The Freedom Pineapples have helped, but Taiwan still gets erased in international media

Pineapples aren't actually at their best this time of year, but it's been a good week for wearing this necklace I picked up awhile ago.

First, a quick explanation for why my blogging has trickled off in the past few weeks: I've taken on a project as one very busy cog in a massive research project. If (hopefully when) the results are published, I'll talk about them more. For now, I'll just say that there's a relationship to some of the topics that come up in this episode of Taiwan Context, where I talk at with Donovan Smith about issues in English language education. Perhaps my Facebook friends have seen that I've been hopping around the country -- multiple trips to Tainan and Hsinchu, I'm writing this from Kaohsiung, and I'll be skipping through Taoyuan next week. It's all related, and I'll be excited to share more when I can.

However, this means I spend a lot of time in front of a computer, even when traveling. It's tiring to the eyes and can cause throbbing headaches if I overdo it. After all those hours of writing up long research notes and checking transcripts, I just don't have the eyeball stamina to blog. I'm sorry, and I do expect the pace will pick up soon. 

That aside, let's talk about the good and the bad in the international media regarding Taiwan, starting with the bad so we can savor the good as a sweet, tart dessert. 

After dinner with a friend, I flopped down on the couch in my Kaohsiung hotel to drink tea and channel surf as I don't have a television at home. Not finding anything satisfyingly dumb like one of those wedding dress shows, I settled on DW after flipping past several monks, costume dramas and shopping networks. I let it play in the background as I loafed around, and then promptly sat up and turned it off when I heard this: 

China was the ONLY major economy to see growth last year.

DW made a similarly clumsy mistake in October, with this:

China is the only industrialized economy that has seen growth in 2020.

That second segment isn't entirely bad, as one commenter calls Taiwan a "country" later on. The point stands, however, that the statements above are simply wrong. 

Assuming one can believe any statistics from China -- and that's a gamble I don't make as a rule -- Taiwan's economy still grew more than China's in 2020 and the country is experiencing a tsunami of demand for semiconductors that frankly, only Taiwan has the technology to make well and fast enough. 

Taiwan is an industrialized country, moreso than China. China's economy highly uneven across every metric I can think of, and while I'm no economist, being a massive economy (#2 in nominal GDP) with mediocre per capita rankings (#71, #79 and #66 in nominal GDP per capita, PPP per capita and GNI per capita respectively) doesn't look great. Taiwan can't beat China on GDP, but on every per capita ranking it comes out better: nominal GDP per capita at #36, GNI per capita at #33, PPP per capita at #20. 

It's just not accurate to say that China was the "only" industrialized country to see growth in 2020. Taiwan's economy not only grew, it beat China for the first time in decades. 

As for being the only "major" economy to grow, it's true that China's economy is bigger than Taiwan's, and China is in the G20 while Taiwan is not (SCMP at least got this right). But being in the G20 is not the final call on what counts as a "major" economy. Can we really say that Country #20 (that would be Turkey or Switzerland, depending on whom you ask) is "big", but Countries #21, #22  and #23 (which is just about where Taiwan falls) is definitively not? 

If you're going to use a general term like "major" -- as opposed to a specific one like "G20 member" -- then it's erasure of Taiwan to ignore the fact that the 22nd largest economy in the world experienced more growth than the one that keeps making the news for growing. (Notably, several developing countries also experienced economic growth, including Guyana, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Sudan, Rwanda and Turkmenistan. The presence of countries on that list which are also facing devastating famine or generally not considered well-governed should demonstrate that growth isn't the only marker that matters). 

China helped COVID19 spread due to its initial cover-ups, yet its economy grew. Taiwan did an excellent job of handling COVID19, and its economy grew more than China's. But China gets the DW shout-out and Taiwan doesn't? This shows we have a long way to go to press for better international media coverage of Taiwan. 

By the way, If you're wondering why I'm crapping on DW and not any of these other news outlets that published the same garbage, it's because I saw it on DW first. But they are just as culpable for bad reporting that erases Taiwan on the global stage. 

