How Donald Trump learned how to manipulate white rage

Chauncey Devega,

 Salon
October 13, 2022

Trump supporters and protesters gather outside a campaign rally (and accompanying anti-Trump protest) for President Trump and US Senate candidate Martha McSally. (Eric Rosenwald / Shutterstock.com)

American democracy is in peril, teetering between democracy and authoritarianism and under siege by Donald Trump, the Republican Party and the larger white right. To call them "conservative" is an insult to language.

In a recent Salon essay, historian Robert McElvaine addressed this directly, calling out "the media's ingrained tendency to aid and abet the enemies of democracy through the careless use of language," and especially "the ubiquitous use of the word 'conservative' to describe extreme right-wing radicals and their beliefs, which only seek to conserve white supremacy — and more specifically the class or caste supremacy of a small minority of wealthy and nominally Christian white men."

Even President Biden, a career politician and a conflict-averse lifelong moderate who still yearns to "unite" America, has publicly warned that the "MAGA Republicans" — which at this point means nearly all Republicans — are the greatest internal threat to the country since the civil war.

America's democracy crisis is a drama of raw political power, and a nationwide campaign by the Republican fascists to end America's multiracial democracy. If they prevail, Black and brown people, most women, LGBTQ people, those with disabilities, non-Christians (or liberal Christians), immigrants, poor people and anyone else targeted as the Other more generally (and thus deemed "un-American") will literally become second-class citizens both under the law and in daily life.

Many Americans who believe they are safe from American fascism because of the color of their skin, their money or other forms of privilege will rapidly learn that their freedom, safety and quality of life will be greatly diminished as well. In a recent Salon interview, author and activist Brynn Tannehill summarized this harsh reality:

Everybody who watches a zombie movie assumes that they're going to be part of the resistance and not part of the shambling, undead brain-eating horde. All these people assume that under a fascist system they are going to be among the winners. There are many more losers in a fascist system than winners. The winners make sure that their people get taken care of first, and if you're not near the front of the line for the goodies you aren't going to get them. The vast majority of Americans are not going to be rewarded by fascism.

American fascism is not a foreign import or unimaginably alien. It is in our soil, and in many ways a continuation of this continent's long history of white supremacy and racism going back to the 17th century. Trump and the other neofascists are like political necromancers: They summoned up these dark, lingering energies and are now using them for their own purposes.



Trumpism, like other forms of neofascism and fake right-wing populism, is based on a cult of personality and pathological feelings of shared identity between the leader and the follower. Any criticism of the leader is experienced as an attack on the follower, and an existential threat to one's racial identity and core sense of self.

Trump's anger is rooted in the assumption that a rich white man is above the law — and that it's a violation of the natural order for a Black woman to have any power over him.

As Donald Trump faces the real possibility of finally being held accountable for his many obvious crimes, whether those be fraud, seditious conspiracy or violations of the Espionage Act, he will incite and channel even more white rage and white tribalism. He will urge his acolytes and followers to tear the country down rather than see him face justice. He will urge them to do so again if he or his party are somehow defeated at the polls in the upcoming midterms or the 2024 presidential election.

Words presage action; depending on the context, words and language can be a type of violence. Donald Trump has repeatedly said that the prosecutors who are investigating him for alleged crimes in New York and Georgia — all three happen to be Black — are "racist," "horrible" and "mentally sick" people who are unfairly targeting him, and by extension his overwhelmingly white followers.

The assumption here is that white people, especially rich white men, are above the law and moreover that it is a violation of the natural order of things, or American "tradition," that Black people (and Black women in particular) could in any way potentially have so much power.

AP reporter Bobby Calvan interviewed a communications scholar about how "Trump's rhetoric has escalated, perhaps because he recognizes that some among his base are receptive to more overt racism":

"It intensifies that discourse and makes it explicitly racial," said Casey Kelly, a communications professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who for years has pored over transcripts of Trump's speeches.
At a recent rally in Arizona, he said — falsely — that white people in New York were being sent to the back of line for antiviral treatments.

And now Trump is using the investigations against him — and the prosecutors behind them — as "evidence of a larger systemic pattern that white people don't have a place in the future of America and he's the only one that can fight on their behalf," Kelly said.

Michael Steele, who more than a decade ago was the first African American to chair the Republican National Committee, said Trump was being Trump.

"If he can race bait it, he will. These prosecutors, these Black people are coming after me — the white man," Steele said….

Trump is questioning their legitimacy, said Diana Becton, another Black district attorney who serves in Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay area.

"His accusations are certainly not subtle. They're frightening," Becton said. "It's like saying, we are out of our place, that we're being uppity and we are going to be put back in our place by people who look like him."

At the National Hispanic Leadership Conference last Wednesday in Miami, Trump continued with his racist victimology, telling attendees that "No other president has been harassed and persecuted like we have." He also attempted to compare the FBI search of his redoubt at Mar-a-Lago for classified documents with the compounds of drug cartels in Mexico:

They raided Mar-a-Lago, but the cartels, they have their own Mar-a-Lagos — those are fine….Leave them alone. Let them continue to destroy our country.

Think how sick it is — what's happening in this country….We're a country of investigations. We don't talk about greatness anymore. Everybody gets investigated. … The cartels — nothing's happening to them. But they go after politicians!

Trump's fundraising and other political emails repeatedly emphasize the fictional narrative that his supporters and other "real Americans" are being victimized and are under attack by "Democrats" and their supporters, including Black Lives Matter activists and "elites" who want to destroy American heritage, values, culture and traditions. (All of which are understood as white by default.)

Trump's fundraising repeatedly emphasizes the narrative that his supporters are under attack from "elites" who want to destroy American heritage, values, culture and traditions.

Such language is not a racial dog whistle or coded appeal. These are blaring sirens. Public opinion polls and other research have consistently shown that a high percentage of white Republicans believe that white people are the real "victims" of racism in America and are somehow oppressed or otherwise discriminated against because of their skin color, religion or cultural values and beliefs. There is no evidence to support such delusional fantasies.

