In politics, as in life, there’s a time for vagueness and a time for bluntness. The same even applies to foreign policy and world affairs. Nothing is more obvious than that Xi Jinping, the head of the Chinese Communist Party, is a dictator. The dictator of China.

Recently, President Biden said so. It was like saying that the sky is blue or that Wednesday follows Tuesday. Here is a report from the Associated Press:

President Joe Biden said Thursday that his comments calling Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “dictator” did not undermine progress in the U.S. relationship with China and that he expects to meet with Xi in the future.

Biden said his blunt statements regarding China are “just not something I’m going to change very much.”

(For the full article, go here.)

In his own way, Donald Trump, the ex-president, and possible future president, is blunt, too. He spoke of Xi Jinping with Fox News earlier this year.

“Top of the line,” he said of Xi Jinping. “President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find him. There’s nobody like that. The look, the brain, the whole thing. We had a great relationship.”

The look, the brain, the whole thing.

“We got along so well,” Trump said. “There was a great chemistry, we had. Great.” Xi is “top-of-the-line smart. Top of the line.” “You never met anybody smarter.”

And so on and so forth. Trump went on to praise Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin in the same terms.

This is nothing new, of course. In October 2020, I wrote a piece called “Trump and Dictators.” It is fairly comprehensive. It includes, of course, a section on Xi Jinping.

Here is Trump on that dictator:

“You know, when I’m with him, because he’s great, when I’m with him, he’s a great guy.” “I think I like him a lot. I think he likes me a lot.”

“Well, he’s a friend of mine. I have great respect for him. We’ve gotten to know each other very well. A great leader. He’s a very talented man. I think he’s a very good man. He loves China, I can tell you. He loves China. He wants to do what’s right for China.”

“President Xi is a terrific guy. I like being with him a lot, and he’s a very special person.”

And so on and so forth.

China is a one-party police state with a gulag. The Chinese state, led by Xi Jinping, is committing genocide against the Uyghur people, according to the U.S. State Department.

In our nasty, fallen world, democratic states have to deal with dictators. But you don’t have to gush over them like Old Faithful. You can even call them dictators — because that’s what they are. They themselves know it, better than anyone (except, maybe, their victims).

• A headline from the AP reads, “Chinese human rights lawyer chased out of 13 homes in 2 months as pressure rises on legal advocates.” That man is Wang Quanzhang. The bravery of such people is beyond belief. They give a nation under dictatorship hope.

(For the article I have cited, go here.)

• Let me paste an item from a column of mine last January:

I would like to praise the name of Abby Zwerner, a first-grade teacher in Newport News, Va. She was shot by one of her students but has survived. As the Associated Press reports, the police chief “hailed Zwerner as a hero for quickly hustling her students out of the classroom after she was shot. He said surveillance video shows she was the last person to leave her classroom.”

What a woman.

This is the latest: “Teacher who was shot by 6-year-old student in Virginia has resigned, school officials say.” (Article here.) A rotten, tragic case. Abby Zwerner is 25. She has gone through hell, physically and no doubt mentally. I wish her all the best. When you sign up to be a teacher — you really don’t sign up to be shot, I wouldn’t think.

And by a six-year-old?

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is picking up steam in presidential politics. His name (illustrious, except for maybe the “Jr.” part) is all over the media. RFK Jr. is running in the Democratic primaries. But praise of him tends to come from Republicans. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Democrat praise him, just Republicans.

Commented Patrick Chovanec:

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Sometimes very, very strange.

A headline from Fox News gives you a flavor of Kennedy: “RFK Jr tells Joe Rogan he has to ‘be careful’ the CIA doesn’t assassinate him.” (Article here.)

Donald Trump had some warm words for Kennedy: “He’s been very nice to me. I’ve actually had a very nice relationship with him over the years. He’s a very smart guy, and a good guy.” Kennedy, for his part, responded, “I’m proud that President Trump likes me.”

Hmmm. Trump-Kennedy ’24? In today’s America, that could score.

