RUSH: We’re gonna get to the NBA stuff today too. I’m glad that I actually didn’t get to that yesterday because there’s a bunch that’s happened since then. And I’ll tell you what this Chinese stuff, folks, let me tell you, this Chinese stuff is a teachable moment for a lot of reasons.
You know, Millennials today are big into socialism. They think it’s wonderful and great. Well, here it is on display. Not only socialism, but raw communism on display by the ChiComs. You cannot dissent. You have no civil liberties. You have no opinion. You’re not allowed.
The same NBA that told North Carolina to go to hell because they wouldn’t have same sex bathrooms to accommodate transgenders wants to cozy and up make friends with the ChiComs. Because there’s 1.2 billion people as a market in China and how many people in North Carolina does the NBA really care about? Aw, man, there’s so many teachable moments here. We’re gonna get to ’em as the program unfolds.
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RUSH: This is such a teachable moment what is happening here, and it’s gotten so obfuscated. Let’s start at the beginning on this. No, let’s not. I want to make an observation before starting at the beginning. The beginning is the tweet that the general manager of the Houston Rockets sent out (chuckles), which was a totally harmless tweet showing support for freedom-loving people in Hong Kong pursuing freedom and democracy.
And for that, he was shellacked by the ChiComs. The ChiComs then threatened the NBA, and the NBA originally buckled to it! Until they got the impression that they were doing this all wrong, and now they’re trying to have it both ways. But take a look at what’s happened here. I want to draw an analogy for you. We have the general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, on Friday sending out a tweet that — in the normal ebb and flow — nobody should have ever noticed. They were just supporting the freedom-loving, democracy-loving seekers in Hong Kong!
Who are being beaten up and threatened and imprisoned by the ChiComs. So he sends out this tweet and all hell breaks loose. Half of the NBA players come down on this guy. “How dare you criticize the Chinese! How dare you!” The NBA executive bunch, their initial reaction was to come down on Daryl Morey, who is the general manager of the Houston Rockets. Now, what happened? The ChiComs blew up. And why? Because the ChiComs do not permit dissent. The ChiComs are…
I don’t care what anybody else thinks they are. They are, first and foremost, command-and-control communists. There is no freedom in communism. There is no dissent in communism. There is no individuality or sovereignty in communism. You are nothing but a slave in communism — and if you stray, you will pay a price that may include costing you your life. So here we have — in the big scheme of things — a small and mild little tweet about Hong Kong, and it has been turned into a gigantic and polarizing international issue.
You know who it remind me of? It reminds me of the left in this country. It reminds me of the way they are enforcing speech codes with the threat of violence, the same level of intolerance as the ChiCom government. It doesn’t matter what university you go to. In New York City, you can’t say things like “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant” without being chased down. Now, what we have in Hong Kong are people fighting a war against communism, and they’ve known this was coming since 1997.
When the Brits… The queen sent Prince Charles over there and had this gigantic ceremony turning control of Hong Kong back to the mainland ChiComs. Hong Kong, prior to that, was maybe one of the greatest examples of raw capitalism you could find on the planet. I went to Hong Kong in the late 1980s, and I came away stunned that it works. It is massively populated — overpopulated, based the square footage living space and so forth.
It’s two different cities daytime and nighttime. Across the harbor in Kowloon when you’re looking at Hong Kong, it’s a different existence. But tourism by night, business by day. Whole cities completely change once the sun goes down. I’m not talking about from capitalism to communism, just about what the purpose of life is. Everybody got fed. Everybody eats whatever they wanted to eat. There was plenty of food. Nobody wanted for anything.
I mean, there was poverty. There’s always that no matter where you go on the planet, but it worked. And it was based on complete economic freedom. When you went into a store to buy, at that time, you want to buy an MP3 player, every purchase was a negotiation. Yeah, they had a sticker on it, but every purchase was a negotiation. You could negotiate these people down.
Everything was in Hong Kong dollars, and so the salespeople were accustomed to talking to you, “220 Hong Kong, 220,” so you have to get your calculator, “What’s 220 Hong Kong?” After a while you learn it. But no matter what it is, you’re negotiating with them. Everything was a deal. And then the Brits announce they’re gonna turn it over and I knew, and everybody knew, this day was only a matter of time. The ChiComs cannot let Hong Kong exist as it was. It’s in direct conflict with mainland China. They can’t permit it.
