Contra Trump
每個人被迫著發出最後的吼聲
From early 2017, China Heritage has noted, and frequently commented on, the trans-Pacific echoes of authoritarianism both in the People’s Republic of China and in the United States of America. When launching our Contra Trump series in November 2024 we noted that we had first gazed through our Sino-American lens with the publication of A Monkey King’s Journey to the East on 1 January 2017 on the eve of Trump’s inauguration as president. During that first term, we commented on the ways that both Official America and Official China twist modern history to serve their needs — see Mangling May Fourth 2020 in Washington and Mangling May Fourth 2020 in Beijing— and observed that:
Those of us who are inextricably involved with both of those nations while living, for the most part, on the periphery of these cheek-by-jowl empires, have long witnessed a decades-long ‘apache dance’.
In the series of essays that we published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of US President Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to Beijing, we further remarked upon the Sino-US doppelgänger:
The GOP in the United States of America and the CCP in the People’s Republic of China have long demonstrated eerily similar traits: an obsession with distorted historical narratives coupled to delusional nostalgia; the heroic defense of patriotic education; destructive sectarian political behaviour; intolerance of dissent and enmity towards civil society; a proclivity for rule by secretive cabals of power-brokers; a crippled vision of individual rights and collective responsibilities; a worldview based on what in recent years has become known as ‘fake news’; a fixation on conspiracy theories and systemic paranoia; the promotion of hate and resentment; self-affirmation provided by a claque of toadies, ambitious politicians and unprincipled media figures; an admiration for and the cultivation of oligarchs both at home and abroad; an obsession with race and ideological rectitude shored up by glib sophistry; the targeting of minorities for political advantage; the drumbeat of militarism; an apocalyptic view of the world; and, a penchant for rhetorical warfare, among many others. These characteristics shared by both political organisations are at their core informed by a fundamental disdain for democracy, the rule of law, equality, independent critical thought and free speech.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, while working with the Long Bow Group in Boston, I followed the trajectory of the ideas of hard-right conservative thinkers like Patrick Buchanan and the gambits of Newt Gingrich, a political manipulator of dark genius (see Better Angels, Persistent Demons — Part II). Our Contra Trump series follows up on those early lessons to which we would now add an observation by the historian Adam Tooze that
Trump is the legitimate heir to a reactionary, national-populist strain that runs deep in US democracy. What is also clear, however, is that he is the most brutish, self-deluded, undignified incumbent ever to have graced the White House. What has gone wrong?
The crucial thing is that elite checks and balances have failed within the Republican party. And with no strong leftwing grassroots movement, the result of elite weakness in the US is that democracy slides towards crass populism. A large part of the US electorate will vote for anyone other than a member of the liberal elite. A smaller, but still substantial, segment positively adores Trump. Added dynamism comes from the fact that, unlike during his first term, Trump is opening the door to a new guard of younger men, represented by vice-president JD Vance and Elon Musk.
Anyone who has tracked the radicalisation of the GOP since the 1990s, remembers Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and has felt the brittle grip of America’s self-satisfied meritocracy could see that this was a disaster waiting to happen.
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The portmanteau term ‘Chimerica’ was coined by the historian Niall Ferguson and economist Moritz Schularick in late 2006 to describe the symbiotic economic relationship between China and America. Such ill-judged boosterism did not long survive the Global Financial Crisis and, in 2009, the authors pompously announced the end of Chimerica.
In 2025, Year Thirteen of Xi Jinping and Year One of T2, as autocrats rule both in Beijing and Washington, we would suggest that Chimerica is coming into its own once more.
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The following essay, published in The Hartmann Report in relation to Republican and Republican-adjacent reactions to Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of the United States Congress on 4 March 2025, brings to mind some observations that Xu Zhangrun made about Xi Jinping in The New York Review of Books:
In March 2018, the Chinese legislature approved revisions to the constitution that effectively put an end to the already minimal political advances achieved following the economic reform policies originally introduced by the Communist Party in late 1978. Although the revisions [which abolished term limits on national leaders, making it possible for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely] unsettled China’s legal world, the outrage was expressed sotto voce; the disquiet barely went beyond what in the Soviet Union used to be called “kitchen table talk.”
