Politics of the Kindergaten

 

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few of years, it is hard not to notice that the quality of some of our Members of Parliament has been spiraling downwards in a spectacular race-to-the-bottom. 

As a British national I’m well used to the politics of the madhouse. That said, the deranged days of Brexit, a succession of short-lived Premierships for a succession of reasons from uselessness and lying in office to crashing the economy, some semblance of normality has now returned. 

(Liz Truss lasted for just 44 days in office as Prime Minister after crashing the economy)           

Here in Taiwan, where I have lived for ten years, the quality of our political representatives appears to be getting worse by the day. Their rhetoric and outlandish statements seem to be designed to inflame and anger, rather than make sensible political points. 

Which is all out of Trump’s playbook of endless lies designed to fool the electorate, and it is clear many Americans believe even the most ridiculous lies he tells.

KMT Chairman Eric Chu seems to have run out of his own ideas to become a Trump Mini-Me, or repeating utterances from our communist neighbour. 

Chu has asserted the DPP’s William Lai is doing to Taiwan’s opposition parties essentially what Hitler did in 1939.  After the German office protested at this outlandish comment, he refused to  back down and said...

"If Germany has truly learned the lessons of the Nazi era, it must deeply reflect on how the Nazis exploited so-called "legal procedures" to gradually eliminate dissenting parties and all opposition forces."

After half a dozen foreign offices in Taiwan stood by Germany's protest, Eric Chu doubled-down, asserting that foreign governments should not interfere in Taiwan's internal affairs.

First, they are not interfering in Taiwan’s internal affairs, they are merely pointing out that what you said is uneducated, absurd and wrong. (Chu should also bear in mind that Taiwan will need all the friends it can get if things with China get bad, insulting them is not a smart move.) 

Second, lessons about Nazism and The Holocaust are mandatory in German schools and most students will have visited at least one concentration camp on a school trip. I have a German student at my university who attested to this. I also have the evidence of my Taiwanese wife who was NOT taught about the White Terror. It is taught in schools now, but who would you say the Kuomintang acted like during Martial Law by suppressing such education? 

Is this the kettle calling the pot black? 

The rise of Nazism was multifaceted and bears zero relationship to what is happening in Taiwan at the moment. There were broadly five factors involved. 

There was the Great Depression which saw hyperinflation, huge unemployment and widespread poverty, the German people were desperate. The Nazis exploited this. The Treaty of Versailles, imposed on Germany after World War I, was humiliating, prompting a sense of injustice. The  Nazi’s also exploited this by claiming the military had been betrayed by politicians, communists, and Jews.

The Weimar Republic, established in 1919, was weak, unstable and riddled with conflicting ideologies. The Nazis sold themselves as a strong and unifying force. There was a huge fear of communism in Germany, particularly after the Russian Revolution in 1917. On top of all this, Hitler was highly charismatic and had an extremely effective propaganda machine.

To compare the way the Nazi’s used all these factors to gain power to the situation in Taiwan now, is patently absurd. Chu's simplistic assessment of the Nazi’s use of the then German  constitution is partly correct but if the German people had not flocked to support the Nazi’s because of all the above factors they never would have been in power. In 1928 the Nazis only had 2.6 percent of the vote, by 1930 it was 18.3 percent and by the July 1932 election it was 37.3 percent making it the largest party.

All democracies have gaps in their constitutions which allow politicians to use clever or devious ways to gain the upper hand. Like the KMT standing in the way of allowing new judges in the constitution court so it cannot sit or rule, or like the KMT physically locking other MPs out of the chamber so votes are put through on the nod without proper discussion.

Flinging about mindless accusations hoping people will just believe you is not how proper  leaders should behave, although Chu does have a bit of a track record in this regard.

Is it just huge arrogance that they are somehow way smarter than everyone else in the country? A feeling they will just get away with it? That it doesn’t matter if they make themselves look stupid or they don’t care if they look stupid? 

Or, worst of all, if it works and they get power, the end will justify the means…er, back to Trump.           

Chu is at the vintage end of Taiwan politics, let’s look at someone on the junior end.   

The latest example of just how bad it has become is put perfectly in focus by Keelung’s KMT member of parliament Lin Pei-hsiang. Rich and clearly entitled, he recently proudly announced he and his ilk were "are the top one percent of outstanding people." 

With mind boggling self-importance he even felt the need to say that he is ‘outstanding’ and a member of the ‘elite’. “We are members of parliament, there are 23 million people, we should be the tip one percent of elite people.”

