There is the usual praise for the Hong Kong government and Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu's leadership. One striking difference is that Premier Li Qiang included in his annual work report, delivered at the opening session of the National People's Congress (NPC), a call on Hong Kong to improve its governance and align itself with the national plan. Li has made the central government's position clear: improve the city's governance and get with the programme already. [Link]
I don't like this. "National Plans"? That's for socialist economies. Top-down economies. Not capitalist ones like us here in Hong Kong.
I know there are many in the west, in capitalist economies, that are in love with similar things. Like "industrial policy". I'm not sure any has been hugely successful.
Rather leave things to the genius of the market. Of the pricing mechanism. It's the market that’s really best at "shaking up". It’s the most successful of all systems in "speeding up".
Remember how China sped up in the late 1970s? It wasn't by National Plans, but by releasing market forces. I was there when it happened.i saw it with mine own eyes.
This is classic "Astroturf". Make the fake grass (astroturf) look like real grass (grassroots). I get it now! Astroturf! Fake grassroots.
As Nate Friedman says: "If it weren't for the money supporting all this [from George Soros, Roy Singham, etc] there would be no protests".
It's America's First Amendment (on Free Speech) working against itself. Working against the foundation of America, working against its tolerance and its free speech. It's a tough issue. Because how do you deal with it, without breaching free speech codes, and one's commitment to being a Free Speech fundamentalist?
What are they all about, these activists? The ones shown here by Nate are pushing for socialism. They've never experienced socialism, and don't know, apparently, how bad it is in practice. I do. Many do. Those that have experienced it do know -- myself, I know from personal experience in 1970s China -- that if socialism takes over America, Free Speech is gone. That's number one. Number two and the rest are all the freedoms that these young sign-holders in this vid, take for granted.
~ NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In response to US and Israeli strikes on Iran, which killed the Ayatollah Khamenei and his cabinet.
Sure they do.
But you don't get peace by capitulation. You get slavery. Capitulate to Iran, next thing you're in Sharia hell. Not freedom. Not quite the "peace" you wanted.
Mamdani, a jihadi-socialist, would welcome capitulation by the US. Because there will be more Islamist immigrants to the US, and in the west. Thus progressing the Muslim Brotherhood aim of "defeating the west from within".
Neville Chamberlain waved a pice of paper signed by Adolf Hitler proclaiming "We have peace in our times". That was 1938. We all know what happened next. Certainly not "peace".
We don't want another "peacein-our-times" type mistake. We have to fight radical Islam, all the more when its in the guise of a whole country, of 90 million people, which supports proxies to attack the hated Jews.
We're done with you, Mamdani. Go stay in your lane: which is trying to run New York City.
Is this neo-McCarthyism? To be worried, again, as we were in the fifties, about "Reds under the beds"?
Well, no.
Because then, in the 1950s it was all about individuals who had some connection, past or present, to the Communist Party. Now it's about whole organizations. All of them avowed, self-styled communists, being quite open about their communist sympathies. People like AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Zohran Mamdani… and many more. Members of Socialsts for America, of the organisations in the post above.
So what? Is it something to fear?
I say yes it is. This is something to fear.
From my experience of living in Communist China in the 1970s. Food and clothing was rationed. Why? Because the government was in charge of every single aspect of life, and they're simply not good at running an economy. If one objected to any aspect of this despotism, it was off to Labour camp (劳改) for you! It's a One-Party state, so you can forget your worries about "democracy"… there is none.
I can't vouch foe every fact in the above paper. But the thrust is correct. The Democratic Party has ,moved so far left, many influential members are outright communists. And proudly so.
Xi Van Fleet is a refugee from China, in the days I knew it. When it was very Communist. She suffered under communism, as did hundreds of millions. She warns:
I grew up in Communist China. I saw how the CCP exploited their followers and discarded them when no longer useful .
The pattern is the same everywhere. Causes like this depend on useful idiots to rise.
I’m going to say this once, and I don’t care if it makes people uncomfortable.