In reality, American society from before the founding and through to the present is based upon the creation, protection, perpetuation and expansion of white privilege and other unearned advantages for those deemed to be white by birth or otherwise identified with whiteness and white power. Yet the compulsion toward white victimology and white grievance-mongering is so powerful in the Age of Trump that a majority of Republicans and Trump supporters now believe in some version of the antisemitic "great replacement" conspiracy theory.

In a previous essay for Salon, I wrote:

Did Republicans and Trump supporters feel shame and disgust about themselves when they learned that the terrorist who killed 10 black people in Buffalo shared their delusional beliefs about white people being "replaced" or "oppressed" in America? Of course not. If anything, the Buffalo attack appears to have reinforced their commitment to protecting white privilege and white power by any means necessary.

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted ... only days after the Buffalo killings found that 61% of Trump voters believed in the central claim of the "great replacement" theory that "a group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views." ...

According to this poll, almost three-fourths of Trump voters and more than 60% of Republicans believed the fantastical claim that "discrimination against white people has become as big a problem as discrimination against Black people in the U.S." ...

Another new poll, this one conducted in April by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Tulchin Research, found that while a plurality of Americans had "a positive view of the country's changing demographics," that was not true for Republicans, "a majority of whom viewed those changes not only negatively, but as a threat to white Americans."

The white supremacist mass shooting earlier this year in Buffalo represents a much larger trend in American history: White racial paranoia and feelings of white grievance and victimhood have been the fuel for massive acts of violence against Black and brown Americans. Notable examples include the end of Reconstruction and the Red Summer. Indeed, Donald Trump's coup attempt and the assault on the Capitol by his followers on Jan. 6, 2021, was a textbook white-rage attack against the very idea of multiracial democracy.

In his new book "American Midnight," historian Adam Hochschild describes these historical continuities of white supremacy and white rage:

On Memorial Day 1917, a march of some 1,000 Klansmen though the New York City borough of Queens turned into a brawl with the police. Several people wearing Klan hoods were arrested, one of them a young real estate developer named Fred Trump. Ninety years later, his sone, with similar feelings towards people of color, would enter the White House.

During Donald Trump's presidency, the forces that had blighted the America of a century earlier would be dramatically visible yet again: rage against immigrants and refugees, racism, Red-baiting, fear of subversive ideas in schools, and much more. And, of course, behind all of them is the appeal of simple solutions: deport aliens, forbid critical journalism, lock people up, blame everything on those of a different color or religion.

In his book "On the Pleasures of Owning Persons: The Hidden Face of American Slavery," anthropologist and psychiatrist Volney Gay explains how ethnic violence entrepreneurs such as Donald Trump use fear, anxiety and feelings of group victimization and aggrievement as a way to expand their power:

Because splitting is a universal form of thinking, savvy political leaders use it when necessary to advance their agenda. In this sense, many politicians are canny. They recognize their subjects' anxieties and then exploit them to increase panic, anxiety, and regression to primitive solutions…. These appeals to group solidarity and to a mythic past are identical. In each instance, a dominant group fears annihilation of its way of life and its identity (or at least manufactures those anxieties in its subjects).

With the rising neofascist tide, both here and around the world, the American people are at a crossroads. They are experiencing two countervailing forces where a fascist reactionary force is pushing back — with great success — against centuries of positive revolutionary struggle whose aim was to create a better, more inclusive, multiracial pluralistic democracy in the United States. The American people, and white Americans in particular, now have to decide what type of nation this will be. Do we move backward into some of the worst parts of our history, or do we move forward along that long, often broken arc of progress to a better tomorrow?

TAX THE CHURCH

How Republicans conspire with churches for social and political control

Thom Hartmann
October 11, 2022

Franklin Graham attends UN global call to protect religious freedom meeting at UN Headquarters in 2019. (Shutterstock.com)

For Republicans, the purpose of religion is — as it has been for authoritarians since Old Testament days — political and social control. It’s not about spirituality: it’s all about raw, naked, taxpayer-subsidized power and the wealth associated with it.

A Michigan county Republican Party just posted a video showing picture after picture of that state’s Democratic politicians, starting with Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who right-wing terrorists have already tried to kidnap and murder.

Under each picture — including a picture of George Soros representing, presumably, the “International Jews” who Republican politicians suggest wield space lasers and secretly are trying to control the world — reads the death threat, in bold, all-caps:

“GOD’S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN!”

The wealthy pastors of at least four Republican-aligned megachurches in Georgia have invited Hershel Walker to campaign, in clear violation of their tax-exempt status.

Across the nation, white evangelical churches brazenly push their parishioners to vote for Republican candidates: they’ve been getting away with breaking the law since the 1980s and don’t show any inclination to stop now.

As the University of Chicago Divinity School noted five months ago:

“In January, Walker spoke at Free Chapel in Gainesville, the congregation led by former Trump evangelical advisor Jentezen Franklin. In late February, Walker spoke during a worship service at First Baptist Atlanta. And in March, he spoke at Sugar Hill Baptist Church, where he made controversial comments questioning evolution. In each sanctuary, the pastors interviewed Walker on stage and offered their support for his candidacy in ways that appear to violate IRS rules prohibiting 501(c)3 tax-exempt nonprofits from engaging in partisan campaign activity.”

It’s time for average Americans to stop being forced to subsidize politically radical religious leaders and their institutions.

Back during Trump’s second impeachment trial, Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and heir to the multimillion-dollar Graham fortune, publicly said that the 10 Republicans voting to impeach Donald Trump in the US House of Representatives were like Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.

“And these ten, from [Trump’s] own party, joined in the feeding frenzy,” he wrote. “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”

Franklin Graham is a multimillionaire in large part because neither he nor his family have to pay any taxes on their family’s business’ income or even pay property taxes on the land and buildings their business owns and in which they live.

Instead, you and I and the taxpayers of his town and state pay extra taxes to subsidize Graham and his “ministry,” as we do thousands of other politically active “preachers.”

There’s a history to this political-religious-financial complex.

Back in the 1950s, the John Birch Society put up billboards all across America demanding that Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren be impeached because he’d signed off on the Brown v Board decision that required schools be racially integrated.

