Season 4, Episode 6 January 29, 2023

Well, hello! Here it is, season 4, episode 6 of the Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, we’ll hear about the connection between tulips, two kings, and New York City, plus, the most important President of the United States. But first, (not the headlines! China Edition!)…

A Gizmodo story written by Molly Taft tells a story about a proposed battery factory for the state of Virginia to build batteries for the Ford Motor Company. They’re for use in electric cars, and the factory would create a couple thousand jobs. The Governor of Virginia doesn’t want the factory in his state. The reason he doesn’t want the plant in Virginia is because Ford wants to build it in a partnership with Contemporary Amperex Technology Company Limited, which is a Chinese company, and answers to the Chinese Communist Party, the people who brought you tiktok. Personally, I think we should do as little business with China as possible, but Governor Younkin of Virginia put is this way, according to the story, “I’ve said before that I want ‘Made in America’ to mean ‘Made in Virginia.’ But let me be clear, ‘Made in Virginia’ cannot be a front for the Chinese Communist Party.” He’s all in favor of the plant if Ford builds it without a partner from China. You may think it’s in the best interest of Virginia to bring that factory and those jobs to the state. You may wonder why the coal mines in Virginia are shutting down when it’s coal that generates the electricity to charge the batteries they want to make there. You may think that electric cars are how the government will control us. You may thing communism is a good idea. But however you feel about electric cars or the Chinese Communist Party is often influenced by how the story is covered. How the story is covered often depends on who’s doing the covering. No two people see exactly the same thing in the same way, and in today’s journalist climate, it’s often the viewpoint of the writer along with help from the viewpoint of the desired audience. The writer of the article I read, Molly Taft, is a freelance writer who’s been published in a variety of printed pages as well as online. She often writes about climate change and environmental issues. She’s based in New York City, a city we’ll talk about a little later, so I can understand why she’s worried about the environment. She’s passionate about environmental issues, and has written stories about how YouTube Promotes Conspiracy Theories and Climate Change Denial, doomsday stories about what will happen in the future and stories critical of coal mining, an integral part of Virginia’s recent history. The story Molly wrote was critical of Governor Younkin’s decision to not welcome the plant to Virginia. In fact, she wrote, “All those jobs, it seems, weren’t tempting enough for Youngkin. Just days after news of the Ford and CATL partnership—and the possible choice of Virginia as a location—broke, the Daily Caller, a right-wing outlet, reported that Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin had instructed the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, a state agency, to take Virginia out of the running for housing the plant. That was kind of a run-on sentence for a journalist to write, so let’s break it down. The first part says, “All those jobs, it seems, weren’t tempting enough for Youngkin.” As if the security of our nation isn’t important enough to keep a communist government from infiltrating our manufacturing infrastructure. It’s better to sacrifice our nation’s security than to deny 2500 people jobs in a factory that’s needed because the current administration has vowed to end fossil fuels. A factory that will import heavy metals and other toxins required to build the batteries from the same communist country that wants to control the world. Some environmentalist Molly turned out to be. It seem she’d rather import toxins to our environment and our way of life than support the decision of a Republican Governor. She didn’t care about those people when the coal mines were threatened. She claims it’s all about the jobs, and the environment is a benefactor. But if that factory was run by robots, she’d probably be alright with that, too, since the robots are making electric car batteries. Now for the second half of the sentence: “Just days after news of the Ford and CATL partnership—and the possible choice of Virginia as a location—broke, the Daily Caller, a right-wing outlet, reported that Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin had instructed the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, a state agency, to take Virginia out of the running for housing the plant.” It’s clear now why this lady’s still a freelance journalist. If I may summarize, when the story broke, she got scooped by the Daily Caller. Her description of it as a right-wing outlet adds nothing to the story, except to establish her own political position. A normal journalist would have simply cited the source, i.e., “according to the Daily Caller.” Then once she establishes the source with as much disdain as possible, she also requires you to believe it by spelling out what a despicable thing the Governor did when he “instructed the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, a state agency, OK, Molly, that’s redundant, to take Virginia out of the running for housing the plant.” 