If you have never lived in Venezuela
If you did not grow up there
If you did not watch your country collapse in real time
If you did not stand in food lines
If you did not watch your parents lose everything they built
If you did not have to leave your home with nothing
Then shut the fuck up.
You do not have an opinion.
Your opinion does not matter.
And you don’t get to lecture anyone about what’s happening there.
I’m Venezuelan.
I lived there most of my life until my early twenties.
I watched my country go from a functioning democracy to full blown socialism right in front of my eyes.
This is not politics to me.
This is trauma.
Before socialism, Venezuela was not perfect, but it worked.
There was trade.
There was money coming in.
There was investment from the US.
There were jobs.
There was food.
There was medicine.
My family had five businesses.
We had our home
We had investments.
We had a future.
Then the government started nationalizing everything.
Private companies were taken.
Foreign investors were pushed out.
Imports were blocked.
Price controls destroyed production.
Corruption exploded.
And everything died.
Not slowly.
Violently.
People didn’t suddenly become poor because of “capitalism” or “the US” or whatever bullshit slogan people like to repeat online.
They became poor because socialism destroyed incentives, destroyed production, destroyed trust, and destroyed hope.
People today in Venezuela are not debating ideology.
They are trying to survive.
They are trying to find food.
Trying to find medication.
Trying to keep their families alive.
So when I see people in the West posting from comfortable homes, full fridges, stable currencies, and safe streets talking about “imperialism” or “US bad” or “Trump this or that”
No.
It’s not complicated.
You’re just ignorant.
China is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Russia is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Cartels are not rebuilding Venezuela.
They are stealing.
They are extracting.
They are draining what’s left.
If the US comes in and reinvests
If refineries get rebuilt
If infrastructure gets restored
If imports open back up
If food, water, and medicine become accessible again
If people can work and earn with dignity
Then yes.
Let them take all the oil they want.
Because at least something gets built instead of destroyed.
This is something to celebrate.
Not because it’s perfect.
But because for the first time in a long time, there is hope.
Hope that families can eat.
Hope that people don’t have to flee their country.
Hope that Venezuela can function again.
If you’ve never lived through a country collapsing
If you’ve never watched socialism destroy everything around you
If you’ve never had to leave your home because staying meant starvation
Then again
Shut the fuck up.
This isn’t theory.
This isn’t politics.
This is lived experience.
By Stephen Subero. Singer
=====================
Me: Socialism is horrible. I've seen it. I've lived it. I know it.
Socialism makes people poor and wretched. It encourages corruption, fraud and waste. It's the most destructive ideology of the 20th century, a period with plenty of destructive ideologies.
Poland becomes capitalist in 1990 and the economy Zooms.
Venezuela becomes socialist in 1999 and is impoverished.
We know that these are "correlations with causation". The cause of the Zoom for Poland, the cause of the impoverishment for Venezuela, in each case, the causes were the policies followed.
We know this because we study the individual examples. And because we have plenty of other examples out there.
Eg: The difference between North and South Korea. Eg: The difference between the old East Germany and West Germany. North Korea, East Germany, both run as Socialist economies, both grindingly poor. South Korea and West Germany, both run as Capitalist economies, both wealthy.
We also know that in every single country that socialism has been tried, it's failed. The people have got poorer. The economy has tanked. Repression and dictatorship abound.
Then there's China. Socialist until the late 1970s. Then more capitalist. Aka, run by allowing market forces to operate. That was what raised hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. Not socialism. But the exact extent to which the authorities allowed market forces, capitalism, to operate. That was the exact extent to which they prospered.
I saw the effects of socialism when I first arrived in socialist China in 1976. The only vegetable you could get in winter was cabbage. Bread was unavailable. Shoes and clothes were rationed. Rice was rationed. Meat was rationed. Then Zhao Ziyang began the "Four Modernisations", the Chinese version of Market Forces. Lo! China prospered.
Yet, in New York's Times Square, yesterday, we saw crowds of people calling for more socialism. For more Communism. For more of the "Bolivarian revolution". For Maduro do be released. For America to become socialist, communist even.