White churches across the country, along with wealthy industrialists like Fred Koch, helped fund the effort, arguing that school integration was the first step to full-blown communism in America and was against “God’s will.”

Preachers ranted from the pulpit about the dangers of school integration: the issue birthed the modern “religious right.” Bob Jones, Jerry Falwell and others started all-white schools to defy the decision, often claiming that because their schools were “Christian” they were exempt from federal oversight and thus didn’t have to comply with the Supreme Court’s dictum.


Into this firestorm stepped Senator Lyndon Johnson, who proposed in 1954 that it was fine if churches wanted to engage in politics or argue that Jesus would have been against racial integration, but if they chose to preach and practice racism and politics the rest of America shouldn’t be forced to subsidize them.

It passed Congress that year and was signed into law by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Since the Reagan era, however, the law has been largely ignored. As The Washington Post noted in a 2016 editorial:

“Indeed, more than 2,000 mainly evangelical Christian clergy have deliberately violated the law since 2008 as a form of protest against it; only one has been audited by the IRS, and none punished…”

When preachers push politics instead of religion on Sunday morning, the so-called Johnson Amendment said, their church should lose its tax-exempt status.

As the IRS notes:

“Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

Churches could still participate in non-partisan political activities like a voter registration drive or organizing buses to take people to polling places, but when they took a position on candidates or political issues they lost their right to force all the rest of us pay for their roads, police, fire, and all the other public services that taxes fund.

But ever since George HW Bush brought his son George W. Bush into his 1988 campaign to reach out to white evangelical churches, many evangelists, televangelists, and churches across America have been ignoring this law.

They not only regularly preach rightwing hate, completely inconsistent with Jesus‘s message, but they raise hundreds of millions of dollars — all tax exempt — to inject into political campaigns.

This is not how the Framers of our Constitution thought America should operate.

At the founding of our republic, “Father of the Constitution” James Madison was worried about government influencing and corrupting churches as had happened in Massachusetts before the Revolution.

On the other hand, his mentor, Thomas Jefferson, was worried that churches and their religious leaders could corrupt politicians and government itself.

It turns out both were right.

Their solution was written into Article VI of the Constitution, which says:

“[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

They doubled-down on it with the First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

Thomas Jefferson later referred to this as a “wall of separation between church and state” that would keep both our republic and our churches independent of each other.

When he became our fourth President, James Madison’s first veto was to reject a piece of legislation that would’ve given a federal subsidy to a church in Washington DC to feed needy people.

No American government should be giving money to churches, he said, regardless of purpose, and the proposed law he vetoed would “be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.”

Sadly, and particularly since the Reagan Revolution, we’ve badly backslid on this principle. Churches have figured out hundreds of ways to get their hands on government money, and deeply embedded themselves in the business of lobbying and politics.

It’s hard to find a successful televangelist or major evangelical pastor who is not now a multimillionaire, presiding over a multi-million or even billion-dollar empire within America’s multi-billion-dollar-a-year religious industry. And they got there, in part, because you and I are subsidizing them.

Modern history, particularly since 1954, proves the wisdom of Madison and Jefferson‘s concern.

If rightwing religious leaders want to tell their followers how to believe, how to behave, and how to vote, that’s fine. That’s their right in a nation that celebrates both free speech and freedom of — and freedom from — religion.

Churches, after all, have been telling their members how to behave since the beginning of organized religion. Social and political control exercised through religion is nothing new: it’s at least as old as the Bible.

But you and I shouldn’t be forced to subsidize their political control over their followers through our tax dollars.

It’s time for the IRS to tighten up their enforcement and cut these freeloaders off their free lunch of tax exemption when they engage in politics.

Joe Biden's cannabis pardons matter — but the war on drugs' racist legacy lingers

Mia Brett
October 12, 2022

J. Edgar Hoover -- (History Channel)

Last week President Biden announced he would pardon people convicted of simple marijuana possession. This mass pardon could help over 6,000 people but it’s still a drop in the bucket in our fight to end the criminalization of marijuana use and the outsized harm to Black and brown communities from that criminalization.

This mass pardon doesn’t free one person from prison, because there are currently no federal prisoners in jail for simple possession.

However, the pardons aren’t meaningless.

READ MORE: 'Legalize it': Advocates cheer presidential pardons of federal cannabis convictions

People who have felony convictions on their records face obstacles in finding jobs, getting housing, receiving loans, voting or serving on juries. Despite the conviction being from a federal charge, many of these rights are dependent on state law. In some states, a federal felony conviction is an obstacle to voting while in others, it isn’t.

Prison time isn’t the only harmful consequence to a felony conviction (state or federal). In states that have legalized marijuana, you can only sell it legally or open a dispensary if you don’t have a previous felony marijuana conviction. Even without jail time, felony convictions can have disastrous effects on people’s lives. Pardoning over 6,000 people will remove major obstacles to those people fully participating in society.

So it's very clear the mass pardon is positive no matter how you look at it – but it’s nowhere near enough. Pardoning 6,500 people helps those 6,500 people, but without additional steps, these pardons mean nothing to the larger issue. The executive order was clear that it didn’t apply to future charges and certainly doesn’t address the longstanding harm to Black and brown communities from the decades-long criminalization of marijuana.

In order to address future charges, marijuana needs to be reclassified. Biden ordered HHS Secretary Becerra and Attorney General Garland to speed up their review of marijuana classification but it's a complicated process and could still take a significant amount of time. Even reclassifying marijuana as a schedule 2 narcotic (a substance that’s harmful but with medicinal purposes) could still result in significant criminalization particularly for marginalized communities without access to legitimate medicalized use.

READ MORE: 'Reefer madness': Fox News freaks out after Joe Biden pardons thousands of federal cannabis convictions

Rescheduling marijuana as a schedule 2 narcotic would open up avenues for research and likely provide the option for prescribed marijuana, but that does not go nearly far enough in actually decriminalizing the substance.

While the majority of marijuana felony convictions are at the state level, federal charges disproportionately target indigenous people who live on reservations. Arrest for marijuana possession in the District of Columbia, a majority Black city, can also result in federal charges.

