I recently did my annual retraining about protected rights. It was nice to learn that as an old person I could not be fired because of my age. It was also nice to learn that I could not be fired because I am a lesbian (don’t ask). Theoretically I could not be fired if my skin was orange.

Then there was a whole group of reasons of why people could be fired for the words they use. For example if you said mean things about me being an old orange skined lesbian you could get fired! And rightfully so. I am really just a young person hiding in an old person’s body.

I figured an old body was the best place to hid. People can be so mean. So what I did notice about all this training for protected rights, politics was not protected. It was even mentioned that political speech was not protected. Now they tell me! I have been writing about politics for more than six years. True you can say what you want, but you may not have a job the next day.

So what do I do next? Hit the publish button? In the past I depended on the censors to keep my out of trouble. They still may be. According to my stats the Chinese are the only ones reading what I write. So I usually have a observation to make when I write. The reason I write is because I may get into trouble if I say what observe. People can be very well trained to say what they are told to say.

Political winds change. Parties change power. My point is what is viewed as acceptable political commentary today, may not be acceptable tomorrow. It is rather unusual if political speech is actually free.