Not familiar with Piker. Then again, he’s an “influencer”. I ignore all of them. When I was being raised we called people like him “bigmouths”. We ignored them then, too.
China might think that US’s stalemate in the Iran war and Trump’s ambivalence towards Taiwan … as a ‘good time’ to invade them and reclaim *their* sovereignty
Taiwan will be China shortly. Trump will not stand between Taiwan and Xi. Any weapons delivered to Taiwan, unless destroyed, will become Chinese. So Taiwan will not receive our cutting edge weapons thereby facilitating merging with China. Holding up the sale may be one good things Trump is doing since we all (including Xi) know Trump may offer to sell weapons, but will not provide other support to Taiwan.
The thirst for power like greed becomes insatiable like a malignant cancer Since the 1980's during the Reagan years of dominance the Nazi Republicans decided it was their time to flip the script of Democratic dominance but they knew because of unpopular policies eg reducing the social safety net, lowering taxes for the wealthy and corporations, reducing/elimination of federal control over the states, that the only solution was to rig the electoral system in their favor, at that time gerrymandering
But over at the DOJ a fella named Roberts had another idea Seeing what the VRA had done to the Nazi's ability to control the power dynamic he and his Federalist Society buddies decided that the judicial solution would be to declare that racism was over and the VRA had to go
Now fast forward to today and one can see the result of the rise to power by the fascist Republicans Not only was it labeled legitimate to illegally rig the 2016 and 2024 elections(abundant circumstantial evidence supporting such statements) for the betterment of American society but it was necessary with a malignant narcissist candidate like Cheeto to head a fascist takeover of the government What may have been "cute judicial manipulation" by GW gradually grew over the decades to frank obsession and thirst for power and need to retain it
And voila!! The trifecta achieved!! Now with the governmental levers of power in hand it's time to make hay The antidemocratic Roberts Court as it will go do in the history books is merely a symptom as often the case in these situations of a greater sickness in an organization like the Nazi....and I don't use that word lightly.....party aka CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) What WE the People are witnessing is an organizational thirst/lust for power and survival like a cancer that has gone out of control and metastasized and WE the People must stop it
The real issue is not “Trump likes China.” States often deal with hostile or authoritarian powers. Diplomacy requires contact with enemies, rivals and competitors.
The deeper issue is this:
Does diplomacy remain constrained by democratic principles, or does it become admiration for unconstrained power?
That is where the loadbearing problem appears.
A liberal-democratic leader can meet Xi, negotiate with Xi, trade with China, avoid war with China, and even speak respectfully in public. That is normal statecraft.
But when the rhetoric turns into personal admiration — “great leader,” “friend,” “big hug,” ceremonial intoxication — the signal changes. The democratic office-holder seems less like the representative of a constitutional republic and more like a man recognising another man of power.
That is the authoritarian attraction.
Demagogue, not ideologue
Gottesman’s strongest line is that Trump is a demagogue, not an ideologue.
That matters because ideology still has principles, however mistaken. A communist, nationalist, liberal, conservative or socialist is at least constrained by a worldview. A demagogue is constrained mainly by appetite: praise, dominance, grievance, revenge, spectacle, deal-making, survival.
So the contradiction is only apparent.
Trump can denounce “radical left socialism” at home while praising Xi abroad because the deeper organising principle is not anti-communism. It is anti-constraint.
Xi is not attractive to Trump because he is communist. He is attractive because he appears unconstrained by courts, journalists, civil servants, universities, opposition parties, hostile judges, electoral loss, or procedural restraint.
In Gymnostic terms: Trump is not drawn to Xi’s ideology. He is drawn to Xi’s stabilisation of personal power.
The collapse of consistent anti-authoritarianism
Gottesman’s appeal for “consistent anti-authoritarianism” is important because democratic societies often oppose authoritarianism only when it wears the wrong costume.
The right may condemn communist authoritarianism while excusing nationalist authoritarianism.
The left may condemn fascist authoritarianism while excusing socialist or anti-Western authoritarianism.
The nationalist may condemn foreign tyranny while excusing domestic strongman politics.
The anti-imperialist may condemn American power while ignoring Russian, Chinese or Iranian domination.
That is the central hypocrisy: people pretend to oppose tyranny, but often oppose only the tyranny of their enemies.