There's no teaching some people. Some people are immune to the lessons of history. Some people will never learn the lessons of history, not matter how much you tell them. I think we just have to live with that reality and simply not let them near the levers of power. Because we know, to a moral certainly, what happens to a successful economy when you turn it Socialist. In a word: Penury. In another word: Ruination.
“Mullocracy” = Dictatorship of the Mullahs. Aka Dictatorship of the Ayatollahs. Aka Theocracy. Aks Iran.
Which Iran has been since 1979. And which so many Iranians have come to hate. And now bravely say so. As in the video above.
Unlike the faux “bravery” of a Greta Thunberg in the west. Who is performative in her “resistance”, who “speaks truth to power”, is “bravely” arrested, and out of jail before the day has ended, in Iran, women who resist, who break the law by going into public with hair uncovered risk jail, rape and death. To resist the Iranian regime is the real bravery. Western women defying cops in western cities are performative.
Do not forget: this regime in Iran is the one who came to power in 1979, via revolution fomented by leftist allies. The Mullah regime, the Islamic theocracy then repaid their allies by executing over 30,000 of them.
Zero good has come out of the Mullocracy since 1979. Only oppression and terrorism. Terrorism exported to allies and proxies: Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen…. Even in South America where they fund nasty regimes like Maduro’s Venezuela.
If it’s true that the Iranian demonstrators are out in force this time because “enough is enough”, that’s a good thing. But I’ve seen reports that counter the one in the video above, that claim today’s demonstrations are like the demonstrations during Obama — unsupported by Obama — which failed to overturn the Theocracy, perhaps precisely because of that lack of American and western support.
This time Washington has come out in support of regime change. Good.
I drove through a lot of Iran in 1974. I was in a clapped-out Ford Anglia, on the way from London to New Delhi, with girlfriend and another couple. In Iran, we visited old friends, Aussies, teaching in Isfahan. We met their students. Lovely, open, friendly people. Society was open. The Shah was in charge. He a moderate, liberal, pushing for open education, women’s rights, housing reform… all kinds of nice stuff. Stuff the Left loves! But the Shah had secret police, the Savak, notoriously violent. And so, to the liberal west this was a Bad Man. He had to go.
This case is just one of many that reminds me of Thomas Sowell’s famous quote:
“There are no solutions; only trade offs”.
People made the mistake of assuming the Ayatollah, the Mullahs, the Islamists, the Theocracy was a Solution. Had they thought it was a matter of Trade Off, we’d rather have an open minded, secular -Shah, even with his dreaded Savak, than an oppressive, dictatorial Islamist theocracy. It’s not a matter of hindsight either. Plenty of people warned about this at the time. But President Jimmy Carter, that achingly liberal incompetent, preferred Ayatollah Khomeini. Because, you know, you’d rather have an anti-west Theocracy than a pro-west Shah who had secret police.
Of such quirks is world history made.
Now, nearly 50 years later, it may be time for history to turn again. Inshallah….
ADDED: How do I feel overall? About the demonstrations in Iran? Pessimistic. I doubt the unarmed populace will be able to topple the theocrats, protected as they are by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — the much-worse-than-Savak armed police who protect the regime. I hope I’m wrong.
If you are convinced you have “Solutions”, you can get yourself into real trouble. That’s the key problem with communism, with socialism. People keep on thinking they’re Solutions. Whereas they are almost always worse than the “bad” situation they replace.
Much safer to consider if what you’re facing, the problem you want to solve, may be one of “Trade Offs”. Where there are choices, often between bad and worse. Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 was one much. A matter of people supporting a worse outcome because it was seen as a Solution to a “bad” situation.
From algorithmic incentives to progressive posturing, this episode explores how anti-semitism has
become a feature—not a bug—of influencer culture. Zoe Booth speaks with Corey Walker, a Washington, D.C.-based reporter focusing on the Middle East and global terror groups, about audience capture, the anti-Western project of the modern Left, and why Israel represents values worth conserving.
