Hail, brothers! The Domain Query series is finally back, with an all-new episode, thanks to LRFotS Randale6, who wrote in with a long two-part question. The questions relate to my recent trip to Russia, and everything that I have seen and learned before and since. Here is what he asked - edited somewhat, due to my Grammar Nazi tendencies:
The first question is pertinent to your recent vacation to Russia, have the Russians finally accepted and (we can hope) embraced the reality that they are Russian, not European, and not Asian? I do not mean this in the cruel sense of deriding the Russians as a barbaric race, rather I think of them as being the far eastern analogue to Texas...just bigger, colder, and to be blunt possessed of questionable cuisine (all hail the two truly homegrown American cuisines, Cajun and Tex-Mex).
Over here in the USA Texas has never been ashamed of being Texas, it readily accepts the fact that it is its own little (alright, big) reality that doesn't quite play by the rules as the American South, Southwest, and Appalachia know them. But Russian history doesn't play out that way, it's never a good sign when your nobility can speak better French than Russian...and you keep doing it despite the frogs shitting on you whenever they see you (ditto for the rest of western Europe with regards to Russia).
The second question relates to China. Simply put the Chinese have done something that they have never done since before the birth of Christ, that something being the alteration of their government. From the time of the first Emperor to the nomadic conquerors from over the wall the Chinese governmental model has stood firm, the only changes to it essentially being window dressing.
Those days are now gone, in the place of the old dynasties stands the CCP (which should be renamed the Fascist Chinese Party if we are honest). The CCP has a problem, a threat that it cannot answer like the old dynasties did. That thorn in their side being the question of legitimacy.
In the two millennia of dynastic rule all an Emperor had to do to remain legitimate was to keep China prosperous and stable. So long as he could do this the Emperor was legitimate, regardless of whatever bullshit his predecessors had cooked up.
However, the CCP cannot partake of this Mandate of Heaven like the dynasties did. The CCP is built around ideology, not an Emperor. Just because Deng took over from Mao does not mean the former can abjure the latter as having lost the mandate of heaven, the ideological tenets of the CCP being an absolute commandments that cannot be challenged (formally) lest the foundations of the entire party crumble.
Simply put the CCP cannot come to terms with the fact that are no longer Communist, they are Fascists, hence such euphemisms as "Communism with Chinese Characteristics". What this does is force the party to live in a state of cognitive (and political) dissonance, a damaging state for both the individual and the party itself.
With that in mind do you think that the CCP can overcome this internal contradiction?
I answer these questions at length in the podcast. Basically, the answer to the first question is: YES, the Russians have rediscovered their ancient love of their own people, and their own deeply ingrained sense of national pride.
The answer to the second is more complex, and there are a few misconceptions about the CPC that I need to clear up first. Essentially, the CPC faces a number of serious problems in China, and is working to address them by way of your typical engineering mindset - build, baby, build! This is not necessarily a sensible solution, because the problems confronting the CPC are quite severe structural ones, which they have failed to address for many years. But they are nowhere near as severe as what faces the West, and I believe the CPC enjoys far greater popular support than most Western commentators realise.
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