Gorbachev used to say that Chernobyl was where the USSR really started to crumble. The disaster made clear how morally bankrupt and technically incompetent the system really was, wiping out any remaining goodwill or trust. Similarly, Katrina was where the semi-fascist US consensus under GW Bush went to pieces.
I suspect China will experience a similar moment at some point. This might well be it.
This might be similar, but I see zero chance of Xi's power taking a hit. For as long as party's institutes are intact, he will be there.
Some people began to speculate that Xi wasn't seen for the last 3 days, and sudden activity of "party elders," but I bet this is just an enormous amounts of wishful thinking showing up.
Xi's "system" has an expiration date attached, but it's not tomorrow.
Following on that Gorbachev analogy, the Unior really started to crumble during late Breznev for reasons well documented by historians.
Basically, after Brenzhen loyalists, who mostly were his contemporaries (frail 70-80 and even 90 year olds,) started to drop like flies, a whole truckload of political adventurists, with rogue 3 letter services in particular, took advantage of that to grab power. This in a few years term led to the Union turning ungovernable, and ultimately falling apart.
The ultimate proof to that is that pretty much all across the former union, the power went to ex-KGB or men from other 3 letter services.
Even as early as Gorbachev's first year, there were officials who were publicly disobeying his direct orders. The last generation of Union's leadership was hamstrung even before the power was formally passed to it.
> there were officials who were publicly disobeying his direct orders.
Gorbachev's point was more about public opinion than political machinery or party hierarchies.
Infighting factions had been a fact of life in the USSR since foundation, but the public as a whole still operated on the presumption that the State existed and was working with some degree of competency and some degree of shared purpose (if inscrutable or stupid most of the time).
Chernobyl laid bare that the social contract was effectively broken and the State could not guarantee the most basic protection even from itself. The system as a whole was effectively deligitimized at a very basic level, and it soon became "every man for himself". This is why subsequent attempts to solve matters among hierarchies in the traditional way (coups and so on) just failed - the public had moved on.
I remember reading in some article, right before the Arab Spring, the entire Egyptian society had become a society of pretense. Every one was pretending to be, and to be doing things which they were not. There was mind boggling amount of lies on which the society ran.
Eventual Arab Spring was also in some way the society maxing out the amount of lies that can be told to each other and continue without bigger consequences. Some day things like hunger, illiteracy, jobs, living standards, economy all catch up you and your reality. And that's the day reality itself gives you a brutal appraisal of the situation.
Taubman noted that the disaster marked "a turning point for Gorbachev and the Soviet regime".[217] Several days after it occurred, he gave a televised report to the nation.[218] He cited the disaster as evidence for what he regarded as widespread problems in Soviet society, such as shoddy workmanship and workplace inertia.[219] Gorbachev later described the incident as one which made him appreciate the scale of incompetence and cover-ups in the Soviet Union.[217] From April to the end of the year, Gorbachev became increasingly open in his criticism of the Soviet system, including food production, state bureaucracy, the military draft, and the large size of the prison population.[220]
Gorbachev might not have the man who messed it all up, but he was the last man to see through the end of this. Basically this kind of rot is long set in motion, and eventually leads to a black swan disaster event, then every one wakes up to the deep truth they knew all along, but chose bury and move on with their daily lives instead.
The job of leadership on the basic level is to give this brutal self appraisal to themselves, before these disaster big black swan events and do what it takes to fix them.
As an Indian reading this is scary enough as it is. India has been on this disastrous path for long now. Every now and then there is some respite from this. But deep down everyone knows the society is broken, there is mind boggling amount of corruption(Like you said "every man for himself"), and other standard set of problems have long plagued the country.
I hope there won't be a black swan disaster event. But given the history of the world and inevitability of these things, I wonder if one comes along, what could that be?
It's worth remembering that Chernobyl wasn't the only disaster driving public distrust. Chernobyl is just the most known and mythologized one in the West, but there were three in relatively quick succession during that period: Chernobyl (1986), Spitak earthquake (1988), and Ufa train disaster (1989). All three (and the government response to them) had huge resonance among Soviet population, with Spitak surpassing Chernobyl.
How stable is the power that Xi has consolidated? How would the party and the public respond if there were leaks about his private life and behavior? I wonder what his skeletons in the closet are...
I've also wondered how receptive the Chinese people would be to a series of documentaries or dramas that point out the inequality and unfairness in their system. A film that highlights how the government treats humans and families as cattle during national emergencies and disasters. Even the great firewall can't keep that out.
