I mean I don’t personally experience the emotion of irony in relation to that state-of-affairs. Like, if one were to tell a tale of some non-mainstream Christi

I mean I don’t personally experience the emotion of irony in relation to that state-of-affairs. Like, if one were to tell a tale of some non-mainstream Christian commune which gave free healthcare to neighboring cities and then one day one of the commune members went to a hospital in a neighboring city and they charged that member a massive hospital bill, that would similarly not generate that feeling of irony. I don’t mean to say that the US is a tremendous beacon of light in all respects, but we do have this principle that everyone can have their day in court and in some respects that is one wavelength of light which we are a beacon of, and it is not terribly surprising that we cast this light out to a world which does not cast it back to us. (As you might see, in other respects I think that ‘beacon’ is quite problematic. None of my Dutch relatives are looking over at the US and saying ‘you know what the Netherlands needs? More lawsuits!’ But it does give a certain access to structures of power which in China one is often impotent to actually access.)