Where We Are This Week 06/23/2023

China eats our lunch, the DoJ is out to lunch, and keep your friends by having lunch.

Last weekend, we had some good friends of ours over. If you’re like me, making plans and sticking to them are anathema to your whole thing - whatever that is; as soon as something is scheduled the anxiety ridden question of what have I done? sets in.

I ought to say, it really couldn’t have less to do with who the plans are with, it’s only that the plans now exist. If you can’t relate, I know my mom can.

That said, I’m getting better - I talk about the importance of getting together every few weeks I think. In Aziz Ansari’s special Right Now - and writer Tim Urban has said something similar recently - he has a bit about how often you see your parents. If you see you parents twice a year, it doesn’t take a mathematician to calculate you only have a few handful of times left - on average - to spend time with the people who ushered you into this world.

The same goes with your friends. I’m older now, I’m well past the high school phase of my life were your friendships are governed more by proximity than likeness. But I’m incredibly blessed to have childhood friends with whom I’ve remained close - and close friendships I’ve managed to cultivate as an adult. Against all odds.

But you know, it’s easy to not see any of them. You get busy, they get busy, blah, and before you know it, a year has passed. So it goes. John Lennon said that life was what happened while you’re making plans - and as much I admire Lennon and love an aphorism, if you don’t make plans, you see no one.

So, we played with our daughter, we had dinner, and we had quite the lovely night - as if it were ever in doubt! We got lost in conversation that touched everything from relationships to RFK Jr, and whether or not Charlie Manson was working for the CIA.

It’s crucial that we welcome all different forms of love into our lives, familial, romantic, plutonic, and otherwise. So, as someone who is eternally humbled by how little I know, let me be so bold as to give you some advice. Make plans, see people, talk to your friends, get carried away, and please, listen to this song.

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Justice for All

What’s the point of even having a justice department at this point?

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Hunter Biden had reached a tentative plea deal with federal prosecutors. This comes after months of investigations which presumably focused on everything from his infamous laptop, corruption schemes, tax payments and the illicit purchase of a handgun.

First of all, it appears as if the only charges they were willing to bring against the President’s son were that of two misdemeanor tax violations and the illegal possession of a firearm. Someone close to the Biden camp has reported that the plea deal will also see the conclusion of the probe into Hunter Biden’s suspect business dealings in Ukraine and China. But that fact seems to be up to debate amongst those in the know - of which I am not.

While some reports say that the corruption allegations - i.e. Biden serving on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma and his subsequent failure to register as a foreign agent - are still under investigation, his personal lawyer has said that he has nothing to worry about - which, given how cryptic the DoJ has been regarding the investigation, sounds likely.

They say hindsight is 20/20, but really, what history allows us to do is zoom out to see less detail. Without concerning ourselves with the minutia of who said what, when, and where, we draw much straighter lines concluding about what actually transpired. In the future, the ambiguities of the ‘big man’ and his slice of the pie will be so obviously referencing Joe Biden that it will be wondered how it was ever in doubt.

I’ve heard several people, political commentators and peers alike, that the alleged corruption of the Biden family and Joe Biden’s time working with Ukraine as Vice President is evidence enough to suspect ulterior motives regarding the US’s support to Ukraine. Maybe out of naïveté or due to the last shred of integrity I hope our federal government is clinging to, I’m not quite ready to accept that narrative.

But the fact they couldn’t nail his son on something more serious seems like slap in the face to the rest of Americans. Federal prosecutors clearly felt compelled to find something to charge him with, and seeing how these types of charges are never leveled against someone of Biden’s ilk, these criminal accusations are just for show.

The DoJ’s lack of transparency or charges in Hunter Biden’s foreign affairs was already enough to question the motives of Merrick Garland and co. but the plea deal that Biden was able to reach blows apart any faith us ‘normies’ may have had in the system.

The President’s son is pleading guilty to both charges; the same President’s son whom he has insisted has ‘done nothing wrong.’ You guys might want to have a little chat soon. But despite Hunter Biden’s admitted guilt, he will serve exactly zero jail time.

Speaker McCarthy has stated that we live in a ‘two-tier’ justice system - meaning the DoJ is unfairly biased in favor of anyone affiliated with Democrats - and that may be true for the time being if you’re looking at things through a Trump/Biden lens, but try being poor or middle class and breaking those laws and see if you get prosecuted.

First of all, who among us has the luxury to not pay several hundred thousand dollars of taxes, then pay a whopping two million dollars to the federal government in a settlement, and walk away with a slap on the wrist? There’s a reason that it’s only the low and middle classes get audited - and it’s not because we’re the ones disproportionately playing jiggery-pokery with our finances.

We have a two-tier justice system, obviously - but it’s in-group vs out-group, not left vs right. And while the left and right play their games, the rest of us non-political or social elite are the perpetual out-group.

Daniel Ellsberg, the man responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers, was unfairly prosecuted and treated like an enemy of the state - all for the crime of revealing to the American public the true nature of the Vietnam War; the fact that the US government knew there was no prospect of victory while sending young men to their demise. Due to federal prosecution breaking just about every legal barrier in trying to build a case against him, his case was reluctantly thrown out by the presiding judge.

