Read Online Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld by Linda Washington - Free Book Online Page B

ownership issue sparks race-related skirmishes in Ankh-Morpork. We’ve certainly heard about or experienced those in our country. During the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, riots broke out in Chicago, Birmingham, and other places. The death threats during Prince Cadram’s diplomatic visit to
Ankh-Morpork reminded us of the threats Martin Luther King received while organizing nonviolent protests—threats that culminated in his assassination in 1968. But race riots didn’t end there. The verdict after the trial of police officers caught on video beating Rodney King sparked a three-day riot in Los Angeles in 1992.
    War over a piece of land is a familiar tune played over centuries. In the United States as the West was settled, soldiers fought Native Americans over the plains. The Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876 (a.k.a. Custer’s last stand) was fought over the Black Hills of South Dakota. Miners wanted the area for the gold they found. The Lakota Sioux, who had a reservation there as well as a treaty signed by the government, considered the land sacred. General George Armstrong Custer was sent to deal with the situation. Custer’s troops faced the combined forces of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors and lost. Fatally.
    At least in Jingo, the war is averted. But not so with the duchy of Borogravia and its Zlobenian antagonists in Monstrous Regiment. Prince Heinrich wants control of the duchy. Pratchett alludes to Walt Kelly’s poignant statement with Polly Perks’s thought, We have met the enemy and he is nice. 56 But such thoughts don’t keep her from fighting.
    Agatean Empire vs. Ankh-Morpork with Rincewind on the Side

    As we look at this wall—we do not want any walls of any kind between peoples.
    â€”Richard Nixon 57

    They’re, well … foreign over there.
    â€”Archchancellor Ridcully about the Agatean Empire 58

    Diplomacy is a way of weaving the threads of two countries together. (It’s also a way to forge powerful alliances with bigger countries with better weaponry.) In Interesting Times, Rincewind’s enforced diplomatic trip to the Agatean Empire (a country with some aspects of China and Japan) in the Counterweight Continent reminded us of former president Richard Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972, a trip that paved the way for a new foreign policy. No other U.S. president had visited China before. First time for everything. While we take for granted today that anyone can visit China (we visited China thirty years after Nixon’s trip; no albatrosses were dispatched to encourage the visit), the fact that anyone can go there is probably due to Nixon’s trip.
    Just before that trip, then national security officer Henry Kissinger visited Beijing. But before that, an American Ping-Pong team paved the way for the visit—hence the “ping-pong diplomacy” designation for Nixon’s trip.
    Relations between the U.S. and China had been strained at best. But China’s weakened alliance with Russia strengthened U.S. resolve to visit the country. Nixon met with Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and Communist party leader Mao Zedong. So, what did they talk about? Now that the notes from their meetings have been declassified, we know they talked about the Vietnam War, Taiwan (would it become independent?), and the Chinese leaders’ fears about Japan—whether it would continue to expand.
    Discworld’s Lord Hong is no Mao Zedong. Hong comes from a wealthy family. Mao Zedong was the son of a peasant who rose to wealth. Mao became the leader of the Red Army (now the People’s Liberation Army)—the revolutionaries. Lord Hong wants the Red
Army—the revolutionaries of the story—to fail. But the incredibly large Chinese Red Army, begun in 1927, has similarities not only in size but also to the history of the PLA.
    Unfortunately, Lord Hong doesn’t factor in the