In fact, it feels even more sinister than that: if you want to write a story that showcases China's 2020 economic growth and makes it sound like it's the only country to accomplish this, you need to add a modifier in order to do so with even a shred of plausible deniability. So you choose an imperfect one -- "industrialized" or "major" -- allowing you to safely ignore Taiwan and a group of mostly-African developing countries. But you got your nice headline that showcases China, a narrative which I suppose gets more eyeballs and clicks than a dive into why some countries' economies grew in 2020 but others didn't. 

In any case, your priority isn't thoughtful reporting, it's creating a narrative that will get views. It's pushing a "China" story for the sake of pushing a China story more than it's an objective look at what's going on with global economic growth.

That feels manipulative: it leaves readers and viewers with a sense that China is somehow special and unique, when it's not. It denies viewers the chance to learn about and from the African experience with COVID19 and allows you to go right back to ignoring Taiwan, which the international media would usually prefer to do, given the choice.

And now for the dessert

It's not all doom and gloom, however. Bloomberg, SCMP and Nikkei were smart to point out that Taiwan actually outpaced China in 2020, although that's a small number of international media that got it right while outlets like CNN, the Wall Street Journal and BBC mucked it up. 

What did garner more attention? Freedom Pineapples! And to a similar extent, the fact that the whole world seems to be finally realizing that they need Taiwan's semiconductors, so Taiwan has mattered all along. 

As uncreative people around the world throw up their arms and say "well we have to give in to China's demands because we absolutely must trade with them", Taiwan got hit with an import ban on pineapples for some pretty dodgy reasons, and fought back through a government-encouraged campaign for Taiwanese to buy their own pineapples, to the point that domestic pineapple sales have closed the gap in just a few days. 

Riding on Australia's Freedom Wine campaign, Taiwan is helping to show the world that it doesn't need to just lie down and take China's weaponizing of trade. Of course, in 2018 Palau was already pointing us in the right direction. 

Just a few years ago, Taiwan would have freaked out at China suddenly shutting down imports of any given product. The DPP would have yelled about it, and the KMT would have used it to stump their "reasonable" platform that we have to be "friendly" with China so they won't pull these sorts of moves, which is about as likely to be successful as shining the school bully's shoes so he won't shove you in a locker. Now, the DPP says "okay, we'll buy our own damn pineapples", and the KMT has no choice but to get on board. 

At this point, China might want to meditate over how and why pineapples are what definitively proved that Taiwan is neither going to allow itself to be bullied nor annexed.

I don't know that the "let's buy it ourselves" model would work on a large scale, but at least it shows the world what it really means to be on the front line of democracy standing up against authoritarianism -- that and all the jet scrambling. It shows that there are avenues for fighting what looks like an impossible foe, and it's possible to simply refuse to be bullied. It shows that China's strategies can be made to backfire spectacularly, simply by refusing to play their game. And when it comes to those aforementioned semiconductors, it shows that a bullied country like Taiwan, erased internationally and treated like crap by international organizations, can still build a stupendously successful industry. 

But even better for Taiwan, if the country can't get the international media attention it deserves on things like, oh, handling both COVID19 and the economy better than China, then at least it can show the world how to effectively stand up against a bully, while reminding itself that it doesn't need to shine China's shoes. 

It's not enough to counter the damage done by all of the bad journalism cited above, but it's something, and if Taiwan keeps finding creative ways to bolster its own identity while telling China to buzz off, perhaps more people will start to take notice. 

On Hong Kong, Asia and Western Hypocrisy

Three leaders of Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution - Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow - who have already completed the community service they were originally sentenced to, have been re-sentenced to 6-8 (varied by individual) months in prison for their role in the 2014 Umbrella Revolution. Or, more accurately, they are being thrown in jail for daring to stand up for democracy.

It is, in fact, a slap in the face of democracy, in a city that until 2014 was under the impression that it would, as a special autonomous region (SAR), be granted a democratic system. China failed to keep that promise, and is failing to even uphold the terms of the deeply flawed treaty it did sign with Great Britain at the Hong Kong handover.

