Sparks: White House rolling out red carpet for historic Xi Jinping visit

That the executive of a free republic should lay the crimson cloth of state for an autocrat, bartering the liberties of commerce and the governance of thought for transient stability, shakes the very architecture of self-determination.

If we cannot long endure a house divided against itself, we surely cannot secure a world where the instruments of human thought are negotiated in secret between the master of a prison and the steward of a republic.

Observing the grand imperial display from my quiet vantage, note how eagerly our leaders debate the mathematics of trade and artificial minds while entirely forgetting the ordinary families who must absorb the consequences of these magnificent pageants.

Spreading a crimson rug over the dirt so two emperors can debate how to teach iron boxes to think strikes me as a comedy, given that my dog thinks perfectly well without a single thread beneath his paws.

Rolling out the red carpet for a dictator is the only way a democracy can hide the threadbare nature of its own principles beneath the ostentatious luxury of its hospitality.

Protocol requires precisely four hundred yards of crimson wool to welcome the sovereign who owns the debt on the wool, which ensures the transaction remains perfectly balanced until the afternoon tea arrives.

Just as two great rivers converging must either deepen the channel or cause a catastrophic deluge, these two massive centers of gravity draw together, altering the invisible currents of human intellect and commerce.

Carpets are unrolled, grand titles are spoken, and empires bargain over thinking machines, yet tomorrow the guests, the hosts, and the very iron they argue over will be nothing but the same indifferent dust.

Welcoming a foreign autocrat with our finest silk and loudest trumpets proves we Americans hold our democratic principles above all else, provided those principles do not interfere with the quarterly trade balance or the price of steel.

Behind the glittering crystal and the heavy talk of artificial minds, the silent waiters adjust the heavy drapes, carefully ignoring the chill that enters the room every time the two men smile for the cameras.

Traveling through this Western capital, see how they lay down dyed fabrics for the ruler of Cathay, a custom matching the lavish courts of Delhi, though here they trade in invisible thoughts rather than spices and silk.

The assumption that an absolute autocracy and a fractured republic can calculate a stable equilibrium for artificial intellect rests on a geometric impossibility, as parallel lines cannot converge without destroying the plane itself.

Providing a heavy crimson carpet is an excellent way to ensure that the footprints of a tyrant do not stain the drawing-room floor, provided one does not look too closely at the color of the dye.

Connecting two opposing dynamos to the same global circuit without a grounding mechanism ensures nothing but a spectacular short-circuit, regardless of how much velvet they wrap around the terminals to muffle the hum.

Watching powerful men lay down soft paths for each other reminds me that the only routes to real freedom are never carpeted, never lit by cameras, and always require walking through the swamps at midnight.

Hearing these grand gentlemen debate the future of artificial minds on their velvet rugs makes me look at my own worn hands, which know more about the raw cost of labor than any machine they plan to build.

Standing behind the press barricade as the velvet is unrolled, note how the official pageantry is perfectly staged to keep our eyes on the silk while the real future of human labor is locked away in the back rooms.

Before we roll out the carpet and erase the borders of commerce and thought, we must ask why the old walls of suspicion were erected, lest we find we have invited the wolf directly into the fold.

This magnificent state pageant is merely the latest mechanism for imperial managers to partition the global market and control digital automation, ensuring that the chains of the working class are modernized rather than broken.

Tracing the algorithmic ambition of these two empires, see that they treat the ultimate analytical engine merely as a weapon of statecraft, forgetting that the laws of computation weave a pattern far larger than their temporary borders.