Payback is a Bitter Pill

China Joe Biden is a Chinese Communist Party shill, there's no question of that. The question is, has he opened the southern border in order to allow China to smuggle fentanyl into the States? Lots of people are now pointing out that this is at least a side effect, if not an intended outcome, of Biden's border policies. 

Now, I am not opposed to open borders because: 

1. our country was founded as an open borders country, 
2. Aquinas was fine with open borders, 
3. the Holy Father is fine with open borders,

But, even if none of that were true, the fact that China is importing a powerfully addicting illegal drug into the United States is unsurprising. If this were a movie, we would expect this to be the end of the reel, wherein after the protagonist suffers endless outrages, he wreaks havoc upon his tormentors. Given what we did to China, and in deference to America's favorite Hollywood ending, China owes us at least that courtesy. Sit back, grasshopper, and I will tell you the tale:

China had much to sell the West, but the West produced virtually nothing China needed or wanted. As British and American citizens consumed tea in great quantity but failed to produce anything the Chinese wanted, the threatening imbalance of trade between East and West became acute.

Both British and American companies solved the problem by illegally importing opium into the Chinese mainland. Chinese officials had long outlawed the drug because they recognized it as a poison. By the late 1700's, however, Britain had control of India’s poppy fields and her navy made it possible to smuggle tons of the stuff across the Chinese border and into Chinese harbors. American businessmen, having no access to Indian poppies, dealt themselves into the illegal drug trade by encouraging Turkish farmers to plant poppies so they, too, could grab part of the drug business.

China responded by confiscating and destroying the huge opium stocks in British warehouses on Chinese soil. Britain went to war to recover the cost of the lost opium, not once, but twice (1839-1842 and 1856-1860). The resulting British victories not only opened Chinese ports to the Western importation of opium, it also gave American citizen Warren Delano, FDR’s grandfather, the enormous wealth which FDR would use to such excellent effect in his own presidential election campaigns. In short, it is not too incorrect to say that FDR's presidency was made possible in part via drugged Chinese slaves.

That's correct: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grandfather imported opium into China despite the fact that China had outlawed opium. This illegal opium trade led directly to the Opium Wars that destroyed China as the centuries-long Asian superpower. It led directly to the burning of the Old Summer Palace, which still angers the Chinese, and to the subjugation of China for centuries by the West. The grandson of one of the major Chinese drug runners became the President that lorded it over them during WW II. 

China never forgot that.

Now, China seems to be returning the favor.

And we are left to whine that payback is a bitter pill.