A truly loadbearing democratic principle would say:
It is authoritarianism whether the flag is red, nationalist, religious, revolutionary, anti-woke, anti-imperial, or patriotic.
That is why the Stalin-Hitler comparison works rhetorically. Gottesman is not saying Trump and Xi are identical to Stalin and Hitler. The structural analogy is narrower: followers who claim firm principles often contort themselves when their own leader embraces a supposed enemy.
The loadbearing principle collapses into loyalty.
Loyalty replaces reality
This is the most Gymnostic point in the piece.
When followers justify anything the leader does, they no longer inhabit a world governed by stable principles. They inhabit a loyalty field.
Before the leader acts, something is evil.
After the leader acts, the same thing becomes strategic.
Before Trump praises Xi, China is communist tyranny.
After Trump praises Xi, admiration becomes “realpolitik.”
Before the pact, Nazis are the enemy of communism.
After the pact, Stalin’s deal with Hitler becomes diplomatic brilliance.
This is not reasoning. It is post-hoc stabilisation.
The mind does not ask, “What is true?” It asks, “How can I preserve loyalty without experiencing contradiction?”
That is why authoritarianism corrodes cognition before it corrodes institutions.
The loadbearing elements being eroded
The Trump-Xi “honeymoon” is not just foreign policy theatre. It erodes several democratic stabilisations.
First, it erodes moral consistency. Democracy depends on the belief that some principles are not merely tribal weapons. If authoritarianism is bad only when practised by enemies, the principle was decorative, not loadbearing.
Second, it erodes the office/person distinction. A democratic president represents a constitutional system. But personal flattery between rulers shifts attention from institutions to men.
Third, it erodes alliance trust. Allies need to believe American policy is anchored in something more stable than one leader’s mood. Reuters reports that the Beijing summit produced warmth but no major breakthrough; FPRI analysts similarly described the meeting as lacking tangible breakthroughs beneath the cordial surface.
Fourth, it erodes the anti-authoritarian identity of the West. If America appears more admiring of strongmen than protective of constitutional democracies, the whole symbolic order of the post-war West weakens.
Fifth, it erodes truth-contact. The follower must constantly rewrite yesterday’s enemy into today’s partner, not because reality changed, but because the leader’s posture changed.
The deeper danger
The danger is not that Trump talks to Xi.
The danger is that he seems to recognise Xi as a model of successful power.
That distinction is everything.
Diplomacy says: “We must deal with China because China is powerful.”
Authoritarian attraction says: “China shows what power looks like when it is not burdened by democratic constraint.”
The first is realism.
The second is civilisational self-harm.
Core argument:
Trump’s praise of Xi matters not because diplomacy with China is wrong, but because it reveals a deeper anti-democratic temptation: admiration for power liberated from constraint. The real crisis is not ideological inconsistency but the collapse of loadbearing principle into personal loyalty.
Trump attempted to bend China to his will with tariffs - and failed. And while China gets things built very quickly, it comes at the cost of cutting too many corners, which manifests in the infamous "tofu dreg construction". And that's coming directly from Chinese citizens themselves.
I've previously mentioned that Putin is the bridge between the MAGA-aligned Alliance of Sovereign Nations/Shield of the Americas and the Axis of Upheaval/CRINK. Hopefully Xi won't be another bridge.
Chang Kai-shek's army may have been an alliance of Bandido chiefs under a socialist flag, but Taiwan, like other Asian countries, including China, has progressed. The thing that bothers me is what happened to Hong Kong. CCP does not seem to be any better at keeping its word than the USA. I kind of wonder what the value is of not selling chips made in Taiwan to China, when China could simply take Taiwan and have it all? Its leaders depend on trade and the international economy, so what prevents that is what we are seeing happening on a smaller scale with the USA's incursion into Iran. The slow conversion to a world without global hegemony and mare liberum is probably underway, as we roll back the clock in answer to hard-scrabble Portugal's bringing mercantilism and the Christian cannon to the far East. Once again, art is long and time is short.
To your point:
The difference between Republican supporters and all others?
Republican supporters have simple and clear requests: dominate, punish, harm, control. That’s it.
Dem/Ind supporters: the want list is lengthy and changes frequently. Insufficient cohesion.
Hopefully the latter can at least to suck up to authoritarians like Putin and Xi. Hasan Piker is misogynist scum.
