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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33985 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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So there is a question that has been gnawing at me for the longest time: is PRC... Good? I mean:

  1. wildly economically succesful with a dynamic tech sector
  2. conservative and nationalistic population, proud of its' culture and heritage - this is the big one tbh, even the more liberal side of the population doesn't seem that bad, none of that self-hatred of the West
  3. technocracy - yeah, they may not be AS meritocratic as they advertise, and personal connections play a huge role, but comparing their officials to whatever the hell Western politicians are doing is not favorable to the latter
  4. willing to forego some comfort and economic progress for the sake of national power and sovereignity (as a European, seeing how our societies prefer to bend over looking for outside help instead of taking the harder route of building capacity for assertivness - yeah, China seems really vindicated right now)

I mean, there are obviously some tough things to get over (the whole free speech thing, how they handled COVID with safetyism that would make many in the West blush, all the other usual stuff), but genuinely, honestly... Following the news from China for a few years, I really can't help but envy the Chinese. Take down the communist iconography and I think that many on the right would see it similarly to Japan.

I mean China is one of the world's most morally bankrupt societies, they lie all the time to everyone (foreign and domestic), they have the most stealing of any country (primarily in the form IP theft), don't really believe in international treaties and society, engage in genocide, oppress their population, clearly want to steal Taiwan (jury is out on how bad they'll be about this) and during a time when we are realizing how much we've fucked the environment they refuse to do anything but worsen the problem.*

What they have (at least superficially, it isn't totally clear) is strength.

That's enough for some people, I'm not sure it is for me.

*I don't think any of these are controversial but please let me know if so.

The "IP theft" thing seems like a forced/propagandistic framing of something that only really amounts to "they are different from us", because it's using the non-central fallacy to associate a nearly universal among humans moral principle (no taking someone else's exhaustible goods) with something quite different and more narrowly distributed (no copying ideas).

Going down this route just will result in us relitigating multiple decades of standard internet piracy arguments, but you need to acknowledge that at least "the notion of intellectual property is fake and gay corporate propaganda that Western culture was successfully brainwashed into believing" is at least a view that exists and therefore nonchalantly using it as an argument that Chinese society is "morally bankrupt" is a form of petitio principii.

You do realize that a large amount of the IP theft was literally using state espionage resources to seize and repurpose information from Western companies while instituting significant protectionism domestically?

"We will use all of our powers to compete unfairly against you and will prohibit you from competing at the most basic level" is a pretty central criticism.

China only does what they do because of the manufacturing prowess, otherwise they'd be a pariah state.

China only does what they do because of the manufacturing prowess, otherwise they'd be a pariah state.

If the West wants to bitch they might have to go back to actually manufacturing things apart from software and regulations.

nearly universal among humans moral principle (no taking someone else's exhaustible goods)

Please prove near universality. Because every angle you look at a history - it is taking some else's exhaustible goods.

I think your points e.g. about not believing in international treaties or China worsening environmental problems, are obviously nonsense at least in comparison to the US (how anyone can still say this with a straight face after everything that happened last year is both interesting and sad), and not really worthy of discussion especially considering how you responded to others arguments below. And of course saying that our society is the most morally bankrupt is just silly considering how (unfortunately) exposed Americans are to other low trust immigrant societies. But it is hard to argue that the average Chinese person is less morally bankrupt than the average American. I know what my preference would be if I ever had to choose.

It’s pretty apparent that China, as of this year, is still a fairly low trust society, despite how much progress it has made (and despite how safe, clean, and orderly the major cities are). There is a genuine mistrust between people, which is reflected in the hypercompetitive, striver culture. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself, and competition with others is seen as a zero sum game. This kind of mentality is quite common among Chinese people, and it’s sorta reflected in web novels, one of the few semi-successful Chinese cultural output in the West. Of course also reflected in the toxic work cultures in Chinese companies overseas (eg tiktok).

I remember a few weeks ago there was a discussion about how high-trust societies were built, and how impossible that now feels. I think Chinese society may actually be building one right now, through harsh and draconian laws, and through education. From my experience, my generation is certainly more trusting than my parents, which is a low bar considering how the Cultural Revolution and the purges destroyed the good and the noble and turned everyone else into cynical non-believers. Like many things, I think our society is moving in the right direction although still deeply flawed and feels hopeless at times. I don’t think Americans feel the same way about their own society.

I don't understand how someone can look at how the U.S. and Europe tried to walk off a cliff for environmentalism and say with a straight face that China is the same.

It's not credible.

China refuses to make costly economic decisions to protect the environment and is doing things like massive pollution, destroying local ocean fauna, and so on.

You can argue that this is economically a good idea, but it.....is happening.

The U.S. has chaotic moments but the overall arc is to make costly decisions of questionable efficacy to try and solve the problem. This has yet to be massively effective but they are trying.

It's possible that they've reached peak carbon emissions already. US carbon emissions peaked in 2007, a two-decade lag time seems reasonable.

the U.S. and Europe tried to walk off a cliff for environmentalism

Being hopelessly idealistic and impractical is not a good thing. Half or more than a half of your people don’t favor that environmentalism, and having your rulers enforced them on you is also doubleplusungood. I don’t know what to say if that is what you meant by not “worsening the problem”. It’s laughable.

The U.S. has chaotic moments but the overall arc is to make costly decisions of questionable efficacy to try and solve the problem.

Much to my disappointment I see little will from Americans left or right to solve the problem. All they have shown so far is to pretend to solve the problem. And they spend more time debating about who should take the blame than acting together as a people to solve any problems. Incredibly unfortunate, I do like the American people.

A central theme I see in a lot of the pro-China comments in this thread is "well the U.S. sucks too" well yes. We don't dispute that, but just because the U.S. has DEI does not mean that disappearing people is anywhere near the same scale of oppression.

The same goes for dysfunction, the environment, and questionable reporting of economic health.

The fed is somewhat unreliable at times is not in the same universe as cooked Chinese economic numbers.

Of course, this place is mostly inhabited by Americans. Your sense of what is right or wrong is inevitably tied to your own experience (which I assume is American), and I see nothing wrong with making these kinds of comparative analyses. They are far more informative than talking about “values” as if they exist in a vacuum.

Your perception of China is a belief system, and it does not have to be rooted in anything real. There are no real interactions, no anecdotes, not even citations. Beliefs are difficult to dislodge with arguments. The good thing is that they also cannot shape reality however they wish.

It is not a belief system, I am expressing known facts.

If you'd like to provide a reputable source indicating that China is not an oppressive regime please do so. Same for my other concerns.

If your argument is that the Chinese are moral aliens then I suppose that's fine, but then also arguing that at the same time everything is a lie and propaganda isn't reasonable, you have to pick one.

Meh. They're atleast productive and have some sort of longterm vision about this stuff. 'Genocide' is a tad strong about the Uyghur but they seem to be the only non-Islamic country to actually figure out how to moderate a population instead of creating a longterm cancer. They're improving some of their behavior on the environmental issues, most of Tier 1 China is shockingly clean and non-polluted.

Well the prompt was "good." If it was something else like "most likely to get us off planet" I might have a different answer, but I do think in terms of "goodness" they are pretty damn shit.

A few things in order.

China is one of the world's most morally bankrupt societies

The common Scientific argument for this belief is the famous civic honesty study where the Chinese returned lost wallets at the lowest rate among all samples including clear shitholes, 7%. The authors decided to exclude Japan (a famously Based and Honorary Aryan society) from the study because the Japanese had similarly low return rates due to idiosyncrasy of their policy around lost items.

In the study design adapted to local customs (eg including WeChat rather than email contact in the wallet – the Chinese don't use email), the return rates jump to 59%, which is around Canadian result in the original study.

It's just bog standard biased research, confirmation of prior belief. Western sociology is pretty hollow once you look at it closely, both in its woke «Science has Spoken» and based «forbidden knowledge» branches.

they lie all the time to everyone (foreign and domestic)

This has become a self-reinforcing belief because the more impressive results they get, the less it is trusted. As a matter of fact I think Americans lie more at this point. For example, Chinese infrastructure definitely gets built, we can see it from space. Is there graft? Certainly, and much of it is likely not even needed. But graft is not the main story. Americans meanwhile just collectively appropriate vast sums, do nothing of value and lie to themselves that it's mere «inefficiency». Chinese products, especially high-end ones, work well enough to drive dozens of countries into trade deficit, Chinese scientists are sought after in the most ruthlessly competitive companies, Chinese commitments are fulfilled, concrete Chinese threats are followed by promised retaliations (unlike American ones). Where's the lie? They certainly lie at times, but probably no more than your typical developed nation. And importantly, they have improved a lot in just a few years, many travelers like Molson note it. Even a Georgetown China hawk Fedasuyk writes: «If the pessimists are right about American decline, if we really are headed toward some kind of Pax Sinica, it won’t be because of how many EVs roll off the line at a BYD factory — it will be because China has rediscovered something we’ve lost: How to make people feel part of something larger than themselves; how to take pride in historical achievement; how to sustain the promise of a national project worth contributing to.» Like, you can dismiss it as more Potemkin village, of course. But it's getting very solipsistic.

they have the most stealing of any country (primarily in the form IP theft),

«IP theft» was overwhelmingly done in the form of legal joint ventures, though there's too much noise written on this. Extraordinary estimates of lost value are premised on the false assumption that Western IP proprietors would have been able to produce at anywhere near Chinese scale. Currently they produce enough IP of their own to force Macron to beg for reverse tech transfer via JVs in France. I guess they've ran out of things to steal.

don't really believe in international treaties and society

Does anyone? Americans are are currently trying to annex a piece of an ally they're treaty-bound to defend. What «society»? On the object level, over the last two decades they've done more to help developing countries with BRI than the entire West did in five, they are the ones building roads and power plants in Africa. Their model is transactional but much more powerful than hopeless charity.

engage in genocide

For a very relaxed definition of genocide, I guess. «Cultural genocide» or something. Feels quaint after Gaza. More seriously it's just coercive modernization of a premodern people, and Uighur situation is arguably improved relative to pre-genocide times.

oppress their population

They deny their population certain political rights standard in the West, in exchange for improvement in life expectancy (already on par with the US), purchasing power and overall dignity of existence. Even in the last few years where real wage growth has been slow, they continually get more and better goods and infrastructure, with eg households consuming 8% more electricity year on year and already above the EU median. It's a very paternalistic form of oppression and I believe one preferable to something like Russia or the United Kingdom.

clearly want to steal Taiwan

Yes they've made it very clear, have been very consistent on this, and forced roughly everyone to stop recognizing Taiwan as a nation. I would prefer nations that strongly disapprove of that to recognize Taiwan again. From their perspective it's an unfinished civil war, which is a legitimate cause for annexation. Given that the ruling party of Taiwan has discredited itself with bad governance and petty tyranny and the pro-Mainland KMT is likely to win, and considering abusive American treatment of Taiwan and better life/jobs opportunities in the coastal cities of the Mainland, they are increasingly likely to get reunification by peaceful means. I will concede that the insistence on getting ready to use force is immoral.

during a time when we are realizing how much we've fucked the environment they refuse to do anything but worsen the problem

They are single-handedly solving climate change. They have driven costs of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines through the floor and continue to drive them lower. They've upgraded their coal fleet to pollute less, they're investing a lot in reforestation and cleaning up in regions with rare earth extraction etc. They pollute a lot becuse they do a lot of stuff, but they are in fact pretty sincere about ecology.

I have put vastly more effort into this than you did, but admittedly it's also mostly assertions that can be dismissed (I could support every one with a citation if I cared though). Just irritated at how easily people in rather mediocre societies can rattle off some half-baked condemnations.

I have put vastly more effort into this than you did, but admittedly it's also mostly assertions that can be dismissed (I could support every one with a citation if I cared though). Just irritated at how easily people in rather mediocre societies can rattle off some half-baked condemnations.

You wrote more but that does not mean I'm convinced about most of your points:

RE: Lying - The West typically attempts to have objective reliable processes outputted by the government and corporate sectors that represents various things. China does not. For a recent and important example consider COVID policies, statistics, and information.

RE: IP Theft - I don't believe your statements on this are factually accurate.

RE: International Society - The U.S., Western Europe, and the weaker countries all at least pretend. China acts like the other "evil" countries. That is not good company.

RE: Genocide - Meh, I'm not particular excited about this one but the genocide people seem to argue that it counts.

RE: Oppression - You can get disappeared just as easily in China as Russia. You can get welded into your home during COVID. From the rich to the poor nobody has any rights unless they are an in favor party elite, all it takes is to get noticed. To add to the angst is an anarcho-tyranical element, petty corruption is everywhere and the country just sweeps through areas every once and awhile to execute or imprison anyone misbehaving. The superficial competence of the regime makes it worse not better.

RE: Taiwan - In the case of Russia/Ukraine the national pride aspect is somewhat countered by other somewhat compelling reasons such as the ports and agriculture. In the case of China/Taiwan it seems to primarily out of imperial angst, as the high tech industries that give Taiwan are fragile and would likely not survive kinetic action. If some democratic process occurs obviously it will be a bit different.

RE: The environment - While China does contribute to some renewables I challenge you to find a reputable source indicating Chinese is better for the environment than the West. This perception is not driven by mere propaganda effort.

The West typically attempts to have objective reliable processes outputted by the government and corporate sectors that represents various things. China does not. For a recent and important example consider COVID policies, statistics, and information.

I repeat, "the West" routinely does corrupt shit that people in China get executed for. Virtually the entire American MIC would get the lethal injection in China, it's just legal and accepted. Being forthright about your vices is kind of a virtue, but only so long as people are not deceived that vice is actually okay.

What about COVID? They had wrong priorities, but broadly competent execution and thus very low deaths for the entire period of the lockdowns until Omicron. Maybe some data had been fudged at the margins. The denial is, again, circular.

What about statistics? For example they are often accused of distorting their GDP growth; the Fed thinks it's about accurate, just smoothed for whatever internal accounting reasons. They have significantly more honest accounting of manufacturing productivity, and accordingly higher productivity, both in units per worker and output per dollar of cost, which is to be expected seeing as how they clobber everyone in the global market. Tons of «Western objective reliable processes» is Eagle Burger Freedom Institute for Democracy inventing a contrived composite index to rank countries or companies from best to worst, it's so far divorced from base layer of reality that I have no idea who needs that. I don't know what you mean by «information».

The U.S., Western Europe, and the weaker countries all at least pretend. China acts like the other "evil" countries.

Regarding pretense: «China has stated its position on multiple occasions on Greenland. The international law underpinned by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter is the foundation of the current international order and must be upheld. We urge the U.S. to stop using the so-called “China threat” as a pretext for itself to seek selfish gains.» I have no idea what you mean, they «pretend» as much as anyone, and they also don't bomb random countries or kidnap their presidents (they totally could stage coups in Africa for their benefit at this point, they do not). Your morality and idea of good and evil are comically self-serving.

To add to the angst is an anarcho-tyranical element, petty corruption is everywhere and the country just sweeps through areas every once and awhile to execute or imprison anyone misbehaving. The superficial competence of the regime makes it worse not better.

We've just had a Chinese person explain that this is wrong, the petty corruption is pretty much gone, why do you believe you have a better clue as to the state of their corruption or how «superficial» the competence is? I think Xi is a true believer in anti-corruption because he's a child of true believers, has been a true believer all his life, became Chairman on the anti-corruption agenda at the peak of Chinese corruption scandals, purges loyalists who've been growing corrupt, and by all visible indicators corruption is down. It's not anarcho-tyranical, there's no anarchy to speak of, at worst there's tyranny. You're just rehashing tropes 10-15 years old.

Other tropes about disappearances etc. are also unsubstantiated.

While China does contribute to some renewables

They do not "while contribute to some renewables". They are the only player in town., eg “in 2023 China produced 98% of solar wafers, 92% of cells and 85% of panels globally”. They carry the entire renewables revolution, pretty much single-handedly, for the last decade, they are the ones who kept investing in it and made it economical rather than a boutique graft opportunity for Europeans, and now they're exporting cleantech for higher value than the US exports fossils. This was a conscious choice, they could have just kept scaling coal consumption.. It's largely strategic but also ecologically minded.

Whether «the West» is broadly good or bad is uninteresting because the West is largely made up of two parts: deindustrializing decaying states like the UK and most of the EU, and major fossil producers like the US/Canada/Norway/Australia. Someone needs to have industry to produce all the goods our industrial civilizaiton relies on. This someone happens to China. In light of this fact they've done pretty well on developing towards a more ecologically friendly regime.

Basically, the question for me isn't whether they're good or bad in some absolute sense. The question is how responsibly have they acted in their particular circumstances, which is, starting (say, after the death of Mao – I won't get into the merits of Maoism now; his power was a product of his key role in the creation of the state itself and unfortunately he couldn't have been dislodged earlier) with a very large, very poor and very angry population, in possession of little resource endowment but massive military potential, and facing an ideologically hostile West committed to convert or destroy them in the long run. What did they prioritize, and how did they execute? The standard for such situations is very, very low. In this context, I say they've acted with nearly unprecedented prudence and restraint for a major power, and produced unexpectedly good results: reduction of poverty at home, exporting deflation abroad, bailing you guys out in 2008, maintaining the economic viability of dozens of small states now, and not going on a conquest spree, even as they've been the largest industrial power with the largest army for many years now.

Morally, it is comparable to the rise of the United States.

RE: IP Theft - I don't believe your statements on this are factually accurate.

They did a bunch to get up to speed but now that relative parity has been achieved there's inherently less need to delve into such behaviors. If anybody but the Chinese was capable of manufacturing at scale, this would be a bigger issue, but alas the West has largely abandoned 'actually making things' and the South is the South.

They are absolutely still engaged in state sponsored industrial espionage, and in a way that is pretty much unmatched given the way the state and companies over lap.

They still engage in a lackadaisical approach to international copyright (not that I am that mad about it).

Still continue to basically ban foreign competitors of various tech things and then make their own version.

One of the biggest ethical problems of the country is also its strength - state power and totally unfair business practices.

Certain you can do that, and you can get away with it if you are China but it is deeply unethical.

Still continue to basically ban foreign competitors of various tech things and then make their own version.

I don't understand how this is bad. Had they not done this, there would just be Google China, Meta China and so on instead of locally grown Tencent and Alibaba. Imagine being a major power and wanting to decouple from America for whatever reason in the future and you basically can't because all government and corporate infra is ran on Microsoft Teams and AWS. You just can't let that happen. This is Europe's reality right now by the way

I'd be more amenable to this if it wasn't for the industrial espionage and IP theft - I'm not complaining about VK here.

You also have a difference between likely popular versions (like Korea and Japan have) and state enforced ones.

Re. China and the environment: https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/assisted-thinking.

TL;DR China's economy mostly runs on coal. The renewables they do have on their local grid only make small contributions. Also, if you read some of the comments, their existing solar industry is running into serious headwinds and the solar panels they do have only have a utilization factor of ~11-12%.

Typical propaganda to help Westerners cope, their emissions have not increased for at least a year. This year virtually all new capacity is renewables.

Low solar utilization is an issue of inadequate battery capacity which they are now aggressively scaling.

