High school was the first time I left the mountains and entered the county town, marking the beginning of my exposure to the wider world. I remember that in 2004, the high school building of our school had not yet been completed. Our Grade 1 class shared a four-story building with yellow glazed tiles with several classes of third and fourth graders from the elementary school.
At that time, many of my classmates who commuted to school had the habit of buying a newspaper on their way, especially the Xiaoxiang Morning Post, which cost 50 cents and was packed with content. It usually had four sections, totaling over a dozen pages, making it a must-have for home life and study.
It was also during this year that I first read about the US presidential election in the newspaper.
A Strange Election
After 2000, George W. Bush became a household name. Events like 9/11, the Iraq War, and his visit to China frequently appeared in the news. This led me to believe that the US president must be a figure of great stature, similar to Chairman Mao in China.
But what puzzled me was that in the 2004 presidential election, a man named John Kerry emerged to compete with Bush for the presidency.
In my eyes, Kerry, as portrayed by the media, was merely a senator. He had never held high-ranking positions like governor or minister, nor did he have any remarkable achievements to his name. There were even rumors of a messy personal life. How could such a person be qualified to run for president?
Was the US election just a formality, with someone randomly chosen to play the role of a competitor?
After seeing the election results, I was even more confused. This political novice had only 4 million fewer votes than Bush, with a support rate just 3 percentage points lower.
The most shocking part was that when the electoral votes were 252:254 in favor of Bush, Kerry was only 2 votes short of a tie. Yet, he publicly conceded defeat, leaving me utterly perplexed.
I couldn’t understand why such a novice was less than 1% behind the incumbent president, given his lack of political foundation.
I couldn’t understand why the election results showed such a close race, with both sides hovering around 50%. If it were just a formality, what if some people didn’t follow the script? It seemed like playing with fire.
I couldn’t understand why Kerry conceded before all the votes were counted. Was there some behind-the-scenes manipulation?
The Beacon of Civilization
2008 was my second year in university. As the Beijing Olympics concluded, the US election entered its most intense phase, with Barack Obama, a Black man, facing off against John McCain, who had spent five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
After entering university, under the subtle guidance of law professors with overseas backgrounds, and amidst the lies spun by public intellectuals on platforms like Tianya and Kaidi, I felt like I had opened the door to a new world. Through the impact of information on platforms like YouTube and Twitter, I finally saw the “real” world.
The 2008 US election lived up to expectations. Obama swept McCain, winning with a staggering 349 to 163 electoral votes.
Thus, a Black man actually became the US president, and a poor boy from a single-parent family, who worked hard to get into university, realized the American Dream.
Just a few years earlier, I had been reciting Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream in my high school English class. And now, Black people had truly risen to power.
At that moment, it felt as though nationalism and racial conflicts were destined to be swept into the dustbin of history. It seemed that the US, as the public intellectuals claimed, truly deserved the title of the beacon of human civilization.
At that moment, I also saw a reflection of myself. Like Obama, I came from a poor family and relied on student loans to attend university. Obama undoubtedly set the greatest example for students like me.
Garbage Time
November 2012 was perhaps the most relaxed period of my life, or, from another perspective, it could be called “garbage time.” That month, I was waiting to move from Foshan, where I had studied and worked for five years, to another city for a new job.
Similarly, the 2012 US election felt like it had entered garbage time. There was no suspense; Obama secured a second term with an overwhelming 332 to 206 electoral votes, while his opponent, Mitt Romney, barely made a ripple.
In fact, many media outlets at the time openly stated that the Republican Party didn’t believe they had any chance of defeating Obama and had simply put forward a candidate to go through the motions.
Obama enjoyed high popularity at the time. His healthcare reform, education policies, and financial bailouts had won him widespread support. Withdrawing troops from Iraq earned him the Nobel Peace Prize, and he had no major scandals during his four years in office, making him one of the most disciplined US presidents in recent decades.
True Colors Revealed
The 2016 US election was filled with an unusual atmosphere. On one side was Hillary Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, and on the other was Donald Trump, a businessman with no political experience.
The emergence of both candidates completely reshaped my understanding of US politics.
If the Bush father-son duo could be seen as a case of political legacy, with the son benefiting from better political resources and experience, the idea of a husband-wife duo taking turns as president was reminiscent of ancient Chinese history, like Empress Wu Zetian and Emperor Gaozong of Tang. It raised uncomfortable questions: What was this family trying to achieve?
Trump’s candidacy shattered the facade of the US presidential election. Previous candidates at least had some political foundation and experience, but now a wealthy outsider could run. Did this mean that anyone with money could become president? Was the US presidency just a puppet show, with the president acting as a marionette controlled by the bourgeoisie, representing their interests while putting on a performance for the public?
Especially after seeing Trump’s shocking statements during the campaign and the massive following of mindless supporters, I felt that this was no longer the US I had come to know since 2008. It was more like the “American imperialism” of 1951, which would stop at nothing to counter the rise of New China.
But in the twilight of Obama’s presidency, I still believed that someone like Trump couldn’t possibly win.
After all, following the first Black president, if the first female president were elected, it would perfectly fit the narrative of the US as a democratic beacon that had been crafted over the past few decades.
