Which gets me to the only thing that these two totally separate news events have in common. They are symptoms of the new era of normal politics. Until genetics changes everything, everything is going to be fairly normal. By normal, I mean a little less interesting ideologically and more consistent with the long line of human history. Take this China mess.
China has a bad government.
They do bad things to their people. They cause mischief abroad. They put MSG in everything . But they are not the Soviet Union, despite what some of my friends at The Weekly Standard sometimes suggest. What they are is a big authoritarian country with a bunch of geezers clinging to power.