He’s only 48, bless him, so a political teenager in the grand scheme of things, but someone  needs to quietly tell him that this is not the way to go about connecting with your electorate, muchless avoid being recalled. His hubris is what caused the recall attempt in the first place. 

While I’m sure his parents - Dad was a mayor twice and Mum was an MP - have always told him he is a Prince among men, brilliant beyond other mere mortals, and a member of their laughably-mini political elite, he has clearly made the mistake of believing them.

As the old cliche has it when looking at a wayward child - ‘I blame the parents’.  

The amazing political stupidity of not realising that telling your electorate you are massively smarter than they are and clearly the person to tell them what to do, in fact the top one percent of the entire population, might just rub them up the wrong way. 

I defy anyone to provide me with evidence that just because someone has enough money and clout to be able to finagle their way into politics that they are smarter than anyone else. There are hundreds of examples of stupid acts by stupid politicians - I certainly have plenty of evidence for that. 

The top one-percent, what utter tosh! It is an elitism mentality in its most acute form. I would ask every voting individual in Keelung to ask themselves…are you not as smart as your MP? Because he certainly does not think so. He thinks he is way smarter than you and you just need to listen to him and do what he says.    

What drives this kind of political stupidity and a belief that, like Trump in the United States, you can get away with making absurd statements like Pei-hsiang? President Donald Trump's self-appraisal is that he is “a very stable genius” he has said it many times.

Elsewhere in the exclusive world of the political elite, the DPRK’s Kim Jong Ii scored a perfect 300 the first time he bowled, according to North Korean media. He was also better at golf than Trump with five hole-in-ones for 38-under par round in his first game of golf.

It beggars belief these people say all this out-loud. For Pei-hsing to say, pretty much, that everyone is stupid except him is either simply aping Trump - or worse - he actually believes it of himself.

You see this kind of Warlord like behaviour elsewhere in the world. Which is likely due to the fact the KMT has lost a lot of wealth and power in recent years as the DPP stripped away their assets and property. “The KMT is running on cronyism, it used to be centralized but now distributed,” said Recall spokesman Mitch Yang.

“The property and assets were illegally obtained and have all been confiscated by the government. Because they now don’t have those resources, they have started to do what they can to make money,” added Yang, who was out on the streets of Keelung on Sunday urging voters to sign the recall petition there. 

“The central KMT control has gone and each of the local guys are getting stronger and they are likely getting money from the CCP.” 

This fragmentation means the likes of Pei-hsiang and the Hualien King can speak and act like they are running their own little fiefdoms for their own ends, whatever they might be, rather than for the good of the people who voted for them.  

With the old KMT money gone, is it fair to assume cash is coming to them from elsewhere?

What exactly was behind last year’s China visit by eighteen Kuomintang legislators to mainland China?  They met with Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and Song Tao , Director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council.

A cultural, or political visit? I’ll let the reader decide.   

With daily military threats from China from both the air and sea, it is exactly why the KMT recalls are happening.

The China friendly stance of a number of hugely arrogant KMT MPs is something Taiwanese voters need to urgently take note of. Taiwan is a democracy and the people voted for the KMT and TPP knowing they were both China friendly and the narrowly claimed a majority in parliament is what they are left with. 

Through these two party’s actions over the last year and a half, it is very clear they are actively seeking closer ties with China. 

Those who have a vote in the latest recall might be able to change that worrying dynamic.

Tinkerty Tonk...

Financial Markets - Never try to catch a falling knife

A large chunk of my over 40-year journalistic career was spent covering economics and financial markets. It was my job to talk to those in the field, from foreign-exchange, stock and bond traders, to top bank economists and strategists. With political economists thrown in.

What follows are purely observations of the dynamic of the stock market crashes I have witnessed and reported on, together with what I currently teach at Universities here in Taipei  and elsewhere, in terms of understanding financial market structure. 

This is not investment advice. Merely my observations of past market volatility I have witnessed and covered first hand, and some investments that were obvious at the time, and some that were pushed by banks and others that did not turn out for the best.  

WHERE DOES THE MONEY SIT

Let’s first understand the dynamic of financial markets in terms of professional vs retail investors. 

I, like many of you reading this, are retail investors. We are not sophisticated, we mostly buy or hold with a view/hope, prices will rise. Retail investors’ share of total trading volume rose from just above 10% in 2011 to over 22% in 2021, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

But the wider picture of your money in the market then extends to your pension fund, your savings in the bank, your bank deposit or any other stavings you keep with an institution. It’s your money. Never lose sight of the fact that market stories, volatility, crashes and rallies are all happening on the back of your money and affect your personal wealth in some way.

