Bullets still fly around Trump’s hair. We’re in the Wild West, and the former president risks ending up like the students massacred in schools because the gun lobby wants to keep making piles of money. There are around 400 million legally owned guns circulating in the United States, and the numbers keep rising, just like the problems with mental health and drug addiction that no one addresses. A powder keg, but heaven forbid anyone takes the cowboys’ penis extension away or challenges business dominance. Hatred, violence, and an ever-fading line between conspiracy theories and reality. Trump claims he won the debate with Kamala so convincingly that he doesn’t want to do another, and he tells stories about immigrants in Springfield eating dogs and cats, as if they were in China, which is meanwhile galloping towards global leadership without firing a single shot. Trump has spent his life with young girls, bankruptcies, and TV studios, speaking as if he were at the bar.
On the other hand, Xi’s political writings have become part of the official doctrine of the People’s Republic of China, and the initial results are impressive. Chinese governance isn’t communism but an intelligent hybrid system where capitalism doesn’t rule but is guided by politics. American turbo-capitalism is in the hands of maniacs like Elon Musk and sharks like Jeff Bezos, with immense resources landing in the pockets of a few fat cats who, among their privileges, even get to buy politics, while ordinary folks struggle more and more. The core neoliberal idea is that the freer the market, the more it grows, and the more benefits trickle down to everyone. Gigantic lies that the Chinese have understood. The market produces innovation and wealth but also devastating social injustice, and above all, it needs a brain, a heart, and a vision aimed at the common good, which only politics can provide. Private business aims for maximum profit in the shortest time possible, while the public sector has a broader, deeper, and more forward-looking vision. China alternates between these with wisdom, and the results are truly impressive.
About fifteen years ago, the global race for electric cars, the business of the century, began. Recently, we’ve learned that China’s BYD produces models costing just €9,000, which are crushing the competition. If they made it to the U.S., Tesla would close in a couple of days, which is why the free-market-loving Americans have imposed 100% tariffs to block them. But China is also outpacing the U.S. in solar energy and even in smartphones and similar products, while Europe has completely lost its way. This historic overtaking is the result of a strategy. For a long time, Western companies rushed to China to exploit cheap labor and access the vast local market, and while they were making a killing, the Chinese learned the tricks of the trade and now beat us both in products and in the economic model.
Of course, when it comes to freedom and democracy, China still has a long way to go. But since we handed political power over to private lobbies and since we’ve been drenching the world in blood with pointless wars, we’ve lost the right to issue certificates of democracy and human rights to others. Even internationally, China has overtaken the U.S., offering a smarter and calmer leadership. They believe in a multipolar system, not in hegemony. Instead of exploiting, they cooperate, and instead of threatening, they persuade.
But elections rage in the United States. Kamala is sanctified on every network and has even received Taylor Swift’s endorsement with her 300 million followers, yet she’s not breaking through. She pays for her appalling vagueness on genocide and her stubbornness on the Ukraine conflict, for her lack of personal depth, and for being the product of the most hypocritical establishment since Abraham Lincoln’s time. Old Trump, for his part, has more convictions than ideas and now flies to Florida and thanks Oklahoma, but he still embodies the frustration with a failed political and social model. It’s a shame that Trump isn’t the cause but one of the symptoms of turbo-capitalism and the money that has bought everything, even reality itself. Bullets and insults fly, but Xi can rest easy. In the West, governments may change constantly, but not those who really hold power, and no one questions the underlying system. So much so that America’s declared decline may turn out to be irreversible.
