An Open Letter to Andrew Yang Regarding His Recent WaPo Article
Dear Andrew Yang,
First off, I am one of your supporters and have been Yang Gang for some time now, and those things are not changing any time soon. But this article was a pretty big gaffe. I love you, Andrew, but you misfired here.
In terms of what you wrote, I know what you meant. You meant that in this COVID-19 crisis we Asian Americans can be part of the solution and should do so with every resource at our disposal. Many of us are highly educated and specifically trained to be of great help in this kind of situation. I got it.
You also meant that we should all understand that the main driver of this racism is mostly fear of the virus and not necessarily hatred against Asians per se. So if Asian Americans all focus on combating the virus instead of responding in kind, that would be the quickest and most expedient way to deal with this current rash of racial violence against us.
The problem is that A) this is NOT how it came off. How it sounded is actually quite damaging and hurtful to the Asian community. I know that is harsh, but wounds from a friend can be trusted, and I really am a friend. This comes off as saying that the answer to the recent surge of violent racism against Asians is by getting all of us Asians to work harder at fighting this virus so as to prove our Americanness and value to the country. I’m sure you can see the problem with that. Asian Americans (or any American minority) shouldn’t have to prove our “Americanness” or justify our existence to anyone, especially during this current crisis that our whole country is facing.
And B) even if everyone understood what you actually meant, what you meant is still problematic. You are essentially asking for unity between us Asian Americans and the rest of America, where everyone has to do their part to fight this existential threat to our way(s) of life. The problem, and it’s a big one, is that you basically are asking Asian Americans to grin and bear the brunt of this violence. And instead of us fighting back, protecting ourselves, or otherwise addressing it directly, you are asking us to simply keep our heads down and work harder in solidarity with everyone else who is working hard.
The problem is that there can be no unity with racists until the racism is properly addressed. It’s hard to work in solidarity with someone who wants to either kill you or violently drive you away from their presence as if you were the personification of the virus itself.
I understand that this is not the time to be bickering about things other than the COVID-19 situation that is killing thousands of people a day. But asking Asians to be part of the solution here is like blaming women for wearing the wrong clothing after being assaulted. Just imagine if there were a huge spike in sexual assaults all across the country during this crisis and telling the victims, The best way you can address this terrible situation is by keeping your head down, focusing on your contributions to the “war,” and, oh, by the way, dressing more conservatively if you can.
I’m going to hold out hope that the WaPo edited your piece so that things didn’t come out the way that you wanted. If that wasn’t the case, then I’m going to hold out hope that this was just a misfire in your otherwise brilliant mind.
I still support you and staunchly remain Yang Gang. Part of the reason is that you really are, to me, the opposite of Donald Trump: an Asian man who likes math. Donald Trump would cancel anyone who criticizes him. Many Bernie supporters, though not Bernie himself, tend to do the same. I’m hoping that you are what you say you are: not left, not right, but forward. There are quite a few in the Yang Gang who are criticizing you right now over this. Be different from the examples I gave above, lest I, and many others who have supported you, once again find ourselves socio-politically homeless once again.
Your staunch supporter and Yang Gang member,
Joe Kim
President Trump is someone that christians in american ought to have been praying for once the election finished what work it did. The spiritual battle is greater than the material battle. His brand of Christian faith is the root of many of America’s issues – in particular his being a disciple of Norman Vincent Peale’s version of the prosperity gospel and the self-programming of positive thinking. His denial of having any sin is part of this theology and the bizarre grant of evangelical christendom that has been late to raise the banner of critique regarding the issue. Peale’s line ultimately derives from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, from the time of robber barons – and his technique began with six months of heavy meditation that involved occult invocation of the spirits of dead successful men, including Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, to the point where he had difficulty distinguishing between reality and the council of men he conferred with. There is a demonic root to these matters, and spiritual warfare is absolutely essential – the same corruptions are easily infectious and the sin itself is common to man, even if his personal form of ostentation is exceptional. He himself has lit candles to a Hindu prosperity idol in the White House each year at Diwali. We must walk by faith and not by sight – sin is what we must oppose more than the person, because the demonic strongholds are the ultimate enemy as Christians. I see white Christian evangelicals seeing some of their past mistakes with alarm and currently pressing forward with fasting and prayer – how is it that we would hold hands with pro-abortion, pro-marijuana, pro-LGBTQ covenant breaking “Christianity” that democratic party involvement has policed to qualify for participation? What voice of conscience can the church provide from such a place, to take on the ways of the world to answer the worldly? Yang himself needs prayer, the church must stand as representatives of the kingdom from above and not of this earth – we have Christ, we do not seek another Caesar!
