Monthly Archives: July 2021

Everett Henes| Hillsdale Daily News

Our perspective is always limited. We cannot know why certain things take place or even how long they will last. If we didnt have the word of God, philosophies such as existentialism (where there is no intrinsic meaning or purpose to life) and nihilism (the belief that life is pointless and human values are worthless) would be tempting ways to approach life. What we have, as Christians, is trust that God is in control. This is one of the biggest uses of Gods word for us. Scripture is inspired and shows us the consistency of our God. Nothing will get in the way of his plans as Job professed, I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted (Job 42:2). This is clear here in the story of Josephs life. No obstacles will stand in the way of Gods saving work for he will work around them or, perhaps more often, through them to save his people.

Last week we looked at Genesis 42 and the first journey Josephs brothers made to get grain during the famine. When they came to Egypt Joseph recognized them, but they did not recognize him. This was used to Josephs advantage as he was able to learn about their family and make certain demands upon them. But while Joseph could have used his knowledge to get revenge what we saw was that Joseph was leading them toward repentance and reconciliation.

In the story of Josephs life, we see Gods mercy in the salvation of the people and the provision of food for the entire region. It is a severe mercy. We know from other stories when Israel was hungry that God could rain down manna from heaven. He could supply the food they need supernaturally. God is doing more than merely causing them to survive. He is bringing them toward repentance and reconciliation. CS Lewis once wrote, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

There are more obstacles than the famine. What happens in Genesis 43 is that Jacobs family is without food again. Jacob wants to send his sons to buy more from Egypt, but Joseph had told them not to return without their youngest brothers. Jacob doesnt want to let Benjamin go. Judah offers himself in Benjamins place. He pledges his life that Benjamin will return. This is more than saying he will die if Benjamin dies but rather, that he will give himself (and therefore all his family) to do with as Jacob pleases if Benjamin does not return.

Jacob prays for Gods mercy and then leaves it in his hands. He does not have our perspective. He cannot see that the famine is part of Gods overall plan. Its not just that Joseph is there to provide them with food in a bad time; its that the difficult time has a purpose in itself. What purpose can the famine serve? The famine is what drives them to Egypt. Why is it that the people must go to Egypt? In Egypt Gods people are despised and so they will be left to themselves to grow as a nation whereas in Canaan, they would mix with the people of the land and never become a separate people. And so, it is through sorrow and hardship that God brings the family of Jacob to the place where he can make them into a large nation.

God is removing the obstacles in the way of repentance and reconciliation. When we think of Gods work throughout history, it is always God who removes the obstacles. When they are in slavery in Egypt and need to be released from bondage, God will remove the obstacle of Pharaoh. When King David sins with Bathsheba, God will use Nathan to remove the obstacles in his mind and heart to move him to repentance. Sometimes God works slowly, over time, and other times he works immediately. We know this even in our own lives. God removes the largest obstacle to salvation as he takes our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh. We do not repent because we have decided to follow Jesus. We repent because God has moved us to repentance; he has removed all the obstacles in the way. He does this by sending Jesus to die in our place and sending his Spirit to draw us to himself.

Pastor Everett Henes, the pastor of the Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, can be reached at pastorhenes@gmail.com.

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It's all a matter of perspective - The Hillsdale Daily News

Some non-evangelical Christians from Mainline Protestants to moderate Catholics to the African Methodist Episcopal Church absolutely cringe whenever the Christian Right says or does something racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic or homophobic, as they realize that it turns young Americans off to religion. Countless Millennials and members of Generation Z have said that if far-right White evangelicals are the face of Christianity, please count them out. Liberal New York Times opinion writer Michelle Goldberg, in acolumn published on July 9, emphasizes that the Christian Right has lost a lot of ground since George W. Bush's presidency during the 2000s.

Goldberg explains, "The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right's influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. But the evangelicals who thought they were about to take over America were destined for disappointment."

