Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 22, 2014

But Duke is too crafty for their tricks.-In real life, Ford did send a no-nonsense guy to replace George H.W. Bush in Beijing. He sent Thomas Gates, former Secretary of the Defense in the Eisenhower Administration.-http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S.Gates,Jr.

The tricky statement is one of the most iconic statements in Doonesbury…

So we get to see Honey soon?

From a global perspective, Asians are the majority. It’s the Caucasians that are the minority. Reminds me of my colleague who called locals overseas “foreigners.” Except he wasn’t drawn by a cartoonist making a joke. He was just a moron.

That’s the American perspective: “Anyone other than me is a minority.” And therefore irrelevant.

It’s not that bad:

“In total, China owns about 8 percent of publicly held U.S. debt. Of all the holders of U.S. debt China is the third-largest, behind only the Social Security Trust Fund’s holdings of nearly $3 trillion and the Federal Reserve’s nearly $2 trillion holdings in Treasury investments…”

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/moneymatters/ss/How-Much-US-Debt-Does-China-Own.htm

I hope they show one of my favorite strips from this period, of the Chinese orchestra playing “Rocky Mountain High.”

Can’t argue with Duke’s assessment of the Chinese. (Well, as it applies to their government.)

The primary definition of ‘provincial’ is a person or item that is of or from a particular part of a country. The secondary definition is the one that speaks to being uninformed, naive or narrow in perspective. I like primary definitions, myself…

@Kim MetzgerGreat idea! We should all submit requests.

@ACK!Thanks. I still haven’t figured out how to create a hyperlink in GoComics using my iPhone.

He sent Eisenhower’s former Secretary of Defense, Thomas S. Gates,Jr. .

DoctorDan.” Do you really think that because we can’t expect to fully understand of all of the concerns of all of the peoples in the world, we shouldn’t try at all?".Obviously I try and you try, but no, I do not fault those who choose not to try because they have their own lives to live and realize they are being fed incomplete and inaccurate information, so anything they decide would be inherently flawed. I do not fault the doctor who concentrates on medicine while ignoring the situation in Tibet.

“And you appear to confuse concern with meddling.”. Yes, I do, because so many others do. It is impossible for most to know of a bad situation without wanting to fix it, even if it is unfixable. And just as operating with incomplete information is likely to kill the patient, so is meddling.." It’s possible to be a citizen of the world without being the policemen of the world".It is not even possible to be a citizen of the world. Not in any meaningful sense of the word. A citizen has certain rights and responsibilities. Just living on Earth does not guarantee any rights and if there are responsibilities, that brings us back to being policemen.

I am reminded of a famine in which we sent food to help the starving in Ethiopia. The government used that food as bait to gather people up to haul them elsewhere to die. The entire famine was caused by the government taking away the food of the people or the seeds of people. Our attempts to help killed hundreds of thousands without us even being policemen. The aid workers withheld that information because they thought the trade in lives was worth the lies.

I give up. As nearly as I can tell, we agree on my initial point -that even though we can’t expect to know everything, it’s good to strive to understand other peoples’ cultures and concerns (otherwise you wouldn’t try yourself, correct?). Beyond that, I don’t see much along the line of a consistent theme to your historical citations, other than to say that sometimes understanding helps, sometimes things go wrong even if we make an effort to understand. So? We can never know in advance when it will or when it won’t make a difference, but we can certainly know that there will be occasions where a lack of understanding makes things worse. I still haven’t seen an answer to my other question – do you think that a lack of such understanding is ever a positive trait, even if it doesn’t always make a difference? I don’t. You’ve stated your comfort with people not even trying, but do you consider it a good thing? If so, when? And please – we’ll posit that a doctor shouldn’t take time out from surgery to watch CNN.