Like it or not, we are all involved, and affected by, the political ‘game’ that is playing out globally at the moment, driven by the orange chap in the White House. The reality is retail investors like yourselves have pretty much zero control over what is affecting your money. Unless you decide to trade in or out of volatile markets on a daily basis with the spare money you have and accept the huge danger that involves. 

DUMB MONEY VS SMART MONEY

The first thing to understand about sharp market movements, either up or down, is that professional investors have a huge advantage over the vast majority of retail investors.

By and large, retail investors buy and hold on the hope of a rise in price before they sell to realise their profit. Professional investors, with access to more sophisticated financial instruments can play two sides of the market by selling assets they don’t own with a view to covering that ‘short’ position at a cheaper price later - and pocket the difference. 

This dynamic is a long standing and somewhat depressing one whereby retail investors who only trade with one weapon, that of going long, are fighting professionals who have two weapons - going long and short. Most retail investors try to fight the market with one hand tied behind their backs as they don’t have the sophistication, or ability, to short the market in a downturn.

During less volatile times retail investors are not privy to high level data and market information, much less risk analysis, or even basic or technical analysis of market conditions.  

This is why financial markets tend to have a saw-tooth pattern as retail investors buy-in during good times to push the market higher slowly over time. Then, when something bad happens, the professionals aggressively go short to rip that accumulated wealth out of the market. The sad reality is the flow of money is from retail to professional investors and it happens over and over again when markets top out, for whatever reason. 

Make no mistake. Banks and professional investors will have made billions from the lastest downturn in global markets. The losers will be retail investors, pension funds and the personal wealth of individuals, whose investments are not nimble or sophisticated enough to cash in and take advantage of the sharp and savage downturn. 

THE ANATOMY OF A BULL MARKET 

It is no surprise that financial markets fluctuations, much like life itself, happen in cycles. Gross Domestic Product, ie. The value a nation creates broadly follows an upward trend over time as long as a government is doing its job and creating conditions whereby the people can enrich themselves and improve their standard of living.

Stock markets follow this as, obviously, companies linked to an economy will become more profitable on the back of economic growth. This is when ordinary people buy into stock markets as a means to further enrich themselves, whether through equity funds, pension plans or via direct investment by purchasing shares in a particular company.

When conditions are right, professional investors, I mean the big banks, and institutional investors all start to advise their clients to buy. Using themselves as the brokers to the deals, of course and charging a fee. There are free services but they just sting you on the spread of the asset you are buying or selling, which makes up their commission. It’s not ‘free’. 

Once these big investors are satisfied and fully invested, the professionals will allow their research into the open market which is when you will start to see newspaper articles saying this, or that, is a good buy. This is when retail investors jump in to buy the last part of the rally. 

The last part of any asset market rally is typified by the high level of retail investor interest. They are all getting in once the professional players are fully invested. It’s the icing on the cake for professional investors who are ready to rip money away from a bull market by dealing fast in the spot market or using futures or options to aggressively short. 

I’m going back years, but there was an off-quoted rule of thumb in Hong Kong about the market which went…”When you land at Kai Tak and your cab driver on the way into town tells you to buy the market, or a particular stock…the first thing you do when you get to the office is to sell it.”

It is also well to remember that stock markets only continue to rise if there is money flowing into them. They don’t rise by magic without fresh liquidity. Once a market is full of money, it will stop rising and correct. Huge buying by individuals is usually the last gasp of this liquidy. 

PAST MARKET CRASHES

The first stock market crash I covered was the 1987 collapse. From 1986 there was a powerful bull market that started in the summer of 1982 which soared following the so-called Big Bang which was the sudden deregulation of financial markets. This bull market was fueled by hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts and merger mania. Companies were scrambling to raise capital to buy each other out.

The panic to get out was typified by the inability of investors to sell because systems were jammed and some countries closed their markets to try and prevent more selling. There were cases of brokers being shot by frustrated investors who were unable to escape the carnage. 

It was a similar situation in 1997 when the massive bull market created by the Tiger Economies of Asia fell apart, mainly because governments relied on fixed exchange rates which did not allow for the economic pressure they created to dissipate and in July 1997 the whole thing fell apart and millions were thrown into poverty.