There’s no way the Chinese leaders are gonna permit Hong Kong to remain what it was. So the day has come where they’re not. The day has come where Hong Kong is gonna become subsumed by the mainland. The difference is the people in Hong Kong are not like the people on the mainland. They’re just not gonna say, “Oh, okay,” cower in the corners in fear and let it happen. They’re pushing back!
They’re pushing back against communism! This is what ought to be happening in this country, pushing back against liberalism, pushing back against some of the crazy, radical liberalism that’s infecting every institution in this country! The same kind of lack of tolerance of dissent, intolerance of even speech. I mean, corruption of so many institutions is occurring in this country because of the American left. It all happens under the guise of political correctness, and it’s all based on the fact that minorities are oppressed and so we gotta let these changes happen because otherwise minorities will be continue to be oppressed.
It’s nothing about any of that. It’s an attack on capitalism. It’s an attack on freedom. It’s an attack on individualism that’s being sponsored by international communists around the world who are funding and paying for this stuff, and issues like climate change are vehicles whereby they make it happen. So there’s a great lesson for people to see here.
And another great lesson. Look at how quickly the National Basketball Association instinctively decided to come down on the side of the communist Chinese government and not the general manager of the Houston Rockets who essentially tweeted a little message of support for the freedom fighters in Hong Kong.
That’s all it took to create this massive controversy. Well, the NBA preseason is underway. There’s a bunch of teams over there playing exhibition games, the ChiComs are threatening not to let the games go on. LeBron James — get this — LeBron James has been told it’s up to him to fix this. It’s up to LeBron James to somehow bridge this controversy.
The Chinese love basketball. You know why this is? They’re short compared to NBA players. They admire, “Oh, man, that’s cool, to be able to dunk,” what have you. I mean, there’s other reasons too. It’s intriguing sport for some people.
The people of Hong Kong are fighting a war against communism. There are some people in this country who think that we’re fighting the same battle here, but our battle is not so much with the government yet, but with individual leftists that run and have taken over institutions.
But the ChiComs have shown everybody what they really are. They are dictatorial. They will shut down all disent and they will do it with violence if they have to. And that is what they really are, despite comments by Biden and Bloomberg. These guys are out there saying they’re not dictators. Remember what Bloomberg said in the sound bite we had last week? That the president of China has to serve his constituents, or he won’t survive? Some of the most outrageous ignorance I’ve ever heard.
Then Biden’s out there (imitating Biden), “The Chinese are not a problem. I’ve been there. I’d made deals with them and my son. Oh, wait. Well, they’re not a threat. They’re not our enemy. Come on, man, the Chinese are not our enemy.” So now the NBA, the commissioner, Adam Silver, they’re kind of backtracking now and trying to show support for Adam Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, while trying not to tick off the ChiComs because here come the usual complaints. “The NBA buckled to money. They care more about money and a big market than they do civil and human rights.”
Yeah, well, this is the same NBA that threatened North Carolina and some other states with a boycott if they didn’t open up bathrooms to anybody who wanted to use them. So the NBA had no trouble standing up to the government of North Carolina. The NBA was perfectly fine issuing boycott threats. Let the ChiComs speak up and it’s bend over and grab the ankles time, until people got offended by that, and now they’re trying to have it both ways. But they don’t want to give up the ChiCom market, 1.2 billion people who have increasing buying power.
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RUSH: Okay. So let’s see. The ChiComs bought off the Clintons. The ChiComs bought off the Bidens. The ChiComs bought off Bloomberg. And now they’re in the process of buying off the NBA and all of the woke leftists out there. And you know why. Because of the allure of ChiCom money is just too much for some people.
Meanwhile, there’s one guy waging a war with the ChiComs trying to straighten out this imbalance, and that’s Donald J. Trump. Once again, we have someone on the right side of all of this. There’s more to this but let me get back to the phones.
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RUSH: I just saw some guy on TV say, “We gotta realize doing business with China’s an exchange program. If we’re gonna export freedom like supporting Hong Kong, then we gotta be willing to import some censorship!” For crying out loud. (Snort!) And then the guy on the air said, “You are really filled with wisdom today, sir.”