Now, getting back to why this is called the (china edition), The author of the story quotes another reporter as saying that Republicans are using concerns about Chinese control only to slow down the transition to renewable energy. Molly’s own quote from the Governor explains why he’s against the battery factory, but she presses on with outside opinions about alternative and sinister reasons for the decision, such as claims the Republican Party is “looking into other clean energy firms for Chinese connections” as if that’s a bad thing, making it sound like only clean energy companies are being singled out. Tik tok is not a clean energy company. A lot of public and private institutions are being examined for connections to the Chinese Communist Party, and for good reason. But to Molly, those electric cars are more important than the American way of life. As you know, the person who writes the story doesn’t always write the headline. That’s often done by an editor. The headline on this story was “ Republican Governor Nixes Thousands of Green Energy Jobs, Fearmongers About Communism.” So that’s where we are now. Environmentalists support communism as long as it means we have electric cars. Using fearmongers to describe the act of protecting the very values that make our country great. Look, I’m a supporter of protecting the environment. I want our air, rivers, lakes and earth to be cared for and cherished. I’m sure Molly Taft cares, too. But is building a toxic car battery factory really an environmentally good choice? If Molly was the environmentalist she claims, she wouldn’t want any factory at all. But because it’ll build batteries for the electric car market, she’s all for it. She uses the job creation as an excuse to do so. Her inclusion of support for the Chinese Communist Party makes me wonder where her loyalty lies. The Chinese government has made their intentions clear. They want to become the world’s only superpower, and impose the Communist lifestyle on everyone. Anything we do to advance that agenda is a nail in the coffin of the American Way. 

If there’s any doubt that China is America’s adversary and not a partner, just this week a Chinese engineer was sentenced to 8 years in prison for spying. A CNN story by Nectar Gan describes a Chinese man who came to the United States to go to school for electrical engineering. He did well. After graduating from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2016, he ended up joining the U.S. Army Reserves under a program that accepted foreign nationals if they’re skills were needed. As it turns out, the Chinese army was already putting his skills to work. He was tasked with providing information about other engineers and scientists who might be sympathetic to the communists and recruitible to do more spying. He was further tasked with obtaining information about technologies being studied in the U.S., especially that involving aerospace and satellite discoveries. What may have tipped American authorities off was a lie on the application to join the Army Reserves. He confided in an American spy posing as a Chinese representative what his plans were, which included taking photographs inside aircraft carriers, getting access to classified databases that contained scientific research, and more. Plus, this Chines spy wasn’t new. He was reportedly working for another Chinese spy who was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year. That guy was found guilty of also trying to steal aviation and aerospace secrets. He was captured in Belgium and was the first Chinese spy to be extradited to the United States to face trial. Both were arrested in 2018. Yea. Four years ago. Under the Trump administration.

But human intelligence can only get you so far, and the Chinese know that as well as anyone. They’ve been able to weaponize their dominance of the electronic manufacturing market. A report in the Telegraph this week is a warning to the British people that their refrigerators are just one of the devices that the Chinese Communist Party may be using to spy on them. It seems microchips are placed in all kinds of devices, from refrigerators to cars to light bulbs. A report to the British Parliament describes what the possibilities are. Basically anything that can be controlled by an app that has a Chinese-made module in it can transmit data via 5G to another device that can then be accessed by the companies who made the device, which in this case is probably a Chinese company that is required to turn over to the Chinese Communist Party any data it requests. Three Chinese companies have access to 75 percent of the data generated by the millions of devices in England. These modules are part of a network called “The Internet of Things” which allows devices to communicate with each other. They’re in all kinds of things like police body cameras, doorbell cameras, ATM machines and automobiles. Within the last month, British security services dismantled cars used by the ministry and discovered at least one of the modules hidden inside an unrelated component. The British now suspect that the Chinese have been monitoring the movements of everyone from the Prime Minister on down to whatever level they wished. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. These devices, which are already permeated into our society, can track people’s use of bank cards, know who’s spending time with whom, identify other spies, and more. Supply chains can be monitored and evaluated like never before, giving China an advantage in meeting demand. Even harvests can be tracked, allowing the Chinese Communist Party to anticipate worldwide need. While some may see that as a way to avoid catastrophe, others see it as a catastrophe in itself, giving China an unfair advantage through electronic spying and data gathering, enabled by a government that subsidizes it’s industries enough to undercut global competition in order to dominate the market. A government that utilizes near and outright slave labor to advance the communist agenda. Let’s not forget that the spying modules can also be used to blackmail people, and if needed, simply disable them. How would you feel knowing that the Chinese government could disable every electronic device in your home and car whenever it wants? Right now, in today’s society, that’s what you would call total control. Thanks to the companies and governments who relinquished control over their manufacturing process to the Chinese Communist Party, and there are a lot of them, not just the people of England, but people all over the world are subject to the possibility that we’re not as free as we think. We may not be autonomous at the moment. We may already be operating at the whim of somebody in China. The British government doesn’t think it’s too late to act. The report says, “It’s time to wake up. Free and open countries should ban Chinese manufactured IoT modules from their supply chains as soon as possible.” All devices employed by the government should be examined for the spy modules. 