The over-promise of the internet in 2000 created a huge bubble in tech stocks with venture capital pouring in to find websites that never had any chance of making money. I sold a tech-fund I had after it made a 137pct profit over about a year, in December of 1999. My broker told me I was mad for selling it and I should stay invested.

After the massive fall in 2000 when the internet market bubble burst the tech-heavy NASDAQ index fell from around 5,000 to around 1,400. It didn’t recover back to 5,000 until around 2015.

I clearly remember some market analysts were urging people to buy at the lower levels as the market ws a ‘bargain’ but it never really recovered and the index languished for years. I daresay you have heard ‘experts’ telling investors to buy into this latest orange inspired crash. 

This is where the old market wisdom of ‘Never try and catch a falling knife’ comes from.   

I see echoes of this over-promise now with AI and the billions being poured into it, likewise crypto, but that’s something for another story.  

Smart investors never try to catch the very top, or bottom, of any market. If you catch the bulk of a market run you are doing well and missing out on the last 10 pct of a move is the wise thing to do. Any professional investor or trader will tell you there is no such thing as bad profit.

Trying to call a top or a bottom exactly is a fool’s errand and often leads to disaster. Never forget that financial markets run on fear and greed. Take those emotions out of your personal investments and you will do well. Give into them and risk a lot.

I have shares. What am I doing you may ask, given I've witnessed and written about many stock market crashes. In nearly every case, stocks recover relatively quickly and my losses at the moment are significant, but only on paper. I’ve ridden out every stock market crisis since 1980 when I started writing about financial markets for Reuters. I’m doing the same now.     

MARGIN CALLS

The one thing retail investors often forget is the dynamic that margin calls have on markets. 

If an investor has borrowed money to buy stock, which many do, they secure the loan on the value of the stock. If they buy a stock and it goes up, fine. If it goes down, the lender will ask for a margin payment to cover the difference between the loan and the value of the holding. 

If an investor gets hit by a margin call they will be forced to sell the stock to cover the margin call. In the recent orange stock market collapse, forced margin selling exacerbated the downside considerably. 

It is this dynamic which causes suicides and bankruptsies during market collapses. Never let greed take over investment decisions. Trade within your limits and understand your maximum loss. Beware of futures or options where it is possible to lose everything because of the way they are leveraged. Taking a 20 pct hit on a stock holding is one thing. Losing your entire investment, or more, is quite another.

UNCERTAINTY IS THE WORST THING FOR MARKETS

Uncertainty is something financial markets hate. I’ve lost count of the number of market analysts saying as much in stories I’ve written over the years. We currently have a hugely uncertain situation as the orange one keeps changing his mind. 

Yesterday he was going to war with the world over trade and boasting how world leaders were but panicked when the markets collapsed and backed down on Wednesday by suspending tariffs by three months for everyone other than China.

He claimed that other countries were calling and "kissing my a**" to negotiate tariff rates just before they went into effect. “They are dying to make a deal. 'Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything sir,'” he imitated a begging foreign leader. 

I’d really like to meet anyone who believes that. From a proven liar who is barely able to form a 

coherent sentence, it’s a leap to believe any self-respecting country leader would debase themselves like that. 

By doing a massive U-turn on the tariffs because he was panicking over the stock market crash, only increases the uncertainty as to what his malfunctioning synapses will come up with next. 

The bottom line is no major corporation will move quickly to rebase to the US because the orange administration changes its mind, almost on a daily basis. His actions are not pragmatic, they are driven by panic. His actions are not strategic, they are scattergun.

It’s hugely expensive to rebase manufacturing to the US and takes months, if not years. This is what the orange man wants but some large companies like General Motors and John Deere are already calling his bluff and are happy to wait it out and carry on with plans they already have in place. General Motors to drop 14,000 jobs in North America and close five plants as well, sending a clear message it was prioritizing global expansion over Trump’s nationalist agenda.

Farm machinery manufacturer John Deere has said it will push ahead with plans to move some of its production from Iowa to Mexico. The orange one is clearly furious and has been making all sorts of threats against both companies.      

Which would seem to be a wise move given the current administration seems to change its  mind almost daily on major US trade policy. You simply can’t run a major company with that degree of uncertainty hanging over you. 

Besides, the US mid-term elections are coming in November. There are just too many variables in place for businesses to make long term plans on the basis of the current chaos. Who knows what madness is coming next? Invasion of Greenland? Invasion of Panama, taking Gaza? 

Or, indeed, the US, one way or another, abandons this madness and we can all get back to business as usual. 

