Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "What Happened after the Beijing Flood? - Why The Chinese Government is Terrified" video.

  1. The ruthless decision to flood rural areas probably saved millions of people in the cities at the cost of thousands of people in the hinterlands. How they play it on the propaganda front is counter-productive. Their fear of embarrassment is what embarrasses them. Yes, China is a top-down police state. Chinese are very good at maintaining such for long spans of time. As with other such, the need to compete internationally creates an educated class that sees through them. Mere ruthlessness doesn't suffice, because they need those educated people to keep things on an economic/general-conditions up-tick. If things get WORSE, year by year, control slips. "Who will watch the watchers of the watchers of the people?" A chain reaction of defiance of - or worse, indifference to - authority is their death, a chain reaction Ayn Rand encapsulates with the phrase "Atlas shrugged." IMO, one of the things Western democracies don't understand about Mao or Lenin is that they are the aftermath of "Atlas shrugged" moments that preceded them. The people were SICK of Chang Kai Shek. The Czars were the reason the Czars were overthrown. The storming of the Bastille didn't materialize out of a vacuum.
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  2.  @chinesesparrows  You're ignoring many monarchic and oligarchic dynasties of the past that spanned centuries. But things evolve more rapidly in modern times. Lies that persisted centuries or decades get exposed in a few years, months, or even weeks. Technologies change rapidly. What gives a few the power to impose their will always gives the many new means by which to oppose them. While they're watching US on CCTV, we're walking into their facilities with button cameras of our own! How to stop all the potential whistleblowers from blowing everything up with simple truths? And look at the drone wars taking place. How does a government fight a million privately-owned drones, now that they're so popular with would-be YouTube millionaires? How do you hide your atrocities when Ekbunobe and Sam are talking to each other every day on their XBOXES? It's always a tension between squeezing and wriggling out of the grip. Governments know that no matter how powerful they are, they aren't really in control. They still have to have the people's willing participation, or it all falls apart. They still TRY to control everything (and always fail), but in the end, their primary means of control is public perception. I think U.S. leaders are also in a loss-of-confidence death spiral, and the more they try to control and misdirect, the worse things are getting for them. Today's "win" is an endless stream of losses over many tomorrows. Ask the Democrat National Committee about that.
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