This is where I disagree with my friends on HH about Donald Trump. Maybe because I’m a cynic at heart, maybe because I don’t trust “Great” sales pitches.
Or maybe, because I lived through part of the “Great Cultural Revolution”, which gives me some perspective to call BS.
Here on HH, I have previously written about the Cultural Revolution, its good and its bad. I have an ambivalent feeling about CR. The worst of it was the self-destructive hate that it unleashed upon the Chinese people. How it held back China. How it wasted the youths of an entire generation. The ONLY good that came out of it, was the destruction of Chinese irrational faith in political systems and cult of leadership. Populism was rife through the Cultural Revolution, but it was ultimately its own undoing.
I have no love for the Democrats or the Republicans, both so reliant upon the ideologies of Western Imperialism as their go to strategy.
But I have no desire to see anyone go through a “Great Cultural Revolution” under the Great Leader Donald Trump and his dynastic spawns of multiple concubines.
Is this Trump’s “Great Cultural Revolution”? At least 1 Trump Supporter thought so: https://resurgencemedia.net/2016/10/30/the-donald-trump-movement-is-a-cultural-revolution-a-true-revival-of-what-made-america-great/amp/
You may say that I’m overly alarmist about it. And you may be right.
Indeed, I’m not entirely sure that Trump is capable enough to pull off a “Great Cultural Revolution” in US. But I have predicted here in HH before, a “Western Cultural Revolution” is coming, that much is inevitable, because it is evident that the West is going through increased crisis of its cultural divides.
Many waves of populism are pounding the various shores of the Western nations.
Trump, like many other leaders, may just be the symptoms of the “Western Cultural Revolution”.
Indeed, Mao was just an instigator and symptom of the Cultural Revolution.
Like Mao, Trump doesn’t have to do anything to trigger it. He is merely the symbol to which others follow.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-personally-blasts-the-press
Today, he’s blasting the Press. Not exactly a purge, because he doesn’t have the power to curtail the press. But Mao didn’t exactly have the power to remove CCP members either back in 1966 (50 years ago). Mao just had plenty of willing stupid boys who intimidated Mao’s enemies into submission.
It is no conspiracy. It is simply how Populism in a political revolution works. Populism is stupid and irrational. It exists to defy rules and laws. It exists because the stupid and the irrational want to be “equal” to the rational and the open-minded. (and by “equal”, I mean “more equal”, without being subject to debates of facts).
The problem is, the stupid doesn’t like rules or logic of rules, which require considerable amount of rational thinking. The stupid just want to be “right” all the time, without the need to justify itself.
How then does the stupid populist like Trump justify? By louder voices, yelling, shouting, robo-tweeting. Numbers, even if fake numbers, is better than logic and facts.
That was the basis of the Cultural Revolution.
If you thought Mao could eventually come to his senses? But you forget, Mao wasn’t in charge, not really, nor will Trump be. They are merely symbols. The movement doesn’t care what the symbols actually think. The stupid populism marches to its own justifications of “right all the time, without facts”.
- China’s Cultural Revolution was luckily not more devastating. Same might be in store for the West.
alanking says
I think the author has it backwards. The cultural type mentality already exists, as political correctness reign supreme peddled by the msm all along. Thus any trump supporter was thought of as racist, anti gay, anti immigrant, anti muslim etc etc. so what happens? People just keep quiet and support him at the voting booth, end of the political correctness revolution.
Ray says
I am mostly in agreement with the author. If people believe that by casting a vote his life or country would be change, they are being naïve. One can only change his or her own life through own efforts, there is no such thing as a political Messiah. Trump election’s most important change would be to himself, his family and the vested interest.
Would world trade, US economy or anti-terror mission be much different than the previous administration? I seriously doubt it. Special interest is already too entrenched in the system be it the US, China or rest of the world. The Cultural Revolution is ground breaking because it seeks to destroy the elite class. Trump is part of the system. He and his family is the biggest winners of the trade policy the US has practiced for the past few decades.
The CR was much more devastating because most of the CPC support it, Mao, Liu, Deng etc. The general masses also support it, that’s why a spark would ignite it. Most people forget that the biggest victims of the CR are the top 1%. Only those who are or were part of the elite were prosecuted. It is a very unique phenomenon that I doubt would happen again.
Although Trump was elected, it appeared that he actually garnered less popular vote than Hillary. It is almost an even spit although the Republican now also control both houses of the congress. So in many respect Trump would have more power than Obama but he would not rock the system for which he is the biggest winner.
N.M.Cheung says
I am also have mixed feelings about CR. Mao sensed the party has stagnated and become bureaucratic, and he doesn’t have the votes in the Politburo, that’s why he used his popularity and youthful idealism to smash party apparatus, but he faced pushbacks from his opponents by forming rival Red Guards and resulting battles and hatreds diverted his original purpose. He was forced to compromise, though he seem to gain power, yet he knew he lost. Xi’s anticorruption campaign is a continuation of Mao’s vision, despite some gains it remains to be seen whether it will last.
As for the Trump Revolution, I would disagree. U.S. has been in a CR since the 60s, I would character it as a Dionysian revolt, we have civil right movement, anti-Viet Nam War protests, hippies, sex and Rocking Roll. We have some counter movements in Reagan and Bushes, and Trump is now the full scaled Counter CR. The country is in crossroad, Bernie Sander is correct that left has to move away from identity politics as it’s a dead end. The reason Obamas campaign so hard for Hillary is they realize their identity politics were only going so far and in danger of completely reversed by Trump. The fact is they hope Hillary can be like Pope Francis as Michael Moore said in his movie “Trumpland”, that she can change drug laws to help African Americans. Pundits now claimed she’s a flawed candidate, yet she have 2 million more votes than Trump, and if African Americans in Penn, Michigan, and Wisconsin vote close to their support for Obama, she would have been elected. So the situation looks weird, despite more people voted for Democratic than Republican, the Republicans controls all 3 branches of government and most state houses. When Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court, the blacks with identity politics wants the “Black” seat whether he votes black or not, now they repudiated all those Obama policies because Hillary is not Obama even if she’ll continue his policies and Trump reverse it. I have no personal objection to gay politics or even transgender politics. Yet the democratic candidate for office will face those hurdles. The Black Caucus favored those gerrymandered districts so they can guarantee elect black seats with 90% minorities, while republicans got their 60%, so despite the demographic I see continue domination of republicans and let the Counter Revolution unfold.