Boys will be boys, I suppose. Diario AS captured the moment that stunned everyone. Marc Cucurella walked off in slides, hauling away the World Cup trophy his teammates had bled for, stuffed inside a see-through plastic bag. What was that about?
Rewind to the trophy ceremony itself. Trump handed the World Cup to Spain's captain Rodri, then simply refused to step aside and let the players have their moment. Online users mocked him for "clinging to the stage." FIFA President Gianni Infantino eventually had to physically steer the US president to the side of the podium. Nothing like it had happened in the World Cup's 96-year history.
Here is a theory, purely speculation. The Spanish players were furious but dared not say so out loud. So back in the locker room, they may have drawn lots to pick someone to speak for the team. Cucurella, whose curly hair sets him apart from Dutch legend Ruud Gullit in his own distinctive way, drew the short straw. He answered with a piece of postmodern performance art, mocking the graceless guest of honor.
For real, both Cucurella and Trump share a certain eccentric streak, so who else would it be when a stunt like that is to be pulled off? Before the final, Cucurella had already promised that if Spain won, he would get head coach Luis de la Fuente's face tattooed on his body.
Calling this a national embarrassment might be a stretch. But the numbers back up at least part of the charge. A survey that has drawn global attention just landed. The Pew Research Center reported last week that in 25 of the 36 countries and territories surveyed, most respondents view China more favorably than the United States, and that group includes Canada and Mexico.
Pew ran the poll between February and May, right as the United States and Israel were at war with Iran. Who tanked America's image? The answer is written on the wall.
A Pew spokesperson said this marks the first time in 20 years that global respondents rated China more favorably than the United States. Views of the two countries had crept close before. A clear tilt toward China, though, is new. The spokesperson noted the shift is unfolding as Covid-19 fades from memory and America's global image keeps sliding.
It all adds up. This has all played out during Trump's presidencies 1.0 and 2.0, a genuine wake-up call.
Listen to what the Pew spokesperson actually said. There is a link between the outbreak of war, the sense that the United States is not contributing to peace and stability, and falling confidence in Trump. On top of that, Trump's push to annex Greenland, the US military's capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and Washington's handling of the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas have all dragged America's approval ratings down further.
America's approval could still fall further. Why? Voters, through an indirect one-person-one-vote system, elected a president with the mental age of a five-year-old. Things were bound to go wrong. You and I both saw this coming, so there is little left to say. For reference, the countries that still hold a favorable view of the United States include Israel in first place, followed mainly by Japan, India, South Korea, the Philippines, and Poland. Even in those countries, however, favorable views of the United States have been weakening in recent years.
One postscript. After Spain's victory, reporters asked Cucurella when he would honor his tattoo pledge. His reply: "I'll definitely get it somewhere visible!" Good, very good. The most important thing is not to embarrass yourself. Above all, do not fail on the tattoo and then serve up a TACO, "Trump Always Chickens Out," as a substitute payment.
One more thing. Within less than 24 hours, Cucurella's trophy-in-a-plastic-bag moment had already outshone Messi in online popularity.
Deep Blue
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
What is China? It is a demon-revealing mirror. Hold China up against the United States, and the demons rooted in America have nowhere to hide. I did not buy it at first, but Friedman convinced me. In his latest piece for The New York Times, he lays it out plainly.
The Demon-Revealing Mirror
"In my view, the Chinese today are getting the best out of a bad system of government — by thinking long-term and executing on a plan to align their country with the economic trends of the 21st century.
But one of the weaknesses of China's system has been on dramatic display lately: the sudden disappearance and arrests of senior officials accused of corruption — so many that it could start to slow down the whole system here, if high-level bureaucrats fear making spending decisions that could land them in jail. Or as one Chinese economist put it to me, quoting a Chinese proverb: "If the water is too clear, there will be no fish."
And America? By doing no long-term thinking, appointing incompetent cabinet secretaries and having each new administration undo major initiatives of the previous one — like on clean energy — we're getting the worst out of a good system."
A laureate writer, bending logic the way you twist a Rubik's Cube. He takes a jumbled, mismatched set of squares and turns them, twist by twist, until a neat all-frontal pattern appears. I have not read widely, but AI does not lie to me. Scan Friedman's past articles and the picture is simple: he has written about China for thirty years, back and forth, yet the core never changes. He uses China to examine America.
His view of China, though, has shifted. Not from pro-China to anti-China, and not the other way around. He simply picks China up as a demon-revealing mirror and raises it toward America from time to time. He looks once, twice, three times. Look long enough, and he finally sees it: the celebrated superiority of American democracy and the myth of economic freedom are, in fact, magic cast by demons.
"Just look around. Trump is savaging America's scientific research budget and driving away the most talented foreigners who want to come to America to work, study and invent. Trump gutted the electric car industry in favor of gas guzzlers, while Democrats did not think it was a bad idea to leave our southern border porous, which helped to get Trump re-elected."
One could put it this way. The American demon is not President Donald Trump, nor the MAGA crowd; the ingredients are far more complex than that. As the Doctrine of the Mean in the Book of Rites puts it: "When a state is about to flourish, there must be auspicious omens; when a state is about to perish, there must be demons." Let me be clear upfront: I am not the one forcing the demonization of America. I am merely noting that ominous signs are indeed in the air right now.
Twisting the Rubik's Cube, turning black into white. AI current-affairs cartoon
Twisting the Rubik's Cube
However you slice it, Friedman writes with a magic touch. America gets a light tap, while China gets the knife: "If China were a person, it would have the upper body of an Olympic weight lifter — rippling with muscles that represent its export-driven advanced manufacturing economy — and the lower body of an Olympic skier who just crashed into a mogul, broke his leg and can now only hobble on a crutch."
Why the broken leg? "That lower body represents a domestic Chinese economy that is still so weakened by the explosion of its large, quarter-century-long housing bubble — which ravaged its middle class and left hundreds of millions of people with mortgages that are underwater or with wiped-out savings — that many Chinese are holding tight to every yuan they can.
I see the trick now. Friedman's long piece circles and circles to do one thing: twist out an America that is neat and white on top and a China that is uniformly black below. With that sleight of hand, he turns the demon-revealing mirror into a Rubik's Cube. Please applaud.
After the applause comes the landing. Friedman argues: "The only way we will restore some balance to the economic relationship between China and America (and between China and Europe) is not by begging Beijing but by rebuilding our leverage — by being serious again about our governance, by making cost-competitive products and by planning beyond next week and then executing on those plans."
Read it closely, and the whole closing passage sounds less like strategy than a muffled cry of despair.
Comfort in a Cube
No wonder Friedman treats China as part of the same Rubik's Cube as the United States. Honestly, if my own country were like America, I too would throw everything into twisting it right again.
Even a paper exercise in tallying gains and losses would bring some comfort. Two hundred years ago, China was exactly like this.