Undocumented immigrants are also more likely to face federal charges for marijuana possession. Unfortunately, the pardon does not address marijuana convictions for undocumented immigrants. Why would a non-citizen face punishment for something that citizens aren’t punished for?

If the pardon is supposed to be a first step in decriminalization (which I think it clearly is) then there must be significant movement to pardon people not only of simple possession but also of possession with intent to distribute.

States across the country are legalizing marijuana distribution but rhetoric often focuses solely on the criminalization of possession. White people with resources are beginning to open dispensaries while Black people remain in jail for the same actions. Charging someone with intent to distribute is often based on the quantity of marijuana one has. Intent is assumed if one possesses too much.

Our focus cannot solely be on decriminalizing marijuana but also on actually repairing the significant harm done to Brown and black communities. The war on drugs and mass incarceration were policies that came directly out of the civil rights movement as a backlash to ending segregation and Jim Crow. Before the civil rights movement, Black people were criminalized with blatantly racist laws criminalizing loitering or not having a job. After, criminalization had to become race neutral in the law and only racist in the application.

The answer was the war on drugs and the extreme disparate treatment of Black and white drug users.

During Jim Crow, criminalization of Black people was used to deny voting rights, jobs, jury participation and fulfill labor needs after the end of slavery. The war on drugs similarly has denied voting rights, jury participation, jobs, government benefits and more to those with felony drug convictions. Arguably prisoners are still fulfilling labor needs through prison labor programs.

To address this harm, we need to do a lot more than pardon those with felony possession charges. People with possession or possession with intent to distribute must all be pardoned.

Marijuana must be reclassified in such a way that it is not deemed harmful and so it is legal. Those who have been convicted of possession must have access to licenses for dispensaries.

US Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has been working on this issue for years and has proposed expunging the records of non-violent marijuana offenses (presumably including those convicted of intent to distribute). His proposal also includes “a fund to reinvest in the communities that were hurt by the war on drugs and provide restorative justice to communities of color.”

President Biden’s pardon will materially affect people’s lives for the better. A major obstacle to voting, employment, housing, government benefits and more will be removed. However, unless it is followed by continued action on decriminalization and redress to harmed communities it will only help those 6,500 people.

The language of Biden’s executive order suggests this is meant as a first step so we have reason to hope he will address the larger issues.

We can only hope he follows through.

READ MORE: Legalizing cannabis is a great way to 'defund the police'

Mia Brett, PhD, is a legal historian. She lives with her gorgeous dog, Tchotchke. You can find her @queenmab87.

MEN ARE SNOWFLAKES; PILL MUST BE 100% SAFE
Male birth control options are in development, but a number of barriers still stand in the way

The Conversation
October 13, 2022

Illustration of sperm and egg (Shutterstock)

In the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, developing more contraception options for everyone becomes even more important.

Women and people who can become pregnant have a number of effective birth control methods available, including oral pills, patches, injections, implants, vaginal rings, IUDs and sterilization. But for men and people who produce sperm, options have been limited. Two options, withdrawal and condoms, both have high failure rates. Withdrawal has a failure rate of about 20%. Condoms have a failure rate of only 2% when used correctly, but that rate rises to 13% based on how people typically use them. Vasectomies have a failure rate of less than 1%, but they require minimally invasive surgery and are seen as a permanent method of contraception. Neither vasectomies nor withdrawal protect against sexually transmitted infections.

There has not been a new form of male birth control since the introduction of the “no-scalpel vasectomy” in the 1980s. I, along with my team, have been developing male contraception methods since the 1970s. I believe that new safe, reversible and affordable contraception options can help men participate and share contraceptive responsibilities with their partners, and reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies.

Taking responsibility for family planning

A 2017 survey of 1,500 men ages 18 to 44 found that over 80% wanted to prevent their partner from getting pregnant and felt that they had shared or sole responsibility for birth control.

Men who are dissatisfied with condoms are more likely to either use withdrawal as a form of birth control or never use contraception. Of those dissatisfied with condoms, however, 87% percent are interested in new methods for male contraception. This translates to an estimated 17 million men in the U.S. who are looking for new methods of contraception to prevent unintended pregnancies.

Similarly, a 2002 survey of over 9,000 men in nine countries over four continents found that over 55% would be willing to use a new method of male birth control. Importantly, a 2000 survey across three continents found that 98% of women would trust their partner to use a male birth control method.


The onus of birth control has largely fallen on women and people who can become pregnant.
Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Barriers to male contraception

Strong interest in a new male contraceptive raises the question of why there haven’t been any new male birth control methods since the ‘80s.

Male contraception development has primarily been supported by governmental and nongovernmental organizations, including the World Health Organization working with academic medical centers. However, these agencies frequently do not have a drug development infrastructure comparable to pharmaceutical companies, with programs typically run by only a handful of personnel assisted by clinical research organizations. Limited financial resources further slow down development.

Lack of interest from pharmaceutical companies may also play a role in deterring male contraception development, and there are a number of possible reasons the drug industry shies away from male birth control. One reason includes weighing the cost of development with uncertainties about the potential market. Other reasons include uncertainties about who would dispense these drugs and unclear regulatory requirements for male contraceptive methods to receive FDA approval. Companies may also be concerned about liability if pregnancy occurs.

New methods currently in development

Researchers are currently looking into several different methods of male contraception.

Hormonal methods are usually taken as a gel applied to the skin, injection to the muscle or oral pill. These methods typically contain testosterone and a progestin. The progestin suppresses two pituitary hormones that control the testes, the organs that produce sperm. While the testes require high concentrations of testosterone to make sperm, testosterone is typically included in hormonal methods to ensure that there is an adequate level of the hormone for other bodily functions. Counterintuitively, taking testosterone may also help suppress sperm production, because increasing circulating testosterone levels above a certain level suppresses the same two pituitary hormones. The addition of a progestin further enhances the suppression of sperm production.

The hormonal contraceptive candidate furthest along in development is currently in an ongoing second stage clinical study that has recruited over 400 couples across four continents. I served as the principal investigator of this trial at the Lundquist Institute. The results of the study, sponsored by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Population Council, have so far been promising with minimal side effects, and the couples have found the gel acceptable to use.

