Robert Pape's description of America's growing appetite for political violence being fed by Donald Trump on the political Right as well as radical leftists does seem to remind me of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which was invented by a then politically weakened Mao Tse Tung.
Mao like Trump used the emotions of his angry civilian followers to stir up a tsunami of violence against every traditional institution and individual in his country.
Eventually the internal strike had so weakened China that some of the remaining political establishment and loyal armed forces were able to retake the helm of leadership (but only AFTER Mao's death) and then begin jailing the leaders of Mao's massive "coup".
The national 'clean up' took most of the next decade. Then in the summer of 1989 student led protests for democracy against the CCP establishment expanded to include public grievances about all sorts of issues with rioting and street blockades throughout the capital city of Beijing.
The CCP unaccustomed to mass riot control and with fresh memories of suffering in Mao's civil war, deployed provincial combat troops to the city center killing hundreds of civilians.
The morning after the jailing and mass arrests throughout China began of all participants or supporters and next the reeducation sweep!
This was all probably necessary to prevent a spreading civil war and anarchy situation.
So is the United States about to enter a "cultural revolution" of it's own led and fanned by Trump who, like Mao, is an aging populist politician with nothing to lose . Will loyal branches of the military be needed to deploy to prevent anarchy and civil war?
Will it be while Trump is still alive or only after he dies of old age?
Will democracy be suspended under martial law and insurrectionists be arrested as well as the youth and public subject to reeducation?
Will advertising be censored, gun sales banned and lobbying in Congress banned or strictly regulated(public anger high here).
Will violent entertainment on TV, internet, movies be banned, censored or curtailed? Possibly an entire generation will need to be re-educated in democracy, civil discourse, and non-violence ?
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