The renewables they do have on their local grid only make small contributions

Without renewables, at this rate of generation growth they'd have been burning 30% more coal.

Feels quaint after Gaza. More seriously it's just coercive modernization of a premodern people, and Uighur situation is arguably improved relative to pre-genocide times.

Also to a large degree the inability of a Western country or Western-adjacent one to deal with issues of Islam in a sensible, structured form of oppression like China handled the Uyghur is why you end up with massive shitfests like Gaza. Israel has been sufficiently handcuffed from actually reshaping Palestinian society (and the Gazaites are just another level of insane death cultists) that it produces forever wars and lingering issues.

China is one of the world's most morally bankrupt societies

Not even close. We have India (and the similar Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, etc.), every Arab country, Africa, etc. which are in a whole different league.

don't really believe in international treaties and society

Nearly every right winger will agree that international rules based order is just a fantasy.

engage in genocide

I haven't looked into it personally, but most Chinese living overseas with access to western media will still say this is false. Not sure if it's CCP pre-brainwashing in action or they just know more about the situation, but they clearly don't find the western narrative convincing.

oppress their population

True. Though no worse than e.g. UK.

clearly want to steal Taiwan

Sure. USA clearly wants to steal Greenland too.

USA clearly wants to steal Greenland too

I'd argue that's Trump, rather than the USA, whereas Taiwan seems to be a popular acquisition with the rank and file (or at least the rank and file Party Members).

You have a system where people choose who represents them by voting, and you accept the rules of that system. You don’t get to shrug off the consequences or pin the responsibility on “the other side” when it’s convenient. Trump represents your country. He is your country.

I think that Trump also has quite a bit of quiet support on the topic. US really really wants to control all the places one can use as staging areas for mainland invasion. War against mexico, spain and the forever sanctions on communist cuba tell the story.

they have the most stealing of any country (primarily in the form IP theft)

Based China. Intellectual property is not real property.

The aesthetics of communism, all that block red, a disdain for ornamentation, those ugly 50s modernist busts of Marx and Lenin and Mao that still adorn so many state and party buildings, the straight-out-of-the-USSR party poster design that you still see everywhere in China, including increasingly in Hong Kong, is unaesthetic.

Nevertheless, the Chinese are remarkably capable civilization builders. In Hong Kong and Singapore, tempered by an appropriately small but sufficiently punchy Anglo Saxon influence and so freed from both the worst ancestral and communist impulses, they achieved true heights of civilization that stand to this day as some of the most pleasant and well-run places on earth.

The main problem with China is not China, it is that we cannot become Chinese. Perhaps that is a sadness in and of itself. To answer @DaseindustriesLtd ‘s question, Americans can see themselves as white Russians, and I think on some distant level we can even imagine ourselves in the Malthusian squalor that is India (I suppose Sonia Gandhi showed it was possible). But Chinese? No, this is a wholly foreign identity, unavailable to outsiders.

I feel far closer to being Chinese than Indian just in ethnic/biological terms etc. But culturally? The PRC's partial deracination makes it easier than before! And well, Chinese culture seems easier than e.g. Pakistani (I mean this as closer than India, because of Abrahamic religion etc.)

No, this is a wholly foreign identity, unavailable to outsiders.

I'm a fairly unabashed Sinaboo at this time in my life and I think this is a bit of an exaggeration, both since you're trying to distill a 'Chinese experience' when there's a fuckload of regional cultures even within the Hanosphere and since Chinese identity's probably proven more modular than most historically. China's taken in a plethora of random conquerors and borderers over the years, given them access to the language and some core cultural markers and generally gotten on with it.

I live in a Mandarin/Hokkien-speaking multigenerational household and family unit in SEA that'd probably be more 'Chinese' than a lot of mainlanders in terms of adherence to stuff like religious norms, dialect speaking and how they evaluate themselves culturally against the outside forces of their fellow citizens. I've got a passable command of the language and I'd consider Chinese culture a lot easier to get into than like Japanese.

What is it about Chinese culture that feels so foreign, especially in comparison to Indian culture? I think I sort of understand what you mean, but at the same time I don’t really. Is it the aesthetics, the language, the level or form of religiosity, the way of thinking, or the collective memories people share? And do Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese cultures feel equally foreign to you?

I live in the region and I'd say that I find Chinese culture more palatable and easier to get into the mindset of than Japanese/Korean culture. Considerably less stuffy/status-orientated, albeit maybe I'm hanging out with peasants and peasant-descendants. Vietnam also has more like... 'shocks' to it than Chinese in terms of interesting quasi-agricultural practices, but I'd also consider it more egalitarian and less nuance-based than what's going on in JP/KR

Above all else, I just want to be a good Catholic. And America is one of the best places in the world to be a Catholic, while China is one of the worst. If you have other priorities and China comes out on top, you can try immigrating.

"In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good" -Viktor (Arcane)

China shows the tradeoff between liberty/freedom and authoritarian state capacity. If the government acts in its own interests at all times and does not care about the people whatsoever except as pawns to be managed and leverage for labor, then you can accomplish a lot of things as a government. If were were playing a geopolitical RTS and the citizens were all NPCs managed by a computer, this would be great. If they're real human beings with feelings and lives and utility functions, this is awful.

Every single measure you mention here, including economic success, all have 0 terminal value in my utility function. They have instrumental value only in-so-far as they can be leveraged towards human flourishing and happiness. China could have 10x the GDP per capita of the U.S. and I'd still consider it a failure if that GDP doesn't translate into the well-being of the people actually living there.

I don't think the West is perfect, but at least we try. China's not even trying to be good.

If the government acts in its own interests at all times and does not care about the people whatsoever except as pawns to be managed and leverage for labor, then you can accomplish a lot of things as a government.

I think about this a lot with things like the pyramids, "how were ancient people able to build these" well a lot is possible if you have lots and lots of slaves and don't really care about the conditions they're working under.

The conditions on the ground for most Chinese are fine, plus the Chinese government does a lot to curtail a lot of the own goal stuff that is rife in the West with regards to homelessness and general antisocial behaviors. I'm confused why you think the average Chinese person is at some massive deficit to the average Westerner at this point.

I'm deeply suspicious of the censorship and its effects on signalling. When you have an authoritarian police state that will punish you for complaining, smart people learn not to complain. When your credit score is higher the more positive posts you have about the government on social media, people will post positive things on social media.

I automatically discount any opinions given by people who are paid shills, or are in some way incentivized to exaggerate in a way comparable to this. Literally every Chinese citizen is a shill, therefore I take any apparent public sentiment with a huge grain of salt. If I knew Chinese people in real life I would probably discount their stated opinions significantly less (depending on how well I knew them). But on the internet? I trust nothing. If everything was actually wonderful in China and nobody had complaints then the government wouldn't need to censor complaints. They wouldn't need to censor social media. If everything in China was so wonderful they would be here now telling us about it instead of being kept quarantined away like the North Koreans.

Add to that the sweatshops that produce the Cheap Chinese goods, some anecdotal stories I've heard from North Korean defectors escaping to China and being literally enslaved there, or people stumbling on decomposing bodies from a possible organ farm, and it paints a bleak picture. I expect the average person isn't in abject misery the way they are in North Korea, but there aren't democratic feedbacks to stop that from happening, it's merely the whims of the government.

I've travelled to China a bunch. I'm not gonna pretend I've been to the Tier 7 Sulphur mines to hang out, but the vast majority of Tier 1/2/3 places I've been are perfectly functional cityscapes which are generally cleaner, more pleasant and better developed than the equivalent in the West. You're also vastly overstating the degree of control the Chinese state imposes on low-medium civil whining

conservative and nationalistic population

One of the cognitive biases that irritates me most in the Western thinking is «ideological similarity = moral good». Democracies are good if you're democratic, nationalisms are good if you're nationalist, Putin is good if you're Based, and the whole nonsense about the Judeo-Christian Tradition of course. It's probably an outgrowth of the Western European/Hajnal Line selection for participation in non-clannish moral communities – parishes, religions, nation states. Regardless of its historical adaptability in the parochial intra-European context, it's facile. Ideological similarity can help in alliance-building due to the shared conceptual language, but it can also create conflict if the ideology points you towards the same scarce resource rather than some mega-project. Different branches of Communism are mortal enemies because each wants to remake the world in their idiosyncratic manner, even as they are infinitely more similar to each other than to non-Communisms. And nationalisms are the primary example. The meta-level rule is just «my people first», for whatever definition of «people»; it's not even an ideology in the proper sense but an intellectual framework for advanced tribalism. What interests do a Han Chinese nationalist and a MAGA Heritage American have in common? They both want their people to have more resources and power to deny resources to the other tribe. Some rational win-win cooperation is possible, and common knowledge about incentives may help reaching the equilibrium, but ultimately it's a natural foundation for a zero-sum game. Ideally, you want others to cooperate unconditionally and be free to defect.

That said, I do think that the PRC is basically good. Or rather, they have a holistic notion of "good" that leads to a meaningfully healthier civilization, which is at once competitive and not very aggressive. Among all else, they have

  • a deeply ingrained, shared by the ruling class, doctrine of performance legitimacy/Mandate of Heaven, as opposed to procedure/consent legitimacy that is supposed to be a strong general proxy for performance but in a universal suffrage democracy with lobbyism and spoils politics probably isn't;
  • a similarly deep belief in the value of hard work and cultivation of assets, from personal education and iterative refinement of skills, to reinvestment into capital expansion and R&D, and all the way to the geography of the domain;
  • a gleeful disregard for human equality and commensurate commitment to meritocracy, combined with internal locus of control. On this note, their «conformism» and «shame/face culture» are often misunderstood. It's not so much conformism in the Western sense, a dull Nordic/Germanic/Anglo desire to follow the Proper Etiquette and blend in, as basically striverism. People in Confucian cultures are supposed to be ashamed and pained by evidence of someone being demonstrably superior to themselves, and try to approximate that superior behavior; and on the contrary, seeing an «inferior person» try to seek his traits in themselves and root those out (literally, this is the gist of the theory of shame and virtue as given in the Analects of Confucius). Thus Tiger Moms demanding straight A's at any cost, thus rat races between companies cutting margins and boasting of the proportion of staff holding Ph.Ds, thus every crappy legacy tech company creating an internal DeepSeek-style lab within a year of DeepSeek's elevation to the ranks of a National Champion, while none in the West did anything similar despite easier access to compute and capital.
    Now, it's not like the Chinese people have an infallible internal compass pointing to goodness; what is and what isn't seen as «superior behavior» is contingent on the social consensus. But the consensus isn't totally deluded or hypocritical either, and crucially, it can be steered by the elite that has skin in the game and wants to stay elite for generations to come.

It's a rare, strong and valuable package. It also has a plethora of failures not shared with the Western civilization and/or others, which may (or may not) be intrinsic to their system and impossible to ameliorate without compromising the strong parts.

I view it as an experiment among other experiments. Thus far it has been impressive, but research continues. It'll probably be good for the Han Chinese in the long run. Whether it'll be good for the rest of us… well, they'll definitely solve change on their own, for one thing. Just no way around it at this point, they have made solar dirt cheap, they're making battery storage dirt cheap, they've bulldozed through the European degrowth bullshit by proving that you can have both economic growth and low carbon emissions. Their own emissions have been stagnant for like 2 years now despite ≈6% annual electricity consumption growth, exports to the developing world have high double digit CAGR, it's a self-reinforcing loop with no discernible limit. Anthropogenic climate change used to be a big deal politically, Westerners are still debating kooky conspiracy theories at the behest of the fossil lobby, but soon people will realize we won't need to bother anymore, renewables simply make more economic sense.
That's one thing. There are more things. You can solve many problems with an insanely productive large scale economy. Mainly they'll be solving their problems, though. They don't have any moral commitment to international charity.

P.S. I have to say, while some skepticism on China is warranted, takes like @Amadan's here are very blackpilling.

most of its meritocracy and probably its economic numbers being as fake and gay as ours

Just how uncurious do you have to be to remain so ignorant of the 2nd biggest nation on the planet that makes half of all your shit, that has been the only state to retaliate and fight you back just in the course of this year's tariff insanity, your supposed arch-nemesis, the oldest surviving continuous civilization etc. etc.? As far as I'm concerned, Han Chinese are the closest thing we have to an alien species (maximally distinct and consequential of all non-Western groups), and China is the main story of the world's development over the last two millenia, only briefly deposed by the European diaspora; it's crazy interesting, but it's relegated to the same basket as Russia (the last European empire, mainly distinguished by its backwardness and large near-Arctic possessions) and «Gulf States» (…come on now). I've been saying on this forum for years that Based Russia is an embarrassing LARP cooked up by the likes of Surkov, that we're fake and gay corrupt atheists with some talent for theatricality (shared by yours truly) and bog standard nationalist-authoritarian schticks. I love my people, there are some very cool things about us, but it's just not a big deal. How can you not notice that, say, they can routinely create a new industrial equipment plant in 1 year? Or that they're The Only Country that has drastically increased its share in high-quality research in many critical fields? That it's no longer just «catching up»? From the fresh NBER review:

The US share of total global publications has fallen sharply from roughly 40% in 1980 to just 15% by 2022, with other high-income countries also declining, though less steeply. Meanwhile, China’s growth has been explosive: its share of total publications rose from near zero in 1980 to surpass both the US and high-income EU countries by the late 2010s, making up over 32% of all publications in 2022. … Surprisingly, such shift is also pronounced in top-tier science. The decline of the US persists and is even slightly larger in magnitude with a decrease of about 30∼35 percentage points since the 1980s. On the other hand, China produced less than 3% of top-journal publications in 2000; by 2022, it contributed nearly 35%, surpassing both the US and EU. These developments reflect China’s rapid industrialization, massive investments in higher education and research infrastructure, and the strategic prioritization of science and technology as national imperatives. Importantly, these patterns also counter the persistent perception that Chinese research is of low quality: evidence shows clear catch-up and even surpassing at the very top of the publication hierarchy. However, other middle- and low-income countries continue to face barriers to produce high-quality science. In 2022, over 20% of all publications were authored by researchers from these countries, but they accounted for only 5% of top-journal publications, a figure that remained virtually unchanged over the past 40 years. […] A clear pattern of specialization emerges: China is the absolute leader in Materials Engineering, Communications Engineering, and Physical Chemistry, holding over 60% of breakthrough publications within these domains. China is also leading fields like Data Science, Digital Hardware, Machine Learning, and Management, etc.

And it's all like this. Russia? Saudi Arabia? Really? Where does one get the chutzpah to look down on this? How is this psychologically possible? Is this just because the US has barred imports of high-tier branded Chinese goods like EVs and Huawei phones, and the industrial stuff they do export and dominate in (from advanced chemistry batteries to John Deere parts) gets wrapped into American-branded shells, so the only thing you see is dolls, baby strollers and crappy cheap plastic and chinesium tools from ebay?

I feign the bafflement, to be clear. Theirs is a highly illegible and uncharismatic culture, their advertisement smells fake and gauche, all those drone shots of LED-lit skyscrapers and tiktok reels with high-pitched alien music. It's very easy to appreciate intellectually but it's not in-your-face amazing like the US or Europe or Japan used to be. Still, I am blackpilled with the lack of intellectual… hunger among the Western commentariat.
Westerners enormously overrate the value of their taste and gut feeling. The Chinese don't really need to hide strength&bide time; their natural low charisma and Western preoccupation with signals isomorphic to reproductive value indicators did all the work for them.
It's darkly flattering how very seriously, in comparison, my own people had been taken during the Cold War — with all our grinding poverty, our low trust and laziness, our dysfunctional empire of subsidized third worlders, our bonkers suicidal economic system, and our petty, unvirtuous leadership. Essentially just because we can write, sing, dance, fuck well. Because we can pose and flex to make Americans cast Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago and imagine themselves scrappy underdogs, while being precisely the opposite.
So I'm trying to use our theatrical virtues to correct the record.

The level of ignorance well-educated Americans have about China is honestly baffling, especially considering how many Chinese nationals literally live among them, how easy it is now for anyone with enough curiosity to see at least what Chinese social media is actually like, and how the civilian and bureaucrats pretend to take China seriously. A few weeks ago Scott Alexander in his open thread, quoted someone claiming that China has a whopping 50% youth unemployment rate (to his credit, he did acknowledge that he hadn’t verified the number). And of course during any discussions you get the usual “social credit score” or “cook the book” talk points. If people wants to talk about overproduction or involution or demographics or the pathological striver culture or the weak cultural output, I’m all for discussion. But using those recycled talk points from ten years ago is all so tiresome.

I sometimes wonder whether Americans today have roughly the same level of understanding of China as people had of the Soviets back in the day. Or maybe Russia being (at least in our Oriental mental map) Western meant it was better understood? Genuinely not sure. Don’t you want to know your enemy, if thats what we are?

Are China's economic fundamentals sound? Do they not have a problem with cooked books and all the usual problems of a command economy that can make everything look like it's absolutely splendid until it's not? Do they not have their own demographic issues?

I am not "incurious" or saying I don't think China is a first world power. Of course it is. I am not "looking down" on them. Their technological progress, and their prodigious transformation since the days of the Cultural Revolution, is truly impressive. But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of rot underneath. Or that they have already become the future hegemon, however much they may intend it.

There is a lot of ruin in a country, as they say- the West, and the US, are arguably coasting now until our own wheels come off, and China may be able to coast longer. Who knows? But it bemuses me that people who are quick to point out all the rot eating away at the West, despite us still being, in most respects, in a much superior position (which I do think is near a tipping point), take every piece of knob-slobbering news about Sino-ascendancy and their roaring economy and industrial output at face value. Because, good gosh, at least they aren't "woke."

Are China's economic fundamentals sound? Do they not have a problem with cooked books and all the usual problems of a command economy that can make everything look like it's absolutely splendid until it's not? Do they not have their own demographic issues?

They do but atleast they're producing physical goods instead of a weird vibe-based service model that inflates the fuck out of the value of basic requirements for living. The Chinese are largely housed (since the government decided to batter the fuck out of the upper-middle class by reigning in their property appreciation), the demographic issue is there but the Chinese elderly don't have the same ability to distort the economic system by demanding massive accommodation and they seem to be somewhat trying to maintain a society that actually builds things.

Are China's economic fundamentals sound?

Absolutely. The world's strongest talent pipeline, the world's most competitive market, the world's best infrastructure. Some things like capital markets need major work, but they are simply the least bullshit large economy on Earth.

Do they not have a problem with cooked books and all the usual problems of a command economy

It's not really a command economy, their state plans are guidelines. What does happen is, for example, suboptimal investment due to provinces rushing to fill the quotas and creating unproductive competition. The cooking is not a big contributor at this point.

The US has no experience dealing with a competent adversary, so I understand reaching for a cached example, but it's laughable to compare them and their problems to the Soviets. Soviets exported… crude oil and timber, so I guess they were about as advanced an economy as Canada. Chinese export, for example, humanoid robots to work at Airbus and Texas Instruments. Is this all a big Potemkin village? Is everyone in the West just bribed (with money created by deficit spending probably) to purchase inferior goods and help Xi save face? Maybe, but then that means that Western economies and societies are inferior in another way, if they're vulnerable to such tactics. Personally I think it's mostly about productivity.

