Brian: So, your argument essentially boils down to this: “I like Bob. Bob is classy, well-off and well turned out. Yes, I know that Bob beats his wife and abuses his children, but Bob manages to keep that within his four walls and, on the outside, Bob is witty, urbane and the very epitome of how a successful person should behave. Most important, Bob is NOT fat.”.

Your previous arguments on the Royals centered on their “class” and you know refer to the Queen as the “apogee of polite society”. Really? So “the apogee of polite society” has people murdered? You do know how (former Princess) Diana met her end, right? The “apogee of polite society” comes from a brutal, blood-soaked line of succession. It is interesting that you disdain certain behaviors in the US that you quite willingly accept from the Brits, mainly because they’re soaked in a patina of “class”.

As to the Chinese: Sorry, dude, that’s a completely specious argument, akin to saying you admire Mussolini because he made the Italian trains run on time. The Chinese are an autocratic, oppressive and repressive regime with absolutely nothing to admire because its been built on the backs of the 30 million dead from Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

Things are what they are, no matter how much lipstick you try to put on the pig.