I'm sure some lurking wag will de-cloak to incorrectly attribute this lack of talk to a universally held sympathy for the CCP.
What I do know is that these events have given some of the people in my life - I'll call them NPR listening romance Buddhists (here's Dennis Perrin re: this - <http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2008/03/livin-on-chinese-rock.html>) and BoingBoing.net style, backpacking humanitarians - a reason to state, and state again (and again) their denunciations of China and dedication to seeing a 'free Tibet' in their lifetime.
Sure, I reply, I can get behind the idea of self-determination and a no-harassment lifestyle for Tibetans. But I read eyewitness accounts reported in the Guardian and Economist: it sounds as if Tibetan nationalists - or maybe separatists, or hell, maybe even plain old ethnic chauvinists - decided to use the fact that Han cops got excessively rough with protesting monks to go wild: breaking heads, burning shops, killing Chinese people. And, in response, Beijing is doing what all governments do in these situations: lock down info-feeds, shatter ribs, go too far and generally muck things up further.
All of which reminds me of the LA riots of 1992.
My friends don't like my reply; it makes them angry. For starters, to some, the suggestion that Tibetans have committed acts of violence is absurd. Tibetans are "the most spiritual people on Earth", I'm told. Others are clear-sighted enough to concede that Tibetans, who're all too human after all, have been violent but insist that after decades of Chinese oppression and "cultural genocide", they're due their measure of righteous anger.
So, I bring up the LA riots.
More than one thing can be true at a time.
You can say that the anger which exploded in 1992 was, given the LAPD's long history of shattering black and Hispanic skulls and lives, completely predictable AND that opportunists, hotheads and hood rats took advantage of the tumult to do fucked up shit which had nothing to do with 'rebellion'.
But that's different, my friends insist. Different because "gang bangers" (a phrase everyone knows and uses thanks to grim documentaries and crime dramas) got involved. But there are no such thugs in Tibet my friends insist. Someone starts talking about boycotting the Olympics and Chinese products. Someone else, following the lead of an American net luminary (see: <http://tenementpalm.blogspot.com/2008/03/engaging-chinese-netizens-fanfou.html>) expresses dismay at Chinese "netizens" lack of concern for Tibetans. The consensus is that Chinese young people are "brainwashed" and sorely in need of re-education by their more open-minded and fact-armed friends in the West.
I'm already boycotting the Olympics, I say. It's a boycott made possible by the magic of not paying any attention. But then, I don't give a fly's ass about the Olympic games so that's no sacrifice. Re: boycotting things made in China - well, at this point, you'd have an easier time boycotting air so good luck with that partners. And about Western "netizens" debating their Chinese counterparts into seeing things from the Students for a Free Tibet POV: first off, the net is a tool, like a screwdriver. Calling people "netizens" is like calling them screwdrivizens, only not as much fun to say. Second, if I was Chinese and being lectured about the state of Chinese/Tibetan relations by someone thousands of miles away who presumes to have all the answers, who thinks I'm a mind wiped slave laborer and who knows about as much about China's history and current state as they do about how to build a time machine, I'd be the opposite of convinced. I'd be pissed.
And then I bring up Iraq and Afghanistan.
It seems a bit odd to me, I say, for Americans to expend a lot of energy talking about boycotts, netizen debates, cultural genocide and the perfidy of Beijing's dominance of Tibet when, right before our eyes, Washington is conducting an occupation of two countries - occupations which have caused and are causing mayhem, mass death (remember the Lancet study?) and ethnic strife and which are acting as incubators for god knows what future horrors. It seems odd to me, I continue, that you have so much concern for the fate of Tibetans under occupation (though some Tibetans reportedly think Chinese modernization efforts have been helpful so there's a debate to be had there) but appear to have forgotten the Iraqis and Afghans living under American and NATO occupation.
Why are all of you yelling about the fire in your neighbor's house, I ask, when your own damn kitchen is ablaze?
Now, everyone's angry. They're angry netizens.
.d.