Do not think for a second that this is a matter internal to Hong Kong. China has broken every promise it made to the Hong Kong people, which is nothing to be surprised at. It's China, after all. The Chinese government is behind the renewed pressure on the Hong Kong government to suppress democracy within its territory, despite the city being ostensibly "free". The blame here goes straight to the Communist Party, not a local court.

These three activists took a great risk and, if you believe in democracy and basic human rights, are being unjustly punished for it. Yet, even if they had known the outcome, I bet they would have stood up for what was right anyway.

What I'm saying is, yes, this is a slap in the face of democracy. But also, maybe the West needs to get over its stupid stereotypes of Asian people being too nerdy, submissive, obedient or overly respectful of authority. It's bullshit - some of the bravest people I know are nerdy Asian kids. And maybe we Westerners, already comfortable in our democracies, need to stand with them. 

They are quite literally risking their lives, fortunes and honor to stand up for what is right, and they are not backing down - everything Westerners who don't have to risk anything say they should be willing to do. 

Or are we afraid - too submissive, overly respectful of Chinese totalitarianism, obedient to the demands of the CCP - to do the right thing?

Chances are that China will face no real consequences for its actions. It will be allowed to force Hong Kong into submission. Trade will continue to puff along, the international media will continue to write China-friendly puff pieces and carefully monitor its coverage out of fear of being kicked out of China, so that none of us get an accurate reporting of the region. People, some of whom are my friends, will continue to defend China based on a rosy view of how things work there - mostly fueled by the inaccurate reporting and puff pieces they read. They'll defend human rights violations on a massive scale because "we can't force Western ideas onto non-Western countries, that's cultural imperialism" (no - basic human rights are not Western ideas, they are human ideas. If they were purely Western you wouldn't see a country like Taiwan championing them). Maybe they'll do a bit of time travel to the 1990s and defend "Asian-style democracy" (there is nothing inherently Asian about it, and it isn't democracy). They will take vacations to China and call it "such a wonderful place" (and it can be - just not politically). 

They might even come out with that old bit o' nonsense that "in Asia there's such a reverence for authority", as an easy way to discount the atrocities that China commits. They might even talk about how "popular" Xi Jinping is or how "happy" the Chinese are with their government (as though it is possible to do any meaningful political research in China on these topics).


They won't spare a thought to the activists now languishing in a jail cell for standing up for what is right, people who don't have a "reverence for authority", people who don't obey - because standing up for what is right is not "Western", it's human.
They'll ignore it, because it puts them in the uncomfortable position of being Westerners criticizing an Asian system, and they don't want to be that kind of person (and I get it - I don't, either).

They will do all of this, and in the next breath defend democracy and human rights and talk about how much they care about these things. They'll talk about how free speech is so important, and we must preserve it at all costs. They'll talk about how American democracy is in danger.

They will think these rights are very important...for them. If they even consider that, by making excuses for China, they are condoning the denial of these same rights to others, they'll explain it away.

The hypocrisy won't even register.

In any case, China will get away with it. The puff pieces will continue, the careful monitoring of China coverage so as not to offend the CCP's delicate sensibilities will continue, people - even well-meaning, educated liberals - will read that garbage and call it news. They won't look any deeper, if they even know who Joshua, Nathan and Alex are.

We'll all buy the newest iPhone and China will make a few bucks on each one while Joshua, Nathan and Alex sit in jail standing up for all those things we claim to care about. We won't think of them (well, I will). Some people will take their vacations to China this year, and come back thinking that there can't possibly be anything deeply wrong or dysfunctional with the way it's run, because they saw some pretty mountains and a few temples.

A few politicians will make statements, but these won't result in any actual consequences.

Some of us will continue to characterize Asians as "nerdy", "submissive" or "respectful of authority". It won't begin to register how wrong we are.

The Chinese government is the problem, but perhaps we are the problem too.

The next time you are tempted to explain it and your own discomfort away with "but it's Asia and in Asian cultures people are more respectful of authority", have a think about that stereotype while these three activists sit in jail, okay?

