CAN’T HAVE A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS WHEN THERE IS ONLY ONE:

China’s ‘Bad Debt’ Problem: Why Its Not Learning From Japan (Grant Newsham, 2/21/24, Japan Forward)


I had a front-row seat to the cleanup effort. There are lessons, but I doubt Xi Jinping is interested.

The first lesson the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might learn from Japan is the need for an honest, impartial legal system that’s free of official influence.

Then there’s the simple ability to enforce a contract.

Next, you need guaranteed property rights.

And all of these flow from a system of consensual government.

Japan had all of these. The People’s Republic of China does not – and appears intent on keeping things that way. Otherwise, Party control is threatened.

There is only one hand guiding the Chinese economy and it is the hand of the CCP.

There is no viable alternative to the End of History.

WHEN YOU STARE INTO THE ABYSS, DONALD LOOKS BACK:

The Mass Psychology of Trumpism (Dan P. McAdams, 2/20/24, New/Lines)

Trump’s enduring appeal stems from the perception — his own and others’ — that he is not a person. In the minds of millions, Trump is more than a person. And he is less than a person, too.

In 1962, a prominent Harvard psychologist published a scholarly paper titled “The Personality and Career of Satan.” Henry A. Murray examined how, for over 2,000 years, Western theologians and other writers have depicted the mythical figure of Satan, projecting onto him human traits perennially designated as evil.

It is worth noting that Murray’s characterization of Satan bears an uncanny resemblance to the psychological portrait of Trump painted by many psychologists today. A malignant narcissism rages at the core of Satan’s personality. Cast out of heaven for his overmastering pride, Satan wants to be God, resents the fact that he is not God and insists that his supreme worth entitles him to privileges that nobody else should enjoy while undergirding his reign as sovereign of the mortal world below. Wholly self-centered, cruel, vindictive and devoid of compassion and empathy, Satan nonetheless possesses substantial charisma and charm. Completely contractual in his approach to interpersonal relationships, he has perfected the art of the deal, as when, in the Gospel of Luke, Satan tempts Jesus with earthly powers and riches in return for his adulation: “If thou will therefore worship me, all shall be thine.”

Situated in a middle ground between God and human beings, Satan is a liminal figure. He is like a person but not quite a person. For one, he is gifted with superhuman powers of the sort, Murray writes, that children have always imagined they might possess in the furthest reaches of their wish-fulfilling fantasies. But he does not possess certain qualities that adults especially value and recognize as part of the human condition. He lacks wisdom, for example, and love. He is not troubled by a complex inner life, by the doubts, ambivalences and moral quandaries that routinely run through the consciousness of mature humans. He is instead like the modern conception of a superhero. Satan is one-dimensional and mythic, an idealized personification, rather than a fully articulated person.

Donald Trump sees himself in the same way. While Trump insists that he is a force for good rather than evil, he truly perceives himself to be qualitatively different from the rest of humankind. He has often compared himself to a superhero. He has famously described himself as a “stable genius” who has never made a mistake. He is not lying when he makes these outrageous claims, for Trump truly believes them to be true, just as he believes he won the 2020 election.

At the same time, Trump is incapable of describing an inner psychological life or of identifying traces of reflection, emotional nuance, doubt or fallibility. Even though he talks about himself all the time, Trump has never been able to explain his inner world or to narrate stories about how he has come to be the person he is, as frustrated interviewers and biographers have repeatedly noted.

In my book “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning” (2020), I argue that Trump lacks a narrative understanding of himself in time. A well-established line of psychological research shows that human personhood is tied up with narrative and storytelling. People understand their lives as narratives evolving over time. But Trump is the curious exception, in that there seems to be very little by way of a story in his head about who he is and how he came to be. He is instead what I call “the episodic man,” living outside of time in the eternal moment, fighting in the here and now to win the battle at hand, episode by episode, day by day. At the center of Trump’s personality lies a narrative vacuum, the space where the self-defining life story should be but never was. As such, Trump is rarely introspective, retrospective or prospective. There is no depth, no past and no future.

Currently reading Ian Kershaw’s Hitler bio and the parallels are truly striking, especially the core hollowness of both men, which they fill up with hate.

THANKS, MR. STEELE:

Man accused of lying to FBI about Hunter Biden claimed he got fake information from Russian intelligence (Robert Legare, February 20, 2024, CBS News)

The man accused last week of delivering false allegations to federal investigators about Hunter Biden and President Biden’s business dealings told officials after his arrest that individuals “associated with Russian intelligence” were tied to apparent efforts to peddle a story about the first son, federal prosecutors revealed in a court filing Tuesday.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

Donald Trump’s Cash Crunch Just Got Much, Much Worse (Roger Sollenberger, Feb. 20, 2024, Daily Beast)

On Tuesday, Trump’s “Save America” leadership political action committee reported raising just $8,508 from donors in the entire month of January, while spending about $3.9 million, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission.


Nearly $3 million of that overall spending total was used for one purpose: to pay lawyers.

At the same time, the Trump campaign itself reported a net loss of more than $2.6 million for the month of January. It raised about $8.8 million while spending around $11.5 million, according to a separate filing made public on Tuesday.

The filings reveal that Trump is continuing to burn through his donors’ funds as he struggles to feed two massive cash drains—astronomical legal bills stemming from numerous civil cases and four criminal indictments, plus the costs of a national presidential campaign.

THE BETTER PATH:

The life and martyrdom of Malcolm X (Omar Ahmed, 2/21/24, ME Monitor)

Malcolm’s approach stood in stark contrast to the non-violent civil rights movement led by Dr Martin Luther King, who he once said was spearheading “the only revolution in which the goal is loving your enemy.” For Malcolm X, all revolutions — real revolutions — involved “bloodshed”. It goes without saying that, between the two civil rights leaders, the mainstream establishment favoured King over Malcolm. The former was perceived as more acceptable, whereas the latter was viewed as a formidable threat; someone to be feared. Nevertheless, irrespective of their methods, both were assassinated, with credible suspicions pointing towards state involvement.

In 1964, Malcolm announced his split from the NOI, after some internal disputes and scandals involving Elijah Muhammad, before undertaking a tour of the Middle East, Africa and Europe, visiting many Muslim countries in the process. He performed the Islamic pilgrimage, the Hajj, to the holy city of Makkah. Thereafter he was called El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

The unifying experience of the Hajj saw his beliefs change yet again upon joining the mainstream of the Islamic faith. He witnessed “pilgrims of all colours from all parts of this earth displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like I’ve never seen before.” His departure from the NOI also split the organisation, with many following El-Shabazz into mainstream Islam, including none other than Elijah Muhammad’s son, Warith Deen Mohammed. The most famous African-American Muslim, if not one of the most famous people of the modern age, legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, severed ties with El-Shabazz while still a member of the NOI, a decision Ali later came to regret when he too entered mainstream Islam, without the opportunity for reconciliation.

While on his travels it also became clear that Malcolm moderated some of his views and beliefs, including the segregation of blacks and whites in the US and Black Nationalism. Instead, he embraced internationalism.