But the chaos looks set to continue and unless you think you can second-guess the orange one, it’s probably best to take a hands-off approach to things. If you are thinking of second-guessing him and putting money into the market, I wish you the very best of luck.   

Tinkerty Tonk...

 

Freedom of Speech - well, not all the time

“The world turns and the world changes, but one thing does not change. In all of my years, one thing does not change, however you disguise it, this thing does not change: The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil,” is a quote from a play called The Rock by  T.S. Eliot, a poet, essayist and playwright (1888-1965).

Mankind has to accept the world changes, but at the same time we do not have to accept that  somehow this justifies a shift from good towards evil. 

The bullish and aggressive narratives which currently dominate our lives, largely, it seems, as a result of social media, is clearly making for a more dangerous and unstable world. Sure we all accept the world will constantly change, but why do we apparently have to accept it changing for the worst?   

The understanding of what the truth and freedom of speech actually mean is horribly clouded and people already shrug and say “Ah, we are now living in The Post Truth Era.” That such a phrase actually exists is absurd. Do we really accept that lying is now OK? Does that not undermine the whole rule of law, much less morality?

Let’s take freedom of speech, a long-cherished and hard fought for right of democracies everywhere and something billions of the eight billion of us on this planet, do not enjoy. 

The recent headline stealing story of a mainland Chinese woman married to a local man who has had her Alien Resident Card (ARC) card revoked and is being deported from Taiwan, has thrown the issue into sharp relief.

Let’s look at the details of that case before we get into the broader issues of what exactly is freedom of speech and how the understanding of it is currently being distorted, mainly by those in a position of political power.  

For our home example, I’ll use her TikTok label of Yaya.

Yaya’s assertion that her human rights were being violated because under Taiwan’s constitution she had the right of freedom of speech and her TikToks saying Taiwan was an awful country and China was well able to attack and take the island over and should do so, were protected speech. 

Quite why she stayed here and did not return to China with her family if she thought Taiwan was such an awful place, is another question. 

But her assertion that her rights to freedom of speech were violated is wrong because freedom of speech is not absolute. 

It would seem that under law, her defence to deportation is flawed as her speech strays into the area of sedition and that is why she is being kicked out. Sedition is broadly defined as “conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch”. I’m a journalist not a lawyer, but it seems she is being ejected not for saying Taiwan should be part of China, but for advocating that China should take Taiwan by force. 

She was strongly supported by the KMT and you don’t need to be a genius to analyse their motives.   

By their actions in parliament and general rhetoric it seems obvious to all but the meanest intelligence that the Kuomintang are actively working to help China take control of Taiwan. This despite the almost perfect irony that the Kuomintang were founded on the principle of waging war against the CCP. Go figure? 

‘By their actions shall you know them’ is a paraphrase of The Bible’s book of Matthew which basically says judge people's character and authenticity by their deeds and actions, not simply by their words or appearances.

But I digress. 

Whether Yaya is simply seeking clicks and views and the accompanying money from TikTok, or whether she is something more sinister like an agent provocateur in the pay of Beijing is obviously open to question. You have to ask yourself if destroying your life and splitting up your family so effectively is not something you expect to be ultimately rewarded for?

Call it a conspiracy theory if you like, but parading in front of journalists and courting publicity even as she was thrown out of the country are the actions of someone expecting to be rewarded somehow. Or she is just as stupid as a rock.      

To my mind, she is rightly being deported and the less of such people in Taiwan seeking to promote a China takeover, particularly by force of arms, the better. 

But it does raise the issue that while some countries have strict sedition laws which can be used to stifle freedom of speech, Taiwan does not. The question is, should such laws be tightened given the threat from the mainland given that for Taiwan it could mean bombs, invasion and mass slaughter of civilians, not just a threat to the existing government.

Since martial law ended in July 1987, Taiwan has junked its strict anti-sedition laws and embraced democracy with a strong emphasis on freedom of speech. Clearly, this latest case of the outspoken Yaya means the government might need to look again at how sedition should be defined and handled in the future. 

There would seem little hope of that while the KMT hangs onto its tiny parliamentary majority and is actively seeking closer ties with China, but when things change it would be well to revisit this and finesse the sedition laws here. Given the oft-made threats of direct violence and war towards the Taiwanese people by China, this would make a lot of sense.

But it is a tricky balancing act. Taiwan was right to pretty much abandon the strict sedition laws as they can easily be misused to subdue democracy and have been used historically to subdue populations and prevent political opposition to an incumbent administration.