Human rights are just that, human. Not Western - human. How can you say "it's their culture" not to have human rights, when three people from that culture are paying the price for standing up for these very rights? Clearly it's not endemic to the place or people. Liu Xiaobo died for them, and many others before him that you never heard of because the media is afraid of China. 

There's not much I can do except write. I can't even vote for people who will do better, because there aren't any. The few who want to stand up to China have such odious platforms in other areas that I cannot in good conscience vote for them either. Maybe I'm part of the problem too, for failing to be creative enough to think of more I could do.

But I can refuse to listen to the China apologists and say it straight up - fuck you, China, for what you did to those activists.

Fuck. You. 

Anatomy of a Sunflower Hit Job

I wasn't going to blog about this, because it should be well-known that the South China Morning Post (SCMP) has gone from being a relatively free publication to one that seems to be little more than a Chinese government mouthpiece, and therefore little in it is worth paying attention to anymore.

However, at the encouragement of friends, and also because ignoring fake news as unworthy of our time to refute is one reason why one of the biggest douchelords of his generation ended up as President (barf) of the Unites States of America. Some things shouldn't be given any oxygen to grow, but others need to be held up to the light so everybody can see exactly how the people who create purposefully preposterous content are aiming to run democratic institutions into the ground to give their own agenda more seeming legitimacy.

Also, I did a few Google searches and this article is quite high up in the results, meaning it's time to tear it down and take it apart.

So, let's take this stinking heap of garbage for a spin, shall we?

FYI, as I already wrote out a lot of this where many of you may have already seen it, I'm going to cut and paste quite a bit.

I can think of at least five things wrong with this piece of garbage article.

First of all, the article states that "four" "former student leaders" took jobs in China. Since we don't know who these people are, they could be any one of the 300-or-so people who occupied the legislature:

Chang claims at least four former student leaders are working on the mainland. One works for a computer game developer in Shenzhen, earning the equivalent of HK$12,390 a month. 

I have a few (unverified - this is harder to source than I thought and even the BBC says the numbers are not available for how many young Taiwanese are going to China for work) numbers for you.

Someone I know pointed out that a little under 300 people occupied the legislature in 2014. Here we have stats saying 60% of young Taiwanese intend to leave Taiwan for work (how many would go to China is unclear), 73% of young Taiwanese saying they would be willing to consider jobs in China (how many would take them is again unclear), and nearly 60% of Taiwanese working abroad are in China, so we have enough data to know that it's common. Many go, more than half are planning to go abroad, more than half of them are likely to end up in China, and a large majority would be willing to at least consider it.

Therefore, if only 4 out of 300 occupiers (that's not even counting the supporters who camped out outside) took jobs in China, that would be well below the national average, not above it. So the real question is, why isn't that the story? Why is "four" painted as this big deal, when it's actually a very tiny number when compared to the general population? Why are so few former Sunflowers going to China to work?

That, right there, is fake news for you. Taking a number that actually shows how rarely former Sunflowers go to work in China, and therefore how possible it is to build a life and be pro-Taiwan without moving across the strait, and making it seem instead as though our former student heroes betrayed their cause. The whole thing is marketed so that the truth looks very different from what it actually is.

Secondly. as some of my friends have noted - and I obviously agree - the piece attempts to paint the Sunflowers as an "anti-China" movement:

So what’s the big deal? Plenty of Taiwanese live and work on the mainland [sic]. The Sunflower protesters, who once occupied Taiwan’s Legislative and Executive Yuan, were opposed to closer economic ties with the mainland [sic]. More specifically, they successfully fought in 2014 against the ratification of a key trade pact negotiated between the then ruling Kuomintang and Beijing.

However, that's not what the Sunflowers were about at all. The point of the protest was not the CSSTA (服貿) bill itself, but the way the bill was undemocratically rammed through the legislature with essentially no oversight, with most people not even knowing what the contents of the bill were (because they were purposely kept in the dark), a culmination of a number of undemocratic moves then-President Ma made in the lead-up to his biggest mistake.

