The Chinese government is currently cracking down on anything resembling criticism of Xi Jinping's plans to be dictator for life - among other things, they've banned the letter "n," something that sounds like an Onion article except that it's actually happening - and to say that the international community isn't exactly thrilled with the leader of the world's 2nd largest economic (and 3rd largest nuclear) power turning into North Korea would be something of an understatement. The only reason that it isn't getting more attention is that Vladimir Putin also decided that he wanted to model himself after Kim Jong-un, and did so even more explicitly with literal nuclear saber-rattling.
This would seem to be an excellent time for the leader of the world's leading democratic nation to step up to defend democratic principles, by maybe pointing out that "presidents for life" have always proved to be a terrible thing (no matter how charming that president may have seemed beforehand), and even showing some small iota of awareness of why he himself is term-limited. Unfortunately, the current U.S. President is Donald J. Fucking Trump, who thinks that the sun shines out of his own ass, and thinks that being president for life sounds just swell, in spite of the fact that his own administration is already a disaster.
This effectively undermines any sort of response that any of the planet's other democratic nations might have been planning. After all, if the United States isn't going to do anything, and they very clearly aren't planning to, and Vladimir Putin is obviously down with the whole "strong man dictator" thing, then there's not much that nobody else can effectively do that Xi Jinping will be compelled to take any notice of whatsoever. China had spent the entire Obama administration slowly moving in a more open and democratic direction, but that's all over now, and the orange idiot in the White House is too much of an idiot to even realize that this is a bad thing.
I'd written before about the Trump damage being a generational thing that the United States will be dealing with for decades to come. It's becoming increasingly clear, though, that the U.S. won't be the only ones dealing with Trump damage for the next twenty years, as his ham-fisted, ignorant approach to foreign policy continues to push both Russia and China further away from liberal democracy, cementing them into oppressive, nuclear-armed dictatorships that the rest of us will now have to deal with the foreseeable future. GG.
Can this idiot please just get his ass impeached, already?
This would seem to be an excellent time for the leader of the world's leading democratic nation to step up to defend democratic principles, by maybe pointing out that "presidents for life" have always proved to be a terrible thing (no matter how charming that president may have seemed beforehand), and even showing some small iota of awareness of why he himself is term-limited. Unfortunately, the current U.S. President is Donald J. Fucking Trump, who thinks that the sun shines out of his own ass, and thinks that being president for life sounds just swell, in spite of the fact that his own administration is already a disaster.
This effectively undermines any sort of response that any of the planet's other democratic nations might have been planning. After all, if the United States isn't going to do anything, and they very clearly aren't planning to, and Vladimir Putin is obviously down with the whole "strong man dictator" thing, then there's not much that nobody else can effectively do that Xi Jinping will be compelled to take any notice of whatsoever. China had spent the entire Obama administration slowly moving in a more open and democratic direction, but that's all over now, and the orange idiot in the White House is too much of an idiot to even realize that this is a bad thing.
I'd written before about the Trump damage being a generational thing that the United States will be dealing with for decades to come. It's becoming increasingly clear, though, that the U.S. won't be the only ones dealing with Trump damage for the next twenty years, as his ham-fisted, ignorant approach to foreign policy continues to push both Russia and China further away from liberal democracy, cementing them into oppressive, nuclear-armed dictatorships that the rest of us will now have to deal with the foreseeable future. GG.
Can this idiot please just get his ass impeached, already?
No comments:
Post a Comment