Not familiar with Piker. Then again, he’s an “influencer”. I ignore all of them. When I was being raised we called people like him “bigmouths”. We ignored them then, too.
I only brought him up because the article mentioned him.
China might think that US’s stalemate in the Iran war and Trump’s ambivalence towards Taiwan … as a ‘good time’ to invade them and reclaim *their* sovereignty
Taiwan will be China shortly. Trump will not stand between Taiwan and Xi. Any weapons delivered to Taiwan, unless destroyed, will become Chinese. So Taiwan will not receive our cutting edge weapons thereby facilitating merging with China. Holding up the sale may be one good things Trump is doing since we all (including Xi) know Trump may offer to sell weapons, but will not provide other support to Taiwan.
Power And SCOTUS
The thirst for power like greed becomes insatiable like a malignant cancer Since the 1980's during the Reagan years of dominance the Nazi Republicans decided it was their time to flip the script of Democratic dominance but they knew because of unpopular policies eg reducing the social safety net, lowering taxes for the wealthy and corporations, reducing/elimination of federal control over the states, that the only solution was to rig the electoral system in their favor, at that time gerrymandering
But over at the DOJ a fella named Roberts had another idea Seeing what the VRA had done to the Nazi's ability to control the power dynamic he and his Federalist Society buddies decided that the judicial solution would be to declare that racism was over and the VRA had to go
Now fast forward to today and one can see the result of the rise to power by the fascist Republicans Not only was it labeled legitimate to illegally rig the 2016 and 2024 elections(abundant circumstantial evidence supporting such statements) for the betterment of American society but it was necessary with a malignant narcissist candidate like Cheeto to head a fascist takeover of the government What may have been "cute judicial manipulation" by GW gradually grew over the decades to frank obsession and thirst for power and need to retain it
And voila!! The trifecta achieved!! Now with the governmental levers of power in hand it's time to make hay The antidemocratic Roberts Court as it will go do in the history books is merely a symptom as often the case in these situations of a greater sickness in an organization like the Nazi....and I don't use that word lightly.....party aka CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) What WE the People are witnessing is an organizational thirst/lust for power and survival like a cancer that has gone out of control and metastasized and WE the People must stop it
Repeal the filibuster and expand SCOTUS
Agree completely with the Ribbentrop pact parallel. I half-expected a non-aggression pact to come out of Trump's visit to China. Maybe it did.
The real issue is not “Trump likes China.” States often deal with hostile or authoritarian powers. Diplomacy requires contact with enemies, rivals and competitors.
The deeper issue is this:
Does diplomacy remain constrained by democratic principles, or does it become admiration for unconstrained power?
That is where the loadbearing problem appears.
A liberal-democratic leader can meet Xi, negotiate with Xi, trade with China, avoid war with China, and even speak respectfully in public. That is normal statecraft.
But when the rhetoric turns into personal admiration — “great leader,” “friend,” “big hug,” ceremonial intoxication — the signal changes. The democratic office-holder seems less like the representative of a constitutional republic and more like a man recognising another man of power.
That is the authoritarian attraction.
Demagogue, not ideologue
Gottesman’s strongest line is that Trump is a demagogue, not an ideologue.
That matters because ideology still has principles, however mistaken. A communist, nationalist, liberal, conservative or socialist is at least constrained by a worldview. A demagogue is constrained mainly by appetite: praise, dominance, grievance, revenge, spectacle, deal-making, survival.
So the contradiction is only apparent.
Trump can denounce “radical left socialism” at home while praising Xi abroad because the deeper organising principle is not anti-communism. It is anti-constraint.
Xi is not attractive to Trump because he is communist. He is attractive because he appears unconstrained by courts, journalists, civil servants, universities, opposition parties, hostile judges, electoral loss, or procedural restraint.
In Gymnostic terms: Trump is not drawn to Xi’s ideology. He is drawn to Xi’s stabilisation of personal power.
The collapse of consistent anti-authoritarianism
Gottesman’s appeal for “consistent anti-authoritarianism” is important because democratic societies often oppose authoritarianism only when it wears the wrong costume.
The right may condemn communist authoritarianism while excusing nationalist authoritarianism.
The left may condemn fascist authoritarianism while excusing socialist or anti-Western authoritarianism.