Meanwhile, in public, a host of obsequious legal scholars vied to offer fawning praise for the new dispensation. Seemingly unabashed as they betrayed previously held views, they gave no hint of any internal moral struggles or sense of ambivalence about their conversion. Quite the opposite: many appeared to relish the fact that they were able to navigate the situation so adroitly. Instead, they focused their energies on how they could best realign themselves and pursue professional advancement.
At this crucial juncture, China’s political, business, and academic elites revealed a core of craven self-interest and vacuous hypocrisy. The display was even further evidence of the degraded state of our nation’s public life, one that has long been characterized by brazen political opportunism, systemic corruption, and the celebration of populist thuggery.
All of this may also ring eerily true to observers of Trump’s America, the difference being that at least half (if not more) of the engaged population of that country is Contra Trump. Moreover, that country enjoys a robust free media environment, a vociferous and active civil society, extraordinary educational institutions, and a legal system that will not be easily cowed. Nonetheless, as Elisabeth Bumiller notes,
The silence grows louder every day.
Fired federal workers who are worried about losing their homes ask not to be quoted by name. University presidents fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute.
Even longtime Republican hawks on Capitol Hill, stunned by President Trump’s revisionist history that Ukraine is to blame for its invasion by Russia, and his Oval Office blowup at President Volodymyr Zelensky, have either muzzled themselves, tiptoed up to criticism without naming Mr. Trump or completely reversed their positions.
More than six weeks into the second Trump administration, there is a chill spreading over political debate in Washington and beyond.
People on both sides of the aisle who would normally be part of the public dialogue about the big issues of the day say they are intimidated by the prospect of online attacks from Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, concerned about harm to their companies and frightened for the safety of their families. Politicians fear banishment by a party remade in Mr. Trump’s image and the prospect of primary opponents financed by Mr. Musk, the president’s all-powerful partner and the world’s richest man.
“When you see important societal actors — be it university presidents, media outlets, C.E.O.s, mayors, governors — changing their behavior in order to avoid the wrath of the government, that’s a sign that we’ve crossed the line into some form of authoritarianism,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard and the co-author of the influential 2018 book “How Democracies Die.” …
Mr. Levitsky, the Harvard professor, said he had some hope. The United States, he said, has a “wealthy and diverse opposition,” and rather than outright authoritarianism, there could be “a slow and gradual slide into a gray area.”
As he put it, “no democracy this old or this rich has ever broken down.”
— Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves, The New York Times, 6 March 2025
We would suggest that Pollyanna-esque bromides about ‘a gray area’ should be balanced by the Cassandra-like warnings of writers like Timothy Snyder and Ann Applebaum, both of whom have studied real-world authoritarianism. See, for example, Applebaum’s Trump and Musk Are Pushing for Regime Change, The Atlantic, 13 February 2025, and the Thinking about… series by Timothy Snyder.
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Even though House Democrats by and large responded to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address with ‘jazz hands’ inanity — their signature style since November 2025 — the formal reply to his ‘Fidel Castro-length diatribe’ was laudable. Delivered by Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), the response was, as Jennifer Rubin described it, ‘normal, civil, grounded in reality, and decent; a far cry from the mean and vindictive blowhard who had preceded her.’
Slotkin told the audience what ordinary Americans can do to fight back against the Musk-Trump autocracy threat: stay engaged, hold officials accountable (“Watch how they’re voting. Go to town halls and demand they take action,”) and organize around an issue you care about. She is right that democracy requires that the people take action, not that we wait for elected leaders to tell us what to do.