My team and I are also developing drugs that function like both testosterone and progestin, but in a single compound. These drugs are currently undergoing early testing in people as a daily oral pill or a long-acting injection.


Scientists have been trying to develop male birth control pills for decades.

Nonhormonal methods typically involve drugs that specifically target sperm-producing organs to decrease sperm concentration or function. Nonhormonal drugs show efficacy in animal models, but preclinical toxicology results are needed before clinical studies to demonstrate safety, tolerability and efficacy in people can begin. A few of these methods are working toward first-stage clinical trials.

Another nonhormonal method involves reversibly blocking the vas deferens, an organ that transports sperm for ejaculation. Studies sponsored by the Male Contraceptive Initiative and Parsemus Foundation are testing hydrogels, a type of polymer that retains water, that block sperm from traveling through the vas deferens.

People are ready for new contraceptive methods. I believe that collaboration across academic, government, nonprofit and pharmaceutical sectors can help deliver new birth control methods that are safe, reversible, acceptable and accessible to all.

Christina Chung-Lun Wang, Physician/Investigator at Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles

AN ALL AMERICAN CRIME

Bill O'Reilly-endorsed investment group slapped with federal charges for Ponzi scheme

Matthew Chapman
October 13, 2022

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Jan. 21, 2015 [YouTube]

On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that National Realty Investment Advisors, an upscale real estate investment firm with celebrity backing from disgraced former Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly, has been busted by federal investigators as a Ponzi scheme.

"After investing a few thousand dollars, the New Jersey-based group focused on high-end real estate in gentrifying neighborhoods claimed, clients might see returns of at least 12 percent. The message was repeated in thousands of emails, on huge billboards at the Lincoln and Holland tunnel, and even radio ads featuring the former Fox News host and ex-NFL star," reported Pilar Melendez. "But on Thursday, prosecutors alleged that the investment company’s president and an associate were in fact participating in a brazen $650 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors."

"The U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey announced an 18-count indictment, including charges of securities and wire fraud, against Thomas Nicholas Salzano and Rey E. Grabato II for their role in the almost four-year-long alleged scheme. The pair also allegedly tried to evade $26 million in taxes," said the report. The founders allegedly scammed almost 400 retirees out of savings, and used them “to pay distributions to other investors, to fund an executive’s family’s personal and luxury purchases, and to pay reputation management firms to thwart investors’ due diligence of the executives.”

O'Reilly himself is not charged with any crimes in relation to NRIA, nor are any of the other celebrity endorsers.

“These defendants schemed to create a high-pressure, fraudulent marketing campaign to hoodwink investors into believing that their bogus real estate venture generated substantial profits,” said U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger in a statement. “In reality, their criminal tactics were straight out of the Ponzi scheme playbook so that they could cheat their investors and line their own pockets.”

PLAYING WITH TOY SOLDIERS
Trump knew he'd lost 2020 — and that's when he ordered abrupt military withdrawals around the globe: Jan. 6 hearing

Sarah K. Burris
October 13, 2022




Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said Thursday during a hearing held by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack that former President Donald Trump knew full-well that he lost the 2020 election. Meanwhile, he was acting on that loss, and trying to quickly withdraw troops from around the globe even though the Department of Defense urged him not to.

Kinzinger showed videos of several defense officials who testified that it was young staffer Johnny McEntee, who did nothing more than run the staffing office of the White House, and who penned the directive ordering all troops out of Afghanistan and Somalia.

"Knowing that he had a lost and had only weeks in office, President Trump rushed to complete his unfinished business," said Kinzinger. "One key example is this: President Trump issued an order for a U.S. troop withdrawal."

"He disregarded concerns about the consequences for the fragile government on the front line of the fight against ISIS and terrorists. Knowing he was leaving office, he acted immediately and signed the order on November 11, which would have required the withdrawal of troops from Somalia and Afghanistan all to be complete before the Biden administration on January 20."

RELATED: Trump’s ‘false’ victory speech was a ‘premeditated plan’ to stay in office: Jan. 6 hearing

He showed clip after clip of high-ranking military and security officials revealing that Trump wanted the "immediate" withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan. Military leaders told him it would be a disaster, but Trump didn't care. When Joe Biden entered office, it was the mess that he was forced to clean up and for which he was blamed. The implication is that it was what Trump wanted.

Watch video below or at this link.



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Former Trump official: He 'wanted people to die' in the riot so he could declare martial law and stay in power

Matthew Chapman
October 13, 2022

Capitol rioters (Photo by Saul Loeb for AFP)


On Thursday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," during a discussion about the final January 6 Committee hearing, former Trump administration Homeland Security official Miles Taylor said he believes the former president wanted members of Congress to be killed on January 6.

Taylor, a Trump-skeptic who wrote the infamous anonymous New York Times op-ed describing himself as part of a "resistance" within the executive branch, argued the former president would have used such deaths as a pretext to declare martial law and remain in office in perpetuity.

"It made my heart race to watch today's hearing, really, because they brought up Trump's mindset, and the question was, what was his mindset?" Taylor told anchor Nicolle Wallace. "I'm going to demystify that for America right now. I've spent time with the guy in the Oval Office, the White House situation room, and Air Force One. I'll tell you what his mindset was on January 6th."

"I believe Donald Trump wanted people to die," said Taylor. "He wanted people to die who were elected officials, en masse, so he could call out the military, so he could invoke the Insurrection Act, so he could prevent the peaceful transfer of power. That's not a conspiracy theory. In fact, in hindsight, it's pretty damn clear to me this is what he had in mind from day one in office."

This plan from Trump, said Taylor, explains something that had mystified himself and other national security officials about the former president from day one: why he continually refused to condemn right-wing domestic terrorist groups every time there was a violent incident. "Why did he make excuses for domestic terrorist groups? Because he was on their side."

"We saw in testimony the other week in courts that the January 6th plotters knew they were engaging in an insurrection, an armed insurrection. That's what they intended," said Taylor. "And we have people, extremists ... two hops away from the president of the United States who were planning on making that happen. He wanted people to die on January 6th so that he could use those presidential powers to prevent our democracy from transitioning to a new president. And I think the committee presented that in extremely powerful passion."