During Taiwan’s White Terror Period (1949-1992) sedition laws were used to great effect by the KMT. This era ended in September 1992 with the repeal of Article 100 of the Criminal Code, allowing for the prosecution of "anti-state" activities. Therein lies an issue about perhaps changing the code, particularly given the ‘enemy’ is the same, China. 

Thirty three years later, China is again a huge threat as it was in 1949. Maybe time for a rethink?     

India and Hong Kong have both found their sedition laws particularly useful at times to stymie opposition groups. 

In Hong Kong, the century old laws were used to great effect to prosecute democracy activists and these convictions sparked concerns over the impact on freedom of speech, in the wake of the Beijing-imposed national security law.

In India, the laws of sedition are still a powerful sanction used by the authorities to criminalise dissent and arrest critics of the government. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government uses these old laws to crack down on journalists, activists and others.

Surprise, surprise, sedition laws were pretty much a product of the Colonial Era which to a large extent came under British rule, certain in the case of Hong Kong and India that is the case. Other countries are just as guilty but these old laws in most parts of Asia are throwbacks from the Colonial Era, whichever powerful country involved was.

Do a Wikipedia search <Colonial empire> for a full list (which, incidentally, includes the United States…a nod to Trump’s ambitions for Greenland and the Gaza Strip). It really is an interesting list if you have not studied this subject or had much time for history and were too busy earning a living.

Many countries have laws of sedition but most don’t use them and some have softened them much like Taiwan has. However, the definition of Freedom of Speech is very much in play in global politics and it is a phrase being bandied about more and more.    

The fact is there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech, it seems daft that Elon Musk has declared himself to be a “free-speech absolutist”.

Much like the man, this is clearly absurd. Having bought Twitter he promptly banned a whole bunch of people from it who he didn’t like so is clearly a hypocrite. There is nothing illegal about being a hypocrite but it serves to remind the entire world the man is morally bankrupt and a fraud, Nazi salute notwithstanding.  

On top of this, he cannot be ‘free-speech absolutist’ as he is threatening to sue Jamaal Bowman, an American politician and former educator for calling him a “thief and a nazi” during a television interview. Which is exactly why there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech. If there was, defamation would not exist and that is preposterous. 

Aside from the largely pointless ramblings of the likes of relative nobody in global terms like  Musk, more insidious are the moves by US President Donald J Trump who is currently moving to stifle news reporting in a thinly disguised revenge attack on organisations critical of him in the past. Using free speech as a cover.  

What we are not seeing cuts to the quick, as suddenly…freedom of speech becomes a problem.   

Associated Press (AP) was banned for resisting Trump’s demand to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and other news organisations like Reuters and some European publications have been similarly affected. 

Trump’s war on the truth and freedom of speech, together with his moves to replace it with slavish sycophancy from supportive outlets must be music to Chinese state media who are filling the vacuum with their own brand of world news.

Just as Trump is making inroads into the US Constitution, this attack on the First Amendment is an obvious one. Like dictators before him, including Hitler, Stalin and Mao, Trump seeks to directly control the narrative. His seemingly endless lies will be with us for a while yet until the American electorate comes to its senses and dumps him. 

Surely, by now, most right thinking humans who have devoted some critical thought time to the subject must realise that Trump will sell Taiwan down the river if it suits his own ends, just like he has tried to do with Ukraine and their rare-earths. 

Rare-earths…semiconductores, pause for thought. (not forgetting Greenland, Gaza etc) 

"Democracy Dies in Darkness" is the official slogan of The Washington Post. Sadly for us all the United States, that one-time bastion of free speech, freedom and democracy is entering a darker phase where all those rights are at risk, even for America’s own population.

Tinkerty Tonk...

Today's political leaders - When the satire becomes real

The deterioration of the quality of the world’s politicians has been happening for a while now but 2025 might become the year political satire finally dies. The reality is fast becoming too bizarre to be ridiculed.  

There has always existed the irritating background noise of absurdness, truth bending, corruption and stupidity around politics, pretty much everywhere in the world. It has been so since prehistoric man was first dumb enough to elect their first cave leader. 

In modern times, when politics was still a serious business there remained a good chunk of ethics and morality in play, with the occasional lapses rich pickings for gleeful journalists and comedians to pounce-on and poke fun at those who rule over us.