The Times columnist illustrates her point by citing aPublic Religion Research Institute pollreleased on July 8. PRRI's 2020 Census of American Religion found that Mainline Protestants now outnumber White evangelicals in the United States.

Mainline Protestants are non-fundamentalist, non-evangelicals Protestants such as Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists or members of the AME Church a Black denomination that, in contrast to the far-right politics of the White evangelical movement, has a long history of supporting liberal and progressive causes.

"PRRI's 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people, shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as White evangelical, from 23% in 2006 to 14.5% last year," Goldberg observes. "As a category, 'White evangelicals' isn't a perfect proxy for the Religious Right, but the overlap is substantial. In 2020, as in every year since 2013, the largest religious group in the United States was the religiously unaffiliated."

Goldberg continues, "One of PRRI's most surprising findings was that in 2020, there were more White Mainline Protestants than White evangelicals. This doesn't necessarily mean Christians are joining mainline congregations the survey measures self-identification, not church affiliation. It is, nevertheless, a striking turnabout after years when Mainline Protestantism was considered moribund and evangelical Christianity full of dynamism. In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, White evangelicals were also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56."

One person who did a lot to turn people off to the Christian Right and the White evangelical movement is former President Donald Trump. Although Trump was raised Presbyterian in Queens, he was never known for being a devoutly practicing Christian or for being especially religious. Trump is really an agnostic even if he claims otherwise, and his relationship was the Christian Right was one of convenience. Many Americans looked at the Trump/Christian Right relationship and either became agnostics or embraced non-evangelical forms of Christianity.

Goldberg points out that during the George W. Bush years, Generation Joshua a far-right evangelical group that pushed for home schooling was optimistic about the future of the evangelical movement. But the PRRI survey, according to Goldberg, doesn't give that movement any reason for optimism. And she concludes her column on an ominous note, fearing that the more the Christian Right feels they are losing the Culture War, the more dangerous they could become.

The columnist writes, "White evangelicals probably aren't wrong to fear that their children are getting away from them. I was frightened by the Religious Right in its triumphant phase. But it turns out that the movement is just as dangerous in decline. Maybe more so. It didn't take long for the cocky optimism of Generation Joshua to give way to the nihilism of the January 6 insurrectionists. If they can't own the country, they're ready to defile it."

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"Outnumbered": White evangelicals find themselves on the decline - Salon

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On September 23, 2020, reporter Barton Gellman published an article at The Atlantic titled The Election That Could Break America. It was the stuff of small-d democratic nightmares.

Gellman described blinking red lights among expert observers of our political process alarming signals ahead of the 2020 election that the mechanisms of decision are at meaningful risk of breaking down.

You could sense stomachs flipping somersaults when The Atlantic posted Gellmans essay, with that reporting and its revolutionary implications laid out so starkly.

Some of the portents Gellman observed were already in clear public view: Former President Donald Trump in advance of the election denouncing mail-in ballots as inherently fraudulent; Trump proclaiming the election itself again, in advance as The greatest rigged election in history. Gellman walked readers through the wooliness and exploitable loopholes in the statutory and constitutional provisions that undergird the lauded peaceful transition of power during the interregnum between election day and inauguration.

Gellman also reported for the first time that the Trump campaign was discussing contingency plans to bypass election results in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. Pennsylvanias state Republican party chair even admitted to Gellman that he had initiated those discussions with Trumps campaign because, If the process is flawed our public may lose faith and confidence in the elections integrity. And in that instance, the argument goes, Republican state legislators would step in and void the result of the supposedly flawed vote, replacing it with their own declaration of who won. They would then send a slate of electors for their chosen candidate to represent Pennsylvania for the electoral college count.

You could sense stomachs flipping somersaults when The Atlantic posted Gellmans essay, with that reporting and its revolutionary implications laid out so starkly: The worst case is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all.

That was Gellmans warning in September.

