It's not the name, it's the helplessness

Not entirely accurate, but funny

Another day, another instance of the Chinese government being assparrots.

First, the Gap sells a really cool t-shirt that shows a map of China that doesn't include Taiwan (the picture above is a photoshopped joke version by a friend - the real one didn't include a Taiwan running away or the year 1949), and then apologizing for printing a map of China with "incorrect borders".

The borders are entirely correct (even in areas where I don't think they should be, such as Tibet and Xinjiang).

But, of course, selling t-shirts in China is more important than having a spine, and I can't even really bother to argue against that because it's about as useful as farting in a stiff breeze. T-shirts are going to matter more than values, principles or ethics for as long as I'm alive, most likely, and when I am consumed by rats or worms, they will continue to matter more than what is right.

Then, Air Canada - wobbly jellyfish to the last - changes Taiwan on their destination list to "Taipei, CN". Of course that destination does not exist. It's like trying to book a flight to Heaven, or Hell, or Oz, or wherever the Care Bears and Smurfs live. A wonderland of CCP revisionism. An imaginarium of a less just world.

"Travel everywhere with us," one of their Facebook posts says. Everywhere, it seems, except Taipei, Taiwan.

"Get your friends to travel together," another one says (on their Chinese-language Facebook page). Sure, let's travel to China (since apparently Taiwan doesn't exist), to get on our knees and pleasure Xi Jin-ping because watching him make his O-Face matters more than correct geographical labeling.

People have started petitions. Great. I went and trolled Gap on Facebook because I have nothing better to do with my time, the universe is cold and uncaring and not only are we all going to die, it won't even matter that we lived in the first place - tiny germs on a speck of dust hanging in a vast, rock-and-gas filled amoral vacuum that will also cease to exist one day. But, trolling Gap is fun so there's that.

This follows a string of "Orwellian nonsense" that's been going on for years as China acts like a massive baby - the tenderest snowflake there is - at the mere mention that a democratic nation called Taiwan exists. It's nothing new.

Of course, it hurts not that China does this - China's gonna China - but that the rest of the world caves in. That they are such cowards and hypocrites. They give in to fantasy land. Their actual moral compasses are about as sturdy as a cheap shit Gap t-shirt made in China.

And it hurts even more that there's so little we can do about it. We sign petitions as the rats get ready to gnaw our bones. We make snarky Facebook posts. Perhaps we contact our elected representative, who also cares more about t-shirts than principles. We gnash our teeth and feel upset, and it happens again and again as the vast coldness of space whirls around us, unaware.

From dust we came and to dust we shall return, but in the meantime, you really should sign the petition. I guess.