Thursday, December 18, 2025

Tucker Carlson wants to Make the US more like the PRC???

Tucker Carlson dislikes Representative Ilhan Omar. I don't know if Ilhan Omar is her legal name, or is it like the old joke about the 'John Johnson Chinese Laundry'.

Someone saw the sign hanging over the door to the laundry, went in, saw a person of obviously Oriental ethnicity, and asked, 'How did you get the name, 'John Johnson Chinese Laundry?'

The owner said, 'My grandfather was in the queue at Ellis Island. The immigration agent asked the man in front of him, 'What's your name?' and he said, 'John Johnson.' The immigration officer filled out the form, gave it to the man, and said, 'Go ahead.' 

Then my grandfather stepped up to the agent and was asked, 'What's your name?' and he said, 'Mi Tu', and the agent gave him a paper with his American name written down as 'John Johnson.'

***

In Arabic cultures, everyone's name is their own name, their father's name, their grandfather's name, and, at some point, their family name which must start with an 'Al'. So Omar is not her family name, it's her father's name. And those calling her 'Omar' are calling her by her father's name, not her own name and not her family name, at least in Arabic.

Of course, the immigration agent might have written on the form: Given name: Ilhan, Family name: Omar

so now, legally, her family name could be Omar, not her actual family name, but like the name given to the apocryphal Chinese laundry owner in the old joke.

***

In any case, Carlson notes that most Somalis living in the US live in two cities, one of them Minneapolis (I forget the other), and they mostly speak Somali, live in neighbourhoods that are all (or at least almost all) Somali, and, worst of all from Carlson's perspective, they vote Democrat.

***

Carlson wants all of the US to be one, homogeneous culture, an Anglo culture. As he says, he has nothing against Somalis, as long as they stay in Somalia, but if they come to the US, they should speak English, scatter and live in mixed neighbourhoods, accept the Anglo culture, and vote Republican (Tucker doesn't like anyone who votes Democrat).

***

The PRC has 56 official ethnic groups. The largest group are the Han, comprising 91.1% of the total PRC population. The 2nd largest group are the Zhuang, with 1.4%. Fifty years ago, there was discrimination in favour of the Han, they got the best jobs, best houses, severe discrimination against the other ethnic groups. But that was 50 years ago. Not clear why, but things changed, lots of things changed.

First, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), two agencies who work with the CIA to bring 'democracy' to undemocratic countries by overthrowing the authoritarian government and replacing it with a good, democratic government that lets US oligarchs steal everything worth stealing, but it's a free democracy, so that's good.

The Uyghurs once occupied a place the Europeans called Turkmenistan, which got divided between the Chinese province of Xinjiang, which means 'New Boundary' in Chinese, and some parts, first of the Russian Empire, and later of the USSR, until the break-up of the USSR when they became independent, impoverished countries, one of which is Kazakhstan. NED and USAID gave Uyghurs in Kazakhstan money and weapons to go into the PRC to destroy PRC government property and kill PRC government officials, so a lot of what the PRC mislabel as 'terrorism,' when it was just doing good by bringing democracy to an evil autarchic state.

But the PRC have lots of intelligence agents and computers, and now they have a list of all who have ever poked their nose into a NED or USAID facilities, and refuse to let them enter the PRC, so the bombings and killings have pretty much stopped.

The Uyghurs had been living in poverty, even by PRC standards, Very poor housing, very poor jobs. The Uyghurs are Muslim, and it was illegal to go to a mosque or to sell any food suitable for Muslims (called halal). The PRC leadership decided that the best way to stop the beneficial efforts of the US was to make every ethnic group equal.

Uyghurs spoke no Chinese, they could not read or write Chinese, they spoke a language written with the Arabic alphabet. So, even if employers wanted to hire them, they could not understand what they were asked to do, nor could the employer understand their questions about what was wanted.

But even when the job was so straightforward that the Uyghurs could be taught, if the job paid well, it was always given to a Han Chinese.

And then all that changed.

All Uyghur children were taught both Uyghur and Chinese. All working age Uyghur were also required to study Chinese, and had to learn to speak Mandarin and read Simplified Chinese (the PRC decided that the standard Chinese characters were too difficult, so they came up with Simplified Chinese, not all that simple, but easier than the older Chinese writing).

And the Uyghur learned, and now they get good jobs and good housing.

Before, a typical Chinese home was one room for what might have been a family with 10 kids. A Han home had no running water, a Uhghur home might not have electricity, and usually had had big holes in the roof, so rain was a big problem.

Today, the Uyghurs have decent, above average jobs and good housing, much larger, than their old homes, no holes, running water and electricity, subsidised heat in winter.

Uyghurs are given jobs picking cotton, a very difficult job to get in China. Most cotton is picked by machine, but there are some very expensive kinds of cotton that must be picked by hand, and this pays very well. Before, such work only went to Han Chinese, but now, most of that work that's in Xinjiang is given to Uyghur people. They also have jobs working on the automatic cotton pickin' machines that pick the vast majority of the cotton.

All the mosques are open, and most of the food in Xinjiang is halal, and for Uyghur who travel outside of Xinjiang, there are lots of halal restaurants where the PRC government checks and makes sure everything is halal.

***

Net: Now everyone must speak Mandarin, read and write Simplified Chinese, and the ordinary Chinese (老百姓 lao bai xing), both Han and ethnic minorities,  all live in similar homes.

So one can say that all the minorities in the PRC have been Hanified (foreign barbarians, 洋鬼子 yang gui zi can't tell them apart). 

The ethnic minorities would probably say they can eat what they want, so they don't eat like the Han, they can worship where and how they want, not in the places where the Han worship, so they are not at all like the Han, but it's hard for us foreign barbarians to see the differences.



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