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15 April 2023 (Saturday)
Op-Ed
Folie à Deux - KMT or DPP?
Ask Yourself Who is Tomb Sweeping and Who is Grave Digging?
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
TAIPEI - There are two things you do not do in Taiwan.
First, ignore Ghost Month.
Second, ignore Tomb Sweeping.
Both are Chinese lunisolar calendar events and during that time period the Taiwan Strait has a low sea state; perfect for invasion or just going for a swim.
In August 2022, the Chinese mounted the largest naval and air exercise in history. It was an encirclement of air and sea in a spiderweb that was obviously practice for a future military blockade.
And to no one’s surprise in Taiwan’s defense community, Tomb Sweeping this week is seeing a massive encirclement of Taiwan by China’s military via air and sea power.
So where is Taiwan’s President?
Well she is not in Taiwan worshiping her ancestors.
She is in United States as the cause célèbre.
Taiwan’s military intelligence briefed her on the incoming red tide, but she left anyway.
So what can you conclude about President Tsai Ing-wen?
Is she a great leader of her people?
That she is a responsible commander-in-chief of the armed forces?
That ancestors are to be respected?
With a major political election coming up for the presidency, Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will battle their arch rivals the Kuomintang (KMT) or Chinese Nationalist Party.
You might wonder if Tsai’s trip was more for an esteemed legacy than it was for the reality that Taiwan’s democracy faces a mega-existential threat.
So let us look at the KMT for a bit. Since everyone in D.C. seems to have forgotten they exist.
If the DPP is the good witch of Oz then the KMT is the bad witch.
This simple metaphor is how D.C. sees the problem.
However, in Beijing the good witch is the KMT and for this reason the reader should ask themselves where former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou is during Tomb Sweeping?
Well, it is funny you should ask, because Ma is also on a trip.
Ma is in China performing his ancestral responsibilities.
He is not the commander-of-chief anymore. But while president (2008-2016), his relationship with the military was solid. He had served in the Marine Corps as a lieutenant (1972-74). I had participated in a couple of military exercises where President Ma presided and intermingled with troops after the drill to give encouragement.
This is something I have never seen Tsai do. She was always behind sandbags protected by the presidential security service. Some of whom had been trained by Blackwater during President Chen Shui-bian’s administration (2000-2008).
Some have suggested Tsai is afraid of her own troops.
Tsai has not made friends with the military.
Over the past eight years, she cut pensions and increased the age of retirement.
She stopped plans for family housing for military personnel because of money and continued to ignore the horrific divorce rates of military personnel. If you were based in Kaohsiung and your wife and kids were in Hualien, that was your problem.
Over the past eight years, suicides went through the roof.
Then she did something unthinkable to the discipline and morale of the Taiwan military.
Whatever your views are on gay marriage, there is one thing you do not do. Give military NCOs and above, with a nod and a wink, the option of rooming together if they are married.
After the Chinese exercises in August, U.S. pressure on Tsai forced her to increase conscription from four months to one year.
Tsai’s administration consists of academics, policy wonks, pansies. There are no old rifles in her Administration. Therefore, she agreed to the one year, but not two (that would have been outrageous).
Her recent announcement of increasing the conscription service to one year is a problem. Many of the old dorms, rifle ranges, logistics support systems have been phased out. The brass in the military found it cheaper to bulldoze facilities than to submit expensive budgets for maintenance on facilities of no use.
The joke in Taiwan is that “military moderation” really means “demilitarization” under the Tsai Administration.
When Tsai entered office she allowed for the continuation of the dismantlement of the Military Police Command, which once numbered 20,000. She could have stopped it, especially since they are the guardians of the city gates. They turn back the barbarians in every history book.
Now they are down to 3,000 MP personnel. Not 5,000 the local media has reported. The Tsai government keeps adding the 2,000 reserves to the number.
During her watch, she allowed for the military court system to be shuttered with all criminal cases moved to the civilian courts where they have no guidance on military codes of conduct.
As of now, all the MP sub-stations in Taipei have been abandoned. The only ones standing are the MP Command Headquarters in northern Taipei (Linsen N. Road), the 229th Battalion that defends the General Staff’s Joint Command Center, and a Presidential MP facility based across from the Presidential Palace (211st Battalion, 239rd Armored Battalion, 332nd Battalion).
There were suggestions, no evidence, that Tsai feared a coup by her own military. However, a 101 Psychology textbook suggests her behavior of self-harm, perhaps even suicidal, are not actually inflicted on herself, but on Taiwan via her policies on energy security, food/water security, protecting commercial maritime traffic, demilitarization, etc.
Recently, when the military forgot to feed troops on Matsu for a month, who was fired? The answer? Well…the food was actually stolen by the Coast Guard and resold in Kaohsiung. The outcome is unclear at this moment.
President Tsai’s trip to the U.S. is in accordance to her post-modern anti-patriarchal delusional beliefs that reject traditional Chinese customs, like Tomb Sweeping.
As a qualified lesbian, no doubt born of a virgin birth, Tsai views men as unnecessary (particularly those that wear uniforms and protect her from being savaged by Chinese troops).
Tsai has even rejected the obvious opportunity to serve in the role of the Mother archetype of a new Taiwan. Giving birth to a new democracy, figuratively, was within her grasp until she surrendered her presidential power to public referendums that favored her personal tastes and ignored referendum results that did not.
If both Ma and Tsai went on a “quest” during Tomb Sweeping then what would Joseph Campbell suggest via his monomyth theory?
That both are on a “hero’s journey” to discover both their inner and outer strengths?
To stare down their inner demons?
To be tested and to return to their homes with the “prize” - whether it is the dragon’s heart or chalice of gold?
We must forgive Campbell, even if his monomyth was correct, the mentor’s life advice led to disaster for many college kids. Of all his sage advice, “follow your bliss” was the worst of all of them. He should have said follow your blisters.
In the case of Ma, it could very well be that upon his return to Taiwan his gold chalice will be Beijing’s anointment as the future “governor of the province of Taiwan”.
Ma’s ancestors have blessed him with the “Mandate of Heaven” for his respect of tradition.
Ma could very well be the only thing stopping Beijing from ravaging Taiwan with a massive military assault.
Just as Jesus calmed the waters of a turbulent sea to walk across it, Ma might have actually walked across the Taiwan Strait figuratively during this Tomb Sweeping holiday.
Perhaps convincing China to wait until after the upcoming presidential election to see if the KMT can retake the Presidency and Legislature.
During his presidency, Ma established air and sea direct links to China. Opened Taiwan to Chinese tourists and college students. In 2015, Ma met China’s lord commander Xi Jinping in Singapore. It seemed China would simply buy Taiwan via investments in property and bribing the legislature to sign de facto unification legislation.
What did Tsai bring back?
A future legacy as a tragic hero?
To be crucified when the Chinese arrive and not be resurrected beyond martyrdom?
That would be the fall in Campbell’s tragic hero cycle with nothing more than an NGO named after her in D.C. to fight China’s human rights abuses in Taiwan.
But where is Ma in the rise-fall-rise again cycle? Hero or Tragic Hero?
Did he go to China to be resurrected?
To return to Taiwan with Beijing’s assurance that the DPP will be punished for ignoring their ancestors.
That Taiwan will also be resurrected and reunited with Mother China.
Mother Tsai has lost her way…