 Westerners think they are free-thinking individualists, and it's effing adorable. The Times has published an article titled, Lady Gaga embodies everything China fears. Subtitled, the singer's uncompromising individuality makes her a serious threat to the mass imposition of cultural conformity through censorship, and its contents are exactly as horrifyingly idiotic as you would imagine. Here are the first three paragraphs of the article by Ben McIntyre, because if I had to read them, then so do you. Quote, A woman looking like an extraterrestrial praying mantis, upholstered in red leather, strode onto the stage at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Jets of flame shot a hundred feet into the air. Fifty thousand outrageously costumed fans screamed. And I understood why China is so terrified of Lady Gaga. For there is nothing so wildly individualistic, so defiant of convention, so unwilling to be regimented and controlled as Lady Gaga in full voice, an erotic, exotic Uber celebrity, who also contrives to be the girl next door, Stephanie Joanne Angelina Germanata from New York City. Lady Gaga's chromatica ball last week was the first UK performance in seven years by this raw meat-wearing, bisexual feminist, who sings of liberty, drugs, addiction, mental health, and the absolute right of self-expression, because she, as everyone else, is born this way. Simultaneously channeling Freddie Mercury and Princess Diana, she is both an extreme fashion freak and defiantly ordinary, which is why she is one of the most powerful pop stars in history and, from the point of view of Beijing's communist leadership, a serious threat. McIntyre goes on to explain that Lady Gaga was banned from China in 2016 for meeting with the Dalai Lama, who, just between us, is known to have collected a massive paycheck from the CIA for decades, which makes her a serious threat, whose bold defiance and bisexual feminist individualism gives Xi Jinping screaming night terrors. Lady Gaga poses a threat less for her political views, her visit to the Dalai Lama, and her support for LGBTQ rights, and then, through her determination to be, and encourage others to be, entirely different, McIntyre concludes, do what you want, she sings, and Beijing trembles. I seriously cannot believe this article was published. Like, anywhere. I would have been surprised to see it picked up by even the most obscure clickbait blog in the seediest backwaters of the internet, much less by a prominent 237-year-old British newspaper. But from where I sit right now, the funniest thing about it is the way the article portrays the Western world as this bastion of free thought and individuality. Just that one fact alone eclipses the absurdity of the fact that the article's author thinks the perfect symbol of this freedom is Lady Gaga strutting around in a meat dress. I mean, just the fact that we are ingesting anti-China propaganda to facilitate the long-term strategic agendas of the US centralized empire while reading in the Murdoch Press about how free and unique we are compared to the Chinese shows you how bizarre this claim is. In an authoritarian regime, you do what the powerful want you to do. In a free democracy, you do what you like, and it's only by pure coincidence that what you like just so happens to always align perfectly with what the powerful want you to do. The more you understand about the brainwashing effects of domestic propaganda in the West, the more adorable it is when you see Westerners talk about themselves as free-thinking individuals living in a free society in contrast with the citizens of nations like China. A civilization whose inhabitants are continuously indoctrinated with power-serving belief systems from childhood until their dying breath is not individualist, is not free, and is not thinking. Its inhabitants only think this is so, and they think this is so because they've been programmed to. Freedom of thought and freedom of speech only exist on the fringes of Western society in such small numbers that they make no difference. The mainstream population whose numbers could be used to affect revolutionary change are herded into political factions which are designed to prop up status quo power at every turn and corresponding media echo chambers which keep them from providing any meaningful existence to the machine. As a whole, we are marching in perfect accordance with the will of our masters voting how they like, thinking how they like, speaking how they like, working how they like, shopping how they like, and living how they like. It is only the power-serving narratives put in our minds by our educational systems and our media which tell us we are free. And it is only those power-serving narratives which have us trained to look down our noses at people in nations like China.