Watch below or at this link.

Miles Taylor says Trump "wanted people to die" on January 6

Feeling “schadenfreude” about Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis may have impacted people’s views on the election

2022/10/12


A recent study examined Americans’ feelings of schadenfreude and sympathy toward Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis in 2020. The findings, published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, revealed that Democrats expressed more schadenfreude and less sympathy toward Trump’s diagnosis compared to Republicans. Democrats were also more likely to think that the diagnosis would sway people’s votes in the upcoming election.

Schadenfreude, a German word that has been adopted by the English language, describes a feeling of pleasure at another person’s misfortune. This emotion tends to occur within competitive environments, often when there is a conflict between two groups. Study author Joanna Peplak and her co-authors wanted to explore the role of schadenfreude within a particularly heated intergroup context — the latest U.S. presidential election.

“I have been interested in schadenfreude (i.e., feeling pleasure in others’ misfortunes) for some time now and have been primarily conducting research on individual and development differences in children’s and adolescents’ experiences of schadenfreude in social interactions,” explained Peplak, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California-Irvine.

“My primary research questions include: When and why do individuals experience schadenfreude? Do frequent experiences of schadenfreude influence how we treat others? Although schadenfreude is primarily thought to be immoral, can it reflect moral facets as well?”

“For this paper, I was interested in investigating similar questions except in the political context—specifically in response to former President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis within weeks of the Presidential Election. My goal was to shed light on the emotions that contribute to partisanship and voting behavior,” Peplak said.

In October 2020, it was announced that then president Donald Trump had contracted COVID-19. The 2020 election campaign was particularly competitive given Trump’s controversial politics and the ongoing pandemic. Because Trump was perceived by many to have mishandled the COVID crisis, some Americans may have felt that he deserved his diagnosis, particularly Democrats.

Peplak and her colleagues opted to investigate feelings of schadenfreude (and its opposite, sympathy) among the American public in response to Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. The researchers also explored whether these feelings influenced citizens’ voting intentions.

About a week after Trump’s diagnosis was announced, 506 Americans answered an online questionnaire. With both open-ended questions and scale items, the survey assessed participants’ levels of schadenfreude and sympathy concerning Trump’s diagnosis. Participants were next asked whether they thought the diagnosis would affect their and other Americans’ voting intentions in the upcoming election.

In general, the respondents reported slightly more sympathy than schadenfreude. As expected, Democrats demonstrated more schadenfreude than toward Trump compared to Republicans. But even among Democrats, the levels of schadenfreude were not high (about 3 on average on a 5-point scale).

“Given the political climate prior to the 2020 Presidential Election and the influx of media responses that displayed individuals’ schadenfreude, I was surprised that feelings of schadenfreude in the sample of Democrats we surveyed for this study were relatively low,” Peplak told PsyPost. “This may be because our participants took COVID-19 diagnoses seriously. That is, even though Democrats may not have liked and/or agreed with former President Trump, their feelings of schadenfreude following his diagnosis may have been tempered by the relative severity of the diagnosis.”

The researchers next assessed the nature of participants’ feelings of schadenfreude and sympathy. There are said to be different subtypes of schadenfreude depending on the cognitions behind the emotion — deservingness-based schadenfreude, competition-based schadenfreude, and malice-based schadenfreude.

By coding participants’ responses to the open-ended questions, the researchers ascertained that the higher schadenfreude and lower sympathy among Democrats was motivated by deservingness beliefs and very little malice. For example, of the total sample, 43% indicated that they felt Trump deserved his diagnosis, 16% expressed care for his well-being, and only 5% expressed malice. These themes were associated with participants’ level of schadenfreude — Americans who expressed that Trump deserved the diagnosis or expressed malice toward him demonstrated higher schadenfreude.

Interestingly, respondents felt that Trump’s diagnosis would impact others’ voting intentions more than their own. Democrats were especially likely to anticipate a shift in votes. Across the sample, of those who thought votes would change, most (76%) thought it would sway more votes toward the Democrats. When they expressed why they thought this, most felt that Trump’s diagnosis would help voters recognize Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic.

Neither schadenfreude nor sympathy was linked to anticipated shifts in voting intentions. However, feeling that Trump deserved his diagnosis was. The authors report, “Those who believed then-President Trump’s diagnosis was deserved (cognition strongly associated with schadenfreude) were four times more likely to believe the public would change their vote to the Democratic Party.”

Peplak said the study provided three important takeaways:

“1. The groups that you belong to and associate with shape your emotional reactions. We found that schadenfreude was higher in Democrats and sympathy was higher in Republicans following former President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis.”

“2. Schadenfreude might not always reflect hatred or malice. We found that many participants experienced schadenfreude following former President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis because they believed it reflected deservingness or justice following his mismanaged response to the pandemic.”

“3. Experiencing schadenfreude in response to a political event may (indirectly) influence voting behavior. We found that the more Americans believed Trump’s diagnosis was deserved (a belief strongly related to experiences of schadenfreude), the more likely they were to think others would change their vote to the Democratic Party in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

Overall, the study shed light on how emotionally charged political events may influence the public’s thoughts about an upcoming election. But the authors noted that their study only examined voting intentions and not voting behavior. It would be interesting for future research to explore whether emotions like schadenfreude might actually change voting behavior and influence election results.

“There is still much to be learned about schadenfreude in the political arena and whether and how feeling schadenfreude might change behavior,” Peplak said. “For example, future work should seek to answer questions such as: Does expressed schadenfreude (e.g., via social media) expand political party divided? Does schadenfreude based in correcting injustice motivate us to correct our own injustices?”

The study, “Schadenfreude and Sympathy Following President Trump’s COVID-19 Diagnosis: Influence on Pre-Election Voting Intentions”, was authored by Joanna Peplak, J. Zoe Klemfuss, and Peter H. Ditto.

