China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday jumped into President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal by pointing to the difference in how Biden and former President Donald Trump were treated as proof that “justice, fairness, and the rule of law are worthless in U.S. politics.”
The Global Times took a moment to chide Republicans for “pouncing” on the Biden scandal, but then said they were right to hammer Biden for hypocrisy in criticizing Trump for allegedly mishandling classified material – and then called pox on both Democrat and Republican houses, dismissing them all as hypocrites and opportunists who are merely seeking momentary advantage in the savage battlefield of American democracy:
However, when it was exposed that Trump and Biden retained classified documents, what the US media and politicians focus on is not why the two presidents had hidden documents, how they were discovered, what loopholes the US political system and laws have, or how it impacts the US’ national security and the public’s interests. Instead, they have exploited it as an instrument to retaliate against political opponents. Justice, fairness, and the rule of law are worthless in US politics, but political interests are above everything else.
Especially as the 2024 presidential election is approaching, the US’ political atmosphere is sensitive and the two parties will spare no effort to fully use every opportunity to slander the other. Against this background, it is projected that the Republicans will not miss a golden opportunity to contain their Democratic counterparts.
In many US politicians’ mind, there is no bottom line, or integrity, and what they bear in mind is seeking for power. The US politics has been completely reduced to a game for politicians to realize their party and personal ambitions. They are just playing a house of cards. The two parties put all their effort on political struggles rather than governance, neglecting the public’s real concerns about well-being, national unity as well as interests. Their campaign promises are nothing but an empty talk.
“The increasingly fierce partisan struggle will remarkably reduce the public trust in the US government, no matter which party is taking power,” the Global Times concluded.
A passerby on a bicycle stops near a police van monitoring an area where protesters were expected to gather in Beijing, Monday, Nov. 28, 2022. Chinese authorities eased some anti-virus rules but affirmed their severe “zero COVID” strategy Monday after protesters demanded President Xi Jinping resign in the biggest show of opposition to the ruling Communist Party in decades. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Communist tyrannies are the very last people on Earth who should criticize anyone else for playing hardball politics. In China, the ruling regime makes its opponents disappear into gulags, holding them incommunicado for ages before putting them through secret “trials” in which they might not have any legal representation. Communists love to use “anti-corruption crusades” as political purges to eliminate ambitious rivals and regime critics.
Donald Trump has valid complaints about the hyper-politicized FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago residence, but at least he did not vanish into the back of a sedan with a black bag over his head to rot in a cell awaiting his closed-door trial in 2025, as he would have in China. The great fear of freedom-loving Americans is that our politicized bureaucracy is beginning to resemble Chinese government.
Chinese propagandists repeatedly promote the illusion that authoritarianism brings stability and competence to government, while democracy is a never-ending vicious struggle between callous politicians that prevents Western governments from acting with Chinese efficiency.
Even if this pragmatic argument for authoritarianism was true – and one need only glance at China’s coronavirus disaster, blanketed with absurdly obvious government lies to keep the people from revolting, to see that it is not – the ethical case for representative government would remain decisive. It is far better to have standards that a democracy’s political elite struggles to meet, than a tyranny with no standards, and no limits on the ambitions of its rulers.