Certainly, however, Alex Lo wants you to believe that this was an "anti-China" protest, because it's fundamental to the Chinese government's agenda that readers believe this, especially readers in China whose rage at students in Taiwan "hating" them would serve the CCP well in their quest to ramp up angry, jingoistic nationalism as a buttress for their power. It is also useful to remind Taiwanese citizens who did not agree with the Sunflowers of all the lies their own domestic pro-KMT news was telling them: they were on about "anti-China" this and "they just hate the KMT" that at the time, and some people believed it (hey, copraphiliacs exist in every culture, guys). It helps China to rekindle all of that anger years later. Keep those fires stoked and all.

I think we can safely say most were not in favor of greater integration with China, economically or otherwise, however, and many likely remain so. Once again, though, that wasn't the point of the protest. People who might well have supported the bill had it been deliberated and passed democratically did participate. Plenty of people who might have voted for the KMT did, too. As did plenty of social conservatives.

This is similar to most of the Hong Kong student leaders probably being in favor of HK sovereignty, but it's possible to be a pro-Hong Kong activist without necessarily advocating Hong Kong independence.

So it is quite possible to have been a Sunflower and yet later take a job in China without being a hypocrite. I wouldn't think it terribly common, and I can imagine why supporters of the movement might feel disappointed, but a deeper understanding of the movement would hopefully lead to a rational denouement in that thought arc.

Again, however, it is Alex Lo's and the Chinese government's agenda for you to believe that it would be hypocritical on its face for a former Sunflower to work in China. If you are going to be angry in all the ways that best serve the CCP agenda, a dose of rage at supposed hypocrisy is an even greater spark to light that fire than simply bringing back the old (false) "anti-China/anti-KMT" trope.

What's more, if a Sunflower supporter were to read this and buy its premise - possible, as not every supporter necessarily fully understood what the movement was about - a sense of being betrayed or a loss of faith in leaders formerly admired can also only help China. Their goal is not only to cause Taiwanese to lose faith in their democratic institutions (making them more susceptible, in their plan, to accepting undemocratic Chinese rule) but also in their "heroes" and role models. It serves China if pro-Taiwan voters and activists feel their strongest voices in the new generation have "betrayed" them and are now not worth listening to.

Thirdly,  there's this:

If Chang Yu-hua is right, several leaders of the so-called Sunflower student movement in Taiwan have now graduated from university and found work on the mainland [sic].

(Also, why "so-called"? That was what it was called. That or the 318 movement). 

One of the island’s [sic - it's an island, yes, but more importantly, it's a country] most influential pundits (really?), Chang said on a TV programme that the former student leaders should apologise for their past actions.

That's one excerpt, but throughout the article it uses the term "leaders" but never names a single person.

Alex Lo, by saying "leaders" without saying who those so-called "leaders" were, makes it sound like Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), among others, are working as, I dunno, game developers in Shenzhen or something. It sounds as though the core Sunflowers, those with the greatest visibility, those who went to court over what happened, have turned tail. It never says that outright but casual readers will immediately connect the words "Sunflower leaders" with the most visible people in the movement. There will be people who will come to believe something the article never says, and when discussing it with their friends, say just that. It's not a big leap to go from "Sunflower leaders working in China" to "hey did you read that article about how Lin Fei-fan and Chen Wei-ting are working in China?"

Of course, even cursory research will show that this is not the case. All you have to do is check the public Facebook page of either of these two most visible leaders, to know that neither is working, nor has any intention of working, in China. You don't even need me to tell you what they're up to - check for yourself! It's all right there online! Neither has been particularly secretive about the general outlines of their current activities or near-future plans.

Furthermore, it wouldn't be possible for them to do so, as both are banned from the country (in fact, pretty much every visible "leader" is most likely banned so using that term is incorrect on its face).

Knowing, however, that most people won't look into the facts and it makes a much more powerful fake news story to implant in people's minds that not just any Sunflowers but Sunflower leaders have been brought down to working in China - that gives people something to talk about. The purpose here is not just to make the Sunflowers look bad unjustly, but to make it look like the so-called "change" is happening even among the most ardent participants.

