Machiavelli famously observed that for any ruler, it is better to be feared than to be loved, if one cannot be both. If that’s the case, people should be becoming more sympathetic to Trump’s America. Why, then, is Trump’s constant demonstration of US power not paying dividends?
Idk, maybe stop taking 15th century advice for how to conduct 21st century politics?
The US president fantasises about the scope of China’s industrial power, so much that he now practices state capitalism Chinese-style. It is as if Trump has lost trust in his country’s political and economic system. As the saying goes, imitation is the highest form of flattery, and now it is Washington imitating Beijing.
What absolute horseshit. Nothing about what the US is doing right now bears any resemblance to China’s industrial policies.
I do love how China is never assigned any agency in these articles. They just exist, they’re not doing anything to make themselves as an attractive alternative to the US. It’s all the fault of the bad orange man that humanity sees China as the future now. Nothing to do with China actually developing in a peaceful way, becoming a technological superpower, and raising the standard of living at a pace unprecedented in human history.
Good point. It shows that the people writing this stuff: don’t understand China, are paid to pretend they don’t so readers won’t, or some combination of the two. And both possibilities imply racism toward China. A good dose of anti-communism too because if they dissect China honestly and share that analysis, it’s going to lead to “oh wait, communism is good.”
Chinese system: Future-oriented planning, reducing uneven development
Trump system: no planning, deliberately exacerbates inequality
Western observers: Hmm, yes. These are the same
Invoking Machiavelli is terribly funny here for multiple reasons.
First being Machiavelli’s actual view was it was best to be both feared and loved but if you couldn’t have both then you should at least be feared.
Second is that this advice was meant for despotic leaders, not the heads of republics, as all his advice in “The Prince” is aimed toward monarchs and those ruling similar government structures; he personally preferred republics as a model of governance but wrote The Prince to advise princes on how best to rule within the limitations of what he considered an inferior government model (he was also being paid by the Medici to write it and they’d just dissolved the Florentine Republic and also had him tortured for a while so). Trump is the head of a republic (yes, a bourgeois republic, but a republic nonetheless) and not a monarchy so this advice doesn’t work for him.
Third is that Trump is neither loved nor feared, hence why he is a total failure regardless.
So all around this advice doesn’t work for Trump at all and not because it’s from the 15th century but because it’s from a context that Trump doesn’t operate within.
Amen, they should have at least cited from his republican work.
Yet another demonstration how “state capitalism” is a meaningless term.
Did China make a big tariff board full of BS numbers? If Trump is trying to copy China, he’s doing pretty bad at it.
Trump can’t even emulate an adult. Wtf would he knows about policy? He struggles with HS level maths.
I recall he recently claimed certain medications became 900% cheaper under his administration.
Machiavelli famously observed that for any ruler, it is better to be feared than to be loved, if one cannot be both. If that’s the case, people should be becoming more sympathetic to Trump’s America. Why, then, is Trump’s constant demonstration of US power not paying dividends?
One usually can be both tho. Financial Crimes should propably read Machiavelli before citing him.
Trauma bonding is real.
Trump is making the world fall in love with China
more like he just accelerated the process of loving china
this is why I don’t read, reading is what leads nerds to ascribe outsized importance to something some dipshit said because they already agree with it
I doubt it.