Ellsberg died this past week at the age of 92 but his legacy lives on while the likes of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange remain persecuted by the state.

I know what you’re thinking, how did I manage to shoehorn Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers into an article about Hunter Biden? Well, I’m not sure how graceful of a merger it was, but it serves to illustrate the types of crimes and types of ‘criminals’ our Department of Justice is most motivated to pursue - those who don’t belong in the inner circle of the governing class.

And last time I checked, they’re not exactly handing out membership cards.

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Tankman Taxman

Made in China

This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken finally met with Chinese President Xi Jinping after months of deliberation and consternation.

Blinken, after the meeting had been delayed in response to the Chinese hot air/spy/weather balloon that had accidentally/on purpose flown over the United States mainland; as tensions have increased over the last few months, it was unsure whether the meeting would even take place.

US/China relations have been rocky over the past few years as the Eastern country muscled Hong Kong back under its control and started to lick its chops at the prospect of consolidating Taiwan. There’s been several close fly-bys in the South China Sea, and naval operations that certainly haven’t helped matters.

So, as strain between the two global powers has been at its highest in recent memory - bear in mind, in January of this year, a four-star general predicted an outright war with China by 2025 - the reality that Blinken actually met with Xi was a relief to many.

Unfortunately, however, Blinken did nothing but cow-tow to our Chinese overlords - I mean, companions. The United States Secretary was in a tough position, and while that’s not lost on me, it doesn’t exactly explain his capitulation to Xi.

Since the Reagan administration, the United States has supported a one-China policy - meaning that we might say Taiwan, but what we really mean is Chinese Taipei - and welcomed them to our capitalist fold in hopes economic freedom would bring their population political freedom. How’d that one work out?

Despite winning a few precious attaboys from President Biden, Blinken managed to extract literally zero policy concessions from the Chinese President. There will be no consequence, no admonishment for the foreign technology they, oops, let slip into the very middle of America. Xi and Hunter must have the same lawyers. And as far as I can tell, nary a word was mentioned about the ongoing persecution of Uyghur Muslims.

A central subject of the talks was the future and pseudo-independence of Taiwan. The United States as an institution doesn’t care so much about the people of Taiwan as it does its semiconductor production. The tiny island nation is the majority producer by far of the vital piece of technology that is found in vehicles, computers, and weapons alike, and it’s in America’s interest that China not control outright the production or shipping of said components.

Of course, it would just be easier if produced our own - but where’s the international intrigue in that?

Blinken barely managed to stick to the script of the ‘neither here, nor there’ one-China policy every US official is forced to repeat while committing that the US would never support Taiwanese independence. “Okay, well, what did he get for us in return?”, you might be asking yourself. Fair question.

Nada. Rien. Nothing.

For months, China hasn’t been answering our phone calls regarding the island of Taiwan and the surrounding area. America routinely conducts military operations in the area - because we’re literally everywhere - and has had several contentious encounters with our Chinese counterparts in recent memory.

Previously, the two superpowers have had open military-to-military communication channels to prevent either side from misinterpreting an exercise as an act of war. Seems like a good thing to have, right? Seeing as how a misunderstanding could go nuclear in a matter of seconds.

Well, those channels have been closed for some time now, and according to Xi, they have no interest in reopening them. Nice one, Antony.

News broke this past week confirming the names and identities of patient zero(s) of the Covid-19 pandemic and wouldn’t you know it, they were all scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology whose infections predated the alleged outbreak at the wet market. Yeah, American taxpayers were funding the research, but so was the CCP. If we’re not going to hold ourselves accountable, can we at least foist the responsibility on the other guilty party?

Martin Scorsese directed a miniseries on the inimitable Fran Lebowitz called Pretend it’s a City. I highly recommend it. I’m going to write a book called Pretend You’re a Country and give it to every elected and appointed official I can find.

What did Blinken even say to Xi during their meetings? ‘Ball’s in your court’? Blinked assumed the role of sock puppet for the duration of the trip. And you know, I don’t even blame Xi, he was at least playing his role as quasi-dictator. What was our Secretary of State doing?

Pretend You’re a Country. Literally, everyone else is.

Meanwhile, China is in late-stage negotiations with Cuba to install a joint military base on the island in order to spy on the US. Which you know, at this point, good for them. America has something like six hundred military bases across the world, it’s about time China had its own just off of our shore.

As the war in Ukraine - and China’s tacit support for Russia - continues, and China continues its brand of imperialism by creating client states in Latin America and Africa, tensions will only continue to escalate. Fortunately for us, it seems that we have the world’s worst diplomats on the job who are incapable of demanding compromise. Our way or the highway - or just your way, if you want.

You know, we don’t live in a nation that I would necessarily describe as ‘war-adverse’, and the Ukrainian conflict has made some strange bedfellows out of the far left and parts of the conservative right. In the coming years, that coalition’s resolve will certainly be tested as posturing becomes more blatant, and the saber-rattling gets louder. Godspeed.

To a better next week.

Cheers,

~FDA