> How stable is the power that Xi has consolidated?
Very stable. Basically nothing besides something coming from withing the party itself can shake him, and he took down all of those threats to him from within the party. Not even Mao ever managed to cleanse all of his detractors from the party up until his death.
Saying this, you should not be confusing that "people are throwing looks into his back," and quiet whispers of dissatisfaction with genuine resistance.
> How would the party and the public respond if there were leaks about his private life and behavior? I wonder what his skeletons in the closet are...
If you can write Chinese, google those skeletons, they are up to everybody to see. Even taxi drivers here know of Xi's billionaire sister, but... taxi drivers and other general public can't do anything about that.
> I've also wondered how receptive the Chinese people would be to a series of documentaries or dramas that point out the inequality and unfairness in their system.
People can see that every day out of their windows, not TVs. They don't need to watch any documentaries to know that.
There is the reason people use name of Dong Zhuo as an euphemism for Xi. Take a look at this video, the scene from Chang An says it all about the current political atmosphere in CPC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj_VMvsG7G0
Commoners resent him for disturbing a relative peace of Hu's years that they were just getting taste of, by starting a new political upheaval. CPC elders do not only see him as a threat to Jiang, but they clearly think that they themselves are his next target. His unilateral ambitions on the international stage are no match for the discontent world. And yes, the rank and file ordinary officials can't be more freaked out now.
However... you also don't forget when Xi was thought to stand for reforms, it were the masses themselves who invited his ambitions to move on the supreme power. And that those who were benefiting from status quo were hit by that the most.
> If you can write Chinese, google those skeletons, they are up to everybody to see. Even taxi drivers here know of Xi's billionaire sister, but... taxi drivers and other general public can't do anything about that.
Why would I need to read Chinese to find out about this? The Chinese state isn't able to censor content in Chinese, but has got the Western internet under its thumb?
Hypothetically speaking, would you rather read about the recent US impeachment proceedings in Korean or in English? You know, the language most widely spoken in the US?
>Hypothetically speaking, would you rather read about the recent US impeachment proceedings in Korean or in English? You know, the language most widely spoken in the US?
So, I mean, I agree with your point. but as an aside, I think it would be really interesting to see the perspective of a Spanish historian on the recent events in my country
I don't think it is particularly surprising that the best sources of Chinese rumours is in Chinese. I don't think this about censorship (in-fact it's the opposite).
>I've also wondered how receptive the Chinese people would be to a series of documentaries or dramas that point out the inequality and unfairness in their system.
1. Not Very receptive, as it will be seen as someone ( Foreign Intervention )trying to attack them. Something which may be hard to comprehend for most people.
2. Vastly underestimated the power of CCP.
I think these sort of thoughts are precisely why the West has failed to understand China for decades.
As a native Chinese, I agree with both. for 1) IMO Many documentaries from the west failed to tell the story in a way that is optimized for Chinese audiences. I think a root cause of that is the general public doesn’t have a great awareness of core democracy values like fairness and human rights.
Based on the videos I've seen coming out of Wuhan these documentaries may be Chinese made. Beneath the surface is bubbling a mass discontent with the CCP.
Sounds like a fan of House of Cards talking. I don't doubt that Xi may have "skeletons", but probably not like that. He wasn't born President. If there were any "skeleton" of that kind of political significance, do you not think his political enemies would already have discovered those after all those decades he has been a politician?
> If there were any "skeleton" of that kind of political significance, do you not think his political enemies would already have discovered those after all those decades he has been a politician?
I think they already did, and to no effect. Panama papers would've made China to explode under Hu, but nothing happened this time.
If you believe the rumours, Meng (Interpol guy) was rounded up on the slightest suspicion of indiscretion, despite him pleading fealty to Xi god knows how many times.
Gu Zhuoheng's "revelations" also seem to have not resulted in anything
> This might be similar, but I see zero chance of Xi's power taking a hit
Xi's behavior does not strike me as that of someone who is as confident as you. Consider how he throws a tantrum at the mere suggestion that Taiwan may be an independent country.
By "our government" do you just mean the Federal government? Or do you mean all levels of government? The mayor of New Orleans had parking lots full of empty school buses and claimed he had no way to evacuate citizens. The governor of Louisiana whined and wrung her hands instead of doing anything. The Federal response was far from perfect but it was much more effective than the state or local response.