Meanwhile, the war crimes continue in Ukraine. There’s no one happier about it than the Chinese Communist Party. While they pretend to be a friend of the Kremlin, Russia and the west deplete their stockpiles of weapons while China has no skin in the game. The current political climate in the United States, the unrest in eastern Europe, and Russia’s willingness to suck at the teet of China, along with the way China has been able to infiltrate most of the northern hemisphere through electronic devices seems to be just what Xi Zinping had planned all along. Stopping a battery factory in Virginia might be a small step, but it’s one we need to take to keep the American way of life from becoming a victim of Chinese communism and all the discrimination, elimination, subjugation and humiliation that comes with it. 

Let’s go back liner

1637

In what is now called the Netherlands, Tulip mania collapses. No, I’m not talking about the tulips on your face, I’m talking about the flowers they grow there. The place is famous for them. Sellers could no longer find buyers for their bulb contracts, and many existing contracts had to be settled through arbitration when the the tulip bubble burst. (Bubble gum sfx?) The price of tulips skyrocketed partly because of what was called “broken tulips” which had unique color characteristics that could be duplicated only through the buds of the plant, and not through the seeds. Practically none of the bulbs and plants that were bought and sold in the market actually changed hands. It was all contractual agreements. At the end of the 1636 season, prices for tulips rose quickly, only to crash in February of 1637. According to History dot com, it’s regarded by historians as the first example of an economic bubble bursting, and was lampooned as a folly of herd mentality. In reality, it only really effected those who could afford to lose some money. There were plenty of them though, as this was the Dutch Golden Age, when the area had the highest per capita income in the world. But the legends built around tupipmania are still used as a cautionary tale today. If I were to assign a moral to the story, I would say it’s, “don’t gamble if you can’t afford to lose.”

1649

King Charles I of England is beheaded. He had been found guilty of treason. After all, his style of rule resulted in not one, but two English civil wars. The first one in 1642. He surrendered in the second one in 1646, and was captive until 1648 when he was brought before a court where he was sentenced to death. The leader of the victorious party was Oliver Cromwell, who would become leader of England when the monarchy was abolished. He would lead until his death in 1658. In less than a year, his successor would flee England and the monarchy would be reinstated. More on that in a moment, because this week in...