COMMODITY FETISH

David Hockney ode to French Riviera sells for £24 million

Agence France-Presse
October 13, 2022


David Hockney's 1969 painting 'Early Morning, Sainte-Maxime'

 has sold for more than £24 million

David Hockney's 1969 painting "Early Morning, Sainte-Maxime", inspired by a French Riviera sunrise, sold for over £24 million ($27.3 million) at a London sale Thursday -- more then double the pre-sale estimate.

The piece dates from a transitional phase in the British artist's early career, between his seminal, highly stylized Californian swimming pool paintings and the "naturalism" that came to define his later work.

The work showcases his increasing fascination with light, capturing "glass-like waters bathed in the sparkling light of a new day", said auction house Christie's.

"It is a work of rare, near-cinematic beauty that -- in both subject and style -- ushers in a thrilling new dawn."

The work was created at the height of Hockney's romance with Peter Schlesinger, representing a time of "personal contentment and professional triumph", said the auction house.

It was included in Hockney's first retrospective in London in 1970, and was unseen in public for over three decades.

The work belongs to a group of four paintings based on photographs that Hockney, now aged 85, took during his 1968 European trip with Schlesinger, having recently returned from four years living in California, where he had met his partner.

"Notably, the imagery would ultimately come full circle: it was with a poignant sunset that Hockney ultimately bade farewell to his lover in the deeply emotive 1971 painting 'Sur la Terrasse'," said Christie's.

Hockney later said that the idea of painting moving water in a "very slow and careful manner was (and still is) very appealing to me.

"It is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything -- it can be any color, it's movable, it has no set visual description," he added.


Hockney's 1972 work "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" sold for $90,312,500 in New York in 2018, which at the time was the highest auction price realised for a living artist.

Thursday's winning bid came in at £20,899,500, which works out at £24,219,427 once the buyer's premium is included.

© 2022 AFP

Auctioneers unveil Microsoft co-founder's $1 billion art collection

Agence France-Presse
October 13, 2022

Work by artists including David Hockney will be included in the sale of the century -- the biggest ever art auction Frederic J. BROWN AFP

Auctioneers unveiled the most expensive art collection ever to go under the hammer Wednesday, which belonged to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and is valued at $1 billion.

Five centuries of touchstone works featuring some of the most significant creators in history are being sold next month.

The collection of more than 150 pieces includes work by Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin and Jasper Johns.

"I think this is a sale that sort of exhausts superlatives," said Johanna Flaum, vice-chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art at auctioneers Christie's.

"This is... the most valuable collection ever sold at auction. It's really a once-in-a-generation type of event."

Highlights include "La montagne Sainte-Victoire" by Paul Cezanne, which is expected to fetch at least $120 million, and "Verger avec cypres" by Van Gogh, whose hammer price is estimated at over $100 million.

Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, becoming fabulously rich as the company grew into the computing behemoth it is today.

By the time he died in 2018 at the age of 65, he had bought some of the most important works created in the last half a millennium.

"The collection is quite wide-ranging, it really makes Paul Allen a unique collector in that sense," said Flaum.

The previous most expensive collection sold at auction was the Macklowe collection whose two tranches netted $922 million.


The auction will take place in New York on November 9 and 10. All proceeds due to Allen's estate are to be dedicated to philanthropy, in line with his wishes.

Parts of the collection will be available for public viewing in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Shanghai and New York ahead of the sale.

© 2022 AFP

THE LAW OF THREE

For the third time in recorded history, we will have three La Niña winters


By Karen Graham
Published October 8, 2022

Dried up Little Washoe Lake in Nevada is seen in July 2021 after prolonged drought. — © AFP

L​a Niña is expected to be in place this winter for the third year in a row, making the phenomenon the third time in recorded history with three straight La Niña years.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration *NOAA) is already predicting a 93 percent chance La Niña continues from November through January next year.

During August, below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) persisted across the central and east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean. Not only have there been SST departures in the Tropical Pacific during the last four weeks, but SST departures globally have been significant,

During the last four weeks, equatorial SSTs were below average across most of the Pacific Ocean
and in the western Indian Ocean. Equatorial SSTs were above average around Indonesia and in
small parts of the Atlantic Ocean. Source NOAA Climate Prediction Center

New research led by the University of Washington suggests that climate change is, in the short term, favoring La Niñas. The study was recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.

El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases of a recurring climate pattern across the tropical Pacific—the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or “ENSO” for short. The pattern shifts back and forth irregularly every two to seven years, and each phase triggers predictable disruptions of temperature and precipitation.

Global Impacts of El Nino and La Nina

El Niño and La Niña have weaker impacts during Northern Hemisphere summer than they do in the winter. Summer impacts include warm conditions in northeastern Australia and cooler-than-average conditions across India and Southeast Asia.

Generally, the polar jet stream in a La Niña winter buckles north over the North Pacific, then sweeps into the Pacific Northwest, dislodging cold air from Alaska into the Northwest, the northern Rockies, and Northern Plains.

But in the Eastern part of the country, the jet stream tends to swing to the north, as high pressure dominates over the South and Southeast, pushing warmer air up the East Coast. This is a typical winter pattern during La Niña. The actual conditions can vary with La Niña’s strength and other factors influencing the weather on shorter time scales.

Here’s something interesting to think about – Global warming is widely expected to favor El Niños. The reason is that the cold, deep water rising to the sea surface off South America will meet warmer air.

La Nina weather pattern, Source – The Weather Channel

Anyone who’s sweated knows that evaporation has a cooling effect, so the chillier ocean off South America, which has less evaporation, will warm faster than the warmer ocean off Asia.

This decreases the temperature difference across the tropical Pacific and lightens the surface winds blowing toward Indonesia, the same as occurs during El Niño. Past climate records confirm that the climate was more El Niño-like during warmer periods.

But here we are today, stuck in a La Nina weather pattern that could be classified as a strong La Nina. This generally means that you will see much less snow from southern New England to the mid-Atlantic states, as well as in parts of the central Plains.

The Pacific Ocean off South America has actually cooled slightly, along with ocean regions farther south. Meanwhile, the western Pacific Ocean and nearby eastern Indian Ocean have warmed more than elsewhere. Neither phenomenon can be explained by the natural cycles simulated by climate models. This suggests that some processes missing in current models could be responsible.

