[fleshfly]

It's just like with politics, media, and its society at large, Americans insist on being extreme about everything.

In America, something always has to be either freedom-loving or tyrannical. Something always has to be for or against. Something always has to be good or evil. Something always has to be elephant or donkey. Media and politicians have convinced people that you have to pick a side or you're on nobody's side. Debates devolve into meme-regurgitation and cease to produce any critical thinking. You can't overstate how exhausting this is for most American citizens who come from vastly different economic and cultural walks of life.

If you can't wrap your head around a culture that is perfectly OK with constant ambiguity, uncertainty, and non-black-and-white thinking then you will never get out in front of China. This is not the first time in history America has produced strong anti-China rhetoric, but as long as the rhetoric today continues down this path of polarized thinking, Americans will continue to get everything about China wrong.