— Jennifer Rubin, Undaunted: Senator Elissa Slotkin, The Contrarian, 7 March 2025
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The Chinese tagline of this chapter in Contra Trump — 每個人被迫著發出最後的吼聲 — comes from The March of the Volunteers, a wartime song that eventually became the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China. A rousing work written in 1934, it inspired patriotic enthusiasm and sacrifice among countless people, later it would become a threnody that helped lead generations of Chinese into decades of autocratic repression. (Its lyricist, Tian Han 田漢, was denounced even before the Cultural Revolution was formally launched and was tortured to death in 1968.)
前進! qiánjìn, ‘advance!’ is the refrain in Tian Han’s call to arms, as it is for the legions of bootlickers in both Beijing and Washington today.
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Contra Trump is a form of Larrikin Sinology, an approach that does not shy from drawing discomforting comparisons between America’s precipitate authoritarian decline and China’s ugly authoritarian resilience. Trump’s America and Xi’s China provide rich material for transpacific comparisons. ‘Meanwhile’, as Professor Xu Zhangrun declared:
we must cope with our anxieties as best we can, holding on to what inspiration we can. Even as this age of darkness advances, I know that regardless of my benighted circumstances, my soul rises up, confident in humanity’s better future.
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Thom Hartmann is a writer, podcaster and commentator. The following essay is reproduced from The Hartmann Report. The quirks of the original, including that author’s shouty use of bold type, has been retained. We conclude this chapter in Contra Trump with some statistics from the World Values Survey, published in The Financial Times.
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
8 March 2025
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The Bootlicker Brigade for the Morbidly Rich &
Their Never-Ending War on Democracy
How fake patriots are betraying their own country…
Thom Hartmann
7 March 2025
Former Democratic Senator Joe Manchin accused Congressman Al Green and other Democrats of “disrespect” and — absurdly— “inhumanity” for standing up and pointing out Donald Trump’s over-100 lies in his State of the Union address.
This is the same on-the-take Senator Joe Manchin who refused to break a filibuster and thus blocked legislation that would have reversed Citizens United and established an absolute right to vote in America.
The same sellout-coal-baron Senator Joe Manchin who opened the door for Elon Musk to buy the election for Donald Trump and Republicans to throw around 4 million mostly-Democratic voters off voting rolls or refuse to count their votes.
Now that the big money is on the Republican side, thanks in large part to cross-my-palm-with-cash Senator Joe Manchin stabbing America in the back, the elderly yacht-dweller seems to have joined the MAGA Republicans, at least in spirit.
You know who I’m talking about: those guys who claim to represent the “real” America.
We saw them jumping up over and over again at Trump’s State of the Union Address, chanting “USA, USA, USA” when Texas Congressman Al Green tried to point out that Trump was lying to everybody.
They show up at school board and city council meetings sometimes literally wrapped in the American flag while carrying semiautomatic weapons in one hand and bibles in the other, screaming obscenities and threats at public officials.
They demand that children be exposed to measles in school and refused to vaccinate their kids, then support Republicans who are planning to destroy the Medicaid program that provides healthcare to more than 70 million Americans.
They say they love our country, but they and the world’s richest man are actively gutting our government in a way that is openly delighting Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
They forbid teachers from teaching sex education, make it illegal for teachers to mention birth control, and when girls become pregnant make it a crime to get an abortion.
They strip out of our schools’ curriculum the history of Black people being beaten at the Edmund Pettis Bridge 60 years ago today, are banning books nationwide, and are waging war against queer people for simply wanting to be who they are.
They say they love our military, but are firing thousands of workers in the Veterans Administration.
They claim to be champions for the elderly, but are actively working on a plan to privatize Social Security while they gut the Social Security administration itself.
They insist that global warming is a hoax and fight like hell to keep hundreds of billions in taxpayer subsidies flowing to the fossil fuel oligarchs, threatening violence at even a discussion of a carbon tax, electric cars, or LED light bulbs.
They celebrate an attack on our US Capitol as well as several state capitols, trying to kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Vice President Mike Pence, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
They complain about the “American carnage” of our century-old infrastructure, but threaten a new civil war if politicians raise taxes on the well-off and the morbidly rich to fix it.