But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of rot underneath.

The nature of the rot is what is in question. I will not deny stuff like oppressing Christians (though I will say that the specific Christians oppressed last time were revealed to be the Zion Church, with family members in American anti-China think tanks, and are obviously part of the US-Zionist intelligence network; more grassroots Christians also sometimes get stomped on). I could write about involution, or about the insanity of LGFVs, or cratering fertility and nearly South Korean gender animosity. But those are specifically Chinese issues. They are largely immune to «generic Communist» strains of rot because they are not generic Communists, have a completely unique system and can only be properly understood as their own civilization.

China's barely communist by the definition of other systems. Even Mao's historical status inside China is in a weird spot where he's praised but also essentially nobody agrees with the cultural revolution and the worst excesses of his reign. I'd also rather have too heavyhanded handling of religious issues than the current Western meme of 'let the Islamists do whatever'

Would you happen to have a citation/link on Confucius's doctrine of shame/virtue? Would be very interesting for me to compare to the Greeks.

Just read the Analects. I don't know which translation is the best, I generally double check with LLMs.

but this seems okay: http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/analects.html

[2:1] The Master said: “If you govern with the power of your virtue, you will be like the North Star. It just stays in its place while all the other stars position themselves around it.”

[2:3] The Master said: “If you govern the people legalistically and control them by punishment, they will avoid crime, but have no personal sense of shame. If you govern them by means of virtue and control them with propriety, they will gain their own sense of shame, and thus correct themselves.”

The Confucian notion of virtue (De, 德) is more like "moral charisma", the power to overawe lessers by your example and force them to try following it. That's what I see in Liang Wenfeng's project.

[4:11] The Master said: “The noble man cares about virtue; the inferior man cares about material things. The noble man seeks discipline; the inferior man seeks favors.”

[4:17] The Master said: “When you see a good person, think of becoming like him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points.”

[7:26] The Master said: “I have not yet been able to meet a sage, but I would be satisfied to meet a noble man. I have not yet met a man of true goodness, but would be satisfied to meet a man of constancy. Lacking, yet possessing; empty, yet full; in difficulty yet at ease. How difficult it is to have constancy!”

[7:37] The Master said: “The noble man is always at ease with himself. The inferior man is always anxious.”

[9:14] The Master wanted to go and stay with the Nine Tribes of the East. Someone said, “They are unruly! Why do you want to do such a thing?”

Confucius said, “If a noble man dwells with them, how could they be unruly?”

[12:19] Ji Kang Zi asked Confucius about government saying: “Suppose I were to kill the unjust, in order to advance the just. Would that be all right?”
Confucius replied: “In doing government, what is the need of killing? If you desire good, the people will be good. The nature of the noble man is like the wind, the nature of the inferior man is like the grass. When the wind blows over the grass, it always bends.”

A great deal of the Analects is just discussion on the properties of the noble/superior man. Mencius also wrote on this of course.

Of note, Confucius was apparently exceptionally tall and strong, and so might have been a bit confused of how easy it is for a noble man to intimidate people into deference.

[1:8] The Master said: “If the noble man lacks gravitas, then he will not inspire awe in others. If you study, you will not be stubborn. Take loyalty and good faith to be of primary importance, and have no friends who are not of equal (moral) caliber. When you make a mistake, don't hesitate to correct it.”

[3:7] The Master said: “The noble man has nothing to compete for. But if he must compete, he does it in an archery match, wherein he ascends to his position, bowing in deference. Descending, he drinks the ritual cup. This is the competition of the noble man.”

Of note, Confucius was apparently exceptionally tall and strong, and so might have been a bit confused of how easy it is for a noble man to intimidate people into deference.

Like my old longsword teacher being constantly baffled by the weird things us small people do, including being unable to leverage superior height and reach.

Thanks, much appreciate having the specific verses.

Eh... I've got much more mixed feelings.

It's hard to deny China's effectiveness. The success are somewhat overstated and the failures papered over, at times -- I think China's official numbers on COVID are jokes, and for a more sympathetic case I don't think the government wants to admit how badly they've been screwed over on a number of Belt and Road Initiative operations despite their good effects -- but they're outweighed by its successes, and it's hard to overstate how significant those successes are. China has lifted itself out of staggering poverty, and much of urban China now competes with, or sometimes beats, the quality of life of European countries. News media focuses, imo wrongly, on the flashy stuff like the trains and skyscrapers and chip fabrication, and many of those are especially noteworthy because they are hard, but it's the stuff that's 'easy' and too many countries can't do that's impacted every life on the continent for the better.

And there's a lot of sympathy to go around. Dotted lines and Taiwan aren't great for modern international diplomacy, but the Opium Wars were ethical abominations, and like everyone on that side of the world that wasn't Japan, China has a lot of very valid frustrations with historic Japanese international policy and the resurgence of Japanese hard-righters.

((And I'll skip the various Great Powers questions: international politics is a game where the only rule is that the strong do what they must, and the weak suffer what they will, yada yada.))

The problem's what it chooses to do. I won't blame the CCP for the One Child Policy, since a very specific group of Westerners promoted and drove the campaign. But those Westerners were incompetent gits; government officials acting on their behalf are what lead to a demographic tree that leaves sane people praying that the stats are fake. It's that sort of problem, writ large. Chinese fishing fleets are the best in the world at strip-mining wildcaught fish, Chinese construction companies are the best in the world at building skyscrapers no one lives in, everyone knows how much a critic I am of American academic fraud and Chinese diploma mills manage to beat them at their game. These are only a tiny portion of China's success stories, but they show a country that's able to compete with Elon Musk, and yet either doesn't want to limit its space program from dropping a Tianlong misfire into a town. A populated one! Yes, there's also the human rights abuses, like an incredibly effective organ donor program, or the giant panopticon, or the forced abortion, but they're honestly symptoms.

((Indeed, a lot of great things from China occur where matters can slip through the cracks. Ghost shifts are embarrassing, but they've empowered a massive amount of Chinese and worldwide entrepreneurship. But it's not enough to point at an omelet and break eggs.))

I'll actually give the opposite criticism of Greer, here. Paeans to his specific form of anti-materialist and puritan morality have no sway on me. But where I agree with him solely that Xi's anti-corruption drives have had some beneficial effect, I can very easily see those powers being driven to more malicious ends, and likely to be so driven, and in many ways are already pushed in that sphere. That's more immediate and direct a concern from my perspective. I'm moderately aware, so far as Westerners can be aware, of how tolerance of homosexuality has ebbed from a conclusion that could credibly pretend to be more stable and family-oriented than Western celebrationism into one that's less plausibly keeping to its credo than 1990s DADT. Maybe it stops there. Maybe.

Maybe it dials back heavily on some of the bigger problems. Maybe there's one of a thousand other cultural or economic problems that it's doing great on that's next on the chopping block.

I'd argue that a state that has the mandate of heaven does not need, nor want, the level of cultural indoctrination that the Chinese government demands, but I could be persuaded I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just missing a lot of the cultural context behind scrubbing media of human bones, and the Germans do that too (how have things been working out for the Germans?). Maybe my country got lucky, and I'm vastly underestimating how many eggs you gotta break.

I know that a state that has the mandate of heaven does not need, nor want, to control the outcome of Hugo Awards, or whether a bike-sharing company CEO can fly business class, or RealSexyCyborg's tweets.

Pessimistically, this leaves the country far more fragile than it admits. If it needs these defenses against those things, it is, or believes it is vulnerable to them. Worse -- and given that over a billion people depend on them directly and closer to three billion do so indirectly, I don't just mean 'worse' for the CCP -- I'm not convinced anybody can continue that level of control permanently. AI helps a lot, but it doesn't help that much, and in many ways it's going to make the mid-term less stable.

The middle possibility holds that these are just another form of corruption, made invisible to China's internal controls because it's what those controls have been made to not recognize. So long as no one's getting too rich, a la Ma, or too conventionally powerful, it doesn't matter if they're getting the ability to enforce their will on the world writ large. And, to be fair, an unfeatherbedded bridge to nowhere is better way to enrich random blue collar types than Raytheon featherbedding a million dollars for a thirty-dollar bomb. But the NGOification of everything has more than its fair share of issues.

Optimistically, the greatest defense I can offer of that side of China is that it doesn't need nor want to do these things. They're simply easy to do, and options exist, and can be done, and thus must be done; like the United States, they are guided by the beauty of their weapons rather than the available information, and like the United States, they've poisoned the tools they could otherwise use to gather accurate information.

Which is its own damning critique.

China is good if you are typically Chinese, with instincts toward emotional suppression, conformity, lower novelty-seeking, in-group cohesion, etc. I imagine the rigidity in work and school would drive the typical European into neurosis. There’s no reason to think that a state can ever be designed such that it maximizes the happiness of two distinct cognitive / temperament types.

The Chinese tech sector is second rate, and only survives on the absolute impenetrable protectionism that the government provides. Besides tiktok, no matter the big tech, China's is inferior. Weibo is worse than Twitter, Taobao is worse than Amazon, Baidu is worse than Google, Wechat is worse than WhatsApp etc. And Chinese online advertising is so scummy that it makes godawful western advertising industry look like a bunch of saints.

Rideshare and meal delivery are better in china because they aren't tech companies, they're delivery companies and taxi services, and have a far lower cost of labor in china.

yeah, they may not be AS meritocratic as they advertise, and personal connections play a huge role, but comparing their officials to whatever the hell Western politicians are doing is not favorable to the latter

You don't know how bad things really are, because none of the shit that happens there is allowed to viral on chinese media, and also won't get translated into English. Of course it's unfortunate that in the west half of the elected officials serve the enemy, but that's kind of a natural consequence of half the population voting for the enemy.

Take down the communist iconography and I think that many on the right would see it similarly to Japan.

Japan's tech industry is in shambles though. Galapagos is over and Japan is basically standardizing along the lines of every other western aligned country.

Weibo is worse than Twitter, Taobao is worse than Amazon, Baidu is worse than Google, Wechat is worse than WhatsApp etc

Have you extensively compared these yourself? They're engineered in different ways to suit different tastes but unilaterally proclaiming Wechat worse than Whatsapp is tricky when there's a ton more stuff running through Wechat and it's kind of developed its own niche.

Yes I've used wechat and it's extremely scuffed. The fact that there's a mobile wallet on there has zero bearing on the messaging functionality. And "mini-apps" that westerners gush about are just webviews with an injected payment api.

Western messaging apps- imessage, whatsapp, telegram, discord, etc all have tons of polish on their mobile apps.

What should also be telling is that literally zero people use wechat who don't also have someone currently residing in the PRC in their circle. If wechat was good, there would at least be a community somewhere that uses it.

What should also be telling is that literally zero people use wechat who don't also have someone currently residing in the PRC in their circle. If wechat was good, there would at least be a community somewhere that uses it.

It being a pain in the ass to verify your account as not a spammer as a foreigner is part of that, which admittedly might be a chicken and the egg situation of 'It's hard to verify since there's no large independent foreign userbase and it's hard to have a large foreign userbase when you get kicked off for not verifying'

The Chinese tech sector is second rate, and only survives on the absolute impenetrable protectionism that the government provides

What? Chinese companies absolutely curb-stomp their competitors on international markets (especially the European ones)

In many industries yes, but not in tech.

Other than being a totalitarian police state with no civil rights except those the government pretends to provisionally grant you, and most of its meritocracy and probably its economic numbers being as fake and gay as ours, sure, China is great.

Look, this gets trotted out fairly regularly about a lot of places that are on the surface technocratic modern states with a glitzy veneer where, as long as you are not a dissident, a minority or outsider, or basically anyone disfavored by the state, things are pretty fine. People say similar things about the Gulf states. I remember a few years ago, a lot of "based" trads were saying similar things about Russia: sure, maybe its kind of a little bit corrupt and run by oligarchs and Putin is a dictator who has people who displease him thrown out of ninth floor windows, but he cosplays as a Christian and they don't put up with woke nonsense.

We don't hear that quite so much since the beginning of the Ukraine war, but you still see a little of it here from our Russophiles, who mostly still love Russia because it's not globohomo woke. Leftists put Ukrainian flags in their profiles, therefore invading Ukraine might be... good?

Even the USSR and Nazi Germany were kind of okay for a lot of the population most of the time, and if the thing you hate above all else is anything that Western leftists like, then you can make a case that they were... good because they didn't have pride parades or hordes of imported Africans, I guess.

But I think very few people moaning about how awful things are in the West would actually find they prefer living in China. Unless you are the sort of person who can keep your head down and eat shit your entire life. People angry about having to sit through DEI sessions really underestimate the level of shit-eating that's required in places like China.

Other than being a totalitarian police state with no civil rights

They are authoritarian, not totalitarian. That's an improtant distinction. Also, big deal, most countries in the world are authoritarian to some extent, most countries in history were. Hell, democracy does not guarantee freedom, just look at UK or Germany and how wrongthink there might get you in trouble.

Obligatory 'Everything is Worse in China'.

(I believe Greer later, on Twitter, retracted the point about China at least not having the American gender nonsense. That is in fact spreading among Chinese youth.)

My experience, having known and talked to a fair number of people from mainland China, is that if you want to be politically successful you do have to participate in an awful lot of lies, or at least, insincerities. If you don't want to be part of that, you can mostly check out, but the way that goes for most Chinese people is that you resign yourself to living under a government and a social system that constantly barrages you with a combination of lies, misrepresentations, and technical truths, and you have no way of telling them apart. Most Chinese people know that their government is deceptive and incompetent, and generally try to route around it, or live with its demands, since they have no practical ways to change it.

Now I know what the obvious response is - that Western countries also have governments that barrage people with lies and misrepresentations, and that political or social advancement is also contingent on repeating lies and sincerities. I agree that this is mostly true.

But it is worse in China.

One of the things I'm very grateful to have heard and learned from Chinese friends is that intuitive sense of "same crap, different day". They deal with pretty much the same kind of garbage as Westerners. Only more of it. And worse.

People angry about having to sit through DEI sessions really underestimate the level of shit-eating that's required in places in China.

Can you describe what you're talking about? This is a genuine question; I don't have any direct knowledge of what living in China is like. If I were to guess I would assume a certain amount of obsequiousness towards the Xi and/or the CCP is required but I imagine this feeling a lot more tolerable than being forced to pray at the alter of DEI (I sort of picture it as being similar to having to recite the pledge of allegiance or something).

Of course if you're a Uighur living in Xinjiang I'm sure the situation is quite different.

You have to pray at the altar of DEI and also communism in China too, it's just that they aren't true believers so everyone is just going through the motions. Certainly it's worse in the west where the DEI overlords believe their own nonsense, but the number of times you have to swear fealty to evil in china will still be a lot.

The most salient difference is that I’m the us if you get tired of praying at the alter of DEI, there is in fact a political process, repeated every 2-4 years which enables you to select new leadership. Totalitarian states are so centralized that dramatic change can only really happens after the leader dies. What if China’s next leader is more like Mao?

It’s also my understanding that China doesn’t even permit free movement for most people (people can move but are not automatically entitled to receive public benefits), https://www.citymonitor.ai/analysis/china-theres-no-freedom-movement-even-between-country-and-city-2697/

Well, I need to disclaim that I have not personally lived in China. But:

Obsequiousness towards the state is the big one, but it's also a very socially conformist society. Uighurs and Tibetans are oppressed, yes, but it's also not a great place to be a Christian (my understanding is that you can pray and go to church, but evangelizing is highly frowned on and anything that smacks of "activism" will get you slapped down in a hurry). The things you cannot talk about except in a state-approved way are numerous-- Tienmen square, Taiwan, anything critical of the government. There is a reason they have the "Great Internet Wall of China" that, while very porous and easy to bypass via VPN, is still a crime which can get you in trouble if caught. If you find yourself in legal trouble, forget about any of the due processes you are accustomed to in the West.

It's honestly baffling to me that anyone would say "China seems fine, better than being forced to pray at the altar of DEI." I mean, even if you are in the wokest of woke companies, no one is forced to "pray at the altar of DEI." You may be risking your career if you share your spiciest takes about HBD or male/female differences, but you cannot literally be arrested. Meanwhile in the street or here on the Internet you can call the president a retard, a corrupt tool of oligarchs, a Zionist agent, a pedophile, or anything else, and nobody can arrest you for that either, and you're highly unlikely to be fired even if you said it publicly on X. Try doing that in China. (I believe they also persecute you for "hate speech" in China as well: they may not care much about "DEI" as such, but start posting about how much you hate Jews or blacks or women and eventually you will attract negative attention with an actual government impact on your life.)

Our 2nd Amendment enthusiasts have many valid complaints about the breaches of their Constitutional rights, but you don't have even a shadow of those rights in China. Right now the USA is in turmoil over protesters versus ICE agents. I think some of the folks in this forum would not be unhappy if the National Guard starting machine-gunning protesters in the streets, but most people, even those who are strongly pro-ICE, agree that annoying purple-haired lesbians should be allowed to protest in a non-vehicular-homicidal way. In China, machine guns and tanks would be a real possibility. And not just for your annoying purple-haired lesbians.

Do they have to "worship at the altar of DEI"? Well, their version of DEI is called the social credit score. Would you like the government tracking everything you do and say and whether it is "anti-social" enough to start limiting your access to services, travel, credit, and being put under increased monitoring by the state? That seems better, really?

Again, for the average Chinese person, most of this is probably invisible, and for the affluent, life in the big cities is fine. Chinese have their own forums and social media and their versions of 4chan and the like. But all the stories we share here, about people being persecuted in various ways for wrongthink? Multiply that by an order of magnitude in China. Try being a "normie" Chinese with a few problems, some grievances about the system, or in a bit of legal and/or financial trouble. Try being a real wrongthinker.

I'll take (often dramatically, hyperbolically, catastrophically overstated) DEI bullshit over that.

Ok, so I know that it undermines my main point, but regarding the DEI afaik there is indeed affirmative action in China towards their ethnic minorities.

I know this is a late response, but I want to point out that non-democratic high income countries with fairly robust civil freedoms exist and, more importantly, are not China. Singapore, the UAE, Liechtenstein, are not democracies and are much freer than China. Note that these are not based utopias, either- they're real countries. And they don't aspire to global power. In these places getting arrested for anti-government activities takes being incredibly annoying, not merely irritating. But they're also small countries that know their place in the global order. They have cooperative outside backers, guys. They don't aspire to be superpowers, which necessitates some internal stabilization mechanisms. The record of these in non-democracies is not good.

Singapore

Singapore? The country where they literally whip your ass for writing "fuck PAP" on a wall?

If only it were so easy to have such a good time on the cheap. Mistress Xu charges by the stroke and the ball gag is extra.

As is good and proper. Punishing vandalism is one of the very last things the state should still manage to do before we just shrug and let everyting collapse into utter anarchy.

I mean, even if you are in the wokest of woke companies, no one is forced to "pray at the altar of DEI." You may be risking your career if you share your spiciest takes about HBD or male/female differences, but you cannot literally be arrested.

