When Ilhan Omar Tweeted out ‘It’s All About the Benjamins Baby’, she wasn’t talking about her fellow angry ‘woke’ race agitator LeBron James and the NBA, but she very well could have been, and she would’ve been right. As the disgraceful events of the past week has shown, when it comes to loyalty to one’s country and one’s pocketbook, even for the perpetually aggrieved who see ‘color’ in everything, the only color that really matters is green.
When Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey Tweeted out in support of the ongoing Hong Kong protests “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong.”, you’d have thought he’d committed a murder, and yet, with the absolutely stunning backlash he received, in a way it was, but of himself. As the GM of a team in a league whose players are predominantly black, it would seem a natural inclination to stand with those who were protesting for their freedom, and that he’d get the support of one of the league’s most famous – and outspoken – players. Surely the notoriously ‘woke’ anti-Trump LeBron James, who said he would never sit down with the President, stands with the ‘people’ against dictators, right? But no, he doesn’t, nor, initially did the Rockets players such as James Harden, who apologized for Morey’s Tweet, nor the league itself, which almost fired him.
What’s all the hubbub about the protests on the other side of the globe and why should they matter anyway? Simply put, per Wikipedia: ‘The 2019 Hong Kong protests, also known as the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill or Anti-ELAB movement, are an ongoing series of demonstrations in Hong Kong which began with the aim to oppose the introduction of the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill proposed by the Hong Kong government. If enacted, the bill would let local authorities detain and extradite criminal fugitives who are wanted in territories with which Hong Kong does not currently have extradition agreements, including Taiwan and mainland China. People were concerned that the bill would subject Hong Kong residents and visitors to the mainland Chinese jurisdiction, undermining the region’s autonomy and its civil liberties.’ This should bother Americans on a number of fronts, those who are paying attention anyway.
An explanation of the status of Hong Kong and their relationship with China, per Wikipedia: ‘When London and Beijing announced the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong in 1984, the “one country, two systems” model promised to give Hong Kong “a high degree of autonomy” from mainland China. Hong Kong, a former British colony, would revert to Chinese rule in 1997 as a “Special Administrative Region” (SAR). So when Hong Kongers, who were already afraid their autonomy was deteriorating, got word about a new extradition measure coming before the Hong Kong legislature that would ease sending people to mainland China for trial, the result was huge street protests unlike any since the Umbrella Movement — and a delay of the plan by the authorities.’ They’ve been protesting ever since, and China has been cracking down on them, no doubt testing the world and seeing how far they can go, considering they have a lot of the planet’s companies and governments by the short hairs.
So why does any of this matter to the average American? Look at your phone. Look at your computer. Look at your clothes, your bed, your food. Where was it made? Where does most if not all of the gadgets and doodads that every single American buys every day come from? Yep, China.
Who owns trillions of our debt? China. Who is now instituting a ‘social credit’ score on every single one of its citizens which will be used to control them in every single thing they do in a way that would impress the Stasi, and which American tech companies are facilitating? You see where I’m going with this.
When Morey Tweeted his support for Hong Kong, he was by proxy criticizing China, something for which they will not stand. And instead of backing him up, his own team threw him under the bus, as did the ‘National’ Basketball Association (of which nation it’s not so clear anymore) and LeBron James. (At least Shaq backed Morey up!) The uneducated LeBron, who never ‘waits’ to wade into ‘social justice’ issues in America, ‘criticized Houston Rockets’ general manager Daryl Morey for not being “educated on the situation” when he tweeted in support of the Hong Kong anti-government protests. James shortly after took to Twitter to clarify his statements saying that Morey had no “consideration for the consequences and ramifications of the tweet” and he could have “waited a week to send it.”
The good thing is that as much as all hell broke loose over Morey’s Tweet, all hell broke loose the other way against James’s reaction to it, both here and abroad. In America, all kinds of anti-LeBron hashtags were trending on Twitter, and in Hong Kong, protesters burned his jersey.
What is sad, however, is that it happened in the first place, and it sheds a stark light on where we’ve descended to as a country, where a citizen of the United States of America seemingly has no vested loyalty to his own country. I completely get black American’s complaints about racial issues in America, including its history, in fact, I write about the issue all the time. But here’s a black man, LeBron James, who was born to a 16-year-old mother and a father with an extensive criminal record who through his ability to maneuver a basketball well, has, in America, become an extremely wealthy man.
But instead of supporting the protesters in Hong Kong, who not only want to have the same freedom he has, but who also adore him and love basketball, he stands with the same type of system which he himself rails against. Same as Kaepernick. They virtue signal about the ‘injustices’ in America, while supporting one of the most unjust nations on earth! A country which currently has a million Muslims in concentration camps, practices organ harvesting and uses slave labor. And I won’t get into the Yulin Dog Festival!
Now I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite, I buy stuff at Target and the Dollar Tree and I know where it’s made. And I hate it, but everything it seems is made there now. But I have no money, power or influence, unlike LeBron, who could actually leverage it and try to force his overlords in Beijing to change. It’s one of the reasons I’m so grateful that Trump was elected, because he understands the threat China poses to America and the world, and is bringing the supply chain back here. If it weren’t for Trump, China would’ve overtaken us already and have implemented things that we could ever undo. And it might even be too late already, because they’ve had so much time to already do it, which they’ve done, infuriatingly, with the full knowledge of many of the elected officials in Washington who are supposed to ‘represent’ US!
America isn’t perfect, of course, but it means something to be American, and as Americans, we should be willing to stand with others seeking that which we so cavalierly take for granted – Freedom. The same people who if it were happening today would’ve stood against the apartheid regime in South Africa now cowtow to China. But it’s even bigger than Hong Kong.
If China can bully a sports organization into silence for showing support for people of Hong Kong protesting for what China promised in the turnover, what can they do to the rest of us, when we’re so thoroughly dependent on them?
China has been planning while we’ve been sleeping, and actually, through the WTO, our politicians, and even our own purchases, facilitating our own demise.
This situation not only exposes how profoundly hypocritical the ‘Woke’ Social justice warriors always turn out to be, but also illustrates how insidious and dangerous the China threat is, and the pitiful acquiescence to China’s rise by American politicians and industries.
If American citizens don’t wake up soon, we may just get strangled by the Chinese ‘belt and road’ initiative we’ve helped to build.
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