Among the favorite pop songs of the mid 1960s in northern China were two delightful hits, with the  superlatively catchy titles, “Americans are Ambitious Wolves”, and “Socialism is Very Good”.  I don’t know these songs.  When I think back to my earliest musical memories, Ike and Tina are singing “Proud Mary”, John Phillips in his furry hat leads his diva entourage in “California Dreamin’”, Roberta Flack is being killed softly with my song, and I can see clearly ‘cos the rain is gone.  While there may be truth in those energetic vitalities and wistful optimisms, I can’t help but pine for an alternative childhood, such that my red scarf would remain a cherished posession, and I could look back on the most extreme collective insanity in human history as the foundation for… what I am now?  Of course that is impossible, and that very impossibility lends strength to my ironic delight in the truth of the insight in that propaganda saw, so true of me at least, that “Americans are Ambitious Wolves”.