ZanarkandAbesFan is British, not American. There are hate speech laws there.

The West is not just the USA, and the state of free speech in the rest is considerably more tattered, to the point that these questions are worth asking. The PRC is still worse, but the bright line you speak of doesn't exist for us and it is... annoying... for you to claim that it does. I don't think I've quite stepped over the line in Victoria with my posts here, but I'm not 100% sure of that (and that's because I'm one of the more moderate Mottizens regarding the culture war).

On which note, @ZanarkandAbesFan I have to ask, are you a fan of

  • Zanarkand Abe

Or

  • Zanark and Abe?

I’ve always wondered.

The Zanarkand Abes are a sports team in Final Fantasy 10.

Thank you! That's one mystery solved.

Glad to know someone got the reference :)

I'm aware. Even Brits and Australians have more free speech than Chinese, though, and I think you'd be foolish to say you'd rather be governed by the CCP.

I did just say that, yes.

The religiosity has been loosened a fair bit in the last decade or two, but you're also definitely not allowed to be obnoxiously proselytizing and there's been a certain slow surge back towards it. 'Traditional Chinese Religion' has probably been preserved better over in parts of Southeast Asia amongst the Chinese diaspora due to a lack of cultural revolution plus different cultural pressures. Malaysia, for instance, has a roughly 30% Chinese population in a Muslim majority country who have held strongly to a lot of their Chinese cultural markers partly out of a desire to actively stand out from the Malay ethnics.

Social credit score doesn't function like how you think it does, plus atleast stops all of the relentless own goaling of Western society where social defectors can essentially run around doing whatever they like for an unlimited amount of time. I'm personally willing to take the tradeoff of occasional oppression of protestors in exchange for cracking down on homeless and drug users in some sort of functional way.

So China literally has a "department of propaganda*" (at least, according to an individual I know who lived in China for about 8 months). They'd come by every month and everyone would have to line up and take photos that presented China as a good place to live/work in. The individual in question was in a place that was specifically foreigner-focused (as in, I think they had native Chinese people running the place, but all of the people there were from foreign countries).

*Not a euphemism - they literally called themselves that in English.

They'd come by every month and everyone would have to line up and take photos that presented China as a good place to live/work in.

Being very focussed on propaganda was fairly priced in to my view of the country. What you're describing does sound fairly excessive though.

I remember a few years ago, a lot of "based" trads were saying similar things about Russia: sure, maybe its kind of a little bit corrupt and run by oligarchs and Putin is a dictator who has people who displease him thrown out of ninth floor windows, but he cosplays as a Christian and they don't put up with woke nonsense.

It's not quite your point, but it's fairly incontrovertible that today's Russia is the best Russia there's ever been. And it's even quite liberal by historical standards.

What you don't have is fair elections or genuine political competition, combined with somewhere between 40 - 200 political murders over the last 20+ years. But name one Tzar or Bolshevik with a better track record.

I find much to admire in the PRC, and just as much to disdain or decry.

China is one of the few countries around with real state capacity. Holy shit, it is difficult to overestimate how important that is to getting anything done. It's not so much that they started out uniquely capable, it's more that everyone else, especially in the West, entirely fumbled the ball. The America of the Hoover Dam? A distant memory. The West has decentralized so hard that it's ruled by a tyranny of the minority, with so many people with de-facto veto power that something as mundane as a metro station arrives ten years late and ten times over budget. The West intentionally threw away the keys to the kingdom, and embraced stagnation. It is easy to plateau when you start off at a peak, with your basic human necessities taken care of, and a sense of "things are basically fine".

A lot of the things the rest of the world wrings their hands over are simply addressed pragmatically and directly by China. Worried about oil? Build so many solar panels they blot out the sun (if you're very short). The US says you can't have their fancy (Taiwanese) GPUs? Fuck it, we say no after Nvidia and its (Taiwanese) CEO lobby a retarded president into relenting. Turns out, you can have a heavily protectionist, mercantilist economy if you're really fucking good at it, and the rest of the world is entirely addicted to your products.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety,"

Turns out that there is, in fact, a reasonably acceptable exchange rate between the two. Now, I'd very much prefer the kind of freedom the US offers, but living in the Yookay, China doesn't seem so bad. The topics they censor aren't the drums I want to beat, they won't throw me in prison for discussing HBD.

At the moment, China doesn't seem to have grand imperial ambitions. They have little interest in injecting their values and mores into the lives of people who look nothing like them. If you have something that passes as a state, and you're willing to trade with them, they'll take you. There's something refreshing about relying on enlightened self-interest instead of "liberal values", even if I'm generally a fan of said values.

(There is no guarantee that this self-absorption will remain indefinitely, if they become the hegemonic power)

Now, if only they'd stop being retarded about Taiwan, and the South China Sea, or Arunachal Pradesh...

Other than the US, they're also the only other country with a realistic shot at AGI, or even a mere human employment crisis. They've got the factories, and no hangups about automating everything that can be automated.

It's far from a given that the century will be Chinese, but I'm willing to nihao at some fine shit and not particularly mind. If they unbanned Reverend Insanity, the CCP has my vote.

I live in the region and have been to China a bunch of times recently.

It's not a perfect society but also seems to be less keenly attuned to shooting itself in the foot than most Western countries at this point, and conditions on the ground have improved a ton in recent years. I personally much prefer going to China to Japan for a bunch of reasons, as controversial as some people will inevitably find that. There's a reasonably competent system in place with longterm goals that doesn't get easily derailed by ridiculous screeching or idpol.

is PRC... Good?

Best run Govt. of the last 50 years for sure.

With that said, there are credible arguments I could be a devil advocate for.

wildly economically successful with a dynamic tech sector

How much of the spoils are experienced by the workers ? Intense Darwinian competitions means margins are paper thin. Winning comes with none of the stability or lifestyle perks that make economic victories desirable to Americans. Chinese winners get rewarded with more competition, sleepless nights and even narrower margins. Perpetual crunch-time sounds like hell, and Chinese citizens appear to agree. When given the chance, they hop over toe western companies that offer better life-style at the risk of slower innovation.

proud of its' culture and heritage

Post great leap forward there wasn't much culture or heritage left. Yes, China has a recognizable civilizational identity that's distinct from the west. But, modern China has little in common with erstwhile Chinese culture or heritage.

willing to forego

You'll never know what they're willing to do, because the Chinese never reveal their true thoughts to a westerner. I've had close PRC Chinese friends and they refuse to give me even a hint on what they think about the PRC or Xi. Get them drunk, high, vulnerable, doesn't matter. I don't know if it is brainwashing or defense against the dark arts. But, one things for sure. Neither you nor I know what the will of the Chinese people actually is.

forego some comfort

This is where it's important to draw lines. Is PRC China Xi's China, Deng's China or Mao's China. Where does the lineage begin ? Mao's consolidation, state capacity and land reforms were necessary for Deng's economic liberalization. If it starts at Mao, then 30 million deaths is not 'foregoing some comfort'. That's the greatest genocide since the Mongol conquests. It's simply impossible to talk about PRC China without talking about a Holocaust x 5 genocide event.

Japan, SK, Taiwan and Singapore have all done better than PRC China per-capita. If their genetic makeup is mostly similar, then PRC China's achievements don't seem THAT incredible.

You'll never know what they're willing to do, because the Chinese never reveal their true thoughts to a westerner. I've had close PRC Chinese friends and they refuse to give me even a hint on what they think about the PRC or Xi. Get them drunk, high, vulnerable, doesn't matter. I don't know if it is brainwashing or defense against the dark arts. But, one things for sure. Neither you nor I know what the will of the Chinese people actually is.

I agree with some other points you made but this is a weird take (although it’s only a softer dismissal of our opinions, unlike the other commenters who simply assume that we’re all shills). It’s not like the Chinese government have some Eastern magic spell that forces us to keep our mouths shut.

I don’t know your friend obviously, but my reading of what you’re describing is much simpler: most of them just don’t have an opinion on Xi. Honestly many people, including the well-educated middle class you’d meet in Silicon Valley, have no opinions on almost anything and are just incredibly boring human beings. They care about money and status and their own hedonistic pursuit, and that’s pretty much it. That’s the result of years of grinding under Gaokao. It’s sad but not that mysterious.

China is, above all, fascinating. It is a state that is capable of astonishing feats of engineering and yet it will occasionally build a bridge that will collapse within months of its completion. Its government seems at times to be preternaturally competent, and at other times to be singularly dedicated to causing misery and dysfunction for its own people. It has a cultural history as expansive and complex as any on Earth, and long periods of stability during which one would expect great works of music and visual art would have been made, and yet its actual output in these domains has been, and continues to be, distinctly third-rate. In the past, there were long periods where it was unquestionable strong enough to conquer much of the world, and yet it didn't. Today, it is—or will soon be—strong enough to expand far beyond it borders, but I expect it will again choose not to.

How do we resolve these apparent inconsistencies? Well, first I'd caution that the West is full of these too. We put men on the moon with the computing power of a graphing calculator, but we can't build a single high speed rail line in California. We descend from a culture that produced the most sublime art ever created by man, but we seem largely to have forgotten how to do this, or else lost the will to even try. With AI, we figured out how to make sand talk, but I expect we would be hopelessly incapable of maintaining a Chinese level of order in our society even if our very survival depended upon it.

What do we make of this? I think the obvious conclusion to draw is that human societies are spikey. (You may have heard this term from AI. In that context, it refers to the fact that AI can be at once astonishingly competent in one domain and incompetent in another that seems no more difficult, or perhaps even easier. A classic example was the ability of earlier generations of LLMs to get 90th percentile plus scores on the SAT math section but also to fail at counting the number of r's in strawberry.) China has a weird mix of strengths and weaknesses, and so does the West.

An interesting property of spikeyness is that it is harder to see in yourself. What is easy seems easy and what is hard seems hard, so without some external example to show that certain strengths don't necessarily imply others, and that same is true of certain weaknesses, it can be hard to imagine that these things can be unlinked. Sometimes, it is only when we look at another with a different combination of strengths and weaknesses that we start to more clearly see the spikeyness that exists in ourselves. Of course, the spikeyness of an entity with very different strengths and weaknesses is obvious.

And that is what China is: a different roll of the stats dice. It looks very weird to us, but then I'm sure we look very weird to them.

Did they get a better roll than us, overall? I don't think so, but I'm not completely sure. Are they at least our peers, civilizationally speaking? Certainly.

And the final question: are they good? Well, from my perspective they are not especially good, but also not especially bad either. One Chinese deficit—which is arguably not even a deficit except from a Western, Christianity-inflected moral standpoint—is that they just don't seem to have an interest in much of the rest of the world. The downside of this (and to be honest, I'm a little disturbed by it) is how generally indifferent they seem to suffering that exists beyond their borders. I hope this might change as they become wealthier, but the social science research I've looked at does not show this happening, at least so far. Of course, this disinterest also has an upside: to me it seems obvious the Chinese don't want to conquer the world. Maybe they are HBD pilled and recognize that Chinese style governance would only work for Chinese people (for what it is worth, this seems obviously true). Or maybe they are just such cultural chauvinists that can't imagine what good could come to them from involving themselves with others (mostly also probably true). And maybe it is just that they are temperamentally conservative and risk averse, and they feel more comfortable all crowded together on the territory they have lived on for thousands of years. It is probably a combination. But whatever it is, I just don't worry much about China going all Nazi Germany on us and trying to conquer lebensraum, and I worry even less about some sort of sino-colonialist future (maybe Africa the land could become Chinese, but Africans? Never).

This is very different than us. When the pilgrims came over to Massachusetts, the seal they created for the Massachusetts Bay Colony shows an Indian standing with a text flag coming out of his mouth that said, "Come over and help us". Yes, the universalist impulse runs deep here. That can be beautiful in my eyes, as when Kipling wrote earnestly of the White Man's Burden. And truthfully, I think it has done a lot of good for the rest of the world. But also, I can't say we have a flawless track record. What happened to those Indians? How often have we bungled the helping? How often has the helping just been a pretext to exploit, to enslave, to rape? Not always, but not never either.

As for which civilization is better for the rest of the world, the Chinese or the Western, I think the optimal solution might be a middle ground. I believe there is a White Man's Burden; I also believe there is a Chinaman's Burden. Ultimately, I'd like to see China be a little more humanitarian and universalist, even if that risks them maybe being a little more expansionist. But I also think the West could learn a lot from China. Obviously technologically and governmentally, but also culturally. The West should take a more pragmatic, more Chinese, less Marvel-universe view of its own motives and (especially) capabilities, and also a more Chinese (read: racist) view of those it aims to help, which is ironically what I think will be the key to actually helping them, rather than just pretending to. Indeed, in the long run, China and the West could have a very productive and fruitful relationship that could enrich the whole world enormously. I hope we get to see it happen.

One Chinese deficit—which is arguably not even a deficit except from a Western, Christianity-inflected moral standpoint—is that they just don't seem to have an interest in much of the rest of the world. The downside of this (and to be honest, I'm a little disturbed by it) is how generally indifferent they seem to suffering that exists beyond their borders. I hope this might change as they become wealthier, but the social science research I've looked at does not show this happening, at least so far. Of course, this disinterest also has an upside: to me it seems obvious the Chinese don't want to conquer the world.

The Western mode of directly or indirectly conquering the world because you experience moral outrage at the suffering of the poor and oppressed masses is not the only way to relate to other nations, and taking a different approach isn't by itself evidence of disinterest in global affairs. At this very moment, Chinese laborers are building ports, railroads, and highways across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America; Chinese immigrants are cooking meals in restaurants in nearly every country on Earth, from the frozen sub-arctic to the humid tropics; and Chinese astronauts are orbiting the Earth in their own space station. These are not the behaviors of an isolationist state or people. That this network exists primarily to further international trade, rather than as a tool in some great moral crusade, seems to me eminently reasonable and not a weakness.

Yes, the Chinese diaspora has spread all across the world, and that is great. And evidently they are quite adaptable and enjoy a wide variety of biomes!

Indeed, there is no denying that the Chinese people have contributed a ton to any society they have decided to join. I'm glad for the Chinese people we have in the United States, and I'd personally like more of them. Many more! But this is distinct from what I am talking about, which is again a general Chinese civilizational indifference to the welfare of others. I'd love to be wrong on this for what it's worth, and I as I said I look for signs of change, but I've yet to see much of anything. China has incredible biomedical abilities. Where is its version of pepfar? China is now full of billionaires. How many have signed the giving pledge? Where is the Chinese Bill Gates? Where is the Chinese Will MacAskill?

To be fair, I probably could have phrased things more clearly. Ultimately, my objection isn't that China isn't interested in Lithium deposits in Cameroon, or even that Chinese people aren't interested in running a electronics store in Yaoundé. My objection is that the Chinese don't seem to care about Cameroonians.

Is the Chinese approach of just doing business and not actually caring about anyone but yourself better for others than the Western schizo approach of caring so much you try to invade a country like Afghanistan to set up pride parades? I don't think so. Both approaches have serious issues, and as I said, I think both approaches could benefit from incorporating elements from the other. You don't need to convince me that the West has seriously screwed up at times: that is obvious. But I don't think you can convince me that the Chinese approach is morally better. In fact, I think it is pretty clearly morally worse. I find the good samaritan who accidentally botches an attempt to help a wounded child better, morally speaking, than the person who just doesn't give a shit about the wounded child because the child doesn't own the rights to any critical mineral mines. And I worry particularly that as we approach advanced AI and robotics capabilities, the Chinese attitude of indifference beyond the point where self-interest is in effect is potentially disastrous for our stupider human relations in the Third World. If China obtained post-scarcity abundance for itself, would it selflessly share it with the billions of not very useful brown people that occupy Africa and South America? Would it go through the trouble of making sure that abundance was equitably distributed in those societies, if that turned out to be necessary? I hope so, but I can't say I've yet seen anything that has put my mind at ease.

The Western mode of directly or indirectly conquering the world because you experience moral outrage at the suffering of the poor and oppressed masses

This is applicable, if at all, only to late 19th century (mostly unprofitable) colonialism, justified, along national honor, by civilizing the natives. For the rest four centuries, the sales pitch was "Make Money Fast!".

Certainly one of the best and optimistic post about China from a non-Chinese perspective on this website for me. Thank you.

China is, above all, fascinating. It is a state that is capable of astonishing feats of engineering and yet it will occasionally build a bridge that will collapse within months of its completion. Its government seems at times to be preternaturally competent, and at other times to be singularly dedicated to causing misery and dysfunction for its own people. It has a cultural history as expansive and complex as any on Earth, and long periods of stability during which one would expect great works of music and visual art would have been made, and yet its actual output in these domains has been, and continues to be, distinctly third-rate. In the past, there were long periods where it was unquestionable strong enough to conquer much of the world, and yet it didn't. Today, it is—or will soon be—strong enough to expand far beyond it borders, but I expect it will again choose not to.

What irritates me most when people talk about China here is not the outright hostility but the lack of curiosity, so thank you for finding our society fascinating. Something I never get used to is how intelligent people who are active in political discussion show no interest in understanding China at all, despite pretending to care about it. Many rhetorical techniques were employed to never update on China, treating everything from the Chinese media as propaganda; treating all of our people, inside or outside or China, as nationalistic shills or payed propagandists; pretending all the changes and achievements inside the country as fake and unworthy of serious discussion. On some level I get it, after all that's my default opinion on anything too positive from my own country, and how can I expect better from the others. But on the other hand it's tiresome, especially since I feel some genuine urge to discuss with people and exchange opinions with people outside of my own as a mirror to allow some self reflection.

Sometimes, it is only when we look at another with a different combination of strengths and weaknesses that we start to more clearly see the spikeyness that exists in ourselves. Of course, the spikeyness of an entity with very different strengths and weaknesses is obvious.

This has been one of the most important thing I learned from my experience in the United States. For Chinese people in China, it is difficult to see ourselves clearly, just as a person in the mountains cannot see its entirety. Everything feels natural and inevitable. It is hard to imagine living or thinking differently, and even harder to appreciate the benefits that alternative might offer.

Chinese and American societies are polar opposites in many respects, but also intriguingly similar in others. This is difficult to articulate. Broadly, the individualism-collectivism divide is obvious, as is the very different relationship between the people and the state. The “main character syndrome”, the intentional or unintentional domineering attitude toward other countries, and the industriousness of the people feels familiar. For me, American society has been a useful mirror and a nice calibrator, helping me to see what the optimum would be. As you said, for many things the “right way” likely lies somewhere between the two. It is fortunate that these two societies exist in the same historical moment. Unfortunately, instead of learning from one another there seems to be an irresistible pull toward conflict. I hope that this is not our fate.

my most ardent wish is that China develops a genuine feeling of moral responsibility for its less accomplished relations in the Global South, ideally while still retaining the pragmatism and effectiveness it possesses today. Maybe this will happen naturally as it gets richer—I have to remind myself that there is still a lot of serious poverty in China, for all the incredible progress they've made on that front.

