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The English people are very proper by tradition
wchao37 Updated: 2004-04-20 09:44
If you met someone on a train in England in the old days and tried to start a conversation, it was very rare that he would reveal too much of himself to you under any circumstances.
Sometimes he would even be blunt and simply say, "We haven't been introduced yet."
Americans with a continent-sized hearty outlook on life are very different (that is, I am not including Hawaiians or Puerto Ricans in this differentiation) in their behavior. You can meet someone at a bus terminal at one o'clock and by three o'clock you would have known everything about him -- including why he stole a half-dollar from his sister at age ten.
This kind of temperamental difference stems from many factors -- cultural, geographical and historical. One cannot say whether one is necessarily better than the other. They are just different.
By and large, if an Englishman calls you his friend, that's something you can count on for the rest of your life, unless it got sidetracked by other circumstantial reasons, e.g. financial conflict, etc. If an American calls you his friend, it will only last until the hunting season (business deals, etc.) is over -- they are by nature hunter-gatherers with a very different mentality of what friendship constitutes in the off-season.
That's why the Chinese who find it so refreshing to have Americans as friends often end up being disappointed, while this seems to have happened less with the Brits. They are often taken by the cheerful demeanor and hearty greetings of Americans - in that they think the American 'friends' like them so much that they want to confide everything in them only, and they are doing it only because they are so very special animals.
Take the issue of Taiwan for instance. The Americans will smile and tell you upfront without blinking an eye that he would keep his promise about observing the One China Principle 7-24, but as soon as you turn your back they would sell weapons to Taiwan and adopt One China-One Taiwan Policy 24-7.
As far as they are concerned, there is no blatant dishonesty or even contradiction here and that these periodic assertions of the One China Principle are not just pieces of humbug.
In the present case, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell seems to have an excellent personal rapport with Chinese Foreign Minister Li, with their 'friendship' stretching back any years ever since Li was the former Chinese ambassador in Washington D.C.
You might assume that Powell would not lie to his 'old friend' straight-faced every time he pats Li's back, but a closer look will reveal that he actually did that often and seldom if ever kept any of his words with Li on the Taiwan issue, and I wonder what he actually says about the "One China Principle" while engaging in pillow talk with Mrs. Powell after watching Ted Koppel every night.
Now re-focus the camcorder onto the friendship between Bush and Blair.
First of all I think the chemistry between Bush and Blair is good and they do see eye-to-eye on many issues. Bush being a descendant of the notoriously ruthless Longshanks does seem to impress Tony Blair with his English blue-blooded lineage, and you know how island peoples like the Brits and the Japanese have always stood in awe of their royalties -- it's in their genes and they will never voluntarily give up on their constitutional 'monarchies.'
Every time Bush and Blair meet I say to myself: here comes the gong show put up by two English stars. Who's the dog and who's the tail here? I just tend to believe that Tony Blair with a historical sense of where the Anglo peoples are going is the dog that LOOKS like the tail.
That might not even be cunning. It just fits British aspirations very nicely because America just happens to be run by the WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) in Washington D.C. working nicely hand-in-glove with Jewish financiers in New York City.
And what convinced me was the July 1, 1997 ceremony of the retrocession of Hongkong back to Chinese rule.
Yes, I saw the ceremonies surrounding the return in which Tony Blair, Prince Charles and Chris Patten all participated.
The most revealing performance was given by Tony Blair. The great smiling machine did not cry like Patten did; he did not make a speech like Charles did; yet there was a neurotic twitch on his face every time he tried to flash his MAD-magazine smile, and the thought must have passed through his mind as to how best to rescue some semblance of imperial dignity for Her Majesty, and to curb the burgeoning growth of the Chinese behemoth when there was still time.
His conclusion right then and there must have been the decision to firmly piggyback on the Americans to do whatever strategic ventures BRITISH interests dictate, but he would make it look as if the original ideas belonged to the Americans.
Don't forget that the intelligence services of all the five Anglo nations -- Canada, U.S. Australia, Kiwiland, and the British Isles -- work hand-in-hand with one another in an unprecedented, cooperative manner.
The only thing Blair needed to do was to build on that most special relationship and plod the Americans along with false intelligence information such as the WMD allegations in Iraq.
So only in the sense of projecting the image that America is the rightful heir to British aspirations and interests, Tony Blair was acting in a way exactly what any British Prime Minister under the same circumstances would have done: riding the American buffalo like a cowboy should before they convert themselves into a large Miami speaking only Spanish.
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