Is Tim Walz the Manchurian Candidate?
Is Tim Walz the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life?
Why did 25-year-old Tim Walz spend 1989-1990 in China, the first of his 30 or so visits to China?
Was it all part of a brilliant Manchurian Candidate-quality plot by the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate the Nebraska National Guard by picking out the man who would run for vice president 35 years later?
Well … maybe. I mean, what other reason do young white guys have for teaching English in East Asia?
But doesn’t it seem more likely that the young Walz taught English in a Foshan high school for the same reason lots of normal young American men teach English in East Asia: they have Yellow Fever?
Chinese girls are nice.
As for many of his subsequent trips to China after his marriage, Tim and Gwen were schoolteachers, and many schoolteachers pick up extra money over summer by chaperoning youth trips to foreign countries. Having spent a year in China, it was natural for Walz to make China his specialty as a tour guide.
My suspicion is that Walz is just what he looks like: a nothing-special guy whom the craziness of American politics has elevated to a ridiculous height.
There you go again, Steve, offering the most likely, non-crazy explanation.
It is still really weird he intentionally chose the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre for their wedding anniversary. Combined with his wife's comments about wanting to smell tires burning during the Minneapolis riots, you can't argue these are normal, well adjusted people just wanting to give high school students a vacation in another country. That doesn't make him a Manchurian Candidate in the traditional sense, but I could easily see him getting manipulated by the ChiComs, because he thinks he is an expert on them.