• A word or two about economics: You will have noticed that the populists perform a rhetorical trick: They refer to free-market principles or policies as “free-market fundamentalism.” (An odor attaches to “fundamentalism,” rightly or not.)

Well — I’ll take it over their collectivist claptrap or statist snake oil.

Many people in the world are disdainful of American power and influence. John Bolton tells them, “You’ll miss us when we’re gone.” In that same spirit, I say about markets: “You’ll miss them when they’re gone” — big-time.

A headline: “Biden bashes trickle-down economics to promote ‘Bidenomics.’” (Article here.) I think of Thomas Sowell, and the podcasts we’ve done. He says that “trickle-down economics” is one of the great canards in our politics. Anyone who employs the phrase is either a demagogue or an ignoramus.

• Pedro Gonzalez is an “influencer” of the “New Right” (which of course is a very old Right). He is an editor of Chronicles magazine. He is also a flagrant antisemite, replaying the classics. This has been exposed by Breitbart, here. Why would Breitbart do such a thing? Breitbart belongs to TrumpWorld while Gonzalez belongs to DeSantisWorld.

Red on red, so to speak.

• Over the years, I have known several people who admire The Camp of the Saints, the 1973 novel by Jean Raspail. It is a nasty piece of work (as even some of its admirers acknowledge, to a degree). Linda Chavez has written about the novel here. A service.

• From this article, I learned the phrase “review-bombing”: “How Review-Bombing Can Tank a Book Before It’s Published.” Cecilia Rabess wrote a novel — her first — called “Everything’s Fine.” As the article says, “The story centers on a young Black woman working at Goldman Sachs who falls in love with a conservative white co-worker with bigoted views.”

Before the book saw the light of day, armies attacked it, online. “People were very keen not just to attack the work, but to attack me as well,” said Rabess.

Here is some more from the article:

Rabess, who quit her job as a data scientist at Google to focus on writing after selling her novel to Simon & Schuster, worried that the online ambush might turn people against her book.

“I was concerned about the risk of contagion and that readers and reviewers would dismiss the work without ever really engaging with it,’ she said. “I felt particularly vulnerable as a debut author, but also as a Black woman author.”

That is a haunting line: “the risk of contagion.” It is very today. Mobs are whipped up, online and offline, with regularity. My heart goes out to Cecilia Rabess. I hope she flourishes.

• From the world of sports: “Arkansas AD: It doesn’t make sense that athletes can stay in school and make more money than in the pros.” I agree. (Article here.)

• Also from the world of sports: “Jim Turner, Who Kicked the Jets Into Super Bowl History, Dies at 82.” Alex Traub has written an absorbing obit, and it contains a wonderful line. The Jets’ quarterback, Joe Namath, was nicknamed “Broadway Joe,” as many will recall. He was flashy. But in Super Bowl III, writes Traub, “it was Turner, a decidedly Off Off Broadway figure, who was the decisive player.”

Seriously, props.

• You may enjoy a music podcast. This one is for the Fourth of July, and it features American music (or American-ish music). One way to know a nation is through its music.

• A Brazilian intellectual, a man of letters, put some questions to me — concerning music and the business of music, so to speak. I did my best with them, briefly. If interested, have a look, here.

• Rolf Benirschke was a placekicker for the San Diego Chargers, in the 1970s and ’80s. Marvelous guy, and versatile, too. It was my pleasure to talk to him about his art, placekicking. For a little post I jotted, go here. Want to show you the man — still looks like he could suit up:

• At the foot of Lincoln Center Plaza, in New York, there are some signs, giving advice. I ought to take the advice to heart. Maybe tomorrow . . .

• I spotted this van, in New York:

According to the group’s website, “God’s Love We Deliver cooks and home-delivers nutritious, medically tailored meals for people too sick to shop or cook for themselves.”

A “point of light,” as the first Bush would say.

I wish you all the best, my friends. Thank you for joining me. Have a good weekend.

If you would like to receive Impromptus by e-mail — links to new columns — write to jnordlinger@nationalreview.com.