Comment by martin-t
9 hours ago
There is no collective "the west", there are people in power and the rest of the population. This distinction is universal.
In China it just so happens that the people in power already have so much of it they don't have to pretend. They can just control the population through overt censorship.
The same people exist in the west! For various historical reasons (more focus on individuality, more privately owned guns guns, idk really), they don't have as much direct power at the moment and have to frame their struggle for more as protecting the children, fighting against terrorists, preventing money laundering, etc.
But this can change very quickly. Look how Hitler rose to power. Look how Trump is doing very similar things in the US. Look what historians are saying about it: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
But the root cause is the same everywhere - a percentage of the population has anti-social personality traits (ASPD and NPD, mainly). They want power over others, they want worship, they think they're above the rules, some (but only some) of them even get pleasure from hurting others.
To play devil's advocate, a leader that dismantles broken systems in order fix an otherwise failing society will look identical to one that siezes power by dismantling those same systems. Indeed, in the latter case, they often believe they're the former.
I'm not American, so I have no horse in the Trump race, but it seems clear to me that a significant chunk of the country elected the guy on the premise that he would do what he's currently doing. Whether or not you think he's Hitler or the savior of America almost certainly depends on your view of how well the system was working beforehand, and whether or not it needed to be torn down and rebuilt.
Which is to say, I don't know that historians will have much of relevance to say until the ink is dry and it's become history.