Welcome to Beijing, Florida

It’s a prison offense in China to publish anything about the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, particularly if you are a journalist or teacher. That “incident” never happened. As Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up.” But you can’t in China.

Nor can you read about the forced sterilization and torture in Xinjiang province. Nothing there, comrades. It’s just “vocational training” for a million Uyghurs.

Not to worry, Uyghurs! I’m sure you’ll come out of the Gulag having learned useful skills, just like slaves did in America, according to Florida’s public school curriculum.

But wait, there’s more. It’s become illegal to cast a weather eye, in print or online, on China’s economy. The Ministry of State Security hath warned (sorry, but this is so medieval) that people who worry about China’s economy are threatening national security.

The Ministry (what a great word) issued this cautionary admonition — inexplicably not datelined 1984 — as it oversaw the liquidation of China Evergrande, once China’s biggest property developer, choked to death under $300 billion in debt.

Hmmm … wonder who got all that money …

So what choices do poor journalists or economists have under Elder Brother Xi?

Report the news and go to prison
Bend the knee, avert your eyes and keep your job
Get another job
Emigrate — 11 million Chinese people can’t be wrong!

But you don’t have to believe me, or The New York Times, or The Guardian. Let’s see what China’s Ministry of State Security has to say, on its official Weibo account.

Actually — you know what? — maybe you could read it. I lost interest halfway through the second paragraph:

“In recent years, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, the state security organs have adhered to the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, insisted on attaching equal importance to crackdown and prevention …”

Psst! Bob! Wake up! You’re writing a column here.

What? Oh, right.

Warning: This will be on the test:

Write a short essay comparing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, with Florida, under Chairman DeSantis; or Texas, under Large Brother Abbott. Or any of 22 other minor states, where Republican lawmakers introduced bills to prohibit public schools from teaching lessons about slavery, because it’s a “divisive concept.”

Apparently, it’s prejudicial because teaching U.S. history might make white kids “uncomfortable,” which is forbidden in Florida.

Uncomfortable? For white kids? To tell them about slavery?

Who the hell you think you talking to, Guvnor (tugging my forelock)?

No racial prejudice never ever in Florida, Chairman Ron?

Yessir, no racial prejudice there and never was: neither against the slaves nor their owners.

Am I being unfair to the failed Florida Gauleiter? And if I am, so what? Even if I imitated Ron’s Boss’ wet dream and shot someone to death at noon on Fifth Avenue, would either of them speak up for me? Because I did what they told me to do, and I was an idiot, or mentally disturbed, and did what I thought he was telling me to do.

No.

Has the Great Orange Father done anything for the 467 rioters of Jan. 6 who have been sentenced to prison, cumulatively, so far, for round about a thousand years?

Not that I can see. No, this ignorant butthead teaches his clones to follow him, singing “mi, mi, mi, mi, mi.” But it’s really “him, him, him, him, him.”

And what’s vile and disgusting, is that they think they’re singing a hymn.

Well, the Fűhrer hath instructed the Republican Party how to speak, and his sycophants and toadies have learned it: Yes, Massa; Whatever you say; You right, Boss; How much farther down can I bow, Boss; and why you want me to bend down like that anyway? … under the unrelenting whips of Fox News.

Well, pardon me for being semiliterate, but the poet Thomas Gray did not write the phrase “ignorance is bliss” 275 years ago just as a quip. He wrote it in the final stanza of a long poem. Here is that stanza:

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies.

Thought would destroy their paradise.

No more; where ignorance is bliss,

'Tis folly to be wise.

Categories / Op-Ed