The final result was unexpected. A capitalist portrayed by the media as the “greatest villain,” a political novice with seemingly nonsensical policies, and a populist hailed as a hero by the working class, was successfully elevated to the throne of the world’s most powerful nation by the “rednecks.”
At that moment, the true face of US politics was revealed.
To achieve their goals, they would stop at nothing, even turning against their own.
The Beacon’s Redemption
The 2020 US election garnered unprecedented attention. That year, the two major parties spent a staggering $14 billion competing for the presidency, equivalent to the cost of an aircraft carrier fleet.
The direct reason was that Trump’s first term continued to redefine the world’s perception of the US, and many wanted him out.
“America First,” trade wars, sanctions, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, abandoning the TPP, building the border wall, repealing Obamacare, imposing tariffs, creating the Space Force, and blaming China for the pandemic—all of these actions signaled the full return of an imperialist US, unabashedly displaying its hegemonic power in the most direct and naked way.
These chaotic actions gave the impression that this president, whose support within his own party was shaky and who had been impeached twice by Congress, was wielding his power to the extreme.
His supporters saw him as a savior of the times, while his detractors viewed him as a scourge.
Especially in 2020, as the pandemic raged, with most people still in a state of confusion, a US president who could provide more “certainty” was clearly in line with the wishes of not only Americans but people around the world.
In the end, Trump lost to an even older man, Joe Biden, who needed to wear adult diapers to avoid embarrassing accidents.
This election plunged the US into deeper division.
After the election, Trump refused to accept the results, and his supporters stormed the Capitol in an event that shocked the world.
But ultimately, under the condemnation of the entire Western world, Trump left office in disgrace.
The aging Biden picked up the dying beacon from under Trump’s feet, hoping to reignite it.
The Absurdity of Democracy
Biden’s four years were a period during which the US, having shed its pretenses, voraciously consumed global vitality. During these four years, Biden did not, as many had hoped, re-embrace the banner of democracy with grace and magnanimity. Instead, he continued many of Trump’s policies.
This made people wonder: Was Biden secretly a fan of Trump? Were the two, despite their public feuds, actually in cahoots behind the scenes?
Not quite. Over these four years, Biden led the US on a path of relentless exploitation, with GDP growing by the equivalent of two Germanys, absorbing nearly two-thirds of global economic growth. This enriched the financial and IT sectors to unprecedented levels. Meanwhile, Trump, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, survived multiple life-threatening situations, eliminating both intra-party rivals and external adversaries.
Both men were clearly preparing for a rematch in the 2024 presidential election.
But the aging Biden, weakened by time, was ultimately abandoned by the shadowy forces of capital. In his place, Kamala Harris, 22 years younger and embodying nearly all the elements of the Democratic Party’s “beacon,” stepped up to face Trump.
To the outside world, this seemed like a lopsided battle.
On one side was Harris, who represented the Democratic Party’s ideals of diversity and inclusion, with policies supporting Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ rights, and immigration. On the other side was Trump, riding a wave of working-class anger, backed by billionaire Elon Musk, and even bolstered by a “divine intervention” narrative that seemed to bless his campaign. In comparison, Harris appeared to stand no chance.
But people underestimated the Democratic Party’s ability to manipulate the media. Even though Trump seemed like the chosen one, the media portrayed the race as a tight contest.
In the end, Trump swept several swing states and reclaimed the US presidency, while Harris underperformed Biden in nearly every district.
The only remaining stronghold for the Democrats was Washington, D.C.
Here, Harris won with a staggering 92.4% of the vote, stubbornly defending the last vestiges of the Democratic Party’s dignity. After all, Biden had only secured 92.2% here in the previous election, just 0.1% short of Obama’s record high in 2008.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, Trump’s share of the vote in D.C. increased from 5% to 6.7%.
It’s hard to imagine that in the capital of the so-called beacon of democracy, a city filled with the core political elites and bureaucrats of a hegemonic power, over 90% of the population could ignore the differences between candidates and blindly support one party.
What kind of利益共同体 could achieve such a result?
Is this democracy even real?
A Turbulent Future
Trump’s re-election after four tumultuous years is undoubtedly bad news for China.
The Trump of today is not the Trump of 2016. He has cleared nearly every obstacle in his path. Those within his own party who once dismissed him, the career bureaucrats who ignored or undermined him, the political opponents in Congress who fiercely criticized and even impeached him, and the shadowy forces who tried to imprison or eliminate him—none of them can stop him now.
If the Democratic Party represents the interests of financial capital, the IT industry, and urban elites, their agenda is at least predictable. Changing the puppet in the White House would simply be a matter of who could last longer before collapsing.
But what Trump plans to do now is anyone’s guess.
He has too many options and methods at his disposal. He may not even represent the interests of the Republican Party. After all, during his first term, he didn’t cater much to the military-industrial complex.
Some say Trump is aiming to create a MAGA Party, and there’s some truth to that.
The only predictable trend is that the global power shift is accelerating, and the world is undergoing dramatic changes. The struggle between China and the US will enter a more intense and direct phase, with open confrontation becoming the norm. In such a volatile environment, more direct conflicts and even wars are almost inevitable, and they may arrive much sooner than expected.
Perhaps in four years, we’ll look back on this US election and wonder why that bullet didn’t veer just a little more to the right.
May the world find peace!