Radical centrists have grown a lot in the last couple of years. They weren't even a thing a decade ago.

It didn't even need to be Trump today. Any Republican politician could've walked out amongst them and taken control of the movement. They just needed some form of authority to lend them legitimacy.

Goes to show how wide the ideological gap between the base and the elites really is.

They're not sending their best

I fear the real ghouls just don't care. The global north will be in an even stronger position as food production shifts to higher latitudes

Peter Hessler is a great look at ordinary life in China. A bit lib but he captures the nuances that most western writers miss.

The anti-China direction that the Qult is moving in, led by the Epoch Times and the Falun Gong, genuinely terrifies me. Fearing that we'll see hysterical levels of sinophobia in the future and a push for an even more aggressive stance towards China

He clearly doesn't give a fuck and he seems happy. What more does he need to work through?

Trueanon

This whole thing is super weird. Apparently the AT&T building hit is censored on Google Maps. https://twitter.com/IlyaBayona/status/1342568798969339905

These people can't even give up a tiny amount of "freedom" by wearing a mask, there is no way they would be willing to throw away everything in an armed insurrection. A few individuals, sure, but a mass movement, no chance at all.

Does it spoil easily? I want to try making some too

Eh, you can't fix a culture of consumption with a few concessions. You'd have to change the root cause of overconsumption, capitalism, and that's not a concession that the bourgeoisie will ever make

This was ten years ago in Shenzhen and it might not have been preschool, it could have been kindergarten, daycare or somewhere else kids play together. I know it sounds insane. It left a deep impression on me.

Of course, this was the most extreme example I encountered and I'm absolutely not saying all Chinese people are like this. However, people here need to realize that before Xi, the CPC did very little to promote leftist ideas following Deng's market reforms. The promotion of unfettered domestic consumption in particular left a portion of Chinese society with no strong political inclinations, ripe for reactionary politics to take root. Since I left China in 2015, it seems like China is going in the right direction, but we can't uncritically support them just because they're anti-imperial. There is a very real possibility that China could devolve into ultranationalism, just look at some of the pro-China twitter accounts.

This is absolutely the right take.

I used to work in China and I'll never forget one of my coworkers telling me the story of how she got mad at her six year old son for sharing his toys in preschool because it wasn't a "successful" mindset. On the other hand, I got to know some high level government officials who were truly committed socialists. It really is a deeply flawed country and its future is very opaque.

We're betting everything on the vaccine but I don't think it's a given that we can get 70% of the population vaccinated. Dark times ahead

In a moment of post nut clarity