Kings of Carrion

Scenes being beamed around the world today, of police officers apparently opening the barricades to allow right-wing supporters of President Donald Trump to storm the Capitol, incited by their champion in a lengthy speech, is as disturbing as the riot itself was utterly predictable.

Donald Trump has a fanatical support base, armed and cocky foot soldiers who will not refrain from further extreme action. Nor for that matter will Trump remain silent, unless slain or incarcerated. It is that passionate loyalty to authoritarian diktat that has already led President-elect Biden to choose a different Secret Service team in order to feel secure. Extreme right-wing lunacy is everywhere it seems.

Incredibly, in a nation where many more firearms are owned than there are people, and more people are jailed than in any other country on the planet - in 2008 the US had around 24.7% of the world's 9.8 million prisoners - only one person died during a riot violent enough to temporarily derail a constitutional process. This is unparalleled in the history of the US but, I suspect, only a taste of what is still to come.

If the tensions and anger that boiled over in Washington DC were inevitable, it began long before Trump made his gaudy entrance through the rear door of the theatre of republicanism. It might still end in civil war.

More violence over the coming months is probably unavoidable. Civil disobedience is likely to be ramped up. Nor will the ferment simply vanish, as some hope, because an ageing Democrat sits in the Oval Office. The media will see to that. Meanwhile deep-seated mechanisms of state-endorsed espionage, killing, and covert meddling in the affairs of any sovereign nation deemed aloof or hostile to US interests, will continue unabated.

Corrupt beyond measure, pretentiously powerful, yet unenlightened on a scale that defies comprehension, the US can no longer help itself. And now that schizophrenic butcher is turning inwards as America, the self-styled land of the free, implodes. The US is in need of sedation - though not through the opioids it so recklessly consumes.

I am reminded of some lines by the English war poet Wilfred Owen: All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true poet must be truthful. 

A mentality of brutality and bullying has been cultivated by successive US governments over many years. But since the attack on the World Trade Center, twenty years ago, a paranoia has also descended on this once proud beacon of democratic ideals. Those in power have tried unsuccessfully to deny an unpalatable truth: America is no longer exceptional - if it ever was. And in spite of weasel words from erstwhile suitors in the arenas of international trade and diplomacy, it is impossible to disguise the antipathy a majority of the global populace now feels towards America.

The US today is pitied as much as it is feared. But consolation is scorned - as is advice, however well-intentioned. The deluded self-image of a glorious empire staggers on, zombie-like, in the corridors of power. Donald Trump, or at least his embodiment as Commander-in Chief, was predestined. Much in the manner of Greek tragedy it was inevitable that an injured soul, reflecting a divided, damaged and narcissistic society, with a Washington-based brain sadly in need of a lobotomy, would appear and begin to inflict self-harm on the nation - a personality disorder extremely difficult to treat.

For decades, across the scars of war from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, the mob-mind of America has been finely-tuned, conditioned to endorse and unleash unthinkable cruelty on others. Now that impulse, similar to neuroses exhibited by the most ruthless of serial killers, is bitterly turning in on itself.

More than any other event in the past 50 years, America is seeing itself as many others see them. It will take a few years, but future generations will look back on 2021 as the year the American experiment unravelled.

Meanwhile, half way around the world in Hong Kong, mostly hidden from public view, dozens of former lawmakers and opposition activists were arrested, and their assets frozen, for the crime of subverting state power - part of the national security laws that were imposed by Beijing last year.

Like the situation in the US this is unlikely to end peacefully. Police are continuing with their investigations. More people will be arrested within the coming weeks. Multiple Hong Kong pro-democracy candidates have already been barred from standing in the upcoming legislative elections, although it is probable the government will postpone the polls until 2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an uncanny likeness to the accusations of widespread election fraud in the US, the top representatives from Beijing in Hong Kong have accused opposition groups, aided by unnamed external forces, of attempting to paralyze the Hong Kong government by threatening the fairness of the electoral system and the Legislative Council elections.

As in the US, context is all-important if we are to understand what is really happening. Since Xi Jinping assumed power in 2013 he has set a course that seeks to cement his position in the annals of the Communist Party. His recent actions are reminiscent of Chairman Mao - encouraging a personality cult and centralizing institutional power through measures designed to enforce party discipline, increase censorship, and tighten mass surveillance.

After several years spent working closely with the West, playing the game according to the West's rules in terms of commerce, while continuing the work of his predecessors to eliminate the worst of poverty through the establishment of a creative middle class, Xi is now showing a different face to the world.

Under cover of the pandemic, and the unravelling of democracy in America, he has found an opportunity to enact a far more assertive foreign policy, while still pursuing what one might call Chinese-style globalization - exemplified by the recent investment deal with the EU, and the mercantilist Belt & Road initiative that is already embedding China's economic influence across much of Asia, Africa, and in far-flung countries that are no longer keen to continue genuflecting to US supremacy.