In the end well, at least in November the election result was clear, and Joe Biden is now well into his first year as president. We did experience a paroxysm of violence from Trump supporters on Jan. 6, for which Trump was impeached a second time (and acquitted a second time, thanks to Republicans in the Senate). But we avoided the worst of what Gellman foresaw for the interregnum: the prospect that there would be no clear answer as to who should be sworn in on Jan. 20.

As the first months of this new presidency have passed, though, rumblings on the right about the legitimacy of Bidens election have grown louder, and, frankly, weirder.

As the first months of this new presidency have passed, though, rumblings on the right about the legitimacy of Bidens election have grown louder, and, frankly, weirder. Trump now frequently claims that he will be reinstated as president. A majority of Republican voters now say they believe the 2020 election was marred by significant fraud, and that Biden may not in fact have been elected to the office he now holds. Citing those doubts and fears among their voters, Republican-controlled states across the country are restricting voting rights aggressively and reorganizing election procedures to give partisan Republicans more control over election infrastructure and post-vote challenges.

Arizona Republicans have organized an absurd inquisition into most of the states presidential vote, administered by QAnon adherents and pro-Trump conspiracy theorists. The stated intent of the promoters of Arizonas stunt is to decertify Arizonas presidential election result, which as the kids say is not a thing. But the literal legal standing of the election result, at the end of the day, is not really the point.

The real point is to unsettle Americans sense that the election is done, and that its results are objectively knowable.

We may have survived the narrow scrape with a violent coup attempt during the interregnum, which we were so presciently warned about before the election. But since then, during the Biden presidency, the predominant dynamic among base Republican voters has bent back toward small-d democratic rejection. In 2021, the otherwise normal flow of off-year conservative politics has been inflected by a steady and growing effort to illegitimize the 2020 election result and declare it unclear or unsettled.

The stakes of this gamble are high for the future of American elections. One risk for Republicans is that their own voters become fearful and suspicious enough about voting itself that they decide turning out on election day is a futile effort. That dynamic may have played a part in the Jan. 5 election in Georgia of two Democratic U.S. senators; Democratic voter turnout stayed roughly as strong as it had been in the November presidential contest, but Republican turnout fell off, amid loud Trump complaints that the Georgia election system was somehow rigged.

But the larger risk is that fears about election integrity become intractable; that the Trump-led effort to undermine the clarity of his own election loss calcifies into a hardened belief among Republican voters that there is no objective truth in election results, that instead it is one party or the other that controls the democratic process, and whichever result that party prefers is simply proclaimed at the end of the day.

That is in fact how sham elections work in autocratic countries around the globe. Its not how theyre supposed to work here.

That is in fact how sham elections work in autocratic countries around the globe. Its not how theyre supposed to work here. But hey, time flies when youre flirting with anti-democratic authoritarian nihilism.

Not in the dystopian distant future but in the near term, this dynamic is at work now on the political right. The point of making election results seem unclear and inherently suspect is to provide a pretext for partisans to seize the democratic process for themselves and declare the election result they favor. Thats not the risk we run somewhere far off down the line; in the wake of the 2020 Trump re-election loss fiasco, thats what Republican-controlled states like Georgia are doing now as they restructure elections to fit the conspiracy narrative about 2020.

We made it through the interregnum, yes. But if the mechanisms of decision [were] at meaningful risk of breaking down then, theyre even more at risk now. Were used to Democrats versus Republicans in American elections. Now were entering the era of anti-democrats versus elections themselves. The red lights are blinking brighter than ever.

Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award-winning The Rachel Maddow Showat 9 p.m. ETon MSNBC. The Rachel Maddow Show features Maddows take on the biggest stories of the day, political and otherwise, including in-depth analysis and stories no other shows in cable news will cover.

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The last American election? 2020 and the rise of the anti-democrats - MSNBC

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole attends a Stampede pancake breakfast in Calgary on July 10, 2021.

Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

The official line in Conservative circles is: Dont panic. Campaigns matter, a week is a long time in politics, remember what happened to David Peterson, etc.