Note that Alex Lo doesn't name the so-called "leaders". Since it's not clear who these people are, it is not at all clear that they were "leaders" at all. The movement had hundreds of active participants, thousands if you count the supporters who camped out outside. Not every one of them is a "leader" but any one of them could have taken a job in China, which again would not be hypocritical. So what?

This is a key facet of fake news - implying heavily, drawing susceptible readers to a certain conclusion, but never actually stating it outright so it can't be fact-checked. We can't check to what extent any of the people Chang was referencing, if they exist at all, "led" the movement because we don't know who they are. Our minds are led to fill in the gaps in all the wrong ways.

My fourth point is related to this:  it's not clear who this Alex Lo person is talking about, stopping at "four" people with scant detail on just one, it is entirely possible the "scoop" is fabricated (even if some former Sunflowers did take jobs in China, that doesn't mean that Chang Yu-hua - the originator of this "news" - knows about it necessarily). In fact, I'd say it's highly likely that it was just made up, with the people involved assuming that someone must have gone to work in China so it probably wasn't "false", even if it was a lie to call it a "scoop" (and it probably was).

That's yet another facet of fake news: making up a news story to further your agenda with plenty of assumed or fabricated facts, figuring that somewhere, somehow, there must be an example of what you are talking about if you are called on it. It's the "but rape culture isn't real because some women lie about being raped" of Taiwan news (yes, it does occasionally happen, on very rare occasions, that a woman has lied about being raped. But the person saying that most likely doesn't know of any cases off the top of their heads, and is just assuming that, if confronted on that factoid, they can find an example quickly enough).

It wouldn't be the first time anti-Taiwan news had made something up out of whole cloth, not said outright that it was true, but implied it in such a way as to cause people to believe it. My favorite example is the person I know who deeply believed that President Tsai had called up a pro-KMT talk show (something-something 酸辣湯, I don't remember the full name because they're a bunch of fucking clowns and I can't be bothered) and told them that once she took office they were no longer allowed to criticize her, and if they did she'd take them off the air. They were even crying and hugging each other saying "this is our last episode!"

This is absolutely ridiculous, and of course it wasn't true, but my acquaintance believed it.

It wasn't even hard to find out it wasn't true - if such a phone call was made, evidence would most likely exist. If it existed, that would have been a huge news story, not only a very damaging one but one that could have cost Tsai her job. Whoever made it up clearly didn't think very deeply about how freedom of speech laws - yes, laws, so a president violating them would be breaking the law - work in Taiwan, or assumed the audience wouldn't. It's not a hard assumption to make: most of that show's viewers are KMT supporters. The KMT is the party that suppressed free speech in Taiwan for nearly half the twentieth century. If you still support it, well, you clearly think doing so was, on some level, acceptable enough that a president could do it without it creating a huge scandal or causing that president to lose legitimacy even among her supporters. After all, the former leaders of their preferred party did it, and they still support that party.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, it's possible to fact-check this stuff but those who publish it assume people won't.

And you know what? I'm sure some former Sunflowers did take jobs in China. In fact, I've had several people say they can confirm that. I'm not sure to what extent these people were "leaders" (because, again, the leaders are mostly or entirely banned from China), but it doesn't matter, as doing what they did was not hypocritical.

In fact, that some Sunflowers did do this says more about problems in Taiwanese corporate culture (low pay, long hours, few perks, overbearing management) than about any virtues of China or any problems in Taiwanese politics.

And finally, by pinning the whole thing on a report by some other guy, SCMP - which is hardly a bastion of press freedom - is basically washing its hands of any culpability or being accused of "fake news". "I'm just reporting on what Chang said!" is the easy excuse. Another key strategy of fake news - write something from an uncredible source that, even if discredited, can be blamed on that source. "I just heard it from _______!" - but of course when _________ and you, and some other guy after you, and some dude who links to that, and another news source that picks up on it, and the Chinese state-run media who likes what you wrote because it serves their agenda, all publish it, it will look like these "facts" are coming from a number of sources when in fact they originated with just one: Chang Yu-hua, who, as one friend of mine put it, "if his words were worth listening to, shit can be eaten".

