Melissa Chen
@MsMelChen • 332,332 subscribers
VP @strategyrisks | Board + co-founder @IdeasB2 | Board @envprogress | 🇸🇬 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 | ✍️ The Spectator & elsewhere | Email: [email protected]
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Elite schools went woke because they stopped admitting (and rewarding) this female archetype at scale: the bubbly feminine, high agency, super sociable sorority sister who believes she can win with talent and charm and looks. Elle Woods, basically. Instead they filled it with grim, status-seeking activists obsessed with perpetual victim hood and deconstructing everything.
Melissa Chen326,494 Aufrufe • vor 10 Tagen
Hegseth’s message to Europe could hardly be clearer: the US is pivoting toward the Asian model of alliance management - pragmatic, interest-driven, and results-oriented - rather than the old European model of values-based diplomacy laced with moralizing and lectures on human rights and the “rules-based order.” For Asian countries (Singapore, Philippines, etc.), relations with the US have always been structured more on common interests than common values. Singapore and Asian states are pragmatic and are willing to work with whoever occupies the White House because America’s role as the balancer in Asia remains indispensable. Even non-aligned countries such as India and former adversaries such as Vietnam now recognize this. They appreciate hard power and credible deterrence more than pretty speeches, which is perfectly in line with the US's new national security strategy. Managing the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and other hotspots requires credible deterrence and military capability far more than human rights resolutions. Asia’s focus on this aligns with the need to impose costs on revisionist behavior. Basing your foreign policy on human rights and democracy, you risk losing nations that don't exactly hold the American variant of democracy in high regard. Hegseth praised “model allies” who are “capable, clear-eyed, and ready to defend their national interests.” His use of "clear-eyed" is important here. It means that to be an ally, you must agree on what the threat is. That should be the starting point. From there, national interests converge. Note how European "allies" diverge from this framework. You have many European nations now characterizing the US as the threat to the global order instead. This is the opposite of clear-eyedness. In a world where China presents a serious, long-term challenge to the regional order, utility and resolve matter more than shared ideology. Asia adapted after the collapse of the TPP by building CPTPP and RCEP; it managed Trump’s hard-power instincts and Biden’s style alike by staying focused on interests. The US, facing its own fiscal and strategic realities, is now explicitly choosing to reward and prioritize that same pragmatism. Western Europe would indeed do well to take note.
Melissa Chen94,966 Aufrufe • vor 11 Tagen
The Alysa Liu as hero vs. Eileen Gu as anti-hero arc continues to play out. She skated with such lightness and joy, taking the Olympic gold today - the first individual to win gold for the USA 🇺🇸 in this event in 24 years. Just look at her post-performance reaction - pure all-American exuberance bursting out like fireworks on the 4th of July. She's so bubbly and almost cartoonishly enthusiastic, beaming at the crowd as she skates around, unable to conceal her wide grin. Meanwhile, across the slopes today, Eileen Gu faced her own dramatic twist, crashing down the halfpipe after clips of her press conference demeanor went viral. In it, she laughed loudly at a reporter's question before delivering a haughty and defensive response about her record, saying "I'm most decorated female freeskier in history." It's totally fine to highlight her self-evident success but the way that came off, compared to Alysa's warm and approachable on-ice outburst, just reinforced The Tale of Two Athletes. Eileen raked in $6.6 million from the Chinese government to ski for Team China, and her brand endorsements pull in upwards of $20 million in off-ice income. Alysa on the other hand didn't take the China deal, and had to endure being targeted by Chinese spies all because of her father who is a Chinese political refugee. I hope American companies are paying attention: patriotism is a brand in itself, one that deserves to be profitable too. Alysa is genuine and inspirational and her story is also one about grit and grace and sticking to ones' principles. What a great American hero. Congratulations Alysa Liu, American Patriot 🫡
Melissa Chen535,936 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
Another reason why Trump cannot afford to just walk into a summit and call Xi's regime what it is: America's economy is now so hopelessly entangled with the CCP's that full-throated honesty about the China threat triggers economic blowback and strategic suicide. This wasn't true in the Cold War, as I tell Marissa Streit. Back then, the US and Soviets were economically decoupled. Hollywood made Red Dawn, Rocky IV, and a hundred other films openly calling them the evil empire. Reagan could label them the "focus of evil in the modern world" without the Soviet Union yanking the plug on semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, or rare earth magnets. We fought the ideological war with clarity because the economic one barely existed.
Melissa Chen69,100 Aufrufe • vor 26 Tagen
This is the kind of fresh thinking we need Jimmy Carr is full of ideas on how to give the young a stake in the future. He asks: what if we don’t tax those between the ages of 20-30? This would address intergenerational inequities by incentivizing work, offsetting the housing affordability crisis, getting young people on the property ladder and encouraging marriage and kids.