00:00 – Introduction
02:59 – Interview begins
05:37 – The Anti-Israel Sentiment in Media and Culture
08:28 – The Role of Institutions and Counterweights
11:21 – Creating Safe Spaces for Pro-Israel Voices
14:09 – The Broader Ideological Conflict
17:09 – Cultural Pride and Identity in Israel
20:06 – Comparative Perspectives on National Identity
23:02 – Concluding Thoughts on Values and Patriotism
28:39 – Understanding Right-Wing Perspectives on Israel
31:24 – The Rise of Antisemitism Among Young Conservatives
34:25 – Cultural Dynamics and Victimhood Narratives
39:16 – Corey’s Journey: From Anti-Semitism to Advocacy
45:39 – The Complexity of Racial Identity and Politics
51:06 – Lessons from the Jewish Community
55:05 – Impact of Immigration on Jewish Lives
57:47 – The Left and the Muslim Community
01:00:26 – Nuances in Political Alliances
01:03:29 – Cultural Dynamics and Identity Politics
01:06:17 – Conservatism vs Liberalism
01:09:16 – Multiculturalism and National Identity
01:12:15 – The Future of Western Civilisations
This is NOT Elon Musk, but an AI. I presume Elon doesn't mind, or it would not survive.
Still, what "Elon" says in these vids is pretty well argued, as it is in the above vid.
One thing to note that "Elon" points out Zohran Mamdani, the new Mayor of NYC, talks of all types of New Yorkers, or at least people living in NYC. But nowhere does he mention the New Yorkers who actually built the city, and the system on which they built it. The system of free market economics. Built on the wisdom and hard work of individuals. Not on bureaucratic planning.
This is a very important inflection point. Do we go by the idea that the system is basically good (and almost unique), and that we should fix it where it's failing. Or do we tear down the system, as Mamdani and his acolytes plan to do. With no plan for what comes after. Except we know; it'll be a socialist hellhole, if he gets his way.
I say this is not a Conspiracy Theory, having written, long ago, about what the Democratic Socialists of America think about things.
Which is: they are all about moving to a full communist society: State control of means of production; removal of private property rights; and all the rest of the dreary and dangerous dogma embraced by the far Left.
They say it all themselves. They say it openly. As some of its members do in the video above.
On “Rent Freezes”, a couple of special things about New York City:
One. There’s no income or wealth criterion for getting and holding a “Rent Stabilise” apartment. For that reason, landlords prefer to rent to the richest tenants they can, to ensure they keep getting rent paid.
Two. Many “Rent Stabilised” apartments — some 25,000 according to AI — are left empty by landlords because they can’t afford the repairs to bring them up to code. Eg, they may need to borrow 100 or 200 thousand for repairs, but only allowed to charge $1,000 per month. That doesn’t even cover the monthly mortgage repayments.
Three. NYC has been trying Rent Control for decades. Whenever it’s failed, which is every time, instead of dumping the failed policy, they decide on even more intervention. Makes no sense, but is part of the “People Never Learn” lesson.
It’s a puzzle isn’t it? Why? Why try to destroy the best of the Enlightenment?
People like George Soros in the U.S. fund radical DAs around the country who are soft on crime… crime rises… people are upset… crime figures are hidden…people told everything is OK… people relax… people vote back in the radicals who gave them increased crime in the first place.
Rinse and Repeat. And so the destruction continues. And gets worse. And threatens the very foundation of our societies. And hence the puzzle. Why? Why do they want to do this?
The answer is that the Old has to be swept aside before the New can be built. The Old capitalist system has to be destroyed — it’s very durable after all, and people seem to quite like it— and only then can we build the New Utopia of Socialism and Communism.
George Soros even has his own name for this process. He calls it Reflexivity. You have to Destroy, and the Reflex is to the opposite. That’s it at its simplest; though it’s hardly more complex. I sometimes wonder if his time as a Judenrat in the Second World War makes him embarrassed deep down so he wants to expunge it by the destruction of all that remembers it. Maybe. Or maybe he’s just an old style communist.
The video above is not at all about Soros. But about people like him. Socialists in the west.
From the Show Notes:
Prof. Thomas DiLorenzo starts with a quote from the book “Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis” by Ludwig von Mises, first published in German by Gustav Fischer Verlag in Jena in 1922.