And then, if anyone bothers to refute it all as I am doing,  you have a bevy of competing sources which makes it look as though the two sides of the so-called "debate" are roughly matched, and therefore both deserve equal consideration, meaning facts don't matter and distortion of those facts is as equally valid as a clear interpretation of them.

That's how it works, and that's China's game - make it seem as though the CCP-approved perspective is, if not the correct one, than one that is on equal footing with other interpretations and deserves the same legitimacy. Because SCMP is owned by Alibaba (a huge company that is a big supporter of the Chinese government), and Alex Lo is a pro-China mouthpiece, they are happily playing along.

China is Asia's shitty privileged fedora dude at a bar

No but seriously, if you were out with friends and this guy you know - maybe he lent you some money, but you are not exactly friends - was creeping on a friend of yours and was even making threats toward her, you probably like to think you'd step in, yes? Even if he was a pretty strong dude, maybe strong enough to take you down, you'd know that standing up for her was the right thing to do and take that risk, yes? Even if there was a chance you'd end up beaten up in the parking lot for crossing him?

Let's say he's been acting this way for awhile, totally weirding out his neighbors and any women he talks to, and he's...that type. Dominant, overbearing, seemingly well-educated but prone to being taken in by fake news articles, conspiracy theories and half-truths. He himself "alt right" but you know it's straight-up racism.

Let's say this guy - we'll call him Chad - is at a crowded bar and Tina gets stuck standing next to him. He's being a total douche to Tina but she can't just get away from him. He's creeping on her, saying if she won't go out with him he'll "just rape her oh haha but anyway what're you going to do about it". He also jokes that he "owns" her and she'll "never get away from him". Even if they were together that'd be creepy as hell, but they're not!

Tina's a good friend of yours, very loyal.

You'd go in there and be like "hey, Chad, leave Tina the fuck alone. And that rape joke is seriously not funny. If you don't walk that back I'm calling the cops because that's a real threat and it's not okay."

...right?

You definitely wouldn't be all "well, you know, Chad's going through a rough time right now. And I totally still owe him some money. So I probably shouldn't get involved. Tina can handle herself" (Tina keeps throwing glances at you, begging for help).

No way would you say "I mean Chad was just joking about raping her, right? He wouldn't actually do that! I'm sure Tina and Chad can work it out themselves!"

"When he says he 'owns' her, it just means he really likes her, he doesn't mean it like MEAN it mean it," you definitely would not state.

"It's not like Chad's raping her NOW. She's fine. Ew, he's totally pressing his hard-on into her thigh...that must really suck for Tina, but it's not my business. I have to trust Tina to deal with him herself. Maybe she should just talk to him about it and get him to understand that's not okay?"

Chad's raging boner

Certainly, you'd never say that.

"I mean, Chad totally buys her lots of drinks and she's drinking them. Well, okay, he's pressuring her to, but still. She could probably just say no even though she's really scared. I mean she looks genuinely scared! One of them probably has roofies in it, but she hasn't passed out yet. She can take care of herself."

You'd think you were being a horrible person if you said that, right?
"I mean, the last time we thought we could help out Irene and get her crazy ex-husband off her back, and look what happened, we totally fucked it up and ruined her life. So we definitely shouldn't tell Chad to knock if off."

Nope, not from you. You have integrity!

"The thing about Chad is, he totally thinks he's better than anyone else. He'll even tell you it's a race thing or a guy thing. Yeah, he's kinda racist but what're ya gonna do? He says we have to respect his views. I totally think that's bullshit, but I'm a tolerant person so I can't say he's a terrible person just for having a different opinion. Of course I don't agree, I care about women and other people no matter where they are from. I think everyone should be equal and the world would be better if we could all just get along. I would never say what he says, though, because I'm woke!"

You'd be all "whoever said something like that was a total douchebag", right? After all, you're one of the good ones!

"Also, about Chad? I really can't just step in because he might actually start a fight. I like Tina a lot, I really respect what a strong, beautiful woman she is. Everybody calls her Beautiful Tina! I can't say that too much or talk to her too much, or Chad gets mad at me."

