Maybe China was the cage then- well, one can’t deny that material conditions until recently were worse, that’s the circumstances China, like the vast majority of the world, which has been brutally pillaged and destabilized by the west for over a century, has to face.

My parents, too, left (Singapore) to the west, to Canada. I’d call them both race traitors as you describe, and mentally colonized in so many ways (my dad perhaps less so, but he’s also a shit person whereas my mom has recovered a fair bit in that regard). My mom was the one driving the move, and she fled “for freedom.” She abandoned her culture, her birth language, denounced her family’s traditional Chinese folk religion and Buddhist beliefs as “demon worshipping,” and headed to the west (interestingly enough, not her first time- that was when she eloped in her- I think it was late teens, with a white American teacher old enough to be her grandfather- and interestingly also it was the paternal side of the family, the more westernized, Catholic ones, who drove her to such a bad state as to force the move). All for “freedom.”

What freedom did she get, did either of my parents get? Nothing if you ask me, perhaps the “freedom” to spiral into increasingly cultish and religiously abusive behavior, which they did. The “freedom” to destroy their lives, for over a decade they will never gain back. The “freedom” to become the cultish, mentally ill (on my mom’s part), traumatized, abusive, poor (my dad at least I think got better in that regard, but fuck him), isolated, comprador branch of the family on both sides. The freedom to experience all the accursed nonsense inherent in this racist, genocidal-settler society.

I won’t deny, I myself for a time repeated my parents’ mistakes. While I can’t say I’d change things overly much, not quite, not when I met my partner in the road of life I chose- I too, for all that I always had a pride and strong sense of identity as being Asian, what with being raised- for much of it as a extreme minority in rural Canada- used to fall for the western lies, of milk and honey, “democracy and freedom and liberalism,” and even when I did wind up returning to my birthplace, Singapore, these poisonous lies, alongside trauma from certain bad circumstances in the first 2 months there (after which I had more family, more stability, more prospects, etc. than I had ever had in my life) poisoned my mind, twisted it so I could only seek to return to the “free” country where growing up at one point, if not for a car accident leading to compensation my family might have become homeless- where, I myself, had experienced (and would experience again) homelessness, the “free” country that is now standing for genocide as it always has, and seeking to destroy the peace and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific, and championing “yellow peril” narratives and Sinophobia…

What “freedom” can be said to be had, here? Associated with the west, that word is a poisonous word, a lie, the furthest thing from a truth. There are some “privileges,” perhaps, but it all hangs over our heads like a sword of Damocles at every turn, there to be threatened with removal constantly to keep us in line, a political “good cop, bad cop” circus act which hinges upon the constant divide-and-conquer culture wars western society thrives on, the demagoguery and hysteria that is inherent in our system. What freedom? These words are bitter lies, and the “milk and honey,” the prosperity, is also gone rancid at this point, and there’s no reason whatsoever to think the present “democratic” regimes of the west can even resolve (read: band-aid; and that they can’t even do that is hilariously pathetic) the material conditions within their cores, nor desire to.

I agree with your descriptions of the treachery and insidiousness of white liberals and conservatives alike, of course. But what “freedom,” truly? All moving did, was grant your family (and mine) the material comforts and benefits of a wealthier society, but even that glamour has all been lost now, and as it fades away people are increasingly realizing that our regimes are no different from, and indeed the inspiration for and progenitors of, the most murderous, dictatorial regimes in history- and those seeds are coming home to roost, and the truth is they always were simmering here, and what we really did was trade our dignity, and sonetimes our decency, for a well-marketed, gilded turd, one that has now exploded in our faces and shall only get more repugnant from here on out.