The nationalist may condemn foreign tyranny while excusing domestic strongman politics.
The anti-imperialist may condemn American power while ignoring Russian, Chinese or Iranian domination.
That is the central hypocrisy: people pretend to oppose tyranny, but often oppose only the tyranny of their enemies.
A truly loadbearing democratic principle would say:
It is authoritarianism whether the flag is red, nationalist, religious, revolutionary, anti-woke, anti-imperial, or patriotic.
That is why the Stalin-Hitler comparison works rhetorically. Gottesman is not saying Trump and Xi are identical to Stalin and Hitler. The structural analogy is narrower: followers who claim firm principles often contort themselves when their own leader embraces a supposed enemy.
The loadbearing principle collapses into loyalty.
Loyalty replaces reality
This is the most Gymnostic point in the piece.
When followers justify anything the leader does, they no longer inhabit a world governed by stable principles. They inhabit a loyalty field.
Before the leader acts, something is evil.
After the leader acts, the same thing becomes strategic.
Before Trump praises Xi, China is communist tyranny.
After Trump praises Xi, admiration becomes “realpolitik.”
Before the pact, Nazis are the enemy of communism.
After the pact, Stalin’s deal with Hitler becomes diplomatic brilliance.
This is not reasoning. It is post-hoc stabilisation.
The mind does not ask, “What is true?” It asks, “How can I preserve loyalty without experiencing contradiction?”
That is why authoritarianism corrodes cognition before it corrodes institutions.
The loadbearing elements being eroded
The Trump-Xi “honeymoon” is not just foreign policy theatre. It erodes several democratic stabilisations.
First, it erodes moral consistency. Democracy depends on the belief that some principles are not merely tribal weapons. If authoritarianism is bad only when practised by enemies, the principle was decorative, not loadbearing.
Second, it erodes the office/person distinction. A democratic president represents a constitutional system. But personal flattery between rulers shifts attention from institutions to men.
Third, it erodes alliance trust. Allies need to believe American policy is anchored in something more stable than one leader’s mood. Reuters reports that the Beijing summit produced warmth but no major breakthrough; FPRI analysts similarly described the meeting as lacking tangible breakthroughs beneath the cordial surface.
Fourth, it erodes the anti-authoritarian identity of the West. If America appears more admiring of strongmen than protective of constitutional democracies, the whole symbolic order of the post-war West weakens.
Fifth, it erodes truth-contact. The follower must constantly rewrite yesterday’s enemy into today’s partner, not because reality changed, but because the leader’s posture changed.
The deeper danger
The danger is not that Trump talks to Xi.
The danger is that he seems to recognise Xi as a model of successful power.
That distinction is everything.
Diplomacy says: “We must deal with China because China is powerful.”
Authoritarian attraction says: “China shows what power looks like when it is not burdened by democratic constraint.”
The first is realism.
The second is civilisational self-harm.
Core argument:
Trump’s praise of Xi matters not because diplomacy with China is wrong, but because it reveals a deeper anti-democratic temptation: admiration for power liberated from constraint. The real crisis is not ideological inconsistency but the collapse of loadbearing principle into personal loyalty.
Trump attempted to bend China to his will with tariffs - and failed. And while China gets things built very quickly, it comes at the cost of cutting too many corners, which manifests in the infamous "tofu dreg construction". And that's coming directly from Chinese citizens themselves.
I've previously mentioned that Putin is the bridge between the MAGA-aligned Alliance of Sovereign Nations/Shield of the Americas and the Axis of Upheaval/CRINK. Hopefully Xi won't be another bridge.
Chang Kai-shek's army may have been an alliance of Bandido chiefs under a socialist flag, but Taiwan, like other Asian countries, including China, has progressed. The thing that bothers me is what happened to Hong Kong. CCP does not seem to be any better at keeping its word than the USA. I kind of wonder what the value is of not selling chips made in Taiwan to China, when China could simply take Taiwan and have it all? Its leaders depend on trade and the international economy, so what prevents that is what we are seeing happening on a smaller scale with the USA's incursion into Iran. The slow conversion to a world without global hegemony and mare liberum is probably underway, as we roll back the clock in answer to hard-scrabble Portugal's bringing mercantilism and the Christian cannon to the far East. Once again, art is long and time is short.