Thomas James DiLorenzo is an American economics professor at Loyola University Maryland Sellinger School of Business.
What I've only recently learned: That People Don't Learn.
We -- that is we homo sapiens -- know that Rent Control and "Free Buses" don't work, because nothing's ever "free". There’s no “free” buses— someone has to pay for them. The only thing that rent control controls is the number of rentals — “rent control” only makes rental apartments even more scarce. We know these things. Except we don't.
We know these things even in New York. Except we don't.
Mayor-in-waiting, Zohran Mamdanisays he's going to do it all over again. As if we'd never had the experience. As if we'd never heard of: "There's no such thing as a Free Lunch".
I saw it at "work" in China in the 1970s, when they were still running Marxist Leninist Communism. And all that meant was that all the allegedly "free" stuff was scarce and rationed. Or didn't exist at all.
But this is what New Yorkers are going to vote for. Again.
Go figure.
Below the Show Notes for the above video clip, in which Tom describes very well what the issues are. And how "free" things are never free. And how rent freezes only ever make rentals scarcer. Sigh...
Zoran Mamdani might be on his way to becoming the next mayor of New York, but is his vision for the city a promise or a warning? In this clip from our Live Tom Bilyeu Show on October 17, 2025, Tom breaks down Mamdani’s debate performance, his viral “free buses” proposal, and the deeper economic dangers behind his ideas.
Tom exposes why policies that sound compassionate can end up wrecking entire economies, why nothing in politics is ever truly “free,” and how ideology can blind even the smartest leaders to basic math. From rent freezes to wealth redistribution, Tom challenges the emotional appeal of socialism with hard facts, real data, and history’s painful lessons.
Watch as Tom and Producer Drew unpack what happens when political narratives ignore economic reality, and why so many people keep falling for the same promises. If you care about the future of cities, freedom, and financial stability, this is a conversation you can’t afford to miss.
My guess is that in power Mamdani won't be able to implement all the things he wants to do, for various bureaucratic and political reasons, and so he won't be able to make New York City into a complete dog's breakfast. Only partially so. He'll only partially screw it up. And that come reelection the message will be "we didn't get everything done we wanted to because of these horrible [name the villains], so we must double down on even more socialism. Even more free stuff; even toughter rental freezes." Or whatever. And he'll succeed. At that, at the re-election at least. Because, People Don't Learn.
They adopt failed policies. And when they fail yet again, they double down.
The standard excuse for the failure of Communism from Communist sympathisers -- an excuse that we on the skeptical right have long found risible, a sick joke -- these young Marxists still find somehow persuasive. That standard excuse it this: "We've never tried TRUE communism!”
Oh, yeah? We've tried every version of it. We've tried the Tsarist Russia to Communist Soviet Union version. We've tried the agrarian China to Marxist-Leninist-Maoist version. We've tried the oil-rich industrial Venezuela to impoverished Hugo Chavist version. We've tried the North Korean commodity-rich to hellhole Kimilsungism version.
We've tried them all. The one I personally experienced and lived in, during the seventies, was the Chinese version of it. It wasn’t pretty. It was nothing in the slightest like the version imagined by Miss Trans, pretty in red, talking to Nate Friedman. I’ve also been to the purest version of Marxism in practice: to North Korea, three times. That’s even worse.
But to these dopes, to these "Useful Idiots" as Stalin called them, we still haven't tried Communism properly. We still haven't done the United States to Poverty States version of it. So let’s try that! FFS.
We should try it yet one more time. Yet one more time to mass murder our neighbours because they don't agree with us. Yet one more time to turn a rich and free economy into an impoverished dictatorial hellhole.
As the Russian guy at the end says: "how much more blood you want to spill to prove that communism doesn't work?" Exactly. How much more blood, zoomer?
Nate Friedman is a very active and insightful and useful on-the-ground reporter. Does a lot of good work. This is the best of YouTube.