Melissa Chen226,685 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
Every time I hear the debate between English identity and multiculturalism, I’m deeply confused. Multiculturalism essentially means that “Englishness” is an empty vessel in which cultures live together, that the vessel of being a country is neutral and empty of content. There’s been an elite project in Britain, America and Canada and generally in the English speaking world, to empty identity of distinctiveness and culture and into that empty vessel, pour any old random thing. Literally any old idea unexamined. And so you now have in Britain, a very small minority of radical islamists. They are tiny. Most muslims are not radical. They are tiny, and yet they can run your streets because everybody else is an empty vessel. You look at that idea and you say that’s not me, that’s not us, and you spit it out. But if you don’t know what me and us is, you can’t look at an idea and say that’s not us. One of the most precious things you could give your children is a thousand years of culture. It’s who you are and who you have been. Now I’m an Israeli Jew who firmly believes a nation can be multiracial but I’m worried about multicultural. Because culture is the single most important decider of human behavior. It’s the single most important thing to have in a cohesive country. To Westerners who have been trained by generations of elites to not know who you are because of a misunderstanding of what happened in the 20th century, because of a misunderstanding of where colonialism and WWII comes from, as thinking too much about your own culture, or thinking your culture is too good, is what caused the Holocaust, you need to step back. “Germaness” is not what caused the Holocaust - Haviv Rettig Gur nails it. Every word of this
Melissa Chen245,583 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten
This video has made the rounds on Chinese social media since Maduro's arrest by the US military It's a reel stitched together to the soundtrack of "Beijing Welcomes You." It's a very unsubtle welcome song for the US military to visit Beijing and.. well, I'll let your imagination take flight In a place where people are not allowed to speak freely, this is really brazen and stunning
Melissa Chen143,161 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
Mexico needs to be LeeKuanYew-maxxing “If we could kill them a hundred times, we would”
Melissa Chen96,433 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
Can everyone just calm down. Nothing is new. PM Takaichi said that an attack on Taiwan would be a “survival threatening situation” for Japan. Of course it is. This is evidently true given Taiwan’s proximity to important trade routes and Japan’s dependence on trade. Chinese leaders already know this. The only difference is, she just dared to actually say it out loud. All the bluster and escalating maneuvers are just for “saving face” and distracting from domestic issues. No invasion is imminent. Taiwan is fine. Meanwhile, enjoy this lighthearted take on what happens if China invades Taiwan by Andrew Schulz 👑HEZI 🇯🇵🤝🇹🇼
Melissa Chen123,253 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten
We have a problem in this world today recognizing Obvious Evil. Hamas is obvious evil, and Haviv Rettig Gur explains why. “If you hate Israel, fine. Go for it. Enjoy it! Hamas will *STILL* destroy Gaza. And it will still never do anything other than destroy Gaza. It literally can’t and never has, not in 40 years of its existence.”
Melissa Chen84,228 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
Fireworks are dumb. Once you've seen one, you've seen them all. Unless you do what San Diego accidentally did and light ALL the fireworks at once. There's literally no reason to do fireworks any other way now. Just light it all up in one big spectacle and go home.
Melissa Chen292,651 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren
Oliver Anthony pulled off his first concert for his Rural Revival Project in downtown Spruce Pine, NC among hollowed out buildings still reeling from the floods last year. He sold tickets at $30 a pop without using any of the industry-standard behemoths (Live Nation / Ticketmaster), and had zero corporate sponsors. He has 3 months to pull it off and put together an amazing team - many just volunteers. Crowds were chanting for “Rich Men North of Richmond” - his anti-corporate, anti-bureaucratic populist screed of a hit. These lyrics just captures the political zeitgeist, doesn’t it? 🎶 I wish politicians would look out for miners And not just minors on an island somewhere 🎶
Melissa Chen99,182 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
Crazy to think just how much Trump and Kushner have redrawn the map of what is achievable and possible in the turbulent theater of Middle Eastern geopolitics and diplomacy. Where countless experts - with decades of experienced and training in formal diplomacy and international relations - have failed before. Trump’s and Kushner’s deal making is unorthodox, but no one can deny the results. Because in business what you’re measured by is results. Because pragmatism is far more effective than intellectualism and idealism. Love him or hate him, Trump’s instincts on how to wield power and make deals are exactly what was needed in a world of great politics. Jared Kushner’s quiet and studied approach to bridge building and negotiations helped to make Trump’s vision a reality. A year ago, I explained Trump’s unconventional diplomatic playbook to Andrew Gold and why a crazy world needed a maverick:
Melissa Chen57,546 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten