Business and Government--Inverted

In the United States, “we” have given enormous power to our businesses. If you're a Republican, you feel this is a great and good thing. If you're a Democrat, probably not so much.

We is in quotations because no one asked us—the American public—if we were okay with that. It was just done. Case in point was the 2010 Citizens United decision, which had nothing to do with citizens or unity.

Ostensibly about campaign finance reform, it served to weaponize Republican's biggest advantage (money) and removed any and all constraints from corporate campaign donations. This because in the words of our friends across the aisle, corporations are people, too.

And that being the case, deserve their first amendment rights, also. 

Sniff.

This not only further entrenched the culture of special interests and lobbyists in Washington DC, but made running for office a whole helluva lot more expensive. You are no doubt shocked to learn a Republican-majority in the Supreme Court found in its favor.

As the U.S. economy has moved from one based in manufacturing to one based in more nebulous things like buying and selling stuff like debt and data, it has moved out of brick and mortar structures into cyberspace.

It has changed more-quickly than the government can adapt to it. Tech entities like Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook frequently operate in an unregulated environment that often leaves them to (gulp) police themselves.

Which brings us to Facebook's suspension of Donald Trump.

I'm convinced one-hundred percent of us know Donald Trump is a shit. But only fifty-percent of us will admit it because denying for Donnie has become a cause. A declaration of contempt for people who see things differently than you do.

For those of us not in the cult, Donald Trump is a cancerous skin lesion. Left untreated, it will envelop the body and kill it. And unlike most cancers, the best and most-effective treatment for this strain is silence.

Unplugging the lie machine that seeks only its own affirmation even at the expense of a nation. 

Republicans can yammer about freedom of speech til they turn blue. (Heh heh heh.) Donnie can cry “It's rigged!” til his BMI is appropriate to his age, weight and height. But as they so often do, Republican's own actions hollow-out even their most-pointed accusations until they're nothing but empty shells.

Much like Republicans themselves.

Until government catches up, we are most fortunate to have tech entities like Facebook that realize the greater threat, and have acted accordingly. Ironic, isn't it?

Acquiescence

You never know which match is going to start the fire.

Take China. If there's one thing I liked about Donald Trump (and there was only one, trust me), it was his willingness to call out China.

Long the manipulator of its citizenry, ignorer of trademarks and an all-star violator of human rights, China has an astonishing ability to hypnotize its trading partners into believing it is a trustworthy and egalitarian one.

China is the con man who can bedazzle the world into believing, well, practically anything. Like all successful cons, it uses the greed of its marks to compromise them.

And when hypnosis doesn't work, there is always the bludgeon of cheap labor and those 1.3 billion potential consumers.

We pretended Google wasn't kowtowing to China's oppressive leadership and constructing search engines that prevented Chinese citizens from reading anything their government didn't want them to read, making Google one of the world's most powerful and wealthiest corporations in the process.

We ignored it when Beijing suppressed Olympic coverage it didn't deem consistent with its public relations campaigns, and pretended that Beijing's air quality was great, its citizenry free to express any degree of dissatisfaction with their government they wished and that Tiananmen Square never, ever happened because, after all, no one could find proof of it on a Google search.

Gosh. I could go on and on and on.

In our corporation's desire to make ever-greater amounts of money, and in our own unfortunate acceptance of it, we have shown our true colors. Yeah, democracy is nice and everything, but more than that we prize abundant and inexpensive labor. Corpulent profit margins. Expanding market share. Wealth creation with ceilings like the Sistine Chapel.

That's what we really want.

And China is only too happy to supply it—as long as we turn a blind eye to things like currency manipulation, intellectual property abuses and the Muslim internment camps in western China.

The very corporations who have gone hand-in-hand with Republican policies that diminished the American worker (and subsequently, their ability to consume) now turn to China to keep those bonus checks rolling into the executive suite.

And so it goes.