From my post the other day, noting a major article in the South China Morning Post that likely reflects thinking in Zhongnanhai -- China's Kremlin. Or perhaps informs it. And therefore needs fact-checking and debunking where necessary. Which I'm going to do here as a PSA. As they say: “Buckle Up!”
Some clips, indented in purple, and my comments after each:
“America’s transformation under President Donald Trump has parallels with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the last years of the Soviet Union…”
No. I was in the Soviet Union just before Gorbachev's perestroika. It was an obviously failing socialist economy. Brittle. Autarkic. The main GUM Department store had pyramids of pickled cabbages in tins, on display. That was it. You could get a Coke-bottle's worth of vodka for just a few pennies. But not Coke. It was still the place where packs of Marbloros got you taxis. Jeans bought you night in a hotel.
Trump's America is a strong, post-industrial market-driven technological powerhouse. Trump andmini efforts to re-shore industry will make it even stronger. There's simply no comparison between the two countries. Between one strong capitalist country and one crumbling communist empire.
“ Zheng argued that Trump had altered US party politics – the foundation of American democracy – reshaping the Republican Party through populism and leaving no consensus between Republicans and Democrats.”
Nah. To the extent that there's "no consensus" where does that stem from? As soon as Trump was in power for the second term, the Dems began fighting. They fought against the border closure and against deportations (both supported by 80% of voters). They became violent when Trump’s DOGE began cutting government expenditure to reduce the huge debts — racked up most rapidly by Biden’s team. They sent teams of aging hippies to burn, torch, vandalise and destroy Teslas and Tesla facilities, because Elon Musk was in charge of the DOGE effort. As we speak they and their Antifa proxies are resisting, violently, every move of the Immigration Customs Enforcement efforts of Federal officers to find and deport violent illegal immigrants. They’ve voted to shut the government down. Go figure.
"Consensus"? dream on Dems... you're the ones that created the nightmare.
“Globally, the US used to play a leading role in promoting and expanding American-style democracy, Zheng said, adding that the global backsliding of democracy was “unprecedented”, with the US retreating from its role.”
Nah. The US bombing Iran's nuclear facilities by Operation Midnight Hammer was a brilliant show of US power, of Peace through Strength and of a hammer blow to Islamic Theocracy in the name of peace and democracy.
The Gaza Peace Deal is a blow for democracy. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. They have won the war against Hamas. Despite the human shield tactics against them and despite the western liberal opinion against them. They did it with American support, and specifically with Trump's support.
US democracy promotion = mixed bag historically (coups galore). Backsliding = real but not unprecedented (1930s worse). US under Trump = active, not retreating (Ukraine/NATO/Iran bombing/Gaza peace deal prove it).
“Zheng described Trump as showing little interest in American democracy itself …”
Nah.
Trump shows transactional interest in democracy—via elections, courts, free speech for allies—not "little." He won fairly twice; institutions survived intact (e.g., no martial law, media thrives). He's a disruptive player in robust system. Revised: “...as prioritizing personal loyalty over institutional democratic norms.”
“As an example, he cited Trump’s push to end the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the American government’s humanitarian aid coordinating body and, until recently, one of the world’s largest such agencies.”
Huh? The USAID program is revealed — by DOGE — to be a vast money laundering racket, independent of any overview. Its programs exclusively served left to far-left political causes. The administration costs (money going to staff and relatives of staff) ate up to 80% of donations. Welcome to The Foreign Aid Industrial complex. None of this is denied by the Democrats. They just don’t like it being cut off. As Elon Musk said “the loudest squeals come from the most corrupt”. Even so, USAID has not been completely shut down. It’s been trimmed to focus on urgent needs and its administration brought under the State Department.
By the way, it was not “one of the largest…” it was THE largest such agency in the world. It dwarfed Chinas own tiny foreign aid budget. (Its “Belt and Road” funding is manly loans, not grant aid).
“According to Zheng, Trump was also largely undermining the core of US constitutional governance – the separation and balance of powers – pressuring the legislative and judicial branches and fundamentally altering the system.”