"The thing is, I don't want to get into a fight with Chad so there's nothing I can do. Even though if he could beat me up he could totally wreck Tina. He could really beat me up! The last time we kind of knocked his fedora a little askance he totally complained about it for ages."

"If I stepped in it could be worse for Tina! He might get mad and go after her for real and that might really be a problem!"

"I know it's totally weird that Chad tells everyone they're dating already when they clearly aren't, but maybe she should just go with it? People already believe Chad anyway. Like, is that worse than getting raped?"

Tina: "For fuck's sake, is anybody going to help me get Chad off my back? I could really use some help here."

I hope you see where I'm going with this.

Chad and Tina

Consider the spineless liberal (and I am a liberal) super nice person - could be male or female - who nutsacks out of doing something in real instances of other people being harassed, threatened or otherwise pushed around by shitty privileged white guys, instead of growing a damn vagina and standing up and doing something about it. One thing the past few days have taught me is that you can be a great person in word, who says all the right things and has all the right beliefs (and I do believe there is a clear wrong and right in many, though not all, cases) but it doesn't mean much if you don't stand up for the other people (or countries) you claim to care about - and yes, I am very directly talking about failed Western policies in China, which have enabled it to grow into a Hulk-like bully that threatens Tina and all the other folks at the Asia Bar (and perhaps beyond).



Quite literally, y'all have been letting a shitty privileged dude get away with harassing everyone else and done nothing about it despite claiming to feel otherwise. Nobody cares about how you feel - we care about what you do.

I am a big fan of liberalism. I'm not as far left as a lot of my friends, but then a fair number are straight-up Communists (I'm not), but you can consistently count on me to fight for equal rights, fair pay, a strong social safety net and legal weed.

But I just can't get over the knock-kneed wuss-ass liberal approach to Taiwan. You - all of you - are quite literally watching your friend sit there and take credible threats and doing nothing about it, like that not-really-a-friend bullshit "but I'm not like that, I respect _____!" loser at the bar who won't stand up when it counts. The sort of person I wouldn't trust as a friend, because they would have so many pretty words but not have my back.

You are not a true liberal unless you actually stand up for what you believe in. That means standing up for the folks you claim to care about so much. In this case, standing up for Taiwan. If you want to continue to sell out liberal, democratic Taiwan in order to make nice with dictatorial China, but otherwise call yourself a liberal, you are a hypocrite.

I'm sick of the OMG PHONE CALL too, and I still don't want Trump to be the one to have made it. I still wish it could have been a competent leader under a coherent, ethical policy shift. The craptacular "oh but but but, oh but...we can't anger CHAD! We have to be careful with CHAD!" from not only most major media outlets - not only including but especially the ones with a liberal slant - but also the more liberal end of the diplomatic community has, shall we say, been less than inspiring. I'm starting to feel like, as much as I hate it, and as much as I do not and will not ever absolve Trump, and cannot and will never trust him, the people I wanted to make that call never would have.

This does not mean it's okay that a guy who can't be trusted to stand by Taiwan when it counts was the one to do this, it just exposes the hypocrisy of all the people who could have done so credibly, but didn't.

They'd have let Tina sit there stuck at the bar with Chad's trouser tent bruising her thigh, joking about raping her, and done fuck all about it because "oh no China might get mad oh no".

"This is not how things are done" and "this is a delicate matter!" are increasingly starting to sound like so much window dressing for "oh but there's nothing we can do, you know how Chad can be!" I'd be more inclined to believe it if I still believed they'd eventually do something about Chad. It is becoming quite clear they never intended to.

Obama, as much as I have otherwise supported him despite his sometimes weak leadership and occasional hypocrisies, would have never made that call, as much as I wanted him to. Clinton wouldn't likely have either. And their liberal media friends would have continued making hypocritical excuses for why not, and still insisted they really did care, but, you know, it's a tough situation.

So, I love you liberals. I really do. I am one of you. So I say this with love in my heart:

Shut the fuck up with your excuses. You are embarrassing yourselves. Stand up for what you believe in.