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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

I'm old enough to remember the slimy sales pitch that was sold after the Cold War (by just about every establishment politician and journalist) that said more or less: shipping all our factories to China and tearing the heart out of the American middle class will inevitably bring China closer to (or on the path to) "democracy". The idea being some sort of Potemkin altruism where our leaders weren't just selling out their own citizens and personally pocketing what should have been their wages, but were doing it for the benefit of all those faceless Chinese serfs, who through some process of capitalist osmosis would watch so many American movies and stitch so many American T-shirts that they would demand American-style freedoms, which their leaders would have no choice but to grant.

But lo and behold the ironies of History and the eternal human habit of singing a beautiful moralistic song while stuffing your pockets with every spare cent. Instead of the CCP wanting what we have the opposite came true: the moment the globalist class felt their control slipping (how dare those backward Deplorables and Brexiters interfere with the inevitable future!) they broke out the CCP playbook, while drooling with jealousy: digital surveillance, speech codes, travel passes, de-personing, loyalty oaths, and building a superstructure of propagandists to make sure everyone votes as they're told—or Democracy will die! (Cue Taylor Lorenz sobbing)

Since History is never not a rollercoaster ride into the unknown, wouldn't it be hilarious if the CCP cracks and China becomes a democracy of engaged citizens and all that's left of the party's legacy is the tricks they taught aspiring tyrants like Trudeau, Schwab and Ardern etc: the instruction manual for building a digital panopticon overseen by Apple, Google, the UN, various HR apparatchiks and Social Justice commissars?

Who knows, maybe in another generation we'll be making their T-shirts!

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Frank Lee's avatar

Meanwhile, back in the USA and Canada, two countries founded on individual freedom and liberty, the authoritarians seem firmly in charge... seemingly because the same or similar age demographic we see protesting in China, like it that way.

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