The title of this article (with the long English translation) is a military tactic promulgated by a Chinese, Sun Tsu, and now faithfully executed by MAGA, which hates the Chinese’s guts. Greenland, Panama Canal, and the latest Gaza Strip bravado are “Dương Đông”, make a feint to the East. Tariff serves the same purpose but is also intended to achieve another political goal.
Dismembering Democracy is “Kích Tây”, attacking in the West, taking one quiet step at a time. The first step: concentrating governmental power into the executive branch. Such a move would not be too radical to the public as it was supported by some political theorists and even one of the country founders, Elexander Hamilton, when the nation is in a crisis. It is also necessary for a party in power when it wants to subvert Democracy to replace it with an oligarchic or aristocratic regime. That is what is going on in America, a non-bloodshed revolution (except for a clumsy attempt on January 6, 2021) to reverse history and replace the Democratic political system with a dictatorship.
Democracy is perfect for the common men. One feels gratified walking down the street to have a cup of coffee or say the emperor has no clothes without worrying about being stopped by the secret police or a knock on the door at midnight. But the rich and the hardheaded do not like it. What goes in their mind is like this: how can Joe sixpack have one vote just like me who lives in a 50-room mansion and travel in 700-foot-long yacht? They believe the nation needs to go back to a social order in the shape of a pyramid, they being at the top and us the multitude fighting for space ourselves at the bottom. Equality is a fantasy in your head, they say; you forget at your peril that you are at our mercy.
We must now ask the question: is Democracy flawed and weak?
Like everything else in the universe, American Democracy’s survival depends on its innate ability to resist all assaults from all sides and flourish. When it goes head-to-head against MAGA, Democracy does not seem to possess that ability.
How could MAGA prevailed in 2016 and again in 2024? The answer is now obvious: they skillfully blended racism with nationalism.
The Democratic Republicans as opposed to MAGA, were persuaded that
American Traditional Christian Values were threatened and damaged by an uncontrolled influx of immigrants. More, domestic policies pouring so much money into social programs have made the U.S. a magnet for foreigners wanting to have an idly good life without any prospect of making contribution to the national economy or making life in the U.S., as they understand it, better. Then, they saw the Trump Administration’s ineptitude and excesses and voted Democratic in 2020. But the Biden’s weak or half-hearted legislations and executive actions sent them back to the Republican side in 2024. They wanted decisive policies, even willing to vote MAGA, to clean up the immigration mess, which lured the majority of Americans, Republicans and even Democrats, into voting for Donald Trump.
But they don’t seem to be aware that his policy of high tariffs, tax cuts for the rich, and higher tax for the middle- and low-income folks will push them back to where the hand-to-mouth governing doctrine wants them to be: don’t give the multitude more money than to satisfy their basic needs, lest extra money gives them ideas.
MAGA has raised the immigration problem to the level of a national crisis and loudly denounced the Democrats for failing to do even a minimum job to deport immigrants and stop them at the borders. In fact, from 2009 to 2017, the Obama Administration deported more than 3 million people. In his four years in the White House, Trump deported one (yes 1) million people. In four years, Biden deported or expulsed more than 4.4 million, 270,000 deported in 2024 alone the highest annual number in a decade. The ICE arrests decreased by 33%.
So, immigration has been insignificant and a bogus issue during the campaign, a MAGA’s Dương Đông tactic while pursuing a larger scheme that they had devised to implement Project 2025, weaken or destroy Democratic institutions, and create an oligarchic or aristocratic regime to replace Democracy.
They have already started carrying it out now.
MAGA has turned racism and white supremacism, which is no longer a taboo to talk about, into a weapon. It has been so effective that it sent a political novice to the White House on his first run. It almost sent him back there after four years of clumsiness and ineptitude. That same weapon was exhibited openly, fiercely, and explosively on January 6, 2021, but somehow the Democratic defenders, the American Democrats did not see it, or did but did not know how to create an antidote.
Using, discreetly and implicitly of course, the old threat of Chinese “yellow fever” invasion, or more aptly in the current atmosphere, tsunami, MAGA has successfully marshaled the white community and subdued any white resistance to its march. Reasonable, compassionate, and upstanding Republicans all have got in line behind MAGA.
If you have any doubt that an all-out war has been going on between the U.S. and China, look at the Dow Jones Index and the Hang Seng Index on February 6, 2020: 29,379.77 and 27,493.70 respectively, and on February 5, 2025: 44,873.28 for the American and 20,957.09 for the Chinese.
Perhaps, Democracy is not universal but selective, and American society has never been truly democratic. Justice, a sine qua non element of Democracy, has often been denied to non-white citizens.
Whether the Democracy Ship is sailing into the sunset, or the ship has always been the same but now the paint is peeled to reveal the true brand on the hull: White Nation or White Supremacy, we all are in a journey fraught with danger.
