Into the red: More than fifty years ago an American president ventured for the first time into forbidden Red China. It was political theater of historic proportions. Here was the virulent anti-Communist Richard Nixon having tea in the lair of Communist titan Chairman Mao, by then an old man. There were no tech trillionaires in the mix and China was years removed from adhering to slavish bottom-line values. For that reason, the meeting was an astonishing act of symbolism only. America loved its president for his boldness, and he was reelected later that year, 1972, in a landslide of epic proportions. Mao in turn showed rival and friend Soviet Russia that it could not be discounted in terms of Cold War jockeying. How different it all is today, with Commu-Capitalist China vying with lower-case fascist America, each one high on profit and authoritarianism, old-school narcotics the United States has only recently learned to mix. Then, cultural critics who mocked TV’s growing influence satirically announced the revolution would not be televised. These days, the creators of AI in all seriousness say human beings may come to be optional. Much has changed in fifty years, yes, but the operatic pageantry China is so happy to lay on when it seeks to influence powerful visitors continues, soaked up by a celebrity-felon president and his coterie of moguls in the same way it was by his devious Watergate predecessor.