1653

New Amsterdam is incorporated. As you may recall from the tulip story (I used two lips to say that), this was the Dutch Golden Age. Trade, art, technology, all sorts of things were going on there, and all that money was spent to explore the new world. From modern-day Connecticut to Delaware, the Dutch East India Company became very familiar with the east coast of America. That’s who sent Henry Hudson to look for a northeast passage to India 45 years earlier. On his way up the river that now bears his name, he came across an island called Manna-hata. Dutch settlers came in 1613 and a fort was built there in 1625; Fort Amsterdam. The larger region I already described was called New Netherlands, so when the time came, the fort became a city and kept the name Amsterdam. But it wouldn’t be called New Amsterdam for long, though because eleven years later, the British would take over the land, and King Charles II renamed the city in honor of the King’s brother, the Duke of York. And what was once called Manna-hata is now pronounced Manhattann. But the Dutch can take come solace in the fact that present-day New York has legalized recreational marijuana, just as it’s been tolerated in the original Amsterdam for decades, and I find it funny that some of the talking heads on Fox News complain about the smell of marijuana in public, and always say, “It smells like Amsterdam!” Well, from what I recall of walking around the narrow streets of Amsterdam, the aroma that’s most likely to capture your attention is that of the food. What I remember most about Amsterdam was the rich variety of dining options. Whatever you liked, you could find it. If you wanted to try something new, the possibilities are endless. I guess when you think about it, if you have a city that attracts tourists because of lax marijuana enforcement, you should expect to have a city full of tourists with the munchies. Not to mention the people who live there. I haven’t been to Amsterdam or New York City in a long time, but I’d be willing to bet that Amsterdam smells better. 

1661

Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, the man who earlier in this episode ended the English monarchy is executed! Now, if you were really paying attention, you might have noticed that Oliver Cromwell died in 1658. So how could he have been executed after he was already dead? Well, if you’re a King, you can do anything. And when Cromwell died, and his son, who took over, just like a monarchy would, was forced out, the son of the man Cromwell had beheaded retook the throne under the name King Charles II. Yep, the same guy who changed the name of New Amsterdam to New York. On the 12th anniversary of the execution of King Charles the first, who was dethroned by Cromwell, King Charles II had Cromwell’s body exhumed and his remains hanged in chains. His body would be tossed in a pit. His head would not be re-buried until 1960, three hundred years later. Like in America, there are arguments about memorializing Cromwell. On the one hand, he did away with the English monarchy, but on the other hand, he took a troubled country in it’s second civil war and not only maintained England, but his authoritarian style was similar to what English people were accustomed, and he called himself Lord Protector instead of King. The monarchy still hold a grudge, but the people, and many modern-day historians seem to see him as the man who guided England through a troubled time, and is worth of reverence. As a proverbial poke in the ribs, one of the first ships to be commissioned for the 1776 American Revolutionary War was named the Oliver Cromwell. That’s right, we did it. Put that in your atomizer and spray it on your neck! Because it only took a little more than a hundred years until this week in... 

1789 that George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College. Now, I’m not going to get political here. We can talk about the electoral college, and how some think we should get rid of it, or we could talk about the storming of the Capitol 2021 in an attempt to disrupt the work of the election process. But that’s not what I think is the most noteworthy thing about George Washington being elected to be the first President of the United States of America. It’s not that he was a great leader, or a General, or that he served as President without a salary, having only his expenses paid. No, it was what he did after the next election: He let somebody else become the second President of the United States of America. He probably didn’t have to. He had loyalists, he had control of the army and the navy. At any time during his presidency, George Washington could have said, “I think I like this job. I’m going to keep it for a bit longer. Oh, and there will be some other changes around here, too.” This was when the vision of America was truly fragile. It wasn’t until John Adams was sworn in as the second President in a peaceful exchange of power that the path of American history was destined to become what it is today. 

1845

“The Raven” is published in the New York Evening Mirror, the first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe. Spoiler alert! He was dead the whole time.

1848

John C. Fremont is court-martialed for mutiny and disobeying orders. So? Who’s John C. Fremont?