Daniel, I’m not sure exactly what you are saying besides ‘Donald Trump and Andrew Yang need our prayers’. I don’t know his history or involvement with cults or teachers of aberrant Christianity, but I will agree that he, like any of our leaders needs prayer. Yang needs prayer too, for many of the same reasons. I’m not saying that you’re wrong about everything you listed, for I really don’t know nor do I have time to fact check right now. I’m just saying that I really don’t understand where you are going with this besides your urging us to pray for those two. I think most people would say that politics are like Amazon. Terrible company, with a CEO that we’re not sure we can endorse. But he, like the company is a means to an end. otherwise, we could never vote for anyone. And civil disengagement is generally a bad thing.
Joe Kim’s open letter responding to Andrew Yang’s WAPO article short sighted, tribal and offensive. Racial grievance whiners are tearing this country apart. The worst are those who make their living as agitators in service of converting our federal republic into an unworkable national democacy. Andrew Yang could well succeed as president if given the chance but he will never get there serving small minded interest groups that see only the hole in the american doughnut.
G-d has commanded for the faithful to mourn with those who mourn. If the grievances are illegitimate, then indeed they should be dismissed, but if they are signs of actual injustice, it is wickedness to turn a blind eye & deaf ear to the cries of the poor & oppressed, in fact cursed by G-d to likewise cry without any to hear.
America’s strengths in transparency (with no precedent in history of FOIA and 25yr release of confidential documents), the promise of many of its values (including the ennobling of mankind into the inheritance granted by the Creator), these values held with a margin of integrity by some, all speak to the great credit of the country, but the Republic’s historical involvement in spreading abortion to the world and its current advocacy of LGBTQ against poorer and weaker nations with godly values is exploitative, including holding foreign aid to the tune of 600 million USD to Christian Zambia hostage on condition of removing laws on the matter of protecting social decency and the honor of Christian marriage. This is a door for rich gay americans on grindr to continue pedophilic and homosexual exploitation of the poor in other nations, not to mention undermining advocacy to end sex trafficking.
Dear Joe,
It took time, but these are not hidden facts about where the President is coming from spiritually. Civil disengagement is actually a starting point for all kingdom work, because it gives us the distance from our personal hopes & agendas from clouding our submission to the purposes of G-d in a given era versus the spirit of the age. It is when the seed falls to the ground and dies that it bears the fruit of the harvest; til then, the seed is born from above with complete dependency upon the Root for the fulfillment of its development.
Moral compromise in the seeming small points billow like yeast into greater blindspots, when the content of truth needs no addition or removal from the kernel that can of itself go forth in self-replicating & multiplying life in production of new children for Abraham. How can we retain the saltiness of the Word if we allow the authority on entrenchment in bipartisan politics police whether or not we will speak on behalf on innocence stolen, exploited, murdered, or deceived? The seed retains its properties and breaks into the soil, even sometimes breaking through cement when a tree is the forebear, taking lifeless mineral and water & light and becoming life and a harbor and fruit bearer in whatever land it is sown so long as the soil conditions are good.
