Covering Up Communist Murder
Every now and then, an exceedingly useful word is invented, only to be discarded and forgotten without replacement. One such word is “credenciveness,” a 19th-century coinage describing the predisposition to accept as truth whatever we are told. Being credencive is not the same as being credulous, the latter term implying a certain naïveté. Credenciveness is one of the traits that allows us to sustain society at all. If we lived in a state of perpetual skepticism, civilized interaction would be impossible. Hence, we are predisposed to trust, to believe, and to accept, unless given ample reason to think otherwise.
This faculty is routinely exploited by the powerful and unscrupulous. Understanding that the illegitimate exercise of power depends upon deception, our would-be ruling elites like to encourage the notion that government is honest and credible, and that corruption and coverup are the exception and not the rule. We Americans are particularly vulnerable to such distortions because, as the inheritors of the best government yet devised by worldly powers, we have been less victimized by venality in high places than have been the longsuffering multitudes of the Old World.
While certain big coverups, such as those surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident, have generated popular interest, the murder of John Birch by Chinese communists and ensuing coverup remain virtually unknown to the general public. The news is now saturated with stories about Communist China — the bitter trade war, the preparations for invasion of Taiwan, the fentanyl crisis, the massive military buildup, the Uighur genocide, the attacks on the Philippines, and on and on. But why has Communist China been allowed to become immensely rich and powerful, despite its genocidal history, undisguised brutality, and atheistic contempt for individual liberty? Why are Trump’s tariffs and other anti-China measures even remotely controversial? Why is there any hesitancy whatsoever in decoupling American trade from a regime that has vowed to destroy us?
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