Contra Trump
叱咤風雲
On 31 March 2025, Jonathan Pie reposted his commentary on Donald J. Trump’s victory in the November 2016 US presidential election with the comment:
Eight years on, and nothing has changed.
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The brash political commentator ‘Jonathan Pie’ is the creation of Tom Walker, a British comedian. The spirit, and tenor, of Pie’s November 2016 rant resonates through the chapters of Contra Trump — America’s Empire of Tedium. Below, it is followed by his commentary on Trump’s second electoral victory, in November 2024.
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In a letter to Jiang Qing dated 8 July 1966, Mao said that after the initial upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, similar mass purges would be necessary every seven or eight years:
Everything has been thrown into chaos so that a new form of order can emerge. In seven or eight years it will be required again. Then [like now] all kinds of Cow Demons and Snake Spirits will reveal themselves.
天下大亂，達到天下大治。過七八年又來一次。牛鬼蛇神自己跳出來。
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
1 April 2025
If you elect a cretin once, you’ve made a mistake. If you elect him twice, you’re the cretin.
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November 2016
‘… because Trump just won the White House, being offended doesn’t work anymore, throwing insults doesn’t work anymore. The only thing that works is fucking bothering doing something and all you have to do is engage in the debate, talk to people who think differently to you and persuade them of your argument. It’s so easy and the left have lost the art. Stop thinking that everyone who disagrees with you is evil or racist or sexist or stupid and talk to them, persuade them otherwise because, if you don’t, I’ll tell you what you get: you get President Trump.’
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November 2024
‘America is now a fully fledged plutocracy, so no real change there, then. He will govern largely untrammelled this time; the drainer of swamps, the melter of snowflakes has returned to take America back to the good old days of lynchings, mass deportations and coat hanger abortions; an America where the denial of fact is government policy, where truth takes a backseat in favour of a brash, lying narcissist hellbent on revenge …’