Christian voice that must engage enough to know the details of the mechanics of political corruption and machine politics, backroom dealing, to be able to break in with the life of heaven even though sown in death to this life.
The spiritual war in this nation reaches deep into the roots of political bureaucracy, Freemasonry’s occultism, Greek societies’ pagan mythologies (even rooting the medical authority by oath to such idols), ethnocentric media and culture “sanctified” by a golden calf of white hermeneutics and ethnic purity to usurp & replace the parallel biblical hermeneutics and purity of the soul of institutions, communities, & individuals. How will we stand and face the Savior on judgment day when we have no distinction from the worldliness He died to purchase us from?
I see that Joe Kim’s response to Irv Cohen’s comment has been removed from the site. I would have been embarrassed as Wii if, upon reflection, i maturely reconsidered the sophomoric words I had published. Comments should not be solicited if the standard for acceptable submissions is anything a writer determines to be hurtful to his feelings.
The point he made from Yang’s book, about how being placed even hypothetically into a situation of disastrous failure had a way of dropping anybody’s IQ is a humbling reminder that we all have what mental faculties we are permitted for the times allotted (by which we then resolve to redeem the times in light of the evil of the days). Likely he had his hopes very high upon Yang’s continuance in the campaign and this was his heart unveiled in the intimacy of the confidence he had entrusted in the community of those who have lived heavily marginalized by society.
I’ve seen an elderly man with a confident grip upon American politics take direct aim at me as an obvious son of ethnic immigrants with a prepared attack on the subject of abortion, because bipartisan politics, for all their entrenched personalities and polarized rhetoric, still maintains a secular ecumenism that is established in wealth and secret societies like Freemasons, Bohemian Grove, Skull & Bones, greek college life, and the Roman Catholic/Vatican’s many orders (whose corruptions are being well concealed and aided by the epidemic’s muffling of the popular democratic #MeToo protest which had no republican protestant evangelical support), in particular the paramilitant Jesuits vowed to unconditional and unquestioning obedience, regardless of the commands of Christ, to obey what they call a pope/father. The elderly man was positive, in this small apartment with regulations including that no signs (like crosses) can be hung upon the windows except for political signs, that the bipartisan game forcing either submission to the policed support of LGBTQ/abortion or to the surrender of needed advocacy of immigrant rights had pushed me into the survival state of making compromise by abortion, and proceeded with lethal assurance in how he would silence me in perpetuity with regard to Christian faith & moral rebuke. By G-d’s grace, i remained ready for this attack upon the work of the gospel here.
The benefits of the reformation in bringing a strong doctrinal understanding of Scripture was wrought from european religious warfare of many generations, and the carefully planned staging of the discussion, along with the sniper’s hand at the trigger for leftovers, are all well-oiled and functional in their machinations. They in fact have some modern upgrades with the information age to increase the subtlety of the show above the show of real life(bamboo ceiling), above the trampling of the forgotten oppressed and ruthlessly labelled and cast off (the cordoning off and gatekeeping of undocumented labor/homeless mental health/native tribal voices) whose opportunities at the graces of G-d are increasingly held hostage by a single eternally condemned mistake, however great or minor, while those included under privilege of anti-biblical oath and because of natural affinity by race or clan are continually shown ‘favor’ (really partiality) with the semantics of a G-d of a thousand second chances. This liberality persists, disregarding the fact that G-d brought mercy to Israel by raising up new sons of Abraham from Samaria to substitute hardhearted Pharisees in the repeated pattern of favor to the Gentile as the price for the reconcilitative mercy shown to the Jew.
If you will dispute small points, the larger ones must be mentioned as Christ has required in His speech regarding wood in the eyes.