Nah. No way Trump is "undermining... constitutional governance". Every Executive Order that I've read has a statement: ".... to the extent permitted by law". And every time there's a SCOTUS decision around an EO, the Trump Admin has followed it.
The very fact of the number of Federal Judge injunctions against Trump EOs shows the resilience of the system. "Undermining or altering" is a myth—courts/Congress check him (180+ blocks, bipartisan bills).
All up this article of professor Zheng's is a hatchet job. I get the idea that he came up with a nice notion — America is just like pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union — and shoehorned his “evidence” to fit his conclusion.
Which, sadly, the majority of SCMP readers seem to have bought into. And that the leaders in Beijing may also sip and sup and digest. But it's wrong. And to the extent that it's wrong, it will lead to miscalculations by Beijing. They will, if they believe this nonsense of the academic Zheng, judge America to be more brittle, weaker and more vulnerable than it is. And that in turn could lead to dangerous miscalculations.
Here's hoping that a blog in Hong Kong can find its way to Zhongnanhai and give them a different perspective!
Jing, 1 October 2010, Zacs, Discovery Bay Waterfront. Hong Kong
On this day in 1949, Mao Tse-tung stood on the steps of Tian'an Men gate in Peking and declared the establishment of the "People's Republic of China".
Leftists -- never able to leave well enough alone, never knowing a person they disagreed with that they didn't want to kill or imprison -- launched, under Mao, the "Anti Rightist Campaign", 1957-59.
Overlapping this, and just to ensure complete, not just partial, chaos, the party, under Mao, launched the ludicrous "Great Leap Forward", 1958-62.
Still not enough, for there remained a few voices calling for Common Sense, Mao instigated the most rigorous, the most fearsome, the egregious, the longest-lasting of them all: "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", 1966-76.
That's when I arrived in China. At the very end of that Cultural Revolution, on 5 September 1976. Three days before Mao died on 9 September.
I saw with mine own eyes, experienced with mine own body and mind, the worst of socialism. I saw and well noticed what happened when the shift came to capitalism, to an economy run by the market, not by communist apparatchiks.
That's what made China rich -- to the extent that it is rich -- the market economy, not the Communist Party. China's economy succeeds to the exact extent that the Communist Party stays out of the way. It fails, gets weaker, to the exact extent that the Communist Party intervenes.
Net victims out of all those campaigns? Deaths from all those political movements, all that getting rid of people who don't agree with you: 32 million to 50 million.
Add these to the hundreds of millions killed by Lenin and Stalin, by Pol Pot, by Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and every tinpot socialist crackpot dictatorship in the history of the last century, and you've got such a pile-up of skeletons, such a mountain of maimed lives, all down to far Leftism.
Which the Democratic party in the US is moving toward. (vide: Zohran Mamdani, mayor-in-waiting of New York City, a self-declared, bizarrely proud of being... "Democratic Socialist").
Looking at the Left in the United States, it's hard not to compare them with what happened in China. Specially with the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Those barely pubescent indoctrinees. Brainwashed in schools teaching the neo-version of a "nice" socialism, a neo-Marxism, a "democratic" socialism, no less!
How are the youth of today, in today's academy in the US, how are they different from those Red Guards, who brandished their Little Red Books, and persecuted those who thought differently, just as today's Green and Red Guards, brandish their keffiyehs and AK-47s?
Me? I'm not buying it. The lesson of China and its ructions of "movements" is too much, too clear, of a lesson. Instead of half-digetsted European Marxism, how about we steer the middle course? The Great Way, the 大学, the Da Xue. The "Way of the Mean". 中庸之道 Zhōngyōng zhī dào.
Now that's something China could teach us! The Middle Way, from the teachings of Confucius. For goodness sake let's not follow China's mangled marxism, recycled for the n-the time, in the half-formed minds of mini-Maos or student-Stalins.
I mean it! I Mean it! The Way of the Mean. We could learn from Confucius. The Middle Way!
中庸之道
ADDED: And... 1 October yesterday, at Miru Japanese atop St Regis Hotel, Chicago, also celebrating a birthday:
Lookin' good in Black & White Miru restaurant, Chicago