Look that up liner…

I knew the name Fremont rang a bell, and I’ll get to that. But John Fremont was an early explorer of the wild west. He was also a Army Major when Mexico ceded California to the United States following the Mexican War that ended in 1848. This guy was an adventurer. He actually claimed California two years before Mexico ceded the territory. But prior to all that, he led five expeditions through the wild west. He led a group that found a way to the Pacific Ocean by way of the Columbia River. He wasn’t done, though. He went south from the west coast, and east, and west again, and south again. They called him “The Pathfinder.” After he claimed California, the federal government sent a General to be the Governor. That led to a power struggle, and in the military, the higher rank always wins, so the power struggle ended when the General had the Major court-martialed. Fremont’s adventures didn’t end there. Ten years later, he ran for President of the United States as the first candidate for the newly-formed Republican Party, losing to James Buchanan. When Abraham Lincoln unseated Buchanan, Fremont ran against Lincoln in 1864 under the Radical Democracy Party. He died in Manhattan, formerly New Amsterdam, in 1890. Today, he’s remembered in a variety of ways, and the reason I remember his name is because of Fremont Street in Las Vegas. I lived there when they ended motor vehicle traffic on Fremont street for the Fremont Street Experience, a pedestrian-only area. But he’s also been honored by, according to LasVegasadvisor.com, having four counties named after him, as well as five cities, two mountain peaks, a river, and an inactive U.S. Army Infantry Division. 

1848

The California Gold Rush began. The first ship with Chinese immigrants arrives in San Francisco, California. It took about a year for word to get back to the east coast, causing a mass movement to the west coast in hopes of cashing in. This was before California was even a state, so there were no taxes or land disputes. Find a place to look for gold, put a pan in the water, and keep whatever you find. It’s because word didn’t travel as quickly as it does today that the San Francisco football team is called the 49ers and not the 48ers. I have a family connection to the San Francisco 49ers. My grandmother had a cousin named Len Eshmont. He was the player to score the first touchdown ever for the team. The 49ers still grant the Len Eshmont award to the teammate who best exemplifies the inspirational and courageous play of Len Eshmont. The Len Eshmont award is the team’s most prestigious award since its start in 1957. 

1941

The United Service Organization (USO) is created to entertain American troops. That was my job, too. The job description of an Armed Forces Broadcaster is to “inform and entertain.” And boy did I.

1945

World War II: As part of Operation Thunderclap, 1,000 B-17s of the Eighth Air Force bomb Berlin, a raid which kills as many as 3-thousand people and leaves another 120-thousand homeless. Imagine looking up in the sky over your town and seeing 1000 bombers. You might begin to wonder what your government has done wrong.

1972

The first day of the seven-day 1972 Iran blizzard, which would kill at least 4,000 people, making it the deadliest snowstorm in history. Climate Change! Said no one.

2003

Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard. If you listened to last week’s episode, you know how the Challenger disaster effected me. This was no different.

2008

The New York Giants defeated the heavily favored and previously undefeated 18-0 New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, 17-14, in what is known to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history. And more importantly, kept the 1972 Miami Dolphins the only undefeated team in the history of the National Football League.

Phone and email liner

I recently saw a social media meme the asked, “If you could bring back something from the 1970’s, what would it be?” Now, the first thing that came to my mind was five dollar nickel bags, but there were a lot of other opinions as well. Other than the sarcastic opinions like mine, the most common responses were those related to manners and the way we treat each other. So, what’s changed? Well, how we interact with each other has certainly changed since the 1970’s. Back then, a lot of our communication was reciting words from songs we heard on the radio. You could say “baby I love your way” but only time would tell if your were jive-talkin’. People did treat each other differently in the 1970’s. But was it that different, or even better? Now, I was a young lad in the 1970’s, and I wasn’t as aware as I could have been about political and social issues of the time, but it was the Age of Aquarius, and I was all about the possibilities. I turned 8 years old in 1970, and by 1972 I had become self-aware. The news I saw on television and the music I heard on the radio shaped my opinion of the world, and as an adolescent and teenager, I was influenced by what I was able to witness. What I was able to witness was a small fraction of what teenagers today are able to witness. We had to rely on personal connections to gather information about the world around us. Not just the geopolitical world, but our own neighborhoods. There were no 24-hour news channels. You could buy a newspaper and find out what happened yesterday, or you could wait for the six o’clock news or the 11 o’clock news to come on the television if you wanted to find out what happened more recently. If you wanted to stay as up-to-the-minute as you possibly could, you would keep a transistor radio in your pocket. Because on the radio was where the most up to date information could be heard. Those of us who grew up at that time were raised differently. We weren’t subject to as much of the outside world as young people are today. Older people didn’t grow up witnessing the same kind of hate and vitriol and political division, and if we did see it, it wasn’t at the same volume, nor was it repeated over and over as many times as you wanted. Until the VCR came along, you only had one chance to see something on television. If you missed it, it was gone forever. If it was your favorite television show, you may wonder what you missed and wish you had seen it. But if it was the news, you didn’t know what you missed unless someone else told you about it. But you still didn’t get to see it for yourself. 