Politicians would see it as a badge of honour if they were satirised. I was lucky enough to visit No.11 Downing Street a number of times when I was a lobby correspondent for Reuters during the 1990s and the staircase at No.11, the Finance Minister’s London residence, is lined with framed political newspaper cartoons dating back decades.      

 Once in a while we were treated to an entertaining full-blow scandal with accompanying banner headlines as red-faced politicians apologised for impropriety, or were embarrassed into resigning to ‘spend more time with their family’.

However, in the past decade or so politics has been infected by more extreme forms of behaviour where bad has become the norm, outright lies accepted as ‘alternative truths’ and downright stupidity and gaffes by wannabes seeking high power commonplace.

The zeitgeist, it has to be said, largely driven by western politicians, has changed. Sadly there are leaders here in Taiwan who appear to have seen Trump and other western politicians as role models and copied their style. Lying, switching sides when it suited them, making ridiculous statements expecting them to be believed and, perhaps worse, thinking they are above the law.

‘If they can do it, we can do it.’ A lot of political behaviour in Taiwan politics in recent years has been straight out of Trump’s playbook. It’s sad that they can’t even have their own style of awful but have to copy someone as unbalanced as Trump.   

What used to be satire has turned into simple reporting as lies and absurd statements have become commonplace and not a rarity. It’s tough to satirise the already absurd, ridiculous or corrupt. Like the guys who want to cut the budgets of the Transport Ministry, Police and Foreign Ministry because it will improve the safety of trains, somehow make scams less prevalent and make wooing back previously supportive countries easier. It makes so little sense it’s impossible to make fun of.          

In the decades following World War II there existed an integrity around politics, particularly in the west, where the mind-bending horrors of the war were so fresh in the collective memory that the need for ethics and decency were prominent in voters' minds. Politicians easily risked the ire of the electorate should they stray too far from a path of being relatively upright.

Sadly, that collective memory has evaporated as the wartime generation has died off. Both my father and mother died within the last ten years. He was a conscripted soldier while my mother lived through the Blitz and survived the bombs raining down on her East London home. 

Both had lived through a traumatic experience which was the direct result of a man who in a very short time destroyed the German republic, turning it into a totalitarian dictatorship in perhaps the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy.

As has often been said, mankind never seems to learn from history and it seems the lessons of a century ago when a democracy was given over to a nationalist dictatorship resulting in a World War, a hundred million deaths, economic collapse and the global misery has passed from living memory. 

Now, we are witnessing a return to aggressive nationalism in many countries, and in some the erosion of democracy accompanied by leaders seeking to rule by decree by undermining the judicial system and the constitution. Most of this is happening against the background of a shift towards the right wing of the political spectrum, authoritarianism and, most strikingly, blaming immigrants for a country's ills.  

But surely no one in the world who is in their right mind wants another Hitler, right? 

Until recently most journalists have avoided comparing what is going on now to what happened in the 1930s in Germany for fear of falling foul of Godwin’s Law. US lawyer Mike Godwin was an early adopter of the internet and in 1990 observed…"As a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of a person/s being compared to Hitler or another Nazi, increases." 

For decades this law appeared to hold true and it was deemed that once someone in a thread compared someone or something to Hitler or the Nazis, they had run dry of meaningful  argument as the comparison was held to be so extreme as to be absurd. 

It is now 35 years on and the current crop of world leaders and their bizarre antics, lies and undermining of democracy is tragically becoming normal and seen, by some, as acceptable behaviour. 

From US President Elect Trump’s crimes, endless lies and insults in the United States, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s constant lies and mishandling of Brexit and Covid and former Prime Minister Liz Truss disastrous premiership in the United Kingdom, to Taiwan’s current political scandals, turncoat politicians, lies and the undermining of the Constitutional Court’s powers.  

The KMT are simply refusing to accept any judges put forward so the Constitutional Court is not quorate and cannot make decisions. They are using the democratic tools at their disposal to undermine the Taiwan constitution, just as Trump is doing with the Supreme Court in the US. 

In 1933 Hitler did a similar thing. His erstwhile lawyer Hans Frank, later executed for his complicity in Nazi atrocities, said Hitler’s was an expert in sensing “the potential weakness inherent in every formal form of law” and then ruthlessly exploiting that weakness.

Just like Trump, he was a fierce supporter of freedom of speech and like Trump used his   constitutional right to free speech to huge rallies and spew malicious attacks on Bolsheviks (a far-left faction of Lenin’s Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, social democrats, immigrants, Jews and even fellow rightwing nationalists. 