In our greed, we have ceded the manufacture of practically everything to China. This includes our prescription drugs and the weaponry which constitutes our national defense. The geniuses in the corporate penthouse have eagerly unzipped their flys and allowed China to grab their testes and give them a good twist in exchange for ever larger stacks o' cash.

And who doesn't think that's a good thing?

But every now and then there's someone who didn't read the memo.

I have only to point to Houston Rocket's GM Daryl Morey, whose earnest tweet in support of the Hong Kong demonstrations upset the apple cart. Instead of following protocol and politely ignoring the fart in the elevator, Morey essentially asked “who farted?”

And after so many years of blind obedience, China is upset with us. Is America discovering its conscience?

NBA commissioner Adam Silver, caught between the NBA's expanding business and defending a core value of the United States, wisely choose the latter, further exacerbating the Chinese.

They are burning NBA jerseys and pulling the plug on NBA telecasts and all sorts of horrible things.

Bad America! Bad!

Perhaps. But I'm fine with it. The NBA needs money like I need an elevated cholesterol count. As a radicalized socialist (per our president), it is my opinion that our relationship with China stinks. It is nothing but a museum-worthy exhibit of our hypocrisy.

I am both shamed and highly-concerned by it.

And speaking of shame, I only wish LeBron James had an ounce or two. 

Despite his highly-publicized Twitter exchanges with President Petulant, James is as complicit as any other businessman. When faced with re-thinking his relationship with a plainly amoral government or sustaining his already-exorbitant revenue stream, he chose the latter.

You sure you're anti-Trump LeBron? 

The season doesn't start for another six days. Like James, many of us should take some time off and get a clue and calculate exactly what those low prices and our relationship with China costs.
 

The Battle of Hong Kong

I love protests. I love the idea of people leaving the comfort of their homes to peacefully congregate en masse to explicitly communicate their displeasure with the prevailing government, its leader or pending legislation.

Petitions are nice. But nothing beats the visceral impact of hundreds of thousands of people clogging the streets. It's the power of we the people, challenging those who frequently work so hard to subdue it.

Sadly, my fellow Americans rarely agree. Probably because they're jaded. Or because protesting is sweaty. And noisy. And inconvenient. I mean, have you ever tried to find a good parking place near a major demonstration?

We mostly congregate on social media, which isn't quite the same. Unless you're trying to disseminate misinformation about things like measles vaccinations. Or attempting to create panic over fake threats like pink slime or a presidential candidate running a pedophile sex ring out of a Washington DC pizza joint.

But in hi-tech Hong Kong, people understand the power of a good, old-fashioned public demonstration. They have successfully employed them twice in the last decade to beat back the oppressive hand of mainland China.

Most-recently, invasive extradition legislation was suspended after mass protests clarified citizen's feelings about China's would-be ability to pluck residents out of Hong Kong and deposit them in China for any reason the government deems appropriate.

Considering this is a government that has attempted to erase any trace of Tiananmen Square, blocks its citizens from accessing vast swaths of the Internet (aided and abetted by Google) and routinely tramples its citizen's human rights, the good people of Hong Kong decided this wasn't such a good idea and took to the streets in opposition.

Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam backed down and suspended the offending bill. But suspending is different than cancelling. Translated, it means we'll wait until this cools down and then attempt to push it through again.

The Hong Kong Chinese get it. Which is why they're continuing their protests, demanding that the extradition legislation be ripped-up and thrown away.

Hong Kong occupies a unique place within the Chinese hierarchy.

If China were a car manufacturer, Hong Kong would be its halo car; the car it likes to point to when it wants to show off its design and engineering capabilities. China likes to use Hong Kong as proof of its benign treatment of its citizens. A gesture to the world that says “See? We're not such bad guys.”

But this is essentially public relations. And with increasing evidence that China (like Trump's United States) wants to move forward on a path of strident nationalism, public relations will likely be among the first of its political victims.

I salute the bravery of Hong Kong's citizens, and wish them every success. Tyranny is the weapon of the weak. Dissent the weapon of the strong.

Godspeed, Hong Kong.