Before reality TV really took off, American movie-goers got a glimpse of what life inside a TV program might look like. "The Truman Show," starring Jim Carrey, centered on a man living inside an artificially constructed reality. Nothing about his world was authentic: His family and friends were actors. He was essentially confined to his small "town" on a soundstage. His attempts to understand what was happening were thwarted at every turn.

This is sort of the way that Communist China is treating Americans these days. Beijing's leaders have us trapped in a false reality.

Those of us old enough to remember the Clinton Administration may recall that Americans were told that if we engaged in open trade with China, it would evolve to become more democratic. The planet's final bastion of Communism would fall, washed away by a wave of trade.  Instead, it is America's democracy and economy that is in peril. 

Millions of Americans have lost their good-paying manufacturing jobs to Chinese slave labor. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed by opioid addiction, and the deadliest opioids come from China. Per the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, "China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States." 

With China in the World Trade Organization, the U.S. market is open to Chinese products. Yet Beijing continues to protect state-owned companies and subsidize Chinese labor. That eliminates the sales of American goods in China.

Meanwhile, American companies have been forced to turn over their intellectual property in order to operate in the mainland. Once China reverse-engineers those products, it steals the patents, makes the products for less, and runs the American company out of business.

The solution is long overdue: We need to decouple our economy from China's.

China even steals American military secrets. It is building fighter jets based on American designs as well as submarines so quiet they may be able to attack American carriers. If war comes over Taiwan, China may be able to swallow that island—along with its computer chip factories—without a fight. The Chinese government also hacked the U.S. government's Office of Personnel Management, collecting information on millions of Americans. Meanwhile, Americans stumble along, like Truman Burbank in the movie that bears his name.

Americans think we are in control of events. Instead, we're making idiotic TikTok videos, embarrassing ourselves while handing China even more personal information. What we don't willingly upload, China steals.

Yet instead of fighting back, our leaders act like the directors of China's reality show. They cooperate with the Chinese, less worried about everyday people than about their own power. And they tell us things are going well. "President Biden will deliver bold action and immediate relief for American families as the country grapples with converging crises," the White House insists, "championing America's values and human rights, and equipping the American middle class to succeed in a global economy."

Oh? Ask yourself a version of Ronald Reagan's question: Are you better off than you were 25 years ago, before we opened our economy up to China?