When visiting certain places, you’re only allowed to witness what the authorities want you to see. One of these places is North Korea.
Another is San Francisco — that is, if the visitor happens to be Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
After all, the City by the Bay — known in recent times for homeless encampments, drug use, feces and needles on the sidewalks, and crime — looked like it had gotten a full treatment by the Cat in the Hat and Felix Unger when Xi rolled into town for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit this week. It was so clean, in fact, that California’s governor, hard-left Gavin Newsom, was asked about the transformation and confirmed that, yes, while cleanliness may not be next to godliness in today’s San Francisco, cleanliness is next to a godless pseudo-communist there (video below).
What’s more, reports hold that not only did Xi’s route look like a Chinese thoroughfare, lined with communist flags and American flags absent, but even the Left’s cherished rainbow flag was missing.
As for San Fran locals, they got to discover that there actually is a city beneath the malodorous vagrants, drug paraphernalia, garbage, and human waste (video below).
Of course, this again simply proves that “can’t lives on Won’t Street.” This reality didn’t escape internet commenters, either.
“He’ll clean up the city for a visit for a summit of foreign leaders, but her [sic] won’t clean it up for the residents of San Francisco,” wrote a respondent under this YouTube video. “That should tell you all you need to know about Newsome [sic] and the Democratic party in California.”
Another averred, if “he keeps his ‘house’ in a mess but only cleans it for company then he clearly doesn’t care about the people actually living there.” Well, sure, citizens have to pay their taxes regardless — they rewarded Newsom’s nonfeasance and misfeasance with reelection, too. And as X user “Daoshan Sun” put it, “A one-party system doesn’t have to care about the citizens.”
(Are you listening, Golden Staters?)
But Xi’s situation is different. Our pseudo-elites only get Beijing’s money when they perform. And, boy, what a performance it was if the video below is any indication.
Contemplating the above, another X user noted, “Dang, San Francisco is looking more China than China.” Of course and in fairness, the video presents just one section on the Xi motorcade’s route; this said, no reportage I’ve seen claims the route’s general character was any different.
As to that character, commentator Olivia Murray makes another observation. “You know what else is noticeably absent?” she asks, before continuing:
All those “Pride” flags. That’s weird… What about all that endless “proud ally” talk from city and state officials? I thought California, and especially San Francisco, boldly publicized their willingness to fight LGBTQ “hate” and “discrimination” even when it wasn’t the popular thing to do… But some anti-LGBTQ communist rolls into town and they unfurl the red carpet and rip down the incriminating paraphernalia? And, not that I have a problem with the removal of “Pride” flags at all (instead I applaud it), but it sounds about right for the virtue-signaling left.
This point is especially salient because in 2021, Beijing’s top media regulator announced a boycott of “sissy” men on TV (yes, that term was used), again signaling that the sexual devolutionary (“LGBTQ+”) agenda is unwelcome in China. So while using such epithets gets you canceled in the U.S., Xi and his comrades can be like Archie Bunker (without the American patriotism) and get fêted.
Figuring out why mayn’t be hard, either. That is, there was “a particular press release from Newsom’s office, which detailed how the governor had ‘wed his state to a foreign communist province’ and signed a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ with Vice Governor Chen Huaiyu of Hainan,” Murray reminds us. “It proved that ‘anti-American actors have friends in the highest of places’ as Newsom had entered into an agreement with Chen regarding ‘carbon neutrality plans’—ominous much?” she continues. “As a friendly reminder … this is the nation that harvests organs from conscious humans, executes political and religious dissidents, and welds problematic people into high-rise buildings where they starve to death. I think the picture is pretty clear of how they intend to ‘neutralize’ carbon.”
This pseudo-elite affection for China is par for the course, too. Just consider that Canada’s Gavin Newsom, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, actually said back in 2013 that he admired Beijing’s “basic dictatorship.”
These pseudo-elites feel anything but admiration for their constituents, though, and Xi’s treatment brings this into focus. In fact, it “indicates to us that decline and sludge and crime and garbage and all the things plaguing San Francisco is a choice,” writes pundit Monica Showalter, “the choice of its public officials and they can clean the place up when they want to … except that they just don’t want to.”
Of course. In fairness, though, the San Fran spic-and-span plan does to an extent just reflect man’s nature. After all, most people would serve different food if entertaining British royals than when hosting the poor family next door (not saying this is right or wrong, just reality).
Yet there is another factor. Many politicians — and Newsom appears the epitome — are narcissists. Now, narcissists don’t feel guilt, only embarrassment. In the case here, this would mean our narcissistic pseudo-elites wouldn’t feel at all bad about abusing “their people.” But they’ll feel terribly embarrassed if it appears to a foreign tyrant, who’s a puppeteer extraordinaire in his realm, that they can’t control their own.
Of course, the problem, again, is that to win Xi’s ostensible approval our pseudo-elites actually have to deliver; winning enough voters’ approval only requires some slick talk.