> parking lots full of empty school buses and claimed he had no way to evacuate citizens
That just sounds like a sensational headline lacking in context and details. For example, with Hurricane Harvey in Houston they had to weigh calling mass evacuation against the ability of the road system to handle that much traffic. It doesn't matter how many buses you have in a parking lot if they can't leave the city. I'm not saying that was the case in New Orleans, but I'm certainly not going to assume the worst from "parking lots full of empty school buses".
Honestly, is there even a known good example of how the response to Katrina should have been? Most people's complaints about it seem so shallow in their analysis as to appear a projection of their distaste for the Bush administration or the local politicians; nearly 15 years later.
Edit: Could you imagine an NTSB report on an airplane crash: "Air traffic control had three empty runways but said they had no way to land the plane! If they hadn't just whined and wrung their hands, perhaps everybody would have survived that flight.."
A teenager stole one of those buses, drove it around his neighborhood, picking up people who had no way to evacuate, and then drove them out of town. He was legally in the wrong on many accounts but from a practical point of view, he did what needed to be done to save at least one bus load of people.
The federal response should have been just that, a response afterwards. The efforts before Katrina hit should have been mostly the responsibility of the local and state governments with the feds helping out with the logistics of the evacuees once they were out of the path of the storm.
That they had a bunch of school buses sitting around? Did they also have a bunch of bus drivers, or other qualified people with CDLs, sitting around on call? Because most of them are usually part time employees with second or third jobs and probably also had their own families and problems to solve.
> Did they also have a bunch of bus drivers, or other qualified people with CDLs, sitting around on call?
You unwittingly demonstrate the cruelty of bearaucratic thinking that is inconsequential in the face of real human disaster, ultimately leading to tragedy.
> That they had a bunch of school buses sitting around?
That they had an obvious resource which with proper planning (which would, of course, include lining up drivers) could have been used to evacuate large numbers of people, but which was not used at all, and was not even considered in what little prior planning the city and the state did do.
> most of them are usually part time employees with second or third jobs and probably also had their own families and problems to solve.
Um, put the drivers' families on the bus they're driving?
Again, this is the sort of thing proper advance planning will obviously take into account.
A category 4 hurricane would level most buildings and kill damn near everyone wherever the eye actually lands (luckily Katrina lost power very fast when it hit land and the eye was miles from downtown). So there's really no option but to evacuate, besides just pray it turns away.
Houston is way bigger than New Orleans, but either way you obviously can't evacuate a major city in one day. Their first obvious mistake was waiting way too long to call it (of course a very easy thing to say after the fact). As I recall, Bush was calling on the mayor and governor to evacuate for a couple days before they finally did. Then there was confusion about which govt was in charge with the gov finally taking over the city then Bush taking over the state. In the mayor's defense, he never really had much power to being with, and cops were abandoning their posts so I don't know who he could have called on to get things done. And as you say, once it become national politics, it's impossible to get much objective analysis.
As for examples, the comparison was made to Cuba. A small city in a small country with an absolute dictator calling the shots. I get the impression that the previous poster wanted to criticize Bush as being dictatorial, which is ironic, since it's ultimately a lack of federal domination that everyone complains about in Katrina.
Don’t forget William “cold cash” Jefferson, who commandeered national guard time take him back in the flood zone to get $90,0000 he had hidden in his freezer.
Intesting. Hubei provincial and Wuhan city governments are being bashed hard for covering up and ineffectiveness in handling the crisis and China’s central government is being praised.
I’m specifically talking about when it was obvious that state and local authorities had failed/were overwhelmed, the days and days and weeks before a useful federal response came. I’m imagining how it would go down if not one city but dozens to hundreds were affected by an asteroid or nuclear attack. I imagine total chaos.
exactly, USA is _united_ states, crisis like Katrina really should be dealt by the local governments first-hand, with federal help on its way. it's very different from China's system, where everyone has to get approvals from the central government.
It’s not just the federal system, but the basic nature of disaster response. Even if the EU had jurisdiction over levees in the Netherlands, it would be ridiculous to expect an EU agency to be the front line response to flooding in Amsterdam. It’s the local government that actually knows where the risks and the resources to deal with those are. The federal government can help with money, say ensuring that poor cities have the financial resources to prepare a disaster response. But the actual response has to be local.
Katrina was when I realized how silly it is to think our government would ever deal effectively with a major disaster and how vulnerable we are.
Having been through three major hurricanes and 9/11, I'm not as skeptical as you. Everything is local. If the local authorities are prepared, things will go better. The feds are backup for when things get too big to handle.
