't actually grant him. Congress, however, doesn't need to make it easy for him."


So, yes, abolish Trump. But let's also make it harder for any would-be Trumps -- Tucker Carlson, say, or Tom Cotton -- to follow in his footsteps and do even more damage. Abolish Trump and the DHS.

Conservative men are obsessed with penises (What will probably be a continuing series.)

Ned Ryun, my fellow Kansan, can't just make an argument. He has to call Brian Stetler a flouncing cuck:

This does make me wonder about the sincerity of his Christian faith, which his family parades pretty proudly before the world. Who would Jesus try to publicly emasculate? But Ryun is more Conservative than Christian, and conservatives are really, really obsessed with the status of their penises and making sure people know about their status relative to others. (I once wrote: "The GOP? That stands for the Grand Old Phallus.") It's one reason (along with racism) insults like "soy boy" "beta boy" and "cuck" are so prevalent among the online right. Ryun's version -- "simpering' "eunuch" -- is more of the same.

This kind of misogyny has real and terrible effects, as Jessica Valenti points out today:

Just this week, Roy Den Hollander, a lawyer and well-known misogynist, allegedly killed the son of a federal judge and wounded her husband in an attack at their New Jersey home.

Den Hollander once sued to end “ladies’ nights” at bars, tried to defund women’s studies departments in universities, and fantasized about the rape of another judge who presided over his divorce case. The lawyer was also active in online misogynist groups and had written for A Voice for Men, a men’s rights website tracked as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Ned Ryun isn't going to kill anybody, nor is he encouraging anybody to do so. But it's not hard to see how chauvinism easily morphs into something uglier.