Jadarrius Rose’s semi was traveling through the middle of Ohio near Circleville on July 4th when a state trooper tried to pull him over for missing a mud flap on one of his tires on a perfectly sunny day.

State troopers often pull over semis for safety reasons, mostly to check if their load is under the legal weight limit. Yet whether 23-year-old Rose, an African American, was profiled may never be revealed.

Why Rose did not at once pull over is a good question. But being profiled causes some to panic. Rose eventually did stop, got out of his truck where state troopers urged him to surrender. Instead, a Circleville police officer and his confused dog showed up – the German Shepard first looked to attack a state trooper, but then mauled Rose. The Circleville officer was fired pending his union’s appeal. Yet Rose, after first going to the hospital, was the individual who ended up behind bars that day.

In what passes for “political discourse” in our benighted country, some contend there were “benefits” to slavery, from the antebellum South’s plantations to Nazi concentration camps. How to convince these apologists for slavery – from the crafty crafters of Florida’s school curriculum and its “woke” addled governor, to Fox “News’” smug smarmy smirking chimp Greg Gutless – otherwise? Here are two suggestions:

The first is to subject them to forms of modern-day slavery, which BTW didn’t end with Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. According to https://www.voices4freedom.org/: “At this present moment, there are more people suffering under slavery than at any other time in history. The Global Slavery Index (GSI) estimates that more than 50 million people are currently trapped in modern day slavery.”

In a recent speech, China's highest-ranking diplomat, Wang Yi, spoke of a 'united Asia' and its need to develop a “strategic autonomy”.

 In principle, Wang was not wrong; after all, a stable and prosperous Asia would benefit the peoples of the region and would deny Western meddlers the chance to exploit historical fault lines and sow the seeds of political division.

 Wang's language, although from the outside may seem simple and straightforward, is quite loaded with meaning. “No matter how blonde you dye your hair, how sharp you shape your nose, you can never become a European or American, you can never become a Westerner,” Wang said, as cited in Chinese state media.

 In fact, common culture, beliefs and origins have historically served as starting points of regional cohesion, unity, and collective identity.