I never thought I would find myself saying this but President Biden has just instituted a great boycott. It’s against China, which U.S. officials have been trying their best to reconvert into a Cold War enemy, opponent, rival, or adversary.
What’s so good about this boycott? It purports to punish China by prohibiting U.S. government officials from attending the Winter Olympics in China.
That’s a punishment? Are you kidding? What greater thing could befall China than to have U.S. government officials prohibited from traveling there? Just think — the Chinese will not have to put up with the pompous, imperialist, and hypocritical attitudes that characterize U.S. government officials.
Mind you, Biden isn’t prohibiting U.S. athletes from competing in the Winter Games. That’s what some presidents have done in the past to punish foreign regimes for not kowtowing to the demands of U.S. officials. Biden deserves credit for leaving American athletes out of the political and economic war that U.S. officials have instituted against China.
I wonder if Biden would consider extending his boycott to American cities and states. Wouldn’t it be nice never to have to encounter a U.S. government official?
Biden’s boycott is intended to send a message to Chinese leaders that the U.S. government disapproves of their human-rights abuses. But maybe it would be constructive for Biden to end his own human-rights abuses before lecturing China about its human-rights abuses. In that way, China might be more willing to listen to Biden’s human-rights lectures. Given Biden’s ongoing commitment to human-rights abuses at the hands of U.S. officials, it stands to reason that China isn’t going to pay much attention to his lecturing or, for that matter, his silly boycott.
Let’s review some of the human-rights abuses to which Biden is committed. Let’s start with human-rights abuses at the Pentagon-CIA torture and prison center in Cuba:
- Indefinite detention without trial.
- Denial of due process of law.
- Denial of trial by jury.
- Denial of speedy trial.
- Torture.
- The use of confessions acquired by torture.
- The use of evidence acquired by torture.
- Trial by kangaroo military tribunal.
Let’s go to the U.S. government’s human-rights abuses elsewhere:
- State-sponsored assassinations.
- Torture.
- Coups.
- Support of brutal pro-U.S. dictatorships.
- Stealing of money from innocent people under the rubric of civil-asset forfeiture.
- Jailing of people for ingesting unapproved substances.
- No-knock drug raids.
- Incarcerating and deporting people who come to the United States to better their lives.
- Domestic highway checkpoints demanding to see people’s papers.
- Warrantless searches of farms and ranches along the U.S.-Mexico border.
- Economic sanctions, which target innocent people with death and impoverishment in order to achieve political goals.
- Mass secret surveillance.
- Persecution and prosecution of people who disclose the truth about Pentagon-CIA-NSA dark-side activities.
Biden and other U.S. government officials need to keep in mind that when they point an accusatory finger at the Chinese for human-rights abuses, there are three more fingers pointing back at themselves. Since U.S. government officials won’t be permitted to attend the Winter Olympics, that should enable them to devote more time to ending their own human-rights abuses, both here at home and abroad. What better way to lead than by example?