We simply relied on each other more back then. We had to. We didn’t have devices in our pockets that contained practically all the known information on the planet and beyond. We were more interactive with each other, and therefore, had more experience interacting with each other. If you weren’t courteous with other people, you would be excluded from the valuable information and gossip available. That would put you at a social disadvantage. It wasn’t just information, either. If you treated your local butcher disrespectfully, he might not serve you next time, or even worse, he might serve you an inferior product. There were penalties for not having manners, and there were rewards for gracious and humble.

It’s different today for a number of reasons. The ability to gather information on our own without personal human connections has made it possible for us to stay in the loop, so to speak, without having to rely on each other for inside information about our immediate environment. Social media has replaced the human connection by funneling everything through your personal communication device. Your personal communication device doesn’t have any feelings. You can be a total ass to your phone, and it will still do whatever you wish, within its capabilities. You can drop it in the urinal, crack the screen, subject it to photographs of weird things growing on your body, even spit on it. As long as it still works, there’s no repercussion for how you treat it. It’s still beholden to you. There’s really nothing you can do, no way to treat it poorly enough, that it won’t do what you ask. As a result, the need for manners in order to gather information is now moot. But what about products and services? The butcher may not have the proverbial dish on the latest gossip, but he’s got what you wish to put on the literal dish on your dinner table. Now, when it comes to small mom-and-pop businesses, you still might have to watch your P’s and Q’s, but corporate policies have changed the way we interact with many of the people we encounter when purchasing products for services. While being disrespectful to the butcher might get you an inferior product, being disrespectful to the employee at the grocery store or a major retailer might get you an apology and a discount on your next purchase. People take advantage of store return policies. Some major retailers don’t even seem to have return policies, as they’ll take back whatever you bring in and give you a refund, even if you don’t have a receipt. Even if you didn’t buy it there. If there’s a problem a store manager can make go away with a sorry and a coupon, that’s what’ll happen. The “customer is always right” mentality has unleashed a torrent of abuse by people who realize their bad manners have not repercussions, but rewards. When people aren’t held accountable for their actions, those of us with no empathy will run roughshod over those of us who are mandated to accept it. 

There was a reward for having good manners, now there’s often a reward for being an ass. So, next time you wonder why kids these days don’t have the same manners as older people, one of the answers is that there’s no longer a reward for having good manners. We’ve replaced the rewards of personal exchanges of information with a device, and we’ve rewarded bad manners with corporate policies that don’t hold people responsible for their behavior. We can’t blame the young people for not having the same set of values and the manners that come with them if there’s no longer an advantage to them. None of this happened overnight. It’s been a slow process that has now evolved into more than bad manners, but an increase in personal crimes. There are District Attorneys in cities all over the country who are decriminalizing certain actions, making bad behavior more acceptable. Just as there’s less reward for good manners, there’s less responsibility for poor manners that now include crimes. What we have to ask ourselves is what might our world look like if this trend continues. When there’s no social reward for good behavior, and no responsibility for poor behavior. If we don’t like what we see, then we have to find a way to reward respect toward our fellow citizens, good manners, and personal responsibility, while still finding a way to let those who “rub people the wrong way” know that their behavior is neither what society will expect nor accept.

Until then, I implore you to continue to hold a door open for someone else, say Please and Thank You whenever appropriate, treat other people with respect, or at least the benefit of the doubt. If you aren’t already doing those things, I recommend you start, because you might be surprised by how much happier you’ll be when other people around you are happy, too. Treating others with respect and using manners will have benefits you may not realize immediately, but will accumulate in our society and make all of us happier. 

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2023. Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.