China Might Bar Tiananmen Broadcasts
I honestly don’t know how a government that insists on maintaining an embargo against a mostly harmless speck of an island off Florida can reconcile that with the fact of massive trade – indeed, massive economic indenturement, to be blunt – to the hugest Communist dictatorship in the world. Yes, Communist. Yes, dictatorship. Just because everydamnthing in this country is made in China, because businesses get moist in their special places at the thought of 1.2 billion future customers, we’re willing to overlook the fact that IT’S A GODDAMNED TOTALITARIAN STATE.
I realize that nobody in this country has a memory longer than last week’s American Idol elimination, but yes, this is a country that was “liberalizing” back in 1989 – right before they machine-gunned the kids asking for democracy. That guy didn’t have a line of tanks waiting to run over him because he missed his quota at the Nike plant. It’s something that none of the last three Presidents seem to be able to wrap their brains around, and I sure don’t expect any of the current crop to grasp it (if we piss off China, who’s going to make all the cheap Wal-Mart shit to try to make our economy lurch forward again?), but this is a fact, and it is indisputable: the leadership in China is, for lack of a better word, evil. I’ma say that again. EVIL. If the Soviet Union was evil, if Saddam Hussein was evil, then a government that eschews democracy, uses its economic power to dampen foreign opposition, sells dangerous weapons to known international bad guys AND suppresses its citizens by force of arms?
If you don’t think that’s the definition of evil, well, you’re welcome to suggest another word, but I will also suggest that you’d be full of shit.
And now, oh look, they’re basically doing what they always do to Tibet…and cutting off the press to make sure nothing mars the pretty pictures from the Olympics. Where the world will turn a blind eye again. Just like always. Massacring citizens, shipping toxins, ravaging huge areas of the country (think Three Gorges) – we’re willing to look past all that, because we need our cheap goods, and maybe one day they might buy them too.
If that’s not a pathetic indictment of us as a country, I don’t know what is. But if we had the balls God gave a gnat, we’d bag the Olympics right now and tell the butchers of Tienanmen Square that they can have their five-ring circle jerk without us, because despite everything, we still really do care about promoting democracy. I’m not waiting, though.