The East is Red and green

I grew up during the Cold War. While I don’t miss its obsessions and the disastrous policies that flowed from them —-- the Vietnam War for one --— I have not become completely soft on communism, as so many people have.
Communism was a bad idea then and it’s a bad idea now. (Old-style liberals opposed communism because their liberal principles were affronted by societies that denied human rights and I am nothing if not old style). But today even conservatives have put aside their loathing of the Reds out of their loving for the green, as in greenback dollars.
Now that China has capitalist trappings, now that it has become a dictatorship with which we can do business, most conservatives seemed to have dropped all objections to its form of government. The East is Red and it has cash registers -- — so not to worry. It makes one wonder what all the fuss was about in the old days.
How much the world has changed was illustrated the other day when President Bush announced that he was going to attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. Skipping it, he said in Japan before the G-8 summit, would be an “affront” to the Chinese  people.
Yes, perhaps it would be an affront to the Chinese people, but I think it would be more of an affront to the Chinese government --— not to mention an affront to the admirable and democratic Taiwanese people across the strait, our long-time friends whom we seem to have abandoned in our affections.
Frankly, I wouldn’t mind if the Chinese government were affronted. I know we are in no position to lecture the Chinese anymore about human rights abuses— -- not with Guantanamo Bay still in operation— -- but does the president of the United States really have to worry about affronting them when they richly deserve a little affronting? Couldn’t he instead have made the respectable argument that the Olympics represent a worldwide truce when countries put aside their differences?
Oh, I forgot: China now owns the United States. Mr. Bush was just trying to suck up to management. We can only hope he doesn’t actually kow-tow to Chinese leaders in between basketball games.