You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

As a long-time foreign correspondent, I've worked in lots of places, but nowhere is

important to the world as China. I'm Jane Perlase, former Beijing Bureau Chief for the New York

Times. On face-off, the U.S. versus China will explore what's critical to this important global

relationship. Trump and Xi Jinping, AI, TikTok, and even Hollywood. New episodes of Face Off are

available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

As I'm sure is the case with many of you listeners, my head has been spinning, my faith in humanity plummeting and my existential dread rising like bile in my throat. Over the last month month or so since Trump took office and started his deplorable shock and awe campaign.

I feel compelled to comment on this, even though I wasn't planning to address current politics directly so soon this year.

I like to have a buffer between episodes with explicitly

political commentary in the podcast, so that not every episode ends up a political diatribe, since I

often get negative feedback when I do get political, and it causes me to question whether I should

broach such topics at all, even though it has been a focus of my content from the very beginning,

and even though my official podcast description makes clear that I use history to gain insight

into modern political culture,

and even though I've actually officially categorized the podcast under politics.

Now, though, I honestly don't really care if I turn off some listeners.

Any listeners that might bristle at my comparison of Trumpism to fascism,

and then try to rationalize when Elon Musk overtly seek Heheiles at Trump's inauguration and Steve Bannon

follows suit with his own stiff arm salute at CPAC are just lost to reason and I don't care to take

their objections seriously anymore. They truly are obeying the, quote, final most essential command, end quote, of the authoritarian,

as given by the party in Orwell's 1984, quote, to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,

end quote.

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