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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| We'll Be Alright, and Then We Must Reckon with Communist China |
| 2020-03-22 |
| [PJ] On the first day of the coronavirus quarantine I went for a walk through my neighborhood to the park. The weather was warm and the walk was nice. The park looked like a park in central Texas should in the spring, with wildflowers and bluebonnets in bloom and dandelions popping up like little white clouds above the grasstops. Kids were out playing, oblivious as they should be to the world’s problems, when they should have been at school. But everywhere I looked on the way to the park, where there should be empty driveways, there were cars. Everyone was home. It looked like a Saturday morning, but it was Tuesday. Some of my neighbors were working from home, as I was, teleworking to avoid the coronavirus. But surely some were home because they could no longer work. Their businesses are shut down by the virus. They were inside, worrying how or if they can keep their homes. Worrying about what tomorrow would bring, and the day after that. This creeping dread we all feel once in a while has taken up residence in millions of American homes. There’s a little church along a country highway heading east that I pass often, a small thing that some pastor had the vision to build to reach a small community. It’s a shell now, empty. Closed. It failed. Someone cuts the grass around it every once in a while, probably a city crew, but when they delay, the grounds get overgrown and it looks lost in time. There are few things in modern life that gnaw at me like a shuttered church. There’s something heartbreaking about a place built to exemplify faith that has failed and hollowed out. We’re seeing a lot of shuttered churches now, not because of any failures within them. Their faith is fine, maybe stronger now than a few weeks ago. Hardship will do that. They’re closed because we can’t gather in groups anymore, because of the virus. We can’t worship together, or have large weddings or funerals. Games and graduations and concerts are canceled. The gatherings of our lives are gone for a while. Because of the virus. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #13 "Hi China?! This is President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. As you may, like us, be experiencing a scarcity of toilet paper, you are hereby allowed to substitute all those TUS bonds held by you and your Senior Officials. We're reviewing those owned by your pals. Have a yuge day." |
| Posted by: Anomalous Sources 2020-03-22 22:15 |
| #12 If the crisis passes, most of the powerbrokers will say "It's time to move on" (remember that old chestnut?) and "focus on the recovery and getting back to normal". Oh, yes. I can almost hear them even now. Most unfortunate. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2020-03-22 15:41 |
| #11 If the US was the source of something similar you know the usual suspects would be demanding reparations. Let their silence be the answer if they attempt to play that kind of game against us in the future. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-03-22 15:26 |
| #10 I agree that we should put China back in its box, I just don't believe it will happen as a result of this particular crisis. This will be a link in the chain of causality, but in and of itself it probably won't be enough to bring about any reckoning. If the crisis passes, most of the powerbrokers will say "It's time to move on" (remember that old chestnut?) and "focus on the recovery and getting back to normal". Never mind that "normal" is what got us here. |
| Posted by: charger 2020-03-22 15:05 |
| #9 This isn't the first pandemic that has come from China and it won't be the last. Whether the current shutdown of our economy is justified or not, it cannot be repeated every time some new bug gets loose in China. We need to quarantine the commie bastards until they learn to behave like respectable, civilized human beings. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2020-03-22 14:58 |
| #8 That is why the Chicoms are doing a full court propaganda press right now. They know that their export model is in existential peril and can see that it can sink them. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2020-03-22 14:46 |
| #7 #5, I remember Microsoft doing that a few times. You're not wrong! People should not put up with it. |
| Posted by: Thimp Clusort2035 2020-03-22 14:24 |
| #6 Remember that reckoning with Iran that followed 9-11? Remember our distancing from Saudi Arabia? This time for sure though. LOL |
| Posted by: charger 2020-03-22 14:21 |
| #5 My beef regarding smart phones is the egregious built in obsolescence. Nobody would tolerate it if you were forced to buy or lease a new car every three years because "no more software updates." This happens with phones just to keep the oems and the carriers happy. It needs to stop. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2020-03-22 13:21 |
| #4 The Chinese have stolen or copied more or less everything they make from other nations that created, invented or perfected that process or manufactured good. There is next to nothing that China makes - especially but not only mobile phone parts - that cannot be made just as well, if not much better - by China's neighbors, beginning with that other China located across the Straits. "Global distancing" - ha! Love it. |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-03-22 09:29 |
| #3 ..have to wait for EPA approval to properly dispose of all those toxic chemicals involved in the manufacturing process, don't you know. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-03-22 07:08 |
| #2 Still waiting for a smart-phone/computer produced outside China without Chinese made parts. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-03-22 03:49 |
| #1 Global distancing. Simply don't have anything to do with the SOB's. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2020-03-22 03:45 |