Trump has done the same thing with the democrats, Mexicans and America’s immigrants generally. Hitler’s oft stated claim was to make Germany great again, a startling and worrying reminder to us all of Trump’s - Make America Great Again.   

Hitler exploited his small political power within the democracy to gridlock legislative processes and crush political opposition, undermining democratic structures, thus transforming a democratic republic into a constitutional dictatorship. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who on May 1, 1945 killed his six children and wife in the Berlin Bunker then committed suicide, once said, “The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction.”

Trump’s rhetoric regarding immigrants into the US has undoubtedly been vile. Variously describing them as coming from “shithole countries” and stating “They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums. You know, insane asylums, that’s ‘Silence of the Lambs’ stuff…” He has promised mass deportation of migrants. 

Thirty five years on Godwin said recently, “Trump’s opening himself up to the Hitler comparison,” he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine at the end of last year. In his view, Trump is actively seeking to evoke the parallel, setting himself up for a dictator-like administration. 

Which brings us back to the crop of authoritarian wannabe dictators in the world today. It seems clear Trump will do everything in his power to remain in office and manipulate the existing US constitution to bolster his power and satisfy his lust to take over other countries like Canada, Greenland and control of the Panama Canal. All that rhetoric might seem mad, and it is, but don’t underestimate the unbalanced nature of Trump’s psyche or overestimate his intellect to do much more than decide which burger to have for lunch.

The rise of the right-wing across the world is something that should worry us all, it is not just the US. The Netherlands, Argentina, Italy, France, Sweden and Finland have all seen right-wing populist parties gain more power. Surprisingly, Germany’s AfD (Alternative for Germany) with its promise of mass deportation of migrants is a serious electoral contender in February’s elections.

All this plays into the hands of authoritarians and if you scratch an authoritarian, there is a dictator just below the surface.  

The rise of right-wing nationalism globally is worrying for Taiwan. A Trump with imperialistic ambitions for Canada and Greenland are not a million miles from the imperialistic ambitions we have witnessed with the South China Sea, Africa and Taiwan. I am convinced Trump will not lift a finger to help Taiwan if it suits his own selfish ambitions for the United States. Remember, as a wannabe dictator, he has openly admired other dictators around the world. He wants to be like them.   

That is not the only worry for Taiwan. Just as we are seeing elsewhere and as history illustrates, it is possible to undermine democracy using the very tools that are designed to keep it in place. Those in Taiwan who want Taiwan to be closer to China are on a daily basis undermining the existing democratic process by locking Parliament’s doors to force through votes. The parties with the small majority in parliament are also making the Constitutional Court impotent and pushing through laws which makes it easier for China to make inroads into Taiwan society.

All this is happening fast as with such a tiny parliamentary majority the KMT and TMD know only too well that if they do not act fast to ingratiate themselves with China there is a risk the voters will catch on and vote them out. Why else do you think they are meddling with the recall rules making it more difficult for the public to get rid of MPs. They are using the existing rules to stymie the democracy we currently enjoy. 

Democracy is far from perfect with inherent flaws built into a system that is supposed to ensure the ‘people’ get what they want. Unfortunately the flaws in the system enable the likes of the KMT and TMD to gain a toe-hold in the Parliament to force through policies that bring Taiwan closer to China. It is abundantly clear that is what they want to do. It must be obvious to anyone who voted for the KMT or TMD last time that they voted for closer ties with China and sadly that is what might get.   

The United States is obviously happy with Trump and will reap what they have sowed. The only way of gauging that is waiting to see what happens now. Maybe the US system of democracy is strong enough to prevent him from rolling Canada, Greenland or Panama in a move similar to what we have seen in the South China Seas, and to some extent Africa. 

If the last democratic election in Taiwan signalled a desire by the voters to get closer to China and push for closer integration with all that entails, that is the will of the people. If the electorate wants to turn Taiwan into Hong Kong and kill democracy, that is their right under the current democratic rules.

What I would say is just as the United States had every right to vote for a potential dictator who is also so clearly an idiot, Taiwan had the right to vote for an administration that will obviously undermine their democracy and make the country a potential slave to its neighbour. Will we witness hard won democracy and freedoms destroyed by the very system they are designed to uphold.    

Given the history of what dictatorships have done to the world, it is tragic to see a young and proud Asian democracy being pushed into the arms of a totalitarian dictatorship by the very system designed to keep it free.    

But in a democracy, you get the government you deserve and have to live with the consequences.  

Tinkerty Tonk...