You mentioned this above in a different post but I want to share my thoughts. I think that poverty, or the memory and cultural residue of extreme poverty, has a profound effect on people’s capacity for charity. Some personal anecdote. My mom grew up in the 1960s. Their generation lived through the devastation of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and unlike my generation they usually have more than three siblings in one family despite barely able to feed them all. When resources are scarce survival becomes paramount, like how a family of mice trapped in a small cage that cannibalize each other. People resort to whatever works: lying, violence, corruption. When abundance returns, the psychological mechanisms developed in scarcity do not simply disappear. In this sense her generation “inoculated” itself against charity, and they will pass that fear of scarcity on to my generation. I grew up without extreme poverty, without rampant pickpocketing, without scammers lurking at train stations hoping to lure me to their fake tourist attractions, without (too many) cab drivers driving in circles and charging more money for the ride. But still I remember how my mother carried a constant fear that someone would take advantage of us. She taught me to be perpetually defensive, hold your bag in front when you’re on a train, always double-lock the doors, never fully let your guard down even among close friends. As a child I was confused because her ways of living does not align with my experience. I remember asking her if thieves will wear a balaclava, and why I never saw them on the bus even though she seem confident that they’re out there somewhere. I remember yelling at her for her paranoia around my friend, as I couldn’t understand why helping others is anathema to her when I usually receive kindness in return, something I crave. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate kindness either. She often spoke warmly of strangers who helped her, like an elderly couple who fixed her tire, or how Americans in the suburb seem to always “forget” to lock the door, after her six month stay in the US as a visiting scholar. But she could not translate that appreciation into generosity toward others. It’s not just her, so are the other aunties and uncles I grew up with.

Thing do seem to be improving. Like many things this is the reason why I have my hope high for my country, despite how it is at the current moment. When I return home now I genuinely feel that more people are willing to help one another. After all I could easily see myself as someone who fixes other’s tire, and I do think people will be more likely to reciprocate now than it was before. We may be building a higher-trust society slowly, one in which people help others because they expect it to be reciprocated, and eventually because it becomes second nature. That path might be via harsh and draconian laws and immense social pressure, but I think it's worth it.

What I regret most about our low-trust society is how suboptimal it is. Helping others in our very homogeneous society would not harm you in most cases. On the contrary it should benefit you more as mutualism enriches everyone. Unfortunately we find ourselves stuck in a kind of social prisoner’s dilemma. The encouraging part is that we appear to be moving out of it, however slowly. Hope that trend continues before the society getting eaten by other societal illnesses which slowly start to manifest themselves.

Back to your point about the lack of moral responsibility to help the unfortunate. It may be true that the Chinese ordo amoris resembles a solar system, with most of its moral weight concentrated at the center, our own people, rather than the onion-like layers in a westerner’s mind. But I do not think this difference is immutable. Given a generation or two I believe we will converge.

Indeed, in the long run, China and the West could have a very productive and fruitful relationship that could enrich the whole world enormously. I hope we get to see it happen.

From your mouth to God’s ears.

One Chinese deficit—which is arguably not even a deficit except from a Western, Christianity-inflected moral standpoint—is that they just don't seem to have an interest in much of the rest of the world

I'm not sure where this perception comes from or if it's a specifically western blind spot, maybe some wildly out of date leftover stereotype from after the Opium Wars?

But the Belt and Road Initiative did not come from a country totally disinterested in the rest of the world. China is keenly interested in the rest of the world and quite involved in foreign policy. All that foreign policy is blatantly towards China's own ends, not some abstract ideal like "democracy". But they have lots of it. And they will apply lots and lots of pressure across many many miles to make you do what they want.

See my response to Resolute Raven. The most important point:

To be fair, I probably could have phrased things more clearly. Ultimately, my objection isn't that China isn't interested in Lithium deposits in Cameroon, or even that Chinese people aren't interested in running an electronics store in Yaoundé. My objection is that the Chinese don't seem to care about Cameroonians.

As to your comment on the abstract ideal of "Democracy", I think you are missing the larger point, which is that this is not about caring about systems of government, but about caring about the people that live in them. I recognize many non-Westerners (and even many Westerners) find it hard to believe that the West genuinely cares about the welfare of non-Westerners, since we have such a... mixed record... when it comes to helping them. But I think the moral concern is genuine, and I think a great deal of meaningful help (more than most critics of the West would admit) has been delivered.

In the end, even our most rapacious acts have probably largely redounded to the benefit of our victims or their descendants (there are, as always, exceptions). Take the institution of slavery in America. It was undoubtedly surpassingly cruel, but also your average African American now earns a higher income than many white Europeans. When you compare this state of affairs to what they might be experiencing if they'd been left to fend for themselves in Africa, this seems vastly better.

Is it deranged to credit ourselves for seeing to the welfare of the descendants of people we kidnapped and enslaved? I don't actually think so. Yes, we were bad enough to enslave Africans. But we also were good enough, eventually, to free them, on our own initiative and at great cost to ourselves. And not only that, but to allow them to remain here, and to include them in our society, and to later give them equal rights, and after that to even make great sacrifices and endless efforts to try to promote their flourishing. The act of enslaving, and all the acts of kindness that came after it, both say something true about how the West is, and I think both of these things are very different than anything you could say about China. I doubt China would have ever taken African slaves at scale because I think it would have been obvious to them African slaves can't be good Chinese. And this is very good, because I also doubt, if China had a large population of the descendants of Africans it had enslaved, it would be nearly so indulgent as the West. I don't know what the Chinese solution would be to a population that committed 6-7 times as much murder as American whites on a per capita basis (I don't even want to know what the ratio would be relative to Han Chinese) but I can promise you it would not be Black Lives Matter. And as shitty as BLM was (both for us and for our black population—see the huge spike in murders with black victims) I think it is to our credit, morally, that we responded that way as opposed to in the way the CPC might have responded. Our kindness may yet be the death of us, but I can't bring myself to wish it away. My preferred solution is for us to become more practical and realistic, not less kind. In short, like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, we need a brain.

Meanwhile, I think China needs a heart: my most ardent wish is that China develops a genuine feeling of moral responsibility for its less accomplished relations in the Global South, ideally while still retaining the pragmatism and effectiveness it possesses today. Maybe this will happen naturally as it gets richer—I have to remind myself that there is still a lot of serious poverty in China, for all the incredible progress they've made on that front. The good news is I don't think the Chinese are genetically incapable of changing: this isn't like asking Somalians to start winning more Fields medals. The issue is largely cultural.

But China views the other entities the way physicists view black holes - all complexity is hidden and there is only two parameters - mass and spin. China cares only about resources, markets and shipping routes. They don't care about human rights, religion, ethnicity, who exactly is in power as long as it is stable, they are cavalier about things like pollution and whatnot. The only thing they are emotional about is Taiwan.

is PRC... Good?

Excluding city states, it has the fourth lowest birth rate in the world, probably about 0.9 right now and falling fast.

They've got a few decades left, but before long China is gonna be the world's largest nursing home.

They've got a few decades left, but before long China is gonna be the world's largest nursing home.

They've got a large reserve of the undeveloped hinterland population plus the lack of a democracy means less of an issue with total boomer hijack creating the void that Western civilization is currently disappearing into. The average Chinese boomer has way less power to enforce their will onto the general population.

The average Chinese boomer has way less power to enforce their will onto the general population.

How do you feel that balances with a much more explicit meme of filial piety versus the West? How does the average "4-2-1" grandchild in China feel about their obligations to their elders?

Your point makes sense too, but I'm not sure how to balance them.

How do you feel that balances with a much more explicit meme of filial piety versus the West? How does the average "4-2-1" grandchild in China feel about their obligations to their elders?

Decent amount of the elderly who don't have the familial support are the childless, plus it cuts both ways to a large degree where if you have failed to cultivate sufficient familial bonds to support you in your dotage there's less of a duty of care. I don't think the Chinese state is gonna necessarily let them rot/put a bullet in the head of 80 year olds, but it wouldn't shock me if there's a lot more push towards centralized affordable care compared to what the Western Democratic voting body will allow.

Also sheer longevity of people these days means that even the filial obligations aren't falling that far down. I just went to my Chinese diaspora wife's Great Grandmother's 100th birthday recently and she's got 10 of her 12 children still alive, though she's got about 150 descendants and their particular birthrate collapse is more '12->7->4->4' so less of an issue

is PRC... Good?

Go live there for a while, travel the country and then come to the same conclusion as pretty much every other foreigner, which is "No, god no, absolutely not".

People here have touched on the topic of the PRCs moral bankruptcy and how unpleasant the culture is, but I'm going to focus on something a little more mundane and say that if the PRC becomes ascendant and starts trying to export soft power via cultural exports, you will weep and beg for the woke media to return to save you.

It is my firm belief that Chinese opera should be classified as a form of torture and America missed a trick by not staging mandatory performances at Guantanamo. Lion dances are great though, I'm fine with them exporting that.

the PRC becomes ascendant and starts trying to export soft power via cultural exports, you will weep and beg for the woke media to return to save you.

My riff on this for years has been how poorly Chinese cultural and political export industry goes. It's like an early model AI trying to write a birthday card for your mum. The words and sentiment are there. But it just feels like 15 degrees off somehow.

Their political engagement with the west is just cringe. When they try to pressure western countries it just comes off as the third born child turning 25 and finally standing up for themselves at the family barbecue. Everybody stands there quietly for a moment until big sis sniggers behind her hand and a smiling dad tells everybody to settle down.

Chinese news, from serious journalism to state mandated military propaganda is like something you'd read in a sci fi novel. "How can people take this seriously lol?"

Cultural export from China is crazily uncharismatic. And this is why, in my view, the US would end up with all the allies in WWIII and china would end up with the dregs of the international community. Nobody likes china, nobody outside of china knows what's going on in china, and nobody in china knows what's going on inside china either.

For all their economic progress, China have been totally unable to evolve in that cultural sphere. They can do the Peter Theil style "import all the good business ideas and scale them" but because they're locked in on maintaining their own cultural identity, which the CCP guards with an iron fist, they just cannot import Hollywood or Reddit. Because if they did, they'd feel the cascading oblivion of Western culture. A culture that would endanger the CCP more and more every day.

The result is a pretty ghastly and stagnant cultural climate that's stuck in, at best, the 90s.

But they have fast trains at least.

And this is why, in my view, the US would end up with all the allies in WWIII and china would end up with the dregs of the international community.

The US is losing its luster very quickly in Europe.. Hard to expect better elsewhere.

they just cannot import Hollywood or Reddit. Because if they did, they'd feel the cascading oblivion of Western culture

Do you actually believe this? Hollywood and Reddit, in 2026, really, that's the all-crushing maw of the cultural singularity, the engine powering Cthulhu's inexorable march of progress?

The result is a pretty ghastly and stagnant cultural climate that's stuck in, at best, the 90s.

That's not really how the youth feels. Watch some streamers man.

Very much of this confident American commentary is just totally divorced from current reality. Their games are crushing it, their social media is extremely popular, their products are winning real respect. You're declining on literally every metric and don't even know it yet. You engage with the funny state propaganda staffed by the failsons of officials and assorted dregs of the Chinese society and think that's the spearpoint. It's the rear end.

USA has far more interests in playing world police, anyways. If anything China's fairly deliberate about not taking over any of the 'USA must feed the entire world and defend it and yaddayaddayadda' roles that have developed over the last few decades.

I think this is because Chinese culture of today is not Chinese, but some weird modernist cargo cult culture based on the Chinese perception of the west. It’s of course uncharismatic because it’s a poor imitation of the real thing. And that also contribute to the poor taste of our people.

There is a disconnect between Chinese and the Chinese culture. It’s a civilization that have suffered utter defeat for 100 years, and then ruled by actual progressives who blame said defeat on their own culture and want to distance themselves from it for another 30 years, until they regain a bit of sanity. That’s about four or five generations. Many cultural memories, traditions, vocabularies are lost and hard for people to reconnect. This makes it really hard for the Chinese to export genuine Chinese culture. I think this might be an issue that will get solved once people become richer and have more free time and resource for artistic pursuit but we shall see.

It’s a civilization that have suffered utter defeat for 100 years, and then ruled by actual progressives who blame said defeat on their own culture and want to distance themselves from it for another 30 years, until they regain a bit of sanity. That’s about four or five generations.

Doesn't this roughly describe post-Meiji Japan too? Somehow they punch well above their weight in global culture (sushi, anime, business). (South) Korea arguably fits this narrative too, only with different imperial powers.

I don’t think the Japanese or the South Koreans have been ruled by their own people who actively destroyed their cultural heritage. Yes the Japanese had their own identity crisis after the Meiji restoration (e.g. 脱亚入欧) but I’m not sure if there is a societal wide, bottom up or top down destruction of its own cultural heritage similar to China. The South Koreans are subjugated by the Japanese from 1870s to 1945 and were forcefully Japanified, but being colonized is different from what we’re talking about here. North Koreans sure, and I don’t think they have any positive cultural export. Neither does Vietnam. I think the Vietnamese has the same problem just like us.

I guess a good comparison would be … the Turks? An empire that suffered defeat after defeat for a century and ruled by progressives who have in fact latinized their language and destroyed at least part of their cultural heritage? I’m not that familiar with them to tell if it’s an accurate description of their experience, but I’m also not reading Turkish novels or wearing Turkish clothes.

China is the big replicator. Their biggest cultural exports are Arknights, Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, all exploitative online games with anime art, nothing original. However, they can simply make a hundred more gachas and export the one that is exceptionally good.

As I said, copying things is not charisma. Where they can import a blueprint and copy another product, they do fine.

But that's anti leadership. Which is my point.

At this point (at least in gaming) we've hit a weird point where the west refuses to make the original recipe and therefore China is starting to overtake a bit.

What you are saying was super true for the longest time but Wokeness has left an opportunity and Asian produced and flavored things are taking over because the West is ass.

See: Kpop Demon Hunters for one. The amount of money made by Genshin et al for another.

I mean it's no mistake that the first truly mainstream content about K Pop was produced by Netflix. But regardless, I don't consider Korean or Japanese cultural influence as limited as Chinese influence.

Because the main problem for China is the CCP. Not Chinese people or culture.

I'm diagusted by the cultural vandalism of wokeness too btw. I just don't think our pursuit of enrichment will be done with a CCP member scowling over the director's shoulder back stage.

On the other hand Chinese cartoons and mobile games are ascendant and while still niche are quite competitive with Japanese ones.

It is my firm belief that Chinese opera should be classified as a form of torture and America missed a trick by not staging mandatory performances at Guantanamo. Lion dances are great though, I'm fine with them exporting that.

No one watches those except for the tourists. They have their own modern entertainment, which... Okay, I've seen some of it and it's not my cup of tea, but it's definetely a normal, modern entertainment.

The Western media's been nosediving in quality since the rise of wokeness, though. I'd prefer 20 year old Western highlights against current China stuff, but right now it's essentially Tiktok noise v Tiktok noise for a lot of casual media. I watched more decent quality Chinese films last year than I did Western ones, albeit maybe 2025 was just a bad year for Western Film.

The Chinese system isn't perfect but reigns in antisocial random battle encounters on public transport and seems to be trending in the right direction.

No. China is ... lawful evil. But one of the things that people don't understand is that well run dictatorships end up as disneylands with death penalty. The streets are clean, the trains run on time, they usually care about things like corruption and want the justice system to be reliable, predictable and somewhat just when it is not related to state interests. There are also feedback channels and the borders are somewhat porous so that the troublemakers can actually get out. Why - because total oppression is expensive. It is cheaper for the regime to provide high degree of economic freedom than to go completely planned economy. And economic prosperity tames down the desire for political freedom in the vast majority of people. Shanghai was one of the few places in the world that I have been that the concept of street crime was out my mind. China is probably also the state I least want to cross while under their jurisdiction - they will just crush you. And with total indifference.

I have lived in China, and I like it a lot. Some of its tier 1 cities are quite livable, and there are smaller towns that are also quite nice as well.

The core issue is that... It's not a democracy. Not in a moralistic sense, but it ends up making bad decisions, and then follows through with them come hell or high water. It was genuinely impressive how they marshalled society to get to (near) zero COVID for years, but it was a stupid goal that hurt its economy. It could similarly do something really stupid re:Taiwan, and it can persist in that decision for years.

It also has severe fertility issues, but that seems a broader issue affecting all the East Asian countries. You might hope that its authoritarianism would give it more capability to address that issue, but so far we're not seeing anything too effective coming out of it.

Ok, but both bad decisions and fertility exist in the West too. It's hard to gauge whether on average Chinese government makes more bad decisions than an average Western one (probably not even possible to objectively measure), but it's not evident to me that they don't have an advantage on this one.

I wrote up a long high effort reply to this and then my browser app froze and when it returned the page refreshed and my in progress reply was gone. So I apologize but my second attempt is going to be shorter

1: I knew vaguely there were "rumours" about China doing forced organ harvesting. I only learned very recently the rumours are basically not rumours and have a lot of evidence. My mental model was also maybe dozens of such cases if they were real and not a conspiracy theory. The actual mathematical discrepancies suggest I was wrong by several orders of magnitude. There's a ton written about this if you Google it, I had just so automatically dismissed it as a conspiracy theory I never had. I apologize for not getting the links I originally included but it really is very simple to find.

Edit: I'll add some now

https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/events/hearings/forced-organ-harvesting-china-examining-evidence

Last month, the American Journal of Transplantation – the top peer-reviewed publication on the subject – published a large-scale computational textual analysis of 2,838 Chinese-language articles published in Chinese academic journals between 1980 and 2015 which supports the inference that transplant surgeons in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) removed organs, including hearts and lungs, in violation of the internationally-accepted “dead donor” rule, i.e., before donors have been (or could be) declared “brain dead.”

The PRC is widely alleged to be a major harvester and trafficker of forcibly acquired organs. Available information indicates that Falun Gong practitioners have been the primary victims of this cruel practice, and there are now allegations that imprisoned Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities are also victims, based in part on accounts of mandatory medical testing in Xinjiang consistent with preparation for organ removal. Since 2015, Chinese authorities have claimed to only source organs from voluntary donors, but there are doubts as to the veracity of the claim. Data suggests that Chinese hospitals have performed many times more transplants than the highest estimates of ethically available donors can account for

The final judgment of the Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China Tribunal, published in March 2020, concluded that forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.

https://www.mccaininstitute.org/resources/blog/uncovering-evil-illegal-organ-harvesting-in-china-and-the-2025-stop-forced-organ-harvesting-act/

As of 2015, China declared that all organ donations would be “sourced from voluntary donors,” repealing an earlier policy that allowed the government to source organs from death row prisoners. Accordingly, in 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reported that the voluntary organ donor list of approximately 375,000 people “yielded 5,146 ‘eligible’ organ donors,” resulting in over 16,000 organ transplants.

Yet scholars and experts, such as those who form the China Tribunal, an international organization tasked with investigating transplant practices in China, find a different reality. They estimate from data, including hospital bed counts and medical personnel, that China conducts between 60,000 to upwards of 100,000 organ transplants annually.

Given the overwhelming gap in these statistics, from where did China source tens of thousands of organs?

The answer lies in the illegal operation of forced organ harvesting. Recent congressional testimonies estimate that 25,000 to 50,000 prisoners in China undergo forced organ transplants annually. Imprisoned and detained religious and ethnic groups, including the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, account for the majority of victims.

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/76845/html/

  • Implausible increase of transplant numbers in China between 1999 and 2004.
  • Increased transplant numbers cannot be attributed solely to executed prisoners.
  • Implausible growth of China’s organ donation numbers.
  • Discrepancy between officially reported transplant numbers and other transplant infrastructure parameters.
  • inexplicable medical exams in Chinese detention camps.
  • DAFOH estimates that more than 150,000 Falun Gong practitioners have become victims of forced organ harvesting in China in the past 16 years.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/06/china-un-human-rights-experts-alarmed-organ-harvesting-allegations?LangID=E&NewsID=27167

UN human rights experts* said today they were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged ‘organ harvesting’ targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China.

The experts said they have received credible information that detainees from ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations. The results of the examinations are reportedly registered in a database of living organ sources that facilitates organ allocation.

“According to the allegations received, the most common organs removed from the prisoners are reportedly hearts, kidneys, livers, corneas and, less commonly, parts of livers.

2: The level of censorship in China is very extreme. My penpal told me as a funny story that when they banned stack overflow the software engineers rioted and they backtracked, but in general they ban things freely and arbitrarily. As someone who does follow lots of Chinese media I get used to tv shows getting cancelled or the plotlines getting massively changed because someone decided that from now on you're not allowed to have zombies. The latest development is now you're not allowed to positively portray permanent transmigration, they think it's a suicide risk. It's very much not just the "obvious" don't say anything about tianenmen square, don't criticize the government, etc, it's constant stupid nonsense.

Regarding censorship, there was an old article I remember well but sadly never saved. It was about a western journalist in China who worked closely with censors. The most fascinating thing to him was how opaque the process was. One moment they'd censor something that seemed completely innocuous and another they had zero problem when he was sure they'd want some change. They would never explain the rules of what leads them to act.

One of the standard dilemmas of censorship is that the censors can't just publish a detailed list of what people can't publish without defeating the whole point. You have to come up with broader and/or more-opaque rules that encompass but avoid revealing the narrower rules you really care about, and there's no rule less revealing than "just ask and we'll tell you if it's forbidden". The public has to be kept uninformed about what the public is being kept uninformed about.

Permanent transmigration? Like leaving China or?

As sun_the_second explained, I meant isekai, I specified permanent because that's the specific kind that became not allowed so a bunch of books I'd read added epilogues where ta-da the protagonist is suddenly back in the real world, it wasn't permanent after all. But in webnovel sites it's tagged as and pretty consistently referred to as "transmigration".

You might know it by the word "isekai". AKA that thing in fiction where people from our world go into a different world, usually unexpectedly and sometimes after death.

I've seen at least one Anglophone author use "portal fantasy" as the Western equivalent of the term "isekai". I haven't seen any use "permanent transmigration".

In my experience of n=1 reading Chinese cultivation novels, the term has been "transmigration".

"Portal fantasy" sounds misleading to me. Like it's about a world where rifts open in random places and monsters come out to be slain for loot.

No, "portal fantasy" is an older term (dating back at least to 1997) and describes works like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and The Chronicles of Narnia where a kid gets transported to a fantasy land to have adventures and save the day before returning home to their ordinary lives (xkcd boils down the genre to a nutshell in "Children's Fantasy"). It's also different from the modern isekai genre, which usually involves older teenagers or outright adults dying and being reincarnated into a fantasy world, often with great powers.

It's also different from the modern isekai genre, which usually involves older teenagers or outright adults dying and being reincarnated into a fantasy world, often with great powers.

As seen, for example, in Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom series.

There's a handful of weird intermediate works: Spellsinger has a loser adult who doesn't die, but never returns and gets great powers; Magic Kingdom For Sale SOLD has a successful adult who could return but doesn't want to do so and is flakier on powers, Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure has a teenager with great powers who eventually has to force his way back into the alternate world, the main Barsroom stories have an adult getting superpowers in mere irreversible transportation but a couple characters eventually end up getting Truck-Kun'd into space.

But normally, yeah, there's a pretty clear division, and that's ossified a lot in the last two decades.

My thesis on recent world events is that there is one simple explanation for everything Trump is doing. Namely, as a classic textbook narcissist, having also risen during the uniquely self centered context of the ‘80s and ‘90s business and television culture of the US, and having been propelled to the highest echelons a narcissist could taste, he’s beginning to sense his own physical and political mortality, certainly moreso than in his first term, and knowing that people will try to tarnish his name once he is out of power, he thus wants one and only one thing. For his name to appear prominently in the history books.

This is very simple and obvious in retrospect, but it ties everything together. Renaming major geographical features. Demolishing and rebuilding part of the White House. His fixation on the Nobel peace prize. (Note the letter he wrote today to Norway, linking Greenland to not getting the peace prize). Finally, major territorial expansion. Wait, that wasn’t the final one. Undoing the world order that was in place since the world wars. Now that would do it.

He’s seen himself as a world order undoer for quite some time now, perhaps since the beginning of his rise to power. But this, this is his greatest taste of the raw history changing might that has yet been possible. Either get Greenland and change the US map forever. Or be the sole reason for the undoing of NATO. History will never be able to ignore him.

What I don’t know is whether he cares much about whether the historical changes that he will oversee and be forever tied to his name in this ultimate egoic consummation will end up being good for the United States or not. There are obvious downsides to destroying a world order which has been meticulously crafted to put you yourself at the top. But riding the coattails of that world historical success was not fit for a man who’s ego needed to be propelled to similar—no, greater!—historical status.

Narcissism often flares out into the absurd. And we seem well along that track. But just how far it will attempt to go, in this, one of world history’s most consequential cases, remains to be seen. Trump is now a great man of history and we can only wait to see what of our era will survive his grandeur.

Edit: of course, file this for an early contender for the most obvious insight of the year award. I just think it’s a more congruent explanation for the whole set of second term Trump events that we’ve seen than a lot of other explanations I see floating around for recent events.

Note the letter he wrote today to Norway, linking Greenland to not getting the peace prize

This has to be one of the more stupid things he's done, as any fule kno, the Nobel Prize is Swedish, not Norwegian...

EDIT: Looks like I'm the fule here... I didn't know the Nobel Peace Prize was Norwegian, as all the real ones are done by Sweden... This is good knowledge to have though and yet more reason why the so called Peace Prize should just be discontinued.

Nah, it's like writing a letter to Trump to complain that your movie didn't win an Oscar.

No, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is selected directly by the Norwegian legislature. So it's like writing a letter to the Academy of Motion Pictures to complain that your movie didn't win an Oscar. That won't help either, but it's not as obviously stupid.

Umm…per Wiki the peace prize it is handed out by a Norwegian committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament.

Hm...

Sweden and Norway were united in the 1800s after Sweden took it from the Danes during the Napoleonic wars. Norway was far poorer and far less developed than Sweden and Sweden effectively had to give affirmative action to Norwegians as well as subsidize Norway. When something important and official happened in Sweden Norway had to get a cut. If big prizes were handed out in Stockholm some prize needed to be handed out in Norway.

In accordance with Nobel's will, the (Nobel Peace) prize is selected by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a five-member committee appointed by the Parliament of Norway unlike all the other awards chosen by the Swedish Nobel Committee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize

Point taken

I'm not MAGA, but if I were, I'd think it was probably time to use the 25th Amendment to get President Vance.

Obviously, that's not gonna happen.

(I also thought the GOP should have been fine removing Trump last time to get President Pence. And the same for Biden and Kamala. No one listens to my great ideas.)

You had this correct when you said you are not MAGA (whatever that means).

We are talking about more terms not the final term.

There are two core problems:

  1. MAGA is a distinctively fanatical cult of personality. I suspect senior Republicans believe (probably correctly) that if they yeet Trump, his rabid base will turn on them in punishment for betraying their god-king. Even if they don't, there's a noted swathe of Trump supporters who don't show up for anyone but Trump himself. So getting rid of Trump leaves them in the awkward spot of being deserted by Trump's low-prop voters while being known to the rest of the electorate as the cowards who could have stopped the madness at any time but didn't.
  2. Trump's cabinet has no reason to want to get rid of him. It's no skin off their back if Trump destroys the country (some of them appear to be actively for it), and in the mean time, far better to be whispering in the ear of the Mad King than JD Vance, who appears to have his own ideas.

Basically, getting rid of Trump would be an act of selfless, patriotic self-sacrifice that the modern GOP is incapable of.

The liberal media narrative about how Trump is this huge narcist who wants to surround himself with a bunch of sycophantic yes-men but he's just such a poor judge of character that he keeps hiring habitual contrarians and competitive alpha-dog types (Mattis, Bannon, Flynn, Rubio, Vance, Et Al) entirely by mistake will never not be funny to me.

Basically, getting rid of Trump would be an act of selfless, patriotic self-sacrifice that the modern GOP is incapable of.

You could say the same thing about the democrats and Biden.

Not really. While it was undoubtedly an act of grotesque malfeasance and selfishness to hide Biden's state, even if we grant the most pessimistic assessments of Biden, he wasn't nearly as far gone nor as overtly harmful to the nation. One could quite reasonably conclude that Joe Biden's cabinet plus four hours a day of Joe Biden was a reasonable choice compared to the alternatives.

By contrast, with Mad King Donald and his cabinet of villains and Marco Rubio, almost any plausible alternative would be better (though JD Vance might be one of the only steps down).

The Dems just got done puppeting a diaper-shitting corpse through the presidency while nobody bought it and people laughed at them, until the old fart finally started dissociating and dribbling so badly in public that he had to be forced out of his own reelection campaign in disgrace.

I know Dumbo Drumpf is Mega Hitler because he wants Mexicans to live in Mexico, etc. etc. etc. and that finding new ways to say it after all this time has to be really hard, but maybe find a way to do it that doesn't so directly contrast with the opposition's most ludicrous failure in modern history.

You and @Skibboleth (who are so similar in posting styles that it's not surprising I often confuse your usernames and forget who's the low-effort sneering rightie and who's the low-effort sneering leftie- like seriously, even your mod logs are almost identical):

Shall we just resort to "libtard" and "republithug" now? How about "Magtard" and "shitlib"? Go ahead, bring out all your best disses that really killed it on Twitter in 2016.

No, actually, don't. Go elsewhere for pistols at dawn, or get a room, or whatever, but knock this crap off. Neither of you will be a loss if I just say "Pox on the both of you."

Shall we just resort to "libtard" and "republithug" now?

I mean I'm down if he is, I feel like he's getting the short end of the stick as far as epithets go.

While it was undoubtedly an act of grotesque malfeasance to hide Biden's state, even if we grant the most pessimistic assessments of Biden, he wasn't nearly as far gone nor as overtly harmful to the nation

Biden was indisputably further gone. You may have preferred his admin's governance, but he wasn't capable of putting complete sentences together.

I don't think Trump's sentences are any more coherent than Biden's were, he's just more forceful about them and comes across as less physically fragile.

The two flavors of senility: fading into the background, and using anger to cover up not really understanding what's going on. Avoid saying anything coherent so nobody can tell that you couldn't hear what anyone said, or insist angrily that you are correct and force everyone around you to accommodate because it's awkward to tell grandpa he's wrong.

Trump rambles and sometimes jumps erratically between different trains of thought but whichever token he's outputting at sentence position n usually bears at least some relation to token_n-3. Biden during the 2024 debates was much worse.

For what it's worth I think peak Biden was probably smarter than peak Trump.

The most important difference seems like it is that Biden didn't actually wield power anymore. It is probably not desirable that the US President is basically fully managed by their staff (who, actually, was in charge in 2024?), but this is a much different problem than if your President is crazy and potent... personally, I find the latter worse but I am much more ideologically opposed to Trump even though I loathed Biden's presidency.

I'm genuinely curious, in what way do you think JD Vance would be a step down? I'm assuming you are somewhat inclined towards preserving elements of the status quo given your posts. Do you believe Vance would be more destructive? More impulsive? What is the main concern?

I ask because I've seen this sort of addendum tacked on to a lot of statements about Trump across the internet, but I've yet to hear what specifically is so much worse about Vance.

  • JD Vance is associated with the tech right, which is explicitly pro-oligarchy and pro-authoritarianism and more abstractly seems to be pro-dystopia
  • JD Vance isn't insane. One of the saving graces of Trump's kakistocracy is that he's a decrepit idiot with a short attention span, and his inner circle is more concerned with grifting or pushing their own personal agendas. This is still very bad, but it has undermined the GOP's push towards American Orbanism.
  • JD Vance is much more willing to overtly entertain the fascistic elements of the far-right. Trump is a huge bigot, but I do not get the impression that he has much of an ideological framework, racial or otherwise.

The bear case for JD Vance is that he becomes the front man for a movement that much more smartly pursues authoritarianism and consolidates power while creating the cyberpunk hellscape William Gibson warned us about (but lamer). Combine this with Vance's apparent desire to destabilize global security for... unclear reasons and I think the implications for both the United States and the world are potentially significantly worse than many possible Trump adminstrations.

The bull case for JD Vance is that he's too weak to actually marshal any political support on his own and gets immediately sidelined. The tech right embarrassed itself right out the gate, and brings very little actual popular support to the table.

Personally, being of the Luddite persuasion, the element of the MAGA tent which I most dislike is the Thiel/Musk tech right clique, of which Vance appears to be an agent. I'd much rather be governed by woke moral busybodies or Trumpist kleptocrats than by gay space fascists. Ideally I would like none of these clowns to govern the USA, but that appears to be too much to ask for. (I don't live in the US myself, but I'm afraid my own position is not much better.)

Post lobotomy Jill Biden will have more ability than Kamala Harris on her best day. Harris is not cut of leadership clot.

The real irk here is that it makes him unpredictable in ways that no one can even expect. If you went back to 2024 and told everyone that in the first year alone Trump would start threatening to invade other NATO countries so seriously that they put tripwire troops in Greenland and Canada was looking towards China for diversifying their options, and one of the main motivators is his tantrum over not getting the nobel peace price despite already coercing it out of the actual winner already, even the most insane TDS drones would have looked at you a bit crooked.

If you told people back before the election that the winning candidate was going to try to implement price controls, take state ownership of private enterprise, and blame housing prices on big corporations being too greedy and became phone pals with an unabashed socialist you'd assume it was Harris who won or maybe even that Sanders pulled off a miracle.

And yet here we are.

Canada was looking towards China for diversifying their options

If you are at all familiar with Canada, this wouldn't come as a surprise. We've had consistent allegations that the LPC has had China intervening on behalf of them, and we've been signing a lot of treaties that empower China to access our resources.

I don't think you're wrong exactly, just that you're trivially correct. Everyone responds to the inevitability of death by thinking about their legacy, whether that's wealth, impact, relationships, or something eternal.

When I consider Trump, I am reminded, actually, of the depiction of Alexander the Great (Iskander) in the anime Fate:Zero. Okay bear with me a sec:

The premise of the series is that legendary heroes of the past are summoned with super powers to fight in a battle royale over the Holy Grail. In Fate: Zero, there's a scene where three legendary kings get together and share a drink while discussing what it means to be a king. It's one of my favorite scenes. Two of the kings, Iskander and Gilgamesh, are basically dunking on King Arthur (who's a woman for some reason) because she's sacrificed so much for her people and is basically miserable and moping all the time. Gilgamesh lays out his belief that he's the best king because he's got the most stuff, but then in an exchange between Arthur and Iskander, our boy explains what he thinks being a king is all about. Here's the key excerpt:

Arthur: If I rule the nation as king, I cannot ask to live as a person. King of Conquerors, you seek the Grail merely for your own benefit. You could never understand - you, who became a ruler only to satisfy your endless greed.

Iskander: A king without greed is even worse than a figurehead! [Arthur], you said you would martyr yourself for your ideals. In life, you must have been a pure saint. A proud and noble figure, certainly. But who can truly admire the martyr's thorny path? Who dreams of such an ending? A king. The king must be greedier than any other. He must laugh more loudly and rage for longer. He must exemplify the extreme of all things, good and evil. That is why his retainers envy and adore him. And why the flames of aspiration, to be as the king is, can burn within his people.

That's what Trump is like, and it's why his retainers adore him. He exemplifies the extreme of all things, and he charges forwards without regret. It's awesome! One more excerpt for good measure:

Arthur: Iskander, your reign ended with your heirs slain, and your empire dissolved into three parts. You have no regrets about that end?

Iskander: None. Not if it came to pass by my judgment and my retainers' sacrifices. Its destruction was inevitable. I shall grieve. And I shall weep. But I shall never regret - let alone undo it! Such an act would be a mockery of all who fought with me!

I think it's a very Western mindset to think our leaders should be more like Arthur, 'servant leaders' so to speak. Trump isn't like that at all, and doesn't pretend to be. He is a goddamn king.

In Fate: Zero, there's a scene where three legendary kings get together and share a drink while discussing what it means to be a king.

Anybody interested in this discussion who reads Cultivation Fantasy should 100% read Virtuous Sons.

They call him a narcissist because they can't stand calling him a Great Man of history, because he obviously is. They're going to call this decade the Trump Era of politics and the beginning of populism dominating the west for decades to come. He's not a boomer selling the house instead of giving it to his kids because he wants to go on cruises: he's a megalomaniac, like Napoleon. He is a man who believes he has a destiny to reshape the world in his image...

...and, based on how history has turned out, is he wrong to believe so? He was radicalized by the bullet shot through his ear. Nothing convinces you more of Providence then surviving death. God himself acts through him, as he did Pharoah: hardening his heart and accomplishing what is necessary for the proper course of history to reassert itself. In short, God is punishing you, and Donald Trump is his scourge. Reflect on your many sins you must have committed for such a sentence to be passed upon you, and repent.

and the beginning of populism dominating the west for decades to come.

I think this is serious wishful thinking. The most likely scenario, as I see it, is as follows:

  1. Democrats narrowly win the midterms later this year.
  2. Everything the Trump 2.0 admin has been accomplishing (not that there's all that much, really) is brought to a stop, or even rolled back. ICE grinds to a halt. Hegseth gets sidelined. USAID funding gets restored through various alternative bodies and channels (to the extent it hasn't already). Lawfare intensifies. We get at least another impeachment attempt or two
  3. The Republican Party establishment responds with the narrative they've already been circulating, preemptively, in anticipation of a midterm loss: it’s because we went too far right with Trump and are “scaring the hoes” — that we haven’t done enough to deplatform Carlson, Fuentes, etc. and get them taken of the airwaves interwebs (you know, that silly series of tubes that the young'uns are watching instead of proper TV — surely it can't be harder to get someone removed than it was to get the networks to pay no attention to people like the Birchers, right?); that we haven’t done nearly enough Buckleyite expulsions (see the "edgy jokes in group chat" and “Heritage society Shabbat dinner" purges); and that the party’s only path to regain all those "natural conservative" voters "scared off" by all the "extremism" and "flirting with fascism" is to "tack to the center" with "traditional conservatism" (like forever wars in the Middle East, and shipping your jobs overseas), and become the Republican Party of Mitt Romney again. (You know, the party of virtuous losers, the Washington Generals of politics, whose job — to paraphrase a Republican campaign strategist (whose interview I've been unable to find again) — is to knowingly lie and make false promises to working-class rubes to get elected, then when in office deliver corporate welfare for the GOP donor class.) So they find a way to push out Vance, and run someone like Rubio, Haley, or maybe even Youngkin.
  4. With Democratic voters energized and the Republican base demoralized, the Democrats win handily.
  5. Then, as mitchfynde on Tumblr puts it:

My ultimate vision for the United States of America right now is Gavin Newsome running for president with the slogan "lock him up". He wins and Nuremberg trials are held. Trump's administration is sent to prison, or worse, I don't really care which at this point. When Trump eventually dies of old age (or otherwise), MAGAts can begin to deprogram from the cult… The Democratic Party will begin to introduce legislation that will more correctly guardrail democracy against fascism. AI and social media will face regulations. Funding of education will increase with the hopes of a population better inoculated against fascist ideology.