Looking back, after the initial shock wore off, the on-the-street response in the hours after 9/11 was very interesting. It was clear that NYC and its neighbors have many layers of plans for major emergencies. Do they have everything covered? Probably not, which is only logical since you can't plan for the unknown. But a good deal of faith was earned that day.
"Katrina was when I realized how silly it is to think our government would ever deal effectively with a major disaster"
It's funny because the very idea that 'the government will save us from a big disaster' is a fairly new concept.
Some governments are 'kind of' prepared for some kinds of problems - i.e. the Swiss are prepared for some kinds of invasions, surely the Dutch have preparations for floods.
But for unforeseen disasters (the levy breach in New Orleans), it's harder and we're mostly on our own.
New Orleans is also very poor and is socially dysfunctional along a whole other set of vectors, I'll bet $100 it's pretty correlated with dealing with disaster. If it were some well run mid-sized city in New England it would have been another story. (Plus the possibility of racism which is to vague to consider in a paragraph).
> for unforeseen disasters (the levy breach in New Orleans)
Credible sources, including FEMA, predicted that one years in advance.
Check out the October 2004 issue of National Geographic:
> The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
> Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
> When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
I remember watching the New Orleans breach in TV in Ireland where I was at the time and it was a bit odd - the only US news we had pretty much was CNN and that had been going on about the levys being likely to be breached about every 20 mins for the 24 to 48 hours previously. And then they breached. And then the president came on saying no one could have predicted they would be breached. Which was odd - I guess no one unless they'd turned on TV anywhere on the planet...
Pedantically, Bush may have actually been correct: the levees failed by collapsing under the water load, whereas the concern was entirely on failing by being overtopped. In colloquial terms, people will use the term "breach" to refer to both failure modes, but these failure modes are actually quite different, and apparently the Army Corps of Engineers reserved "breach" to mean only the first one.
On the other hand, I'm not really willing to give Bush much credit here. The middle of a disaster is not the right time for pedantry.
Yes, but with the levees, the cost is massive. It's one thing to say 'there will be a big earthquake' and put together operational plans, do some practice runs. With the levees it might be many billions in upgrades for a 'risk', meaning, it gets postponed until it gets politically untenable to do nothing.
In fact the levees were designed to survive a Katrina-sized storm, but of course never had to prove they could, until they failed. What's also funny is for a bunch of engineers and software developers to expect the govt to enact a system that is impossible to really test, and just have it work smoothly when needed.
Rich cities in california were also a dysfunctional mess dealing with fires. It was only when the same problem happened in the same places in subsequent years that they had a reasonably solid plan together and working.
In fact the levees were designed to survive a Katrina-sized storm, but of course never had to prove they could, until they failed.
They were not, and the fact was well-known in advance. Their limit was a category 3 hurricane and there had been years of passing the buck about upgrading the levees to give the city a shot.
Then Katrina happened and everyone who had passed the buck claimed that it wasn't their fault.
Katrina was actually weakened to category 3 when it hit new Orleans. They should have lucked out (yet again) if the levees performed as they were supposed to.
It's pretty silly to think any government can deal effectively with a major disaster. At the end of the day, the best way to address a major disaster is with both a government response and a prepared citizenry. Centralized support to a decentralized response is way more effective.
There isn't much centralized support can do when it is overwhelmed and the citizens at a local level are helpless/useless.
Learn first aid skills. Learn amateur radio for communication. Have backup water, food and fuel.
1.) internal political war between xi jing ping of the old guards and the moderates. Check sinoinsider if you wish to know more.
2.) internal provincial wars with Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong.
3.) conflicts with immediate neighbors over the south sea and other illegitimate claims, including Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Philippines.
4.) trade wars with South Korea, japan, US, and Europe. More and more factories are shutting down in China in favor of other countries
5.) debt war to derisk 400 percent Debt to GDP in consumer, corporate and government debts. This economic shutdown will at a minimum take 3% off of China’s proclaimed 6% gdp growth
6.) globalism vs populism as Americans realized they have lost 1.6 million jobs to China since 1990.
7.) health wars with the recent pig flu, Wuhan flu and now bird flu
One must realize that China is losing ALL of these wars currently. The finances, social fabrics, and public anger (check Chinese netizens fight over Wuhan) are stretched to the limit. It’s only a matter of time
8.) They're in the beginning stage of a huge demographic bomb. China's birth rate is plunging rapidly, consequence of the (now defunct) one child policy and better standards of living. China's population is aging rapidly, and there is no immigration to sustain the labor pool, like in Western countries.
Immigration is not panacea to it, just delaying the inevitable. One way or another developed societies need to come up with a way to sustain 2.1 child rate. Immigration will prolong time we have to figure it out but it will not fix it.
