Xi hugs Putin as Russia-China talks sealed with rare show of affection Chinese President Xi Jinping surprised many by giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a rare hug in front of cameras, ...
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Readings for Pentecost Sunday: Genesis 11: 1-9; Psalm 104: 1-2, 24, 35, 27-30; Romans 8: 22-27; Acts 2: 1-11.
Last week Russia's Vladimir Putin got the red-carpet treatment when he and virtually his entire government leadership met with Xi Jingping and his governing counterparts for a two-day summit in Beijing.
The collective west was apoplectic in response.
What were these two villains up to? Surely, they're conspiring to take over the world.
The Washington Post fretted about connections between Russia and China on the one hand and with Iran and North Korea on the other.
But of course, what transpired last week in China is far bigger than any of that. It's not just a worrisome alliance between the countries just mentioned. Ultimately, it's a question of pacts between China, Russia, and the entire Global South (aka the Global Majority) that's now taking practical form in BRICS+. And the threat there is not primarily military. It's economic.
It's the fearful (to the west) specter of a world order of cooperation, mutual benefit, and majority rule replacing that of western neocolonial empire with its ancient "divide and rule" tactics.
In the context of this Pentecost Sunday homily, you might even call such replacement "spiritual," "biblical," or (yes) "Pentecostal."
Let me show you what I mean by elucidating what the west can't understand about Russia and China's shared project, about the difference between that project and the one favored by the collective west, and finally about the connections between all of that and today's readings for this Pentecost Sunday.
The Project of the Collective West
What the collective west cannot understand about China is that its worldview is radically different from its own.
Especially since the Reagan-Thatcher era, the west has returned to the Hobbesian and social Darwinian superstition that human beings are primarily individuals constantly at one another's throats.
They've become convinced that humans are basically selfish and locked in a "war of all against all." Hence, "forever wars" are normal and the best we can do.
Westerners have also come to believe that government is somehow the enemy, that its size must be reduced to such an extent that it (as Grover Norquist said) can be drowned in a bathtub. This means that market regulation and taxation must be reduced to a minimum.
Even more importantly, the prevailing western belief system holds that its somehow natural and divinely ordained that just 4.2% of the world's population (i.e. the United States) should run the world. White people are exceptional. In traditional terms, the DICTATORSHIP of the collective west's bourgeoisie (of the G7) is part of the natural order.
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