June 21, 2019
CHINA: Ally or Adversary?
Watching the drama of Hong Kong unfolding, it makes you wonder how they got into that predicament. The agreement China made with the UK was for fifty years after which China would have full control over Hong Kong. We’re only twenty years into the agreement and China is already cheating. Makes you wonder if China can be trusted to fulfill any agreement they sign. The basic answer is that China will say what it needs to say to get what they want in the long term. If it requires that they cheat on an agreement, they don’t have a problem with that.
When China was allowed into the WTO it was with the understanding that they were good citizens. Over the past 25 years, China has revealed its true character (if you didn’t already know it, they are not).
Tienanmen Square was an indication of how China deals with a population objecting to the boot on their neck. A heavier boot on their neck. China of today is as brutal a dictatorship as it was during Mao’s years in control. They dress it up on the surface for Western sensibilities. They learned to make nice with western countries only for the purposes of exploiting the West with their ridiculously cheap labor. They learned from westerners how to go back to China to turn what they learned against their teachers.
China realized after Mao that being like North Korea wouldn’t serve them in the long term. The billion people in China are a resource that can be put to work for the benefit of the state, so China became a place for cheap labor.
Later, they learned that by giving the people the chance to be capitalist on a small scale, their productivity skyrocketed. Socio/Economic policy in China has evolved into a capitalistic dictatorship. The people can have their own businesses in partnership with the government. That opportunity gives the people at least a chance to improve their own standard of living. They can drive a Mercedes car but have no voice in their government or say in how other aspects of their lives are managed.
American manufacturers were led to believe that China would be a great partner because they had a billion people available to work and a government that greased the skids to facilitate production. Did any of the companies that dumped their American workforce ever look at the human rights conditions in China before they moved? Not likely! In the effort to produce cheap crap cheaper, American manufacturers screwed American workers while forming partnerships with the devil to satisfy corporate demand for better margins. The American government allowed strategic industries to collapse in the US in favor of suppliers in China. Did anyone wonder if there was a confrontation with China, would they continue to supply steel or other strategic goods to a rival?
America is at a crossroads in our relationship with China.
Our challenge is to decide whether doing business with a country that abuses the population like China does, that wages war against trading partners with their cyber tactics, that dumps surpluses of manufactured goods on the market to weaken competitors, that regularly steals intellectual property from trading partners, that manipulates their currency to create a competitive advantage, or that charges tariffs for goods coming into China to prevent competition for Chinese companies? Do we want to be business partners with a country whose military is aggressively harassing neighbors while doing little to assist in efforts to rein in North Korea? In my view, China is a bad actor and yet we’ve intertwined our economy with theirs. Why?
The government of China should be considered hostile. Trade with China should be considered in that light. Let’s see how well China will fare without US markets.
In typical government fashion, it will be determined that trade with governments that want to defeat us is okay. China is not the only culprit in this discussion. Our neighbor to the south, Mexico is in the same boat.
The big question is, “Should the United States of America be a trading partner with a country committed to undermining our national security?” We cannot commit to trading with a country like China, then think about their human rights record or their treatment of their neighbors. Most of us as citizens think about the reputation of a vendor before we hire them to work for us. Why wouldn’t our government do the same before promoting China as a preferred trading partner?
The elected leaders in our country were seduced by China with cheap labor to produce cheap consumer goods. At the expense of our national security. Our country has no obligation to develop labor markets for companies without allegiance to the United States. Companies with only an obligation to the bottom line will do business with anyone. Aren’t we better than that?
What kind of idiots run our country?
No Loss for Words 
The New Heresy: When Questioning Becomes a Crime
by Steve DanaThe New Heresy: When Questioning Becomes a Crime
There was a time when science was the language of curiosity. It invited questions, welcomed challenge, and saw debate as the oxygen of discovery. That was the old school — the one I grew up admiring. Today, something quieter and more troubling has crept in: a growing fear that questioning authority, even in the name of truth, marks you as dangerous.
We saw it during the pandemic. People who asked honest questions about origins, treatments, and policies were shamed or silenced. Doctors were censored. Journalists were de-platformed. Social media companies became referees of scientific opinion. Yet, years later, many of those “conspiracy theories” turned out to contain inconvenient pieces of truth. The problem wasn’t that the public lost faith in science. It’s that science allowed itself to be managed by politics.
This new orthodoxy extends far beyond medicine. In the climate debate, for example, legitimate questions about policy design are treated as moral sins. You can agree that the climate is changing and still ask whether the proposed solutions make sense. But too often, that nuance gets lost. The message from the self-anointed guardians of truth is clear: “You may question the details, but never the narrative.”
Real science doesn’t behave that way. It doesn’t blacklist dissent or exile those who see the data differently. Science at its best is a humble companion of reason — not a pulpit from which elites preach certainty to the rest of us. When debate becomes forbidden, science turns into dogma. And once dogma takes hold, truth becomes whatever those in power decide it is.
The deeper issue isn’t about data; it’s about power. When government officials, corporate sponsors, and political foundations all profit from the same set of “approved” truths, it’s no wonder skepticism feels subversive. The pandemic showed how fear can justify sweeping authority, and how economic winners always seem to emerge from moral crusades. Policies built on partial truths can still inflict very real harm — to livelihoods, education, mental health, and basic freedom. And when citizens ask for accountability, they’re told to “trust the science.”
But science doesn’t ask for trust; it earns it. It earns it by being transparent, by admitting uncertainty, and by treating every challenge as a chance to get closer to the truth. The moment we treat questioning as heresy, we turn science into a faith — one enforced not by evidence, but by power.
This isn’t about relitigating the past few years. It’s about remembering that free societies depend on doubt. We are supposed to test ideas, expose errors, and speak freely about the motives of those who govern. When the powers that be suppress questions, the people will start looking for answers elsewhere — and sometimes, that search leads them down darker roads. The cure for misinformation is not censorship; it’s open, honest debate.
So let’s bring back the spirit of old-school science — the kind that believes truth is strengthened, not weakened, by challenge. Let’s respect expertise, but not worship it. Let’s ask hard questions, not because we reject knowledge, but because we want it to mean something again. If that makes us heretics in the age of managed truth, then maybe heresy is exactly what democracy needs.
Because when questioning becomes a crime, truth becomes a casualty. And a nation that punishes doubt has already decided it prefers obedience to wisdom.
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