But the signs of Xi's real intentions, and his growing confidence, are also intimated by the escalation of new military bases in the South China Sea, along with Beijing's new rhetoric regarding both Hong Kong and Taiwan. With patience fast evaporating, China has been quick to assert its control over Hong Kong and now looks to constrain Taiwan with renewed vigour and reintegration by stealth.

And so, along with all the recent history of sabre-rattling, my interest was particularly sparked when Kelly Craft, the US Ambassador to the UN, reported her outrage at the arrests, and that the Chinese Communist Party should seek to silence and undermine Hong Kong's autonomy and long-term commitment to the freedom of its people.

Ah. Freedom. The rhetoric used so casually by those who would control everything if they had their own way. There can be no denying that from the perspective of many in the West, China seems determined to destroy the remaining remnants of Hong Kong's autonomy and rule of law inherited from the British. But is that really the case? And is China really any worse than the US in terms of election fraud and centralized control?

The question is intentionally provocative of course. But the truth is difficult to uncover, blurred, and partly concealed by the extent to which we are all increasingly under the spell of propaganda emanating from within two highly distinct worldviews.

Although we are fed a constant diet of fear-based misinformation and disinformation, pointing to qualitative differences between China and the US, what strikes me more are the startling similarities between the two empires - one in decline, the other rising.

The Chinese social credit system, whereby citizens are surveilled and their access to resources determined according to their public behaviour and compliance, is looked upon with dismay in nations like Australia, Britain and the US for example, in spite of overwhelming approval from Chinese citizens. But the advent of transaction systems using AI, non-fiat digital currencies, and public surveillance technologies, means most Western nations, including the US, are moving in a similar direction - even if the goals are not yet identical.

Another intriguing factor is the current trade war between the US and China and where that might be heading. Few people appreciate that the wealth enjoyed by the West originally derived from centuries of mercantilism - not free trade. Indeed free trade only became attractive to countries like France, Germany, Britain and the US, when they were sufficiently advantaged that they could compete freely in the knowledge they would win every time.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West was able to pursue an aggressive free market policy around the world, virtually unimpeded. But by the time China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001 a perfect storm was brewing that would eventually destroy Western hegemony.

Simply stated, China’s ascension to the WTO allowed Western companies to trade with China on a scale that had hitherto been impossible. As restrictions lifted, the West effectively exchanged its comparative advantage in a wide range of manufactures and services, built up over a century of accumulated intellectual know-how, for little more than a decade of unparalleled economic growth that was fundamentally destructive to its own economies.

Meanwhile, futile wars against Islamic countries distracted the attention of politicians and the general public to such an extent that they did not even notice what was going on in terms of their economic and trading relationships with the Chinese dragon.

Today China pursues the same mercantilist practices that brought wealth to the West. Although this amounts to an asymmetric trade war it is totally within China's right and it makes perfect sense for the Chinese government to pursue this policy on behalf of its population. But history shows us that in any such battle between one country enacting a mercantilist policy and another country enacting an open market or free trade policy, the mercantilist country will win.

The crisis of confidence, and intensifying brittleness, suffered in the West over the past two decades is in stark contrast to the rising economic, political and military conviction of a resurgent China. The centralization of authority, the deepening state infiltration of society, the creation of a virtual wall of regulations that more tightly control the flow of ideas, culture and capital into and out of the country, along with the liberal projection of Chinese power abroad, represents a growing sureness, and a reassertion of China's legitimate bid for equal standing in the international community - at least in terms of criteria previously agreed as the norm by bodies like the United Nations.

China and the US are inextricably joined at the hip, especially in terms of innovation, trade, finance, and power. But a deep irony pervades this interface. While one appears to be facing a moral and physical decline, the other is on a meteoric rise.

It is far too early to predict the outcome from this conflict between two world-systems. Failing empires often display disturbingly similar features. Assuming a continuation of the woes being experienced by the US we should prepare ourselves for that nation to lash out unpredictably in more and more desperate attempts to restore internal order and international pride.

But if the US today is an enigma, then China is an even more of a mystery. History has shown us the rage and force of the crowd when the people suffer misfortune or awake to a reality that is not to their advantage. Although it might seem preposterous today, it is entirely feasible that China's rampaging totalitarianism will backfire, resulting in a pushback by citizens against such extreme authority. After all it happened in 1911 and again in 1949. It can happen again.

I am reminded of a popular English nursery rhyme: Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle, for Tweedledum said Tweedledee had spoiled his nice new rattle. Just then flew down a monstrous crow, as black as a tar-barrel, which frightened both the heroes so, they quite forgot their quarrel.

If Tweedledum and Tweedledee are indeed drawn into war in their wrangle for global hegemony, I wonder in what form the monstrous crow might manifest.