Hearted Youtube comments on Asianometry (@Asianometry) channel.
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There are other aspects of the book, in an addendum to my earlier comment, that make Mao look good in some ways. For example, until late in old age his resilience and physical power - being able to outswim some of his younger guards, while also showing what a risk taker he was, that he risked his own life sometimes for his own exercise gives insight into some of his political decisions. The flippancy for the lives of Chinese is something he sometimes, to his security team's exasperation, displayed for his own. He is also shown as having genuine love and affection for his third wife and Li even notes that the memory of his deceased second wife obviously pains him when it is brought up. But there is also a lot that makes him look bad - Li for example obviously cannot understand why Mao despised the Soviets so much when they treated him like an elder statesman and fawned over him. Mao also increasingly lies as the book goes on, becomes less and less open to criticism. I wouldn't share the opinion that Mao was a sociopath. I think he was a man who had seen a lot of death and suffering, and like you say, had become indifferent to it by the time he was an older man. But I think he did care for certain people as human beings, it's just it became less and less so as he approached his own death - with the unspoken question obviously in his mind of 'what was my entire life for?'
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