  1. Populism is killed completely in the West.

(Then things get worse from there.)

Being a Great Man doesn't make you immune from mistakes and failures, even stupid ones. Napoleon - the prototypical "great man" - fruitlessly invaded Egypt, Haiti, and Russia, losing whole armies each time. In 1813-1814 he failed to make peace with his neighbors and preserve his dynasty, searching instead for a fruitless battlefield triumph. His attempt to reinstate himself in the 100 days was doomed from the get-go. He died on St. Helena in exile a broken man.

They call him a "Narcissist" because somehow they confused Megalomania with Narcissism, even though they aren't related. Narcissism isn't about how much you think your shit doesn't stink, it's about an inability (or, at least, a diminished capability) of relating to other people except as extentions of one's own ego. Which, to be blunt, is pretty much universal at this point.

This is tangential, but this is why when people say things like "China is smart, they won't just start a war over Taiwan." I laugh. Systems with high power individuals at the top run at the behest of that individual, and this is much more true or China than America. If Russia was smart they would've waited out Ukraine to hollow out demographically and become complacent, but Russia isn't in charge, Putin is and Putin wants to be remembered as the guy who reunited greater Russia. Likewise for Xi, maybe

Systems with high power individuals at the top run at the behest of that individual, and this is much more true or China than America.

Xi seems much brighter than Trump, though.

Not sure I agree. He has been absolutely destroying Chinese growth and future prospects. The problem is systems are smarter than people and both are rampaging against what were effectively built systems to greater or lesser degrees.

The question is not whether Xi is brighter than Trump the question is whether Xi is brighter than Putin.

It makes sense for China to wait until Taiwan is no longer the nexus of global semiconductor production (something that has no impact on the chauvinistic / historical / nationalist / sentimental Chinese claim) and then take the island when nobody else cares anymore. If they go early it’s because the US baited them or because Xi perceives or experiences an internal loss of power or influence to more hardcore nationalists.

It makes sense for China to wait until Taiwan is no longer the nexus of global semiconductor production

That could be a long while. And while China may be patient, Xi himself is old.

Is it really 'narcissism' when you are actually that good?

Okay, that's a joke. I mean, he is THAT GOOD, if the talent in question is making everything about himself.

But that also gives him a weak form of Skin in the Game, where he actually DOES want 'good' things to happen since that is precisely what will enable the best legacy for him. It helps that he's seemingly got no real malice as part of his self-aggrandizement (maybe a little, he sure does seem to despise Obama), and generally prefers cooperative outcomes for all involved parties.

If we achieve a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine, and he insists that the Peace agreement be called "Treaty on Russian–Ukrainian Mutual Peace", do I care that much?

No, not really.

My overarching concern has been that his 'movement' is so tied up in his ego it isn't clear if it CAN move on to anyone else once he's out of office, and that will be a major problem if there's no clear successor.

maybe a little, he sure does seem to despise Obama

And Biden, and Clinton, and Comey, and CBS... He spent Christmas ranting about the Democrats!

generally prefers cooperative outcomes for all involved parties.

He put tariffs on the entire rest of the world based the ratio of imports vs exports. And is currently threatening to annex Greenland from our allies and is using tariffs to force them to negotiate.

I saw the list of countries that had tariffs on us, and it suggests that there's a larger strategy of reducing overall trade barriers by forcing everyone else to reduce their own tariffs in the eventual trade deals.

I've talked about this point at some length.

If you haven't figured out that Trump likes to use door in the face in the opening rounds of a negotiation for an eventually agreed deal, don't know what to tell you. Its in that book he wrote.

The list of countries that had tariffs on the US was a lie, Trump didn't write Art of the Deal, and the tactics he usually uses on tariffs isn't door in the face as described in e.g. the linked article.

The last point needs some more explanation. "Door in the face" as understood by people who write about negotiation tactics, involves making an outrageous first ask which functions as a psychological anchor to make the real ask look more reasonable. The announcement of the Greenland tariffs is potentially a good example - if you assume the demand for sovereignty is a DITF which can then be negotiated down to some other concession that Denmark wouldn't normally be willing to make. But Trump's normal approach (see the early Mexico/Canada tariffs, or the Liberation Day tariffs) is to make an outrageous threat without an actionable ask attached, and then invite the threatened party to make an offer.

Trump's tariffs are based on trade deficits, Trade deficits can be a result of unfair trade, but given Trump talks about domestic manufacturing a lot, signs point to Trump simply thinking that exporting more than you are importing is an inherently good thing.

Door in the Face doesn't really have much to do with this. That's a negotiation technique, and you were talking about negotiation outcomes. Maybe it'd be better if I asked what you refer to by "cooperative outcomes for all involved parties." Greenland seems very much only for the benefit of America. His trade negotiations seem solely for the benefit of American domestic manufacturing. His Russia policy seems to be to cut off aid to Ukraine and alternative threatening either of them. He renegotiated NAFTA to increase American production, then negotiated again.

I do want to check my biases. I tried to find bills passed by Trump with bipartisan support. I couldn't find a listicle, so AI will have to do.

  1. First Step Act (2018)

  2. SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act (2018)

  3. VA Mission Act (2018)

  4. Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act Reauthorization (2018)

  5. Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act (2019)

  6. Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (Farm Bill)

I tried to find bills passed by Trump with bipartisan support. I couldn't find a listicle, so AI will have to do.

You can look at the list of all bills signed and click through to the "Actions" tab for each bill. But that isn't necessarily helpful, since most bills are passed unanimously (by "voice vote" or "unanimous consent") in both houses, and it's hard to tell from a cursory glance which bills are actually meaningful.

My overarching concern has been that his 'movement' is so tied up in his ego it isn't clear if it CAN move on to anyone else once he's out of office, and that will be a major problem if there's no clear successor.

It's not though, or at least that's not what I see.

Trump is not the center of the MAGA movement as much as he is "the face", this a big part of why he has had a decidedly mixed record when it comes to endorsing other candidates. Trump isn't "wearing the Republican party like skinsuit" so much as he is the brick that the electorate has chosen to throw through the establishment's window.

Additionally I feel like Trump has been actually been pretty good about setting up potential successors for success both within his own family (IE Kushner and Don Jr) and the wider party (IE Vance, and Rubio)

Vance and Rubio, if they continue to play cards right, should be able to form a strong ticket by all accounts.

If Trump does manage a 'clean' handoff of power to one or both of those guys (preferably Vance) that may just be the single best legacy he can leave.

"Treaty on Russian–Ukrainian Mutual Peace"

I got a chuckle out of this (it took me a second).

My overarching concern has been that his 'movement' is so tied up in his ego it isn't clear if it CAN move on to anyone else once he's out of office, and that will be a major problem if there's no clear successor.

I think this is a huge potential issue, and I will note that it's an issue regardless of whether or not Trump is a good person or a bad person or an evil and vile person or a sort of mediocre person. Strong personalities are not a substitute for strong institutions.

I think it is dangerously tempting for the right to overestimate their victories given that a few strong personalities have swung to their side. Don't get me wrong, it is always good to have great men on your side. But even the best kings pass away.

Yeah. It seems unprecedented in modern history, especially modern American history for a leader to have a sufficiently large cult of personality that when they leave it would be all but impossible for the next candidate to inherit their predecessor's supporters without their explicit blessing.

I guess... North Korea? They solve it by straightforward passing to the next of kin, along with a massive propaganda campaign to deify each successive leader, right?

Actually... I have never questioned it but who is in charge of NK's institution that upholds the Juche ideology and propagandizes the masses? In theory THAT is who is ensuring peaceful transition of power.

Edit: Oh my. Currently its his sister. I guess that tracks.

According to this one (1) singular news report I got in my feed, there's speculation that his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, is being positioned as the successor because she "walked in front of Kim Jung Un on camera."

Kremlinology, Pyongyang-style!

I question the degree to which Trump has the ability to bequeath his support to a chosen successor. He's had mixed success as an endorser of candidates. Especially if he is himself diminished in any way.

Yeah, hence why an institution that can try to build up the next candidate to receive the blessing seems like a necessary component.

Trump himself is popular amongst people who voted for him, I expect that to remain true.

Nominally this would be a job for the Republican Party apparatus but lol.

The big problems being

A) Trump is uniquely talented, so talented a politicians that he can force the tide to recede for a brief period.

B) Trump is selfish and paranoid, rightly so given the number and mendacity of his enemies, and is loathe to name or groom a successor that could turf him out.

Though I'm still surprised we haven't seen one of the kids set up as clear successor.

I don't think any of the older kids have the juice to fill his shoes. Barron is shaping with potential but obviously the age thing.

I don't think anyone has the juice to replace Trump. Love him or hate him, he is world historically talented.

Jared could probably handle the job, though he doesn't exactly have the popularity. At first Ivanka seemed like the pick, but I haven't heard anything about that in a long time.

At the very least, Trumpworld will always dangle a third term or a run by Don Jr to keep Rubio and Vance in line.

I think the framing of “Greenland or NATO” is interesting.

It seem plausible, if not probable, that the administration wants to end NATO. Or at least wouldn’t be sad to see nato go. It’s certainly a high risk gambit, but I don’t think I’m totally against ending nato.

I’ve long felt our European allies have been pretty terrible friends for my entire life. Their biggest sin was getting involved in internal USA party politics. It’s clear that they have a common vision with establishment Democrats and are actively hostile to the political goals of MAGA. They’ve been interfering with our elections since at least 2020. If Harris had won, I have no doubt that the EU would have done everything it can to destroy Elon Musk and X.

I think the Trump administration has recognized that we’re in a multi-polar world. The plan is to retrench to the Americas. I don’t see how nato fits into that. Especially if we have Greenland.

Edit:

Two threads below this:

Amelia is a supporting character in the U.K. government-funded educational visual novel Pathways, a game developed by Shout Out UK to teach the youth about extremism and radicalization. In the game, Amelia is depicted as a far-right anti-immigration activist with purple hair, a pink dress, a purple sweater and a goth or e-girl appearance, who tries persuading the protagonist to join her cause.

I don’t know how we can work with an “ally” that does this. This is just one drop in an ocean of shit that comes from our “friends” in Europe and the anglosphere. Even if you believe (the likely true) theory that European countries are just branch offices of US deep state, I don’t see why we should allow them to share resources.

This is a much more salient problem for me than Russia and China.

I don’t know how we can work with an “ally” that does this. This is just one drop in an ocean of shit that comes from our “friends” in Europe and the anglosphere.

The only reason anyone in Europe has ever done this is because America spent the entire post-war period enforcing it on Europe.

You invented all these shenangians and in a few years, once the Republicans lose, you'll jump straight back into it.

The benefit to the increasing divide between the USA and Europe is that soon Europe will be able to publicly partner far more with China, who has never cared how racist their business partners are, so long as they are stable. No Chinese ever called me Whitey.

We are in agreement.

No Chinese ever called me Whitey.

They definitely do, but they do it in Mandarin, which they are certain you will never understand.

Baizou is an all timer as far as I’m concerned. It’s been like ten years since I first heard the term and it’s basically a perfect slur. No notes.

I essentially agree with you, but I doubt it has much to do with his own mortality, he has simply always been this way. He has always emblazoned his name in giant gold letters on skyscrapers, it's just kind of who he is. I think now that we are halfway through his final term it is obvious that he won't be able to remake American society wholesale and his enemies will always hate him, there is no changing either of those things. So like you said, I think he seeks to emblazon his name on world history. If the USA acquired Greenland his name would certainly be indelibly written into the history books, I don't think there is much of grand strategy angle to it. Most of this stuff seems relatively harmless, and frankly it's potentially a good thing for a US President to have a strong drive to be considered great.

This not his “final term”. Somehow he will be in power in 2028. Either directly through a dictatorship or more likely his puppet will be in the white house. Whether it’s President Vance or President Donnie Jr the real power is still going to be Donnie Sr.

You don’t need to sit on the Iron Throne to wield the Iron Throne. My personal preference is just elect Donnie Jr. but Jr stays in the background.

  • -12

Somehow he will be in power in 2028.

Yes he will — and for the first 19.5 days of 2029 too!

I have two problems with this line of thinking:

  1. A president wishing to protect their legacy is not a novel insight. Anyone who makes it to the position wants to do that. Being an old man in a second term may magnify this need but most actions taken by most presidents should be assumed to be with the goal in mind.

  2. Trump isn't really a narcissist. I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with the (thankfully mostly private) way medical and psychological professionals will throw the diagnosis around. He can't really meet the "formal" criteria because of things like "yes he is actually one of the most important people in the world" and a hopelessly obscured life history.

In terms of informal criteria, Trump has been the victim of so many bad faith attacks, lies, insults, slanders, and true criticisms that if he was at all vulnerable to narcissistic injury he would have gone away or broken down long ago.

Narcissism is superficially described by arrogance but is better described by insecurity. The first hand accounts of Trump I know do describe an amount of insecurity, but certainly not to an excess.

His ability to function makes an NPD diagnosis unlikely, furthermore his ability to attack and frustrate his opponents indicates a sufficient theory of mind to make NPD unlikely.

As a additional matter:

People who know Trump very well will state that while he may be conceited, he legitimately is interested in doing what is best for the American people, especially if it improves his legacy. He just does it in a chaotic way because he is not a politician and does not have an expert level intellectual background in the things he is working on.

if he was at all vulnerable to narcissistic injury he would have gone away or broken down long ago

Trump has broken down. He has a public meltdown like three times a week. I don't know how you can look at his behavior and conclude that this is a guy who has his shit together. The man just wrote a public* angry letter to the PM of Norway because he's mad about the Nobel prize committee (which doesn't work for the Norwegian government) and Greenland (which is part of a different country).

he legitimately is interested in doing what is best for the American people

I really don't see any evidence for this. If people close to him are saying that, it's probably because it's in their interest to present Trump as well-intentioned rather than vindictive and corrupt. Trump has consistently prioritized his own interests, power, and obsessions over the interests of America. The Greenland Crisis is just the latest example of this.

The best argument one could make to sustain the idea that Trump is acting in good faith is that he's just a moron. And in fairness, there's good reason to think that (though being a moron doesn't preclude corrupt intent). He doesn't just lack an expert-level intellectual background in the things he is working - something he has in common with the vast majority of presidents - he lacks basic intellectual curiosity and common sense (see, e.g. his preposterous understanding of trade deficits) and has a zero-sum understanding of the world.

*correction: He sent a completely unhinged private letter which only an idiot would not expect to be shared immediately

I implore you to try and model him as a real person as opposed to a stereotyped figure of hatred. He has human moments, motivations.

He is famous for actively soliciting feedback and information from EVERYBODY even when it's ill advised and he shouldn't listen, this gets painted as "whoever talked to him last" in the media but their is tremendous value to that.

I know several people who have run into him in his golf clubs and he usually asks what they think about it, actually listens, and appears to provide some consideration if they have something meaningful to say.

He is a person doing a hard job without the background that is usually required to do well.

Does he have character flaws? Everyone who is president does. Some people are worse than others, but:

Don't lose track of the fact that he is a real person and some not some poorly written Saturday morning cartoon.

I implore you to try and model him as a real person as opposed to a stereotyped figure of hatred. He has human moments, motivations.

Not Skibboleth, but this seems bit in bad faith --- I am not equipped to make diagnoses, but I certainly have met real people who are to first approximation modeled as vindictive and prone to tantrums. I won't try to analyze Trump's behavior deeply here, just saying such description can match a real peson.

I know several people who have run into him in his golf clubs and he usually asks what they think about it, actually listens, and appears to provide some consideration if they have something meaningful to say.

Most people report similar experiences after meeting most politicians and other sufficiently charismatic people. Because that's what charisma often is. Some people have met "lite" versions of such charismatic persons. Super nice person who actually listens, is very sympathetic, sounds someone you would like to hang around with ... except when when you stop and compare notes with other people, and reflect on your past interactions with this person, it becomes obvious that they shit-talk other people, does come through only when it is for their immediate benefit, generally act in self-serving manner, have always a plan who to throw under the bus when a project fails due to their failings? (that was my first $big_corp line manager --- I have since left the company, I hear his career is going okay. He also never threw tantrums).

I implore you to consider that not all analysis of Trump's behavior are driven by hatred. Like, his letter to Norwegian PM has been published, and apparently is a genuine real deal. It is a very weird thing to read. (Well, so were all his tweets, too, but I suppose I have become desensitized by now).

I implore you to consider that not all analysis of Trump's behavior are driven by hatred.

My assertion is that I have yet to really see any anti-Trump writing that acknowledges him as a complete person, pretty much everything I've seen for ten years now has been exaggeration and stereotyping of his worse attributes and behaviors.

A much, much less lower bar ("say anything nice about Trump at all") has never been cleared by anyone I've interacted with in real life and rarely here.

I disagree with your characterization of charisma but more importantly the aforementioned behavior has been well known and noted by neutral and positive coverage since before he jumped into politics.

Either you ignore it because of Trump hatred, or (more likely) you haven't dug into who the guy is a person, which does a much better job of explaining his beliefs and behavior.*

Private knowledge tells me that Obama is a shitty overly permissive parent and that Bush did a bunch of coke when he was younger, but you don't need to be clued in to know that Clinton got up to shitty stuff with women or that Obama is destructively competitive. These are the most important people in the world and the unbiased information about how they actually function is out in the world.

Related: almost zero moderate to low information Democrats I know are aware of Trump's attitude towards drugs and alcohol despite this being an important part of his character, in fact most people assume they are the opposite of the truth.

Private knowledge tells me that Obama is a shitty overly permissive parent and that Bush did a bunch of coke when he was younger, but you don't need to be clued in to know that Clinton got up to shitty stuff with women or that Obama is destructively competitive. These are the most important people in the world and the unbiased information about how they actually function is out in the world.

Please do realize you just posted a collection random smears about Obama and Bush. While they may be true, they are not characterization of their personality or charisma. Like, trump is certainly famous for his own moral failings on infidelity and lack of decorum concerning women. But concerning charisma, Obama was very charismatic on tv --- exactly the person a blue-coded voter would like to hang out with. Bush projected a cowboy rancher persona, which worked for him but resulted in blue-coded people liking to call him a slow, idiot, moron and projecting conspiracy theories that he was really puppeted by Cheney, which was absurd).

