China, yesterday: Control your soul’s desire for freedom.
Do not open your window.
Do not sing.
Do not pass Go.
Do not collect $200.
Imagine living somewhere, some big modern city, where drones fly around giving you orders.
There are 26 million people in Shanghai. That’s a fact. It’s a thing we can’t deny.
And apparently not one of them owns a slingshot.
Is the future dystopian enough for you yet?
China’s a communist dictatorship, a nation of 1½ billion souls spread out over one of the world’s largest countries and under the rule of a single committee comprised of seven Asian males—not a single birthing person, African American, Latinx, or white devil among them. For that alone they should surely be overthrown immediately. And boycotted. And quick, everyone update your profiles with upside-down Chinese flags! Activate hashtag: #ChinaSoAsian!
The committee is really just the plaything of General Secretary Xi Jinping. Whatever Xi wants, Xi gets. And Xi’s gotta have it.
The Chinese Communist Party is perpetrating genocide against the Uighur people of its Xinjiang province. They’ve got it all: re-education camps, forced sterilization, slave labor, you name it.
And today they get to vote on whether or not Russia should be thrown off the UN Human Rights Council, of which China is a member in good standing.
Countries like North Korea and Afghanistan will also have a chance to vote on whether or not Russia meets the high standards of an exclusive UN club whose current members include not only Big Brother’s wet dream of a dictatorship (China), but also the slave-market Libya and the failed states of Venezuela and Somalia. Among others—obviously.
It’s all over the news, but just for the sake of anchoring this post to a link, here’s DR’s coverage.
And here’s America’s ABC News.
The vote will allow for a level grandstanding that’s going to have to be measured on the Saffir-Simpson Scale:
We’re expecting category 5 moralizing, Jane, so viewers should seek shelter immediately. In addition to that once-in-a-generation moralizing, we’re expecting lethal levels of hypocrisy. Live from Turtle Bay, I’m Basil Winsome… be careful out there!
Conventional wisdom is that Russia’s presence on the UN Human Rights Council is farcical.
I disagree.
It’s the UN Human Rights Council that’s absurd.
By all means, kick Russia right off the Council.
Maybe it’ll piss them off.
Whoops… I was too slow! They just had the vote, and Russia’s out.
That will change absolutely nothing on the ground, it will have no actual impact on Russia, it will do nothing to help Ukraine, and it will in fact be a kind of reward to China (and every other despotic regime): our failure to boot them from the Council can be interpreted as a tacit acknowledgment that their genocide is no big deal.
I was hoping instead of throwing Russia off the Council, every self-respecting democracy would resign from a body polluted by the presence of so many countries whose interest in human rights is at about the same level as my interest in eating bugs or broken glass.
A ship of fools is a ship fools. Throwing one fool overboard doesn’t mean a thing so long as we’ve got so many others on board.