Dear readers, we all know that America is no place of pristine perfection where hugs from strangers are wantonly accepted and gold cascades down rivers weaving through the purple mountain's majesty. Indeed, America can be a place of impenetrable darkness. where moral truth appears as ambiguous as a receptionist Plain Jane down at Mutual of Omaha. However, as dark as I may say it is, no matter how struck I am by hyperbole I will likely not be thrown into prison for ten or more years on that alone, nor is it in any likelihood that I'll be crushed by a tank if I were ever to gallivant about in protest of one thing or another. Such is not the case for some of the citizenry of the People's Republic of China. Unless you're one to purposefully avoid the news cycle, you'd know that today is the 20th anniversary of the protest and subsequent massacre at Tiananmen Square.
Deng Xiaopeng was the savior of China in the wake of Mao's collectivist carnival of horrors (of which he is counted as an occasional victim), highly interested in modernizing the shit out his country where it counts -- industry, finance and such. I remember learning in college of the festive joy the western world felt when these reforms were underway and how befuddled it was when China started its pattern of dazzling the world before thoroughly disappointing it with more-public-than-normal repression of basic human rights. China is a highly complex country that somehow owns much of America's debt and it's successful for all the things for which Mao would have killed a couple million people in stomping them out. It is, however, a sad state of things when it takes a huge swath of idealistic youth to tell the country to lighten the fuck up and have their efforts be in vain by the country doing the exact opposite in reply. Perhaps I'm being overly judgmental, but one can only hope that old habits die with less difficulty than others.
Oh, and go San Dimas Unicorns! Kill! Kill! KIIILLLL!!!
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