My assertion is that I have yet to really see any anti-Trump writing that acknowledges him as a complete person, pretty much everything I've seen for ten years now has been exaggeration and stereotyping of his worse attributes and behaviors.

A much, much less lower bar ("say anything nice about Trump at all") has never been cleared by anyone I've interacted with in real life and rarely here.

Okay. But if you are arguing against such amorphous blob of writing you dislike, you are not really engaging in an argument with us in this forum thread.

e. P.S.

Concerning this aspect in particular: You say you reject my characterization of charisma. Sure, it was not all-encompassing definition. But do you reject that person I tried to describe exist? I recounted it because I found Skibbolet's description not exceedingly uncommon, a plausible theory of mind real people can maintain about other real people, in opposition to your claim that other interlocutors in this discussion are not modelling Trump as a real person. You have also neither touched on his letter to Norwegian PM.

I picked one person from each side of the aisle to make it clear it wasn't partisan, and your approach seems more "gotcha" oriented than anything, between that and a hidden profile I think I'm going to exit this one.

Cheers!

For the record, MAGA dislikes both Bush and Clinton, so it is not really very convincing attempt at non-partisanship. I also admit I don't really understand the point you were trying to make recounting anecdotes of them, either.

It is certainly your prerogative not to engage, I do that all the time when I lose interest in discussion threads here. However, I am befuddled why you posted any replies to my replies if you don't want to have an argument about what I wrote. Dunno if it counts a "gotcha".

More comments

My assertion is that I have yet to really see any anti-Trump writing that acknowledges him as a complete person, pretty much everything I've seen for ten years now has been exaggeration and stereotyping of his worse attributes and behaviors.

A much, much less lower bar ("say anything nice about Trump at all") has never been cleared by anyone I've interacted with in real life and rarely here.

As someone who thinks Trump is decidedly less virtuous than average, I can actually think of fair few nice things to say about him: he seems quite forgiving, he can be generous with praise, he's got a sense of humour etc.

Oh yeah many people here can do this if directly prompted, which is why I made it about people I know in real life. Too many people here will jump in on the discussion (big enough forum and people will get to it) or just say something to score points.

Likewise I'm sure with direct prompting people can do what I ask, but the baseline level on the internet is "Trump will cancel the elections" which is...not great understanding.

Likewise I'm sure with direct prompting people can do what I ask, but the baseline level on the internet is "Trump will cancel the elections" which is...not great understanding.

Well I can report nobody has claimed "Trump will cancel the elections" in this discussion here, yet. We have one complaint this far that Europeans interfere with the US elections, however

The man just wrote a public angry letter to the PM of Norway because he's mad about the Nobel prize committee

It was not a public letter, unless there was another letter I was unfamiliar with.

I'll let you argue the point with other people who have a stronger opinion on what textbook narcissism is.

Personally, I don't really think it matters (except possibly for his personal well-being) - his behavior is either good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, honorable or dishonorable, etc. Whether or not he meets some diagnostic criteria is of secondary importance. I don't, for the record, tend to agree with a lot of the way he's handled the Greenland affair.

But I also think most people forget Ellsberg's warning to Kissinger:

you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess.

But of course there's a caution there not only for the outsider (us, or most of us I reckon), but also for the insider:

The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.

He's legitimately interested in what's doing what is best for the American people insofar as he and his also make a buck.

He's got a mafioso approach towards politics and economics. "What's in it for me?" "Are you loyal above all else?" He automatically respects other leaders with the same instincts. That's why he's got an authoritarian streak, but he's not actually a tyrant. He can be extremely forgiving, if one bends the knee to his satisfaction.

Politicians as a class of human beings are pretty obviously suffering from high rates of narcissism, even if you think a lot of it is subclinical.

Trump and his obsession with e.g. the Nobel Prize, throwing his name/image on all kinds of governmental things, or election results (he always wins by a landslide in his head) make it pretty clearly clinical. He's a standout among politicians for narcissism. A true generational talent.

"What's in it for me?" "Are you loyal above all else?" He automatically respects other leaders with the same instincts. That's why he's got an authoritarian streak, but he's not actually a tyrant. He can be extremely forgiving, if one bends the knee to his satisfaction.

Coincidentally, you can relate this to how Locke defines a ruler tyrannical: he who rules not by law but uses power "for his own, private, separate advantage" and "makes not the law, but his will, the rule". One could try make the case Trump's will is directed to the preservation of the properties of the US citizens, which remains to be seen, but a ruler who judges people not by their actions or character or other principle but strict quid pro quo basis would be anathema to Locke.

Similarly, in Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu argues that wheras republican forms of government springs from the citizens' virtue and monarchical government requires honor (as in, aristocratic titles and behaviors) despotic government requires (according to M.) fear, of losing the favor the despot. Now Montesquieu is not a big fan of despotism, but one could argue that professions of gratitude and loyalty are the flip side of the same coin as fear.

Coincidentally, you can relate this to how Locke defines a ruler tyrannical: he who rules not by law but uses power "for his own, private, separate advantage" and "makes not the law, but his will, the rule"

I haven't read Locke, so apologies if I'm misunderstanding, but this seems pretty obviously false to me? Or at least a very non-standard definition of tyranny. If the USSR under Stalin were less corrupt and arbitrary, would it have been less tyrannical? It would have been more thorough in its oppression. In 1984, no one actually benefits from the system: the more power you have in the party, the less freedom it permits you. It's pure Molochianism: the party accumulates all the power it can and crushes all opposition not because anyone actually wants that, but because the party that prioritizes winning over all else is the one that wins.

I suppose such a system would be less tyrannical in the sense of having less of a tyrant? Not necessarily: if the law permits absolute rule by an individual, which many systems of law through history actually do, the tyrant need not override the law to exercise power capriciously. And again, in such a case, I'd see an absolute ruler who uses his position to enrich himself as less tyrannical than one that uses it in support of sincere authoritarian ideology. Hitler's corruption must have had a (very) small but real impact on the efficiency of the Nazi state, and a less efficient Nazi state is less able to pursue the Nazis' tyrannical aims.

Politicians as a class of human beings are pretty obviously suffering from high rates of narcissism, even if you think a lot of it is subclinical.

Arrogance isn't narcissism, and the former is likely in part required to be a politician. The latter requires actually understanding the motivations of someone which in most cases is going to require a personal relationship or types of interactions that are incompatible with politics.

You'll note that most people who believe Trump is a narcissist already do not like Trump, and most people who like him don't believe he's a narcissist.

Analysis of this is hopelessly mired by political inclinations and fundamentally low quality news coverage.

It's pretty obvious what Trump is doing with Greenland for instance but you'd never guess that from social media and most mainstream media coverage.

At this point, I just use statements of "Trump is a narcissist" or "Trump doesn't understand basic economics" as revelatory of someone who simply isn't fit to be a political actor. Intelligent criticisms of Trump exist; "muh corruption" [which is what happens when social privilege runs into an institution that refuses to respect it] is not one of those.

People saying "not a politician" usually have a better understanding of it, but I think the best understanding is that Trump actually bothers to include the nation in the political process, and the nation is not used to that nor are they ready for it, so they don't react well.

This also extends to people in other nations reacting to Trump, which hamstrings their response: they reflexively vote for conservatives who promise maximum hostility, but aren't capable of evaluating their own economic or strategic position [or that of their immediate neighbors]. This is also D criticism of Trump in a nutshell, for just as negotiations are proposed publicly, they also fail just as publicly (re: China's current strategic retaliation).

The fact Trump is calling the public of those nations directly out on international media, rather than their king(s) in private, is itself enough of a culture shock to send them searching psychology textbooks for answers. But again, it's their worldview that is wrong: European countries are American provinces and have been ever since their invasion force hit the Continent the morning of June 6, 1944.

Usually the public is included in the political process by the legislature, but that hasn't been meaningful for a long time thanks to 51/49 effects which provoke a tendency to never do anything lest that hurt voter turnout (thus the need to hold policy goals hostage- abortion rights, same sex marriage rights, gun rights, industry rights [as a tax or penalty of $0 for disobeying the bureaucracy comes right back if the relevant actors don't vote for politicians that promise it stays gone], etc.). This is arguably just as relevant for D as it is for R.

European countries are American provinces and have been ever since their invasion force hit the Continent the morning of June 6, 1944.

While you are not totally wrong, I think that this is an oversimplification. The deal the US offered in Europe and Asia after WW2 was mutually beneficial, and a lot of countries took you up on it. However, this is based on soft power. You do not own Europe like China owns Tibet.

If you want an analogy, think of the British Commonwealth. Canada is part of it, which means that King Charles is their head of state. But it is (even more than America's NATO) based on soft power. The minute King Charles or Starmer make a hard power move, e.g. try to to take direct control of the Canadian navy or Nunavut, they will learn to their peril that hard power and soft power are different things and Canada can actually function very fine without a British monarch at the top.

Okay, this is the second subthread today that makes me think about a certain scottpost.

Wanting to make history is not limited to narcissists. Every kid who thought about being an astronaut has been there. Trump just never had to give up the dream.

I don’t think this actually explains his attitude towards NATO, which is not a new obsession. He’s harped on it since the first term, but it’s always taken a backseat to domestic politics. So I guess I still prefer my model:

Trump makes brand decisions, not strategic ones.

That’s it. There’s no other criteria. Trump wants Greenland because superpowers do stuff like that. He dislikes NATO because he’s convinced it’s a bad deal.

He does not play the long game. He does not eat a loss. He does not implement a strategy. People come to him with proposals, and if they’re aligned with his brand, he gives them whatever they need. If not, he fires them. Trump I was ineffective because he didn’t have the roster depth needed to survive this style. After eight years of setting expectations, the current administration has much more momentum.

The problem with this theory is that a lot of his moves are not even close to insta-wins. Accepting Obama's proposal that Iran is the new American Ally in the Mid East is an insta-win. Instead he went with a complicated Israeli-Saudi led alliance that has only paid off in ways that 9/10 advisors would have told him would fail.

Same happens basically everywhere abroad.

Domestically his successes are more limited, mostly because his power is more limited and media is stronger. If he could just get blue states to cooperate with ICE with a magic wand and proceedings could be expedited, he would be above his February approval ratings. Instead, doing his promises necessarily looks scary. He's got a harder job.

It's not exactly new or surprising that a head-of-state would have a big ego and ambition to leave a legacy. One might even say that's the norm. The constitution was explicitly designed with this in mind, with the hope that each separate branch of government would, by trying to seize more power for itself, keep the others in check.

What is new is how... useless Congress has become. In theory they have immense power. They could remove the president from office, fully control government spending, and even rewrite the constitution as they please. But in practice they just can't seem to agree on anything. They can barely even pass routine budgets to keep federal services running.

At the same time, social media has given the President more power than ever with his "bully pulpit." We can now directly watch all of Trump's speeches at the click of a button, or read his thoughts in short tweet form. And Trump is very effective at that kind of short-form communication. The rest of government is too fractured and, frankly, boring, to grab people's attention the way Trump can. It'll be interesting to see if this continues- somehow I can't imagine people tuning in to watch Vance or Shapiro with the same sort of horrified excitement they give to Trump. But we'll see- I suppose any speech becomes more interesting when it's backed up by immense power.

Regarding NATO, it's sort of a similar argument. Europe has, in theory, a lot of military power, but it's difficult to really use it when it's fractured between 31 different non-US members. What I would like to see is for continental Europe to form a new "Core NATO" with a centralized European Army, focused entirely on defending Europe. The US could either leave NATO or minimize its involvement there, and instead focus on AUKUS, potentially expanding it to include Canada, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan. This would be a smaller, but more tightly knit alliance, aimed at being able to project force all over the world, but especially at sea and even more especially in East Asia. Since this alliance is smaller and more closely aligned, it would have a lot more cohesion and flexibility to forcefully defend its (narrowly defined) strategic interests- peace in the middle east, counter-terrorism, and containing China and Russia.

Just tangentially:

Am I wrong, or did Greenland come back into the conversation after nearly a year of absence because a reporter randomly asked Trump about it when he was taking press questions about venezuela two weeks ago? Here on air force one impromptu questioning on Jan 4th, (23:45 timestamp). Trump seems bewildered and is laughing about Greenland being brought up randomly/inappropriately, seemingly out of nowhere (I guess Katie Miller had apparently tweeted a troll stars&stripes greenland 'SOON' picture on Jan 3rd, responding to hemispheric dominance from the 'Donroe doctrine', or the reporter was thinking that same thing independently). But having that seeded back into consciousness, Trump went back to his old line, saying "we need it" rather than "we want it", joked about them beefing up their defense with 1 additional dog-sled, and tried to make his little audience there laugh.

It seems entirely like everyone else earnestly picked that up and ran with it again, and Trump has just continued to respond and not back down (which is always his gut instinct). It doesn't actually seem like this was a huge preoccupation with legacy weighing on his mind this term.

I've mentioned that I still go to yahoo news to see what the daily mainstream normie news aggregate is (to a logged-out american IP), and it appears that ragebait trump-bad-ally greenland stories are pushed every day, usually to the exclusion of anything about minneapolis (or venezuela, more understandably).

ragebait trump-bad-ally greenland stories are pushed every day,

Trump is the one pushing them.

Yeah, but... how is that news? Trump having a massive ego is something everyone who took one look at the guy can tell. What's more I don't know if it can be any other way for someone in his position. Years ago I was watching one of Ethan van Sciver's streams (an ex-DC Comics guy for the unfamiliar), and he got into some drama with some indie guy from Brazil. The Brazilian guy posted something on Twitter to the effect of that he's making the best comic book in the history of the world, and when the stream audience saw that, superchats started rolling in taking the piss out of the guy. Funnily enough van Sciver came to his defense, he said "You guys don't get it, he's doing it right. You need to have a massive ego in this field, because if you don't, the amount of negative feedback you get will make you crumble". If this is true for comic book artists, I really don't see how it can be any other way for politicians.

You could try to argue that his particular brand of narcissism is particularly destructive for a world leader, but is it really that unique? Was Angela Merkel bringing over ~1.5 million Syrians and Afghans, and brushing off all concerns with a mere "we'll manage it" all that different?

Yeah, but... how is that news? Trump having a massive ego is something everyone who took one look at the guy has a massive ego

Agreed. I'm a big fan of Trump, but obviously the guy has some issues with grandiosity (probably he would admit as much).

I do think it's silly to push for Greenland but so far, I'd rather have that than have someone who supports things like hiring unqualified air traffic controllers in order to promote a woke racial agenda.

I really don't see how it can be any other way for politicians.

Case in point:

Angela Merkel bringing over ~1.5 million Syrians and Afghans

I was mostly not a fan of Merkel during her 16 years. Before the refugee thing, she did not have any policies she believed in apart from "I should be the chancellor". Spineless, always following the prevailing winds. The people want to get rid of nuclear because Fukoshima? Let's get rid of nuclear.

(Her stance on the refugees was different from that. Apart from the first order effects of letting in a lot of brown people, the fact that she did this while being the head of the CDU also permanently empowered the far-right AfD, a long term effect I personally find far more concerning.)

Of course all politicians have a strong ego, but I do not think hers was pathological. I can not imagine Merkel watching the Tagesschau, noticing that she was not mentioned once, and deciding to do something about it. She knew what she had achieved: starting out as the pastor's daughter (not exactly high society, especially not in East Germany), studying physics, then joining the CDU after the '89 revolution. Starting out as Kohl's Quotenfrau and Quoten-Ossi (affirmative action woman and East-German), she climbed to the top of the CDU (a backstabbing hive of scum and villainy if there ever was one, and certainly not one believing in female empowerment), and managed to keep on top of them (and in power) for an impressive amount of time.

My feeling is that she was quite happy with her achievements, not that she was obsessively comparing herself to her predecessors and found herself wanting because Kohl had one more unification under his belt or Schroeder had more invitations to Moscow or whatever.

To be a bit more blunt, while she was much and viciously ridiculed for being a non-feminine woman, with Merkel I do not get the feeling that she was in politics to compensate for some perceived inadequacy.

I mean, if I was Trump and comparing myself to Obama, I would have plenty to feel inadequate about. Unlike Trump, Obama was not exactly born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Where Trump has a BS from UPenn, Obama has a doctorate from Harvard Law. Obama followed a standard cursus honorum from state legislature to US senate to presidency. Trump basically won the presidency through his willingness to engage in the Birther conspiracy and through being correctly perceived by his proletarian supporters as the candidate who would piss off the establishment the most. It does not matter who your voters are for getting elected president, as each vote counts the same (at least within a district, otherwise it's terribly messy), but for the amount of respect you earn from the upper-middle class for your victory it matters a lot.

Of all the honors Obama received, the Nobel is the one he deserved least, and one of the weakest Nobels awarded. He basically got a Nobel simply for not being George W Bush. Well, Trump always had an additional 15 years of not being GWB on Obama, so it surely stands to reason that he should get a Nobel too, no?

Sadly, Trump severely lacks awareness of how the mind of the Nobel committee works. The way he got into politics is the first point against him. His general style is the second. From his tweets to him renaming the DoD to DoW, he is not even fulfilling European expectations for how a meh US president should behave, never mind the expectations for one deserving the Nobel. At this point, he would have to persuade the Middle East to live in harmony and friendship, negotiate with Russia and China for a treaty which reduces nuclear weapon stockpiles by 90% and be hailed as 'The Peacebringer' by archangels (or equivalent) representing at least three world religions before he had a shot at getting his own instead of a hand-me-down like Goebbels or Infantino's sad participation trophy.

Of course all politicians have a strong ego, but I do not think hers was pathological. I can not imagine Merkel watching the Tagesschau, noticing that she was not mentioned once, and deciding to do something about it.

Yeah, and I don't think that's how Trump operates either. Ages ago, when everybody and their dog was opening startups, before Trump got into politics, I watched a video from some techno-entrepreneur I can't even recall. He was talking about the different motivations for starting a company. Money was the obvious one, he brought up one or two more that I can't remember, but the one that stick in my head was "legacy". He gave Trump as the example for that one, as he was willing to forgo profit, just to put his family name on top of buildings. For me this continues to be the best explanation for his behavior. It's probably the whole reason he ran for president, because now his name will have to recorded in history books.

Getting rid of nuclear, and letting in refugees, and dismissing all concerns with a one-liner, shows the same kind of obsession with how history will remember you, in my opinion.

Of all the honors Obama received, the Nobel is the one he deserved least, and one of the weakest Nobels awarded...

Sadly, Trump severely lacks awareness of how the mind of the Nobel committee works....

...At this point, he would have to persuade the Middle East to live in harmony and friendship, negotiate with Russia and China for a treaty which reduces nuclear weapon stockpiles by 90% and be hailed as 'The Peacebringer' by archangels (or equivalent) representing at least three world religions before he had a shot at getting his own instead of a hand-me-down like Goebbels or Infantino's sad participation trophy.

That's a lot stronger condemnation of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the entire social class responsible for it's stewardship, than it is of Trump.


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