According to the researchers, changes on either side of the tropical Pacific show that the temperature difference between the eastern and western Pacific has grown, surface winds blowing toward Indonesia have strengthened, and people are experiencing conditions typical of La Niña winters.

The researchers aren’t sure why this pattern is happening. Their current work is exploring tropical climate processes and possible links to the ocean around Antarctica. Once they know what’s responsible, they may be able to predict when it will eventually switch to favor El Niños.

US proposes redefining when gig workers are employees

AFP
October 12, 2022

Uber. — © AFP JOEL SAGET

United States labor officials proposed a rule change Tuesday that could make it easier for gig workers such as Uber drivers to be reclassified as employees entitled to benefits.

The move by President Joe Biden’s Labor Department would lower a bar set by his predecessor regarding when someone is considered an employee instead of a contract worker.

It also comes as “gig economy” companies from rideshare platforms to food delivery services strive to maintain the status quo.

The new formula includes factors such as how long a person works for a company and the degree of control over the worker, as well as whether what they do is “integral” to a business, according to the proposed rule.

“We believe the proposed regulation would better protect workers from misclassification while at the same time providing a consistent approach for those businesses that engage or wish to engage with independent contractors,” Jessica Looman of the US Department of Labor said at a press briefing.

Being classified as employees would entitle workers to sick leave, overtime, medical coverage and other benefits, driving up costs for companies such as Uber, Lyft and DoorDash that rely on gig workers.

The proposed rule change is subject to a 45-day public comment period, meaning there is no immediate impact, but share prices took a hit on the news.

Uber and Lyft shares ended the formal day down more than 10 percent, while DoorDash was down nearly six percent.

“It’s a clear blow to the gig economy and a near-term concern for the likes of Uber and Lyft,” despite uncertainty about how the new rule might be interpreted across the country, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors.

“With ride sharing and other gig economy players depending on the contractor business model, a classification to employees would essentially throw the business model upside down and cause some major structural changes if this holds.”

Uber and Lyft have consistently argued that their drivers want independence, provided benefits are added to the mix.

In California, the cradle of the gig economy, voters in late 2020 approved a referendum backed by firms such as Uber that preserved keeping drivers classified as independent contractors.

The measure effectively overturned a state law that would require the ride-hailing firms and others to reclassify their drivers and provide employee benefits.

The vote came after a contentious campaign with labor groups claiming the initiative would erode worker rights and benefits, and with backers arguing for a new, flexible economic model.

Five things to know about China’s Communist Party Congress


AFP
PublishedOctober 13, 2022

The Great Hall of the People in Beijing will be the setting for the 20th Communist Party Congress - Copyright AFP/File NICOLAS ASFOURI

China’s Communist Party will on Sunday open its 20th Party Congress, the country’s most important political meeting, which is held once every five years.

Here are five questions and answers about the opaque process that will see major leadership changes expected to bolster President Xi Jinping’s authority and grant him a landmark third term.


What’s the meeting for?



The CCP, which has ruled China since 1949, has held 19 congresses to fill its leadership ranks since it was founded in 1921.

This year, about 2,300 delegates from across the country will descend on Beijing in a highly choreographed event to pick members of the Central Committee, which is made up of around 200 people.

It will “provide important clues about which leaders may be in line for top posts, and the amount of turnover within the Central Committee — generally around 60 percent — may signal how aggressively Xi intends to reshuffle”, wrote Christopher K. Johnson, senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

The committee will select members for the 25-person Politburo and its all-powerful Standing Committee — the country’s highest leadership body and apex of power, currently comprising just seven people.

Xi is all but certain to begin an unprecedented third five-year term as party general secretary.

In 2018, he abolished the presidential two-term limit, set by former leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s to avoid another Mao Zedong-style dictatorship.



Who’s on the Standing Committee?



The current Standing Committee consists of Xi, Premier Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng.

These career bureaucrats who rose through the party ranks over decades call the shots in the world’s most populous country, each getting one vote on key policy decisions.

But Xi reigns supreme, setting the agenda for their frequent secret meetings.

A sweeping anti-corruption campaign since Xi came to power has brought down former ministers and Politburo members, weakening party factions and eliminating rivals.

“Xi has made important tweaks to selecting the delegates and the pool of senior leaders. These changes overturn earlier conventions designed to foster greater transparency and open competition,” wrote Johnson.



Who’s leaving?



Since 2002, Standing Committee members aged 68 or above have stepped down, abiding by the unwritten retirement age first employed by former president Jiang Zemin to dump an ageing rival.

If the informal rule is upheld, but as expected does not apply to Xi, two out of seven members will step down — leaving Xi, 69, Li Keqiang, 67, Zhao, 65, Wang Yang, 67, and Wang Huning, also 67.

Li announced in March that he will retire as premier, but it is unclear whether he — or some of the others below 68 — will stay on the Standing Committee.

Another nine of the Politburo’s 25 members are also due to retire, leaving a number of Xi’s close allies likely to be promoted to top posts.



Will a successor to Xi emerge?



Xi has scrapped China’s two-term presidential limit and discarded several other party norms, such as indicating a successor by his second term.

This further consolidates his personal power and raises uncertainties about how long he plans to rule, making potential successors vie for his approval.

He has already installed close allies in top positions this year, such as the new minister for public security Wang Xiaohong, 65.

Shanghai party chief and Xi ally Li Qiang has retained his post despite a controversial two-month Covid lockdown in the key city.



Will Xi reign supreme?



Analysts expect Xi to reinforce his stature as China’s most powerful ruler since Mao.

Party propaganda has gone into overdrive since last autumn to bolster Xi’s legacy, diminish the achievements of his predecessors and further enshrine him in the highest echelons of Communist Party mythology.

Each Chinese leader since Mao has had one of his personal political philosophies or ideas codified in the state constitution.

Xi’s political ideology was included in 2018 and analysts say he will be looking to shorten the clunky “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” to the pithier “Xi Jinping Thought” — putting him on a par with Mao.