The Dalai Lama has come and gone, leaving inspiring messages of compassion and dreadful local media coverage in his wake.

As part of his seemingly endless globetrotting on behalf of Tibetans, Buddhists, and more generally the cause of peace, His High Holiness alighted in Seattle for five days for a series of high-profile events, including appearances at Qwest Field and Bank of America Arena.

It's hard to be too cynical about this. Massive crowds for one of the world's preeminent peacemakers is probably a healthier thing, societally speaking, than massive crowds for gifted athletes or performers of catchy songs. But there was one aspect of the media coverage of the Dalai Lama's visit that just drove me nuts.

Tibet is not about to be free. Get over it.

The Dalai Lama himself acknowledges this. Through his religious position, he is also the leader-in-exile of the deposed Tibetan government, and in recent months he's been saying that rather than independence, an autonomous arrangement under Beijing would be acceptable. He repeated the stance in Seattle.

So much for those "Free Tibet" bumper stickers.

Don't get me wrong; the Chinese government is indeed horrible (much more on that in a moment), and Tibetans should, in a perfect world, be entitled to the quiet theocracy they enjoyed up until 1959, when China (then looking for strategic advantage in its rivalry with India) annexed it. But the world is not perfect. As with the Palestinians, whose homeland was forcibly annexed in 1948, what's lost is lost; demographically, it's a fait accompli on the ground. Israel is not about to disappear, and neither are the Han Chinese, who now make up a majority of the population in Tibet through exactly the sorts of resettlement programs Israel has used to establish itself on Palestinian land.

But facts on the ground aren't the only reason that the handwringing by Westerners (particularly the credulous liberal variety) over Tibet grates. Is it an injustice? You bet. But it's part of a much larger pattern of injustice known as the Chinese government that Americans, now that China makes everything we buy and owns our national debt, seem to prefer to ignore. A lot has happened since 1959. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution killed millions. For a year or two the West feigned indignity over the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, a pivotal point that ensured that while the Soviet sphere fell, Chinese tyrants would stay in power. Which they did, morphing seamlessly from communist butchers to capitalist butchers.

Now, the largest migration of human beings in the history of the species is underway: the 700 million or so people flocking from China's countryside to its exploding urban centers, where, in conditions most of us would consider appalling, they will make much of what we Americans consume. Millions are likely to die from the resulting environmental degradations of air, water, and soil. Political prisoners, prison slave labor, the world's highest execution rate, and sales of prisoners' organs continue. So does rigorous censorship, including the Internet (thank you, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google). So do religious repression (particularly of Falun Gong and of Christian and Muslim as well as Buddhist minorities) and ethnic repression, including the Uighur and other minorities in western Xinjiang province and, yes, of Tibetans--as evidenced by the recent protests and crackdowns. And China is now exporting its contempt for human rights as well, providing essential cover for the Sudanese government's genocidal mess in Darfur.

And you, dear credulous Seattleite, are worried about undoing 1959?

The Beijing Olympics this summer, inevitably, are going to be politicized. They already are (c.f. San Francisco, London, Paris, Olympic torch.) They are being treated by the Beijing government as a full validation of China's place as a major and valued member of the international community, and China is doing its best to clean up its messes in a few areas long enough to lead foreign journalists on a tour of them. (Think of what the homeless sweeps that accompanied the Goodwill Games and WTO meetings in Seattle would have looked like had the government wielded unlimited power.) For the same reason, China's critics, including its beleaguered minorities, are hoping for a rare chance to get the world to pay attention.

It would be nice if the Dalai Lama's visit to Seattle did more than foster a renewed appreciation for peace, goodwill, and the dilemma of Tibetans. Those are all good things, but Tibet isn't the problem. Beijing is, and much of its current economic clout has been made possible by the United States. It was America, after giving China permanent most favored nation trading status (largely at the urging of Boeing), that paved the way for China's admission into the World Trade Organization, which opened the floodgates for the cheap consumer goods that Americans have been happily buying ever since.

Locally, Christine Gregoire (who was visibly nervous introducing His Holiness at Qwest Field) brags about her "personal relationship" with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Nationally, both our government (under both Clinton and Bush) and our own mindless consumerism have helped fund the world's worst human rights abuser. As the Dalai Lama departs Seattle, consider, as part of your aspiration to a more compassionate life, what you can do to stop that support.