They assert a belief in “fiscal responsibility,” but are preparing to borrow another $5 trillion to give to their billionaire donors as tax cuts and corporate subsidies.
They demand prayer in schools and “one nation, under god” at public events, yet totally disregard Jesus’ teaching that prayer be done so quietly and privately that it’s in one’s “closet.”
Their preachers openly violate US tax law, forcing us all to pay for their public utilities like police, fire, and public roads, while defying Jesus’ teachings about separating church and state (not to mention the similar sentiments of this nation’s Founders).
They attack colleges and academics and support over a trillion dollars in student debt (which happens nowhere else on Earth) and are actively deconstructing our Department of Education while demanding tariffs against countries that technologically outpace us because they have better-educated workforces.
They claim to be “Christians” yet opposegovernment-supported food stamps and housing support in open defiance of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 25:31-46 that the onlyway to get to heaven is to feed the hungry and care for the homeless.
They claim to believe in democracy yet push laws making it harder to vote but easier for goons to show up at polling places in militia garb to intimidate those who want to vote.
They say they’re on the side of working people but hate unions (except police unions).
They claim to be America’s best patriots.
They’re wrong, and tragically deluded.
In fact, they’re the boot-licking brigade for morbidly rich rightwing billionaires who don’t want their polluting businesses regulated or their taxes raised.
They’re gullible patsies of hustlers claiming religion inspires them while fleecing their congregations to buy a new private jet and a new mansion in Hawaii.
They’re sexually insecure men being played as marks by the NRA and the weapons industry, who tell them that by strapping AR15 prosthetic penises across their backs they seem masculine.
They’re grown-up elementary school bullies who turned to violence as children to conceal their inability to keep up in the classroom and now do the same when they don’t understand basic science.
They’re white chumps who’re convinced they’re genetically superior to everybody else and are terribly confused when they see really smart nonwhite people on TV or in politics.
They’re useful idiots of foreign autocrats and oligarchs who send millions of trolls and fake news across social media daily because a functioning American democracy is a threat to their own wealth, power, and appearance of legitimacy.
They’re dupes for billionaire media families and their TV and radio hosts who’re laughing all the way to the bank as they crank the outrage machine harder and harder to keep their suckers glued to the dial.
Genuine patriots work to heal a country, to bring out its best, to strengthen its social and political fabric and make a better nation and world for future generations.
These people are not patriots: they’ve been screwed for 44 years by Reaganomics, told it’s raining while that “trickle down” is just America’s oligarchs pissing on them, and they’re looking for someone to blame.
Trump and rightwing media have told them for years that their troubles are caused by people of color, scientists, unions, “liberals” and the “coastal elites” — and they’re believing it.
It would be tragic if these boot-lickers weren’t so wed to hate, bigotry, and violence; instead they’re a genuine threat to law-abiding Americans and the survival of our democratic republic.
Pass it on.
The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My new book, The Hidden History of the American Dream, is now available.
You can follow me on Blue Sky here.
The website for my radio/TV program is here.
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Source:
- Thom Hartmann, The Bootlicker Brigade for the Morbidly Rich & Their Never-Ending War on Democracy, The Hartmann Report, 7 March 2025
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The Company One Keeps
Every five to 10 years, the World Values Survey asks hundreds of questions of people in dozens of countries, in an attempt to quantify differences in the culture, norms and beliefs of people in different societies.
Usually, analysis is done at national level, but by drilling down to different political parties in the latest raw data, I find that on everything from attitudes towards international co-operation, to appetite for an autocratic leadership style, through to trust in institutions and inward- vs outward-looking mindset, Trump’s America is a stark outlier from western Europe and the rest of the Anglosphere. In many cases, the Maga mindset is much closer to that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey. …
The next four years and beyond will be a bumpy ride come what may, but it will be more navigable after accepting that the world has fundamentally changed. For decades, the US was the champion of western values. The America of Trump, Vance and Musk has left them behind.
— John Burn-Murdoch, Why the Maga mindset is different, Financial Times, 7 March 2025
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