Xi and You and a Guy Named Zhang

Washington can't stop talking this week about President Donald Trump's latest First Amendment effrontery, telling CNN, Politico, and Ms. Now or whatever it's called, that they're fake news and took away their White House press privileges. They can't stop talking about it because if there's anything the press loves to talk about, it's how important the press is, how good the press is at its job, and by the way, have we told you how vitally important the press is?

It isn't that they're wrong. As my old colleague Bill Whittle likes to say, the press is supposed to act as a free republic's immune system — the antibodies that attack Washington's corruption and lies, exposing them to deadly sunlight.

Then again, Hunter S. Thompson wrote that "Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for f***offs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."

And that was five decades ago, when Washington journalists arguably did a much better job than they do today.

Anyway, the inevitable lawsuits and initial silly rulings and perhaps more sensible rulings on appeal will almost certainly prove the final arbiter of who POTUS is legally required to let set up permanent camp in the White House. While inefficient, unpredictable, and often wrong, that's our process.

In my darker moments, I sometimes wonder whether the Founders might have... let us say streamlined... some of our due process if they'd have known what a convoluted mess it would become under centuries of legal cruft. But no.

I only mention the Current DC Scuttlebutt (which frankly bores me) to prepare your mind for a look at what happens in a country without due process, no matter how messy it sometimes is.

Let's go now to China, where Communist Party boss Xi Jinping's version of due process is to surround his Central Military Commission (CMC) with yes-man.

That's "man," singular.

China's seven-man CMC now consists of Zhang Shengmin and Xi himself. Apparently, Xi didn't get a harumph out of the last two remaining guys — and now they're up on the usual corruption and disloyalty charges.

Xi just "expelled two top military leaders, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, from the Communist Party and the military," Reuters reported on Monday, "citing alleged disloyalty, corruption and other ‌serious disciplinary breaches."

Are they guilty? Who knows. It hardly matters. Methinks "disloyalty" is all Xi really cares about.

After Mao's death in 1976, Beijing managed its own version of "return to normalcy" called "rule by consensus." The Mao years were a bit of a wild ride, what with the Cultural Revolution upending literally everything, and the little matter of some 50 million or more dead Chinese.

The titles change — commies are big on that kind of thing — but from Deng Xiaoping on, Chinese rulers were expected to serve just two five-year terms or thereabouts, and nobody made any big moves without general agreement from the Central Committee (or whatever they call it this week) of seasoned Party leaders.

Then Xi came to power in 2012, and suddenly a lot of those leaders started going to jail on corruption charges. Before long, the political consensus was whatever Xi wanted it to be. He's well into his third five-year term, and — surprise! — he sure seems like a shoo-in to start a fourth next year.

"I am the Senate!" to borrow a phrase.

Now, Xi is also the Central Military Commission.

I mention this only because one-man rule — with no one in the government or the press able to say no — tends to lead to unfortunate adventures like invading the Soviet Union or Ukraine, and expecting a quick victory.

Thompson's "f***offs and misfits" don't seem quite so bad as they did just a few minutes ago.