The China Which Isn't The Republic Of China

Bill Maher is wrong about a few things, such as people, whom he likes significantly less than dogs, and failing to understand that Medicare and Social Security are earned benefits. However, he's right about others, including the value of free expression (hence the title of his long-cancelled show, "Politically Incorrect") and race. He put the latter two perspectives together in noting how Americans and the USA have submitted to the influence of mainland China (or "China," as he and virtually everyone else refers to it), especially in recent years. On Friday's Real Time, Maher explained (beginning at 5:40 of the video below)

So can you really blame 18-year-old Eileen Gu, who's already made over thirty-one million dollars as the face of 23 brand products in China, for following in the footsteps of other American celebrities? Some of Gu's defenders say it's racist to ask if she's still an American citizen and she herself won't say.

Why is that racist? Why is it racist to think that Covid might have originated from a lab leak as opposed to eating bats , besides the fact that the idea that Covid came from eating, gross, weird food seems way more racist than that it came from a high-tech lab?

Besides that, the definition of woke was supposed to be being alert to injustice in society but because the woke now see race first and everything else never, fear of being accused of racism has given free pass on human rights abuses to China and any other places that are perceived as non-white. If China was in Europe, would they get away with having concentration camps without more of an outcry from America?

The answer is an emphatic "no," and only in part because they'd be called "concentration camps," which the ones in Xinjiang too infrequently are. Maher continues

If men were forcing women to wear this (women wearing Muslim attire, seen at 7:00), in, say, Massachusetts, would that go on as unremarked on as it does? The Chinese classified transgender as a mental illness. They just edited "Friends" episodes so that Ross' wife is definitely not a lesbian. How would that go over here? Someone has to tell me where we got this rule that you can't criticize China because I suspect that we got it from China- because after all, it's where we get everything else.

Maher then quoted the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which is the most politically correct thing anyone anywhere in the USA can do because all Americans think MLK believed exactly what they believe.

Still, Maher was willing to identify by name- LeBron James, John Cena, Tom Cruise- a few of the celebrities who have sold out to the Butchers of Beijing, as well as the double standard wherein criticism of mainland China is muted because the Chinese are Asian. He noted also that Cena was forced to capitulate and bow down to the regime after he "referred to Taiwan as  a country as if it was a separate country from China- which it is."

Nonetheless, the central issue is how policy toward Beijing can and should be changed. An immediate and fairly obvious step would be to strip the International Olympic Committee of its tax exempt status in the USA.  Additionally, legislation requiring nation of origin information on all products sold online would allow the consumer to pass over an item made in mainland China for one made elsewhere. Though sometimes there is no alternative because of the extraordinary penetration of Chinese products in the domestic market, as more consumers select products not made in that nation, demand would grow for products to be manufactured in the USA. and supply would respond to demand.

Taming the demonic beast of the east is a gigantic challenge for the USA, reputedly the most powerful nation on earth. However, as with all other problems which should have been confronted yesterday, the best alternative is to begin acting now.

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