In many ways perhaps it is better to face the reckoning earlier rather then later as Japan, Korea and soon PRC will have to do
I assume the poster is talking about the post 9/11 climate, where the country was solidly behind President Bush, while the federal government was busy ramping up Guantanamo, the patriot act, water boarding, etc. in the name of fighting terrorism.
... a one-party state, Homeland security, Judith Miller, two wars of aggression on foreign soil (one completely illegal), the President choosing not to enforce laws he didn't like, every critical voice being labelled "unpatriotic", every media channel bleeding nationalism 24-7... the sort of thing that in other countries we'd call "a regime".
A regime of 4 "good" years maybe, before it started getting real blowback for all of its excesses. In regimes more properly called regimes - those good years last for decades, or the lifetimes of their supreme leaders. So.. at least we got that going for us.
Absolutely, the two-terms limit held up and anyway Katrina had broken the wave for good.
There is an alternative timeline where Katrina doesn't happen and GWB forces a reform of two-terms "to get the job done in Iraq, we need to stay the course", or something else to that effect (like Putin swapping jobs to get around term limits). That would have been very scary.
My initial reaction to the article was that it doesn't sound like the cash injection has much to do with the corona virus. Isn't the reaction to the virus somewhat overblown?
> adding the total liquidity in the banking system will be 900 billion yuan higher than the same period in 2019 after the injection
In other words, 300 billion yuan less without the cash injection. I may be wrong, as I don't see the reaction to the outbreak first hand, but it sounds like this is not just about the virus.
The Chinese financial system is weak, as borrowers come under stress from a lack of business and can't pay and lenders pull back, the government will need to inject more and more liquidity into the system to get everyone to chill.
The direct linkages to the economy aren't the killer, it's that it's hitting at a time when the system's credit (immune) system is already not at it's strongest that worries policymakers.
How do we know that CCP and Xi will NOT survive this? Maybe the system they adopt there, just maybe, is the best system handle situation like this? With all the digital surveillance, AI, and all those new technologies, an authoritarian regime may now have the tools to outperformed the western counterpart?
That would be pretty frightening. There is a hypothesis out there that climate change might ignite an authoritarian regime geared toward counting climate change. Seeing that a mass surveillance program the size of whatever China has cooked up works to contain a biological outbreak and counter a catastrophe might help ignite such a thing.
Current China is not the USSR for sure, still I wonder if this will not shift people away from cheap chinese products long term. You know with the end of globalization this might give a little more push towards local/safer productions.
not decline per se, but it used to be the de facto gold standard of economic structure. The one that had the most weight and momentum and was mostly unstoppable. Now people speak a lot more about bringing some industries back, and some are even starting local brands again (due to climate, jobs, quality concerns).
The comparison to 80s/late-90s USSR is poor. I think this epidemic is showing the opposite, at least in terms of technical competence. The response from the central authorities has been massive and relatively well executed.
The comparison is also off because the day-to-day living situation on the ground (for the average citizen) is totally different from _both_ a political and economic perspective.
The response might not have needed to be as massive if the initial reaction of the Chinese authorities hadn't been to send the police after the doctors who discovered the problem[1] and try to hush it up.
The comparison fits in that a tendency to hide bad news (i.e. swallow errors and suppress warnings) erodes trust in (edit: and effectiveness of) the system.
Well, if we are to nitpick.... apples and oranges are both round!
Yes, there are certainly similarities between the USSR and China. But if we are to be objective and fact-oriented here, comparing China today to the USSR in the 80s and its response to this epidemic to the USSR's in Chernobyl, is a big stretch.
> Yes, there are certainly similarities between the USSR and China.
You are reading my comment in a shortsighted way. Note how the second part of the sentence mentions the US under GWBush - obviously I'm not arguing 2000s US and 2020s China are similar in political or economic structure. The point is how political consensus with fascist characteristics, that had looked unbreakable until then, can quickly be upended by crisis when the system is shown as uncapable to guarantee personal safety.
Understanding the exponential fiction is key here. You can do 50x times as much effort with great technical ability and execution a month and a half later, it will barely be as effective as telling people to be careful a month and a half earlier.
There’s no question that China does not have many of the catastrophic dysfunctions seen in the USSR. There did seem to be some attempt at a coverup or miscommunication early on, which no doubt made things much worse - but the response since has been at a level that would be quite hard to achieve in most other countries. This is an example of a case where centralized control really shines.
