Commentary
The brilliant former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was once quoted as saying, “Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change.” That is absolutely true, but the meanings of commonly understood words are frequently corrupted, represented, or obfuscated by nefarious people.
Both the Chinese Communist Party and the U.S. Democratic Party are masters at obfuscating language to achieve their political objectives. There are even some interesting similarities in certain aspects of messaging by both parties.
Let us explore the thesis.
Democracy
In order to convey a false sense of the legitimacy, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-ruled government Xi Jinping regularly opines about the crackpot term “whole people’s democracy,” which is then endlessly repeated in the echo chamber of state-run Chinese media. The concept is absurd because there is no such thing as genuine democracy in a one-party dictatorship in which only CCP-approved candidates occupy positions across all levels of government.The report presented by Xi during the recently concluded 20th National Congress of the CCP included a new slogan that embellishes “whole people’s democracy”: acting for people, relying on people. This is simply more twisted gobbledygook, as the CCP has been “acting for the people” without regard to any democratically-obtained input from the Chinese people since the communist regime took power in 1949.
Red Guard members wave copies of Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book” during a parade in Beijing on June 1, 1966. Jean Vincent/AFP via Getty Images
The Democratic Party, too, has an odd definition of democracy. Throughout the 2022 election campaign, one of the key pillars of the Democrats’ election narrative has been the imperative to “save our democracy.” Joe Biden attempted to close the political sale on Nov. 2 in a speech devoted almost entirely to condemning “extreme Republicans” and urging voters to “preserve democracy” by electing Democrats, as reported by the New York Post here.
Coupled with the continuing Biden administration’s weaponizing of federal agencies against perceived political opponents (e.g., arresting peaceful anti-abortion activists, suppressing political speech, and refocusing on the investigation and prosecution over various “domestic terrorists” like the J6 protestors), Biden’s naked political appeal is akin to the CCP’s ongoing efforts to perpetuate a one-party state. After all, “saving our democracy” is a thinly veiled slogan whose real meaning is to save the Democrats, not the democratic actions of Americans who are poised to sweep the Democratic Party out of political power, as noted here by The Epoch Times.
Democrats would apparently like to “act for people and rely on people” by encouraging voters to support a one-party Democrat-run state analogous to communist China!
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, alongside House Democrats, holds the CHIPS for America Act, providing domestic semiconductor manufacturers with billions in subsidies to cut reliance on foreign sourcing, after signing it during an enrollment ceremony outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on July 29, 2022. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Political Purges
Xi Jinping completed a political purge of former leader Hu Jintao and his faction of the CCP during the 20th Party Congress. In a shocking display, Hu was frog-marched out of the Congress during an obviously staged event intended to convey to the assembled CCP apparatchiks and the rest of the world that Xi is completely in charge. Besides Xi, the six other standing members of the newly-appointed 20th Politburo are all Xi allies and confidants, as are the members of the new Central Military Commission. Enter the era of complete unanimity of CCP thoughts and deeds, and a return to Mao-style authoritarianism—and a very dangerous time for the Chinese people and the world in general.
Young Red Guards brandish copies of Chairman Mao's “Little Red Book” in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The Red Guards rampaged through Chinese towns, terrorizing people, particularly the elderly. Jean Vincent/AFP via Getty Images
Chinese people demonstrate during the "great proletarian Cultural Revolution" in front of the French embassy in Beijing on January 1967. Protesters show symbols of the Revolution such as the portrait of Mao Zedong, banners, and the book "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung." Since the cultural revolution was launched in May 1966 at Beijing University, Mao's aim was to recapture power after the failure of the "Great Leap Forward." The movement was directed against those "Party leaders in authority taking the capitalist road." Jean Vincent/AFP via Getty Images
A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Peace during the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 5, 1989. Jeff Widener/AP Photo
The Democratic Party is deep into conducting its own political purge of the “Republican faction” from the greater U.S. polity: suppress dissent, redesignate political dissenters as “domestic terrorists,” and refocus federal law enforcement on political crimes. The actions involve silencing and canceling the political speech of those who dissent from Democrat political orthodoxy. For example, the Department of Homeland Security has embarked on an “expansive effort” to influence Big Tech and social media giants, as reported here and revealed through analysis of “years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents—obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents.”
Misinformation and disinformation are now apparently what the Democrats and bureaucratic allies deem them to be, despite the public outcry that deep-sixed (at least temporarily) the DHS’s “Disinformation Governance Board” earlier this year. Never mind the First Amendment that protects all political speech. Democrats know better than the Founders did!
The Biden administration has loosened the definition of “domestic terrorists” to smear, attack, and investigate J6 protestors, those who question the adherence to due process during the 2020 election, and vocal “America First” supporters.
Several hundred J6 protestors have been pursued vigorously for nearly two years, while thousands of violent antifa and BLM rioters (politically supported by many Democrats, as noted here) have been virtually ignored by the Democrat-controlled DOJ and FBI. The FBI targeted True the Vote after alleged election-related crimes by Chinese-owned Konnech Corporation. And after years of lies about now-dismissed Trump-Russia collusion and other politically-motivated efforts to “get Trump,” the FBI carried out an unprecedented action against a former U.S. president by raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August.
An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home after FBI agents searched it, in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 15, 2022. Marco Bello/Reuters
The Democrats’ three-pronged effort to suppress dissent, as defined by their own party, target Democrat-defined “domestic terrorists,” and prosecute/harass/raid Democrat political opponents is eerily similar to the CCP’s decades-long campaign to squelch all political resistance against the Chinese communist regime.
A Brave New World
The CCP and the Democratic Party each have their own visions of what amount to variations on the dystopian future, as presented in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in which each party exercises totalitarian control of their respective societies. We must remember, those visions were also marketed with flowery words and slogans that mask reality.From the newest amendment to the CCP’s constitution approved during the 20th Party Congress comes the slogan of “advancing the building of an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.” Riiiiiggght. The “shared future” promised by the CCP involves boots on the necks of all dissenters (especially ethnic and religious minorities in China), complete and intrusive social controls to manage the behavior of individual citizens, and arbitrary and punitive measures such as those associated with Xi’s “zero-COVID policy” that continues to destroy businesses and lives.
The Democratic Party’s vision for America’s future is laid out in their party platform here. Behind the flowery words such as “stronger fairer,” “universal affordable,” and “healing the soul,” a glimpse at that future has already been presented to Americans over the past two years: economic chaos, massive inflation, out-of-control crime, the fentanyl scourge, sexualizing children, and foreign policy incompetence.
The reality of the Democrats’ future vision for America includes gender affirmation (human experimentation and barbarism), unlimited women’s “healthcare” (infanticide), counting all votes (rigged elections), “free” healthcare (including for the increasing number of illegal aliens), and much, much more. How do the secular Democrats equate all of this damage to “healing the soul” of America?
The above comparisons between the Chinese Communist Party and the Democratic Party in the United States are similar but not matching—yet. However, what the CCP has managed through 73 years of totalitarian control of communist China gives us a glimpse of the future in the U.S. under long-term Democrat domination and control of the federal government.
But American voters who understand the true meaning of the words already spoken may have other ideas for our future.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