Daniel – I don’t know if you got to see the exchange between Joe and me before it was removed. I was not down on Andrew Gang’s candidacy. Yang would be a stronger opponent for Trump than Biden. Not sure where you are coming from with respect to racial discrimination but I will say that with respect to abortion as a political issue, whatever your race or ethnicity you are likely to be prevented from speaking about it on many college campuses and might even be subjected to mob violence. Of course there are persons who bear I’ll will towards others due to immutable characteristics. It is the job of governments to protect individuals from violence. We can’t expect to be protected from all the words that might hurt our feelings. Christians, especially since the reformatin period, are responsible to promote the good news and peace that is made more possible by a decentralization of authority. Inquisition and forced submission by military means must be resisted even as we offer love to the cruelest of aggressors.
I should have edited for spelling. I am not usually that wordy. Thanks for your consideration.
i may have missed part of the thread; my apologies if my previous comment seems out of nowhere because i missed the context. The race points are important to keep on the table of discussion, although discrimination along color lines often falters at some point when honor and wealth become priorities in a worldly imitation of the impartiality of G-d the Creator of all in His own image. Post Social Darwinism and at its current point of saturation in culture and higher education, the religion that Epstein and his posse of billionaires and evolutionary biologists espoused became the spread of the genes of the rich over the inferior genes of the poor – money as the measure of evolutionary fitness, considerations of corruption in the accounting discarded as simply part of how the game is played.
i understand the dangers of speaking about pro-life matters; oftentimes people or their loved ones have done the act of infanticide without considering it murder, and are dangling on a thread of the doctors and nurse’s unquestioned authority and what other affirmation they can find in others around them. At the same time, there are some who have gone well past the point of honest debate and discussion in any search for truth, and have discarded moral considerations entirely in utter depravity. Usually this is first in jest, but increasingly with a venomous audacity some confuse for courage. Still, there is a significant amount of listening that needs to take place on the part of many pro-lifers, especially those that have dubiously taken their self-righteousness in the fact that many of them haven’t murdered their own children and have been sitting pretty, especially when having had both the benefit of strong Christian families of faith, and material wealth beyond the poverty line.
Being confronted with bloodguilt, especially in a merciless way (as is broadly the case by this point in the institutionalization of abortion back in the 70s) is easily frustrating to the point of angry exasperation. This particularly where there is little credence given to the testimony of women who are seduced, drugged, abused within relationship, or raped, and the death penalty or indentured servitude for the lifelong weight of hypocritical dishonor is not considered, thus leaving no dignification of the vicitim, and where options for adoption were not introduced or not available, and where ease of safe and trustworthy healthcare generally (poor people on the whole, and especially ethnic people, often face real risks without the power of a credible threat of malpractice suits against doctors and with little advocacy for the thick exploitation that the medical industry has been guilty of with its overprescription and incestuous relationship with both pharmaceutical companies and medical instrument/imaging companies, not to mention the complication of insurance companies. Doctors already not seeking high profits by going to poor communities after having gone to expensive, honor and profit-seeking educational institutions, leaves the mercy of discretion and social sympathy to be reserved for the wealthy and established.
The race matter arises in the matter of honor and in media, with the lowest common denominator of social sympathy from the castle of the rich landed white male as the implicit gold standard. The bar is moved to the farthest token of tolerance, whether that is a poor white man, or then a white woman, or going lower, a black man, an asian woman, a black woman, or an asian man, with natives removed from the picture and hispanics often lumped with blacks. It’s all complicated and politically mixed with international intrigue and how much America wants to crawl back to England or Europe, or even Russia, to rebase its moral authority on an ethnic basis instead of dealing with unfamiliar voices of conscience here, and what economic and political shifts are occurring in the deals with middle easterners or indians (often a step ahead because they’ve dealt with England) or whoever else is going to sweeten the pot. But although histories of empire and dogs of ethnic solidarity will shelter ethnic purism regardless of which one it is (the French learned empire from the Chinese, after all), the gospel must always stand in the gap and throw itself in the line of fire (as the Apostle Paul did for the Greek brethren) for such corruption of a genealogical caste system to be fended off from the fellowship of the saints.