Are Americans Becoming More Docile Than the Chinese?

The U.S. national anthem declares the United States of America “the land of the free and the home of the brave”.
 
The Chinese national anthem claims no such thing. It starts by calling upon the people of China to rise up if they don’t wish to be slaves, but then describes them as a collective: “We are millions with one heart.”

Rugged individualists, really?
 
Indeed, Americans are supposed to be rugged individualists valuing their personal freedom and independence above all else.
 
Even Americans’ love of firearms, enshrined in the broadest possible interpretation of the words of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, is always justified as a way to safeguard its rights and freedoms.
 
Just who is the obedient bunch?
 
While Americans are generally viewed as diverse and messy, the Chinese are deemed to be highly organized by the powers that be.  Plus, supposedly they are all looking the same and march in step on command from their leader.
 
Given those assumptions widely held in the West, imposing any major policy on Americans therefore should be about as easy as herding cats.
 
Trump works his mind-numbing magic
 
But in just nine months since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Project 2025 has been imposed on the United States with a speed and efficiency that you would expect from China, not the U.S.
 
The U.S. Constitution and its presumably strong safeguards are being resolutely pushed aside, despite all the global bragging by just about by every American politician for the past 249 years.
 
“Gleichschaltung”, American style
 
At Germany’s disastrous turn to the Third Reich, big efforts were made to eradicate any sense of independence of the various branches of government and ensure that all other institutions, including cultural actors, were unmistakably aligned with the new totalitarian ideology.
 
Analysts of modern history must be shocked when they arrive at the utterly distasteful realization that there is evidence that Josef Goebbels operated at a slower pace and with more circumspection to implement his strategies to eradicate any resistance.  It can be argued that he had to contend with more institutional resistance.
 
How the process of succumbing to Trumpism marched forward in the U.S.
 
Due process and habeas corpus have disappeared virtually overnight and the two co-equal branches of government, the legislative and judicial branch, became willingly subservient to the Executive.
 
Meanwhile, the freedom of the press has been severely curtailed by frivolous lawsuits and self-censorship and utter corporate spinelessness.  Academic freedom, supposedly a financially very well-resourced bedrock of liberty and research in the United States, collapsed as universities caved in to grotesquely unrefined Trump administration pressure.
 
Finally, the courts and even the military have been weaponized against domestic political opponents.
 
Is this America’s much-touted exceptionalism?
 
Never mind that, to use a direct quote from the movie Cabaret, Trump got two extremely popular late-night TV comedians cancelled for the capital offense of ridiculing him.  If they are guilty of anything, then it is for having picked on too easy a target.
 
All in all, America’s much-touted exceptionalism went down the drain at a stunning speed.
 
True, there have been protests and a bunch of lawsuits have been filed, but they have not given the men and women implementing Project 2025 as much as a hiccup.
 
Faster than Xi’s takeover
 
In a more contemporary context than early 1930s Germany, the collapse of American democracy happened faster than what it took Xi Jinping to install himself as a ruler for life in China.
 
Is there hope? Of course, Americans haven’t always been as obedient and ready to succumb to autocratic power as many of them are now.
 
Older people still remember the 1968 student takeover of the Columbia University campus, the same university that pusillanimously caved in to Trump’s pressure. There were also nationwide civil rights rallies, protests against the war in Vietnam, open dissent by individuals and politicians, and a free press that acted as a check on the powerful.
 
What a difference broader-based prosperity makes
 
But in the 1960s America was prosperous, jobs were plentiful and paid extremely well, while middle-class families could afford to send their kids even to the best colleges and not just college graduates had a realistic shot at acquiring a home.
 
The older generations were the valiant winners of World War II and the Baby Boomers were confident of their own future and wanted to make their society better.
 
It didn’t happen overnight
 
Of course, America’s transformation into a Western version of China didn’t happen overnight. The road to 2025 began in 1980, when the election of Ronald Reagan inaugurated the Decade of Greed.
 
Then came the concentration of corporate power in the 1990s, the emergence of an American police state in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and, finally, the massive widening of the income gap between the rich and everyone else.
 
What is the same and what is different in China
 
True, under Xi, China fell once more under a one-man rule. But the Chinese people are on average wealthier than they have ever been and their global influence is rising.
 
Russia, once a communist “big brother”, is now a Chinese vassal state. Xi may be an authoritarian, but he is respected around the world.
 
Conclusion
 
The United States, in sharp contrast, succumbed to Project 2025 on its way down. The country — unlike its oligarchs — is becoming poorer, its allies are turning away and its president is a global buffoon.
 
Small wonder Americans pine away for the period of their greatness in the early post-World War II decades. The problem is that aside from donning Made in China(!) MAGA hats, they are mostly just fearful and brow-beaten to do anything about it.