Dude, they built a massive hospital complex in just a few days. We have a... dumb f---ing wall that gets blown over by wind and has to have major stretches of it wide open during the monsoon season to avoid flooding.
> The disaster made clear how morally bankrupt and technically incompetent the system really was, wiping out any remaining goodwill or trust.
I genuinely wonder if the current impeachment process will have the same effect. Will people move on from it thinking it's just a thing with the GOP, or will they take it as a greater systemic failure and give up on the government.
> Similarly, Katrina was where the semi-fascist US consensus under GW Bush went to pieces.
Leaving aside the offensive comparison of the US to the USSR, you overlook that after GWB, we doubled down on the “US consensus” by electing Barack “drone strike” Obama. (I think Obama was a great President, but he was also very little different than George Bush except in his oration.)
> Leaving aside the offensive comparison of the US to the USSR
My argument is that you could see the turning point in public opinion breaking a political arrangement that had looked untouchable (and downright tyrannical, with journalists being ostracized and people getting marginalized as "unpatriotic") just a few months earlier. Katrina is when even Republicans decided the regime they had supported since 2001 was not fit for purpose anymore.
> you overlook that after GWB, we doubled down on the “US consensus”
That's hindsight after a decade. Obama ran on a campaign of dramatic change; at the time he was seen as a massive disruption of the status-quo, way to the left of the Clintons - let alone of Cheney. Whether he then delivered on his original promises, and in which areas, is irrelevant to why he was voted in the first time.
It is certainly not a popular opinion. But as diametrically opposed as they appear, there are plenty of problematic issues under Obama that Dems (and Republicans) conveniently ignore. My biggest disappointment at the time: Obama kept all of Bush's economic team intact when he came into office. Yes, the same people who enabled the housing crisis and had strong ties to Goldman Sachs. Probably it should have been the biggest issue of the election but the dialogue was (and is) dominated by identity politics.
The underlying issue is that Obama was beholden to the exact same corporate influences as Bush. You don't rise through Chicago politics that fast without some deals in place. This isn't a condemnation of Obama, by the way, but recognition of the system's vulnerability.
I grew up during the Clinton/Blair/Merkel era. I thought socialism was defeated in 1991. Everyone understood that markets and the private sector, with some levels of “nudges” as necessary, were the solution to everything. “Politics” was about how much you thought we should nudge in various directions, and whether you thought kids should learn about condoms or abstinence in school. So when Obama initially ran for office, I didn’t perceive Obama’s fundamentally neo-liberal capitalist world view as being a profound similarity between him and Bush. It wasn’t until people like Sanders and Corbyn started getting substantial traction that I realized we weren’t yet at the end of history and a commitment to the current economic world order was actually not universal.
It’s in the hindsight of history that the differences that seemed significant at the time proved to not be. On the economy, both were mainstream neo-liberals. The best example is TARP. Obama inherited and continued TARP, but it’s also what he would’ve done anyway. Obama extended the Bush tax cuts for everyone earning below $400,000. On foreign relations, both were aggressive on terrorism. On immigration, their policies and rhetoric were similar, with Bush possibly being more liberal. (Bush strongly supported the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which would have given everyone illegally present in the US on January 1, 2010, a permanent visa and pathway to citizenship.)
The two had different rhetoric on guns, religion, and abortion, but very carefully preserved the detante on these social issues by not proposing any significant legislation affecting them. On energy policy, both supported fracking and coal. (Obama had some last minute 2015 environmental regulations, which were quickly rolled back by Trump, but they clearly aren’t a priority seeing as how he waited until the last year of his presidency to act.) On healthcare, both had significant measures to expand coverage. (Bush’s Medicare Part D was a $50 billion/year program, while ACA was estimated to be $95 billion/year.)
It's interesting to see the American side of the story: "offensive comparison of the US to the USSR"
I grew up during the fall of the Iron Curtain in an Eastern European country, building Russian Spectrum (Z80) clones for the bloc, the USSR had positive and negative impacts in our lives. I still live in the apartment that I received during the communist era through my work.
However the intervention of the Americans through CIA operations, after the fall of the Iron Courtain, were mostly negative, and we're still suffering because of them.
Not everything is black or white in life and the story is much more complicated than the "Russia bad" the media portrays in America. But I guess each one of us is a victim of a propaganda machine.
You could describe communism as “semi-fascist”. Or any political ideology for that matter. All your doing is spreading FUD. Please expand your vocabulary or be more descriptive in your criticisms.
I suspect China will experience a similar moment at some point. This might well be it.