The unofficial line is: Panic. It isnt just that the Liberals hold a substantial lead in public opinion (six recent polls put them between eight and 14 points ahead). Its that the Tories have very little room to grow.

A new Abacus Data poll finds just 41 per cent of voters would even consider voting Conservative. Thats well behind the Liberals (56 per cent) of course, but its also behind the NDP (48 per cent). Its barely ahead of the Greens (33 per cent).

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How did it come to this, that the party of Confederation could have fallen into such odium that six in ten voters will not even consider voting for it?

Erin OToole needs to show he is a leader who can lead

The tendency will be to blame the leader, and certainly Erin OTooles approval numbers must be dismaying to Conservative supporters. Just 14 per cent of respondents in the latest Nanos poll picked him as their preferred prime minister, versus 37 per cent for Justin Trudeau and 18 per cent for Jagmeet Singh.

But the Conservatives woes did not begin with Mr. OTooles leadership, and they will not end there. In six elections under the unified Conservative banner, the party has averaged just short of 35 per cent of the vote four percentage points less, on average, than the old Progressive Conservative and Reform/Canadian Alliance parties used to get, between them, in the years when the movement was divided.

Of course, the Grits have fared even worse over the same period, averaging just 31 per cent of the vote since 2004. But Liberal weakness masks a more enduring strength: while the party has lost some support to the NDP, the Greens and the Bloc, it has a much bigger pool of progressive voters to fish from. With the right leader, it can still aspire to power. Whereas its not clear even a strong leader could save the Tories.

Some of that is explicable in terms of policy. On many of the most important issues of the day, Conservatives have either had nothing to say (hello, climate change) or have actively antagonized voters they might otherwise have reached (race, immigration, marriage equality).

More broadly, the party seems to have lost its nerve, unable even to advance traditional conservative policies free markets, lower taxes, balanced budgets with any vigour. The left has been right about more things than the right in recent years, but right or wrong it has been demonstrably more confident.

More confident and more cheerful. Beyond leadership or policy, the Conservative malaise seems even more to do with what I might call the partys temperament: not just its image but its persona, the deeper qualities of disposition that are revealing of character. Something in the Conservative temperament has simply become repellent to a great many people.

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If the besetting sin of Liberals is smarmy sanctimoniousness, the Conservative equivalent is a chippy defensiveness, an adolescent petulance, a conviction that the cards are perpetually stacked against them. Fair enough, up to a point: decades of what the late Richard Gwyn called one-and-a-half party rule have left their inevitable residue a bureaucracy, a judiciary and a press gallery that are inclined to see the world, if not through Liberal glasses, then certainly through liberal ones.

Far worse, however, has been its toll on the Conservative psyche. The same fundamental insecurity that, in a Joe Clark or a Bob Stanfield, emerged as a kind of apologetic cough of deference to liberal elites, is also at work in todays smirking Conservative populist. Though Canadian Conservatives have not gone so far down that road as their counterparts elsewhere there is nothing to compare to the Republicans current mix of white nationalism, LOL-nothing-matters nihilism, and lunatic, QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories they are too willing to nod in that direction.

Moreover, while the Liberals, as the party of power and therefore of cabinet posts, have always been able to recruit individuals with a record of accomplishment in other fields, the Conservatives tend to get stuck with the lifers, people who have never done anything but partisan politics and are motivated by nothing so much as hatred of the Grits. Which may explain why the partys leading lights so often look and sound like campus Conservatives.

In sports it is often observed that a team might have the best players or the best strategy, but if it does not have a winning culture, that elusive gel of belief in itself, it is still doomed to defeat. Until the Conservatives develop that culture until they acquire some self-respect, put a smile on their face, and act like grown-ups they will be condemned to the same.

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Opinion: More than leadership or policy, it's the Conservative temperament that's putting off voters - The Globe and Mail

When John Singletons first film, Boyz N the Hood, was released on July 12, 1991, it immediately made him a household name in many Black communities across the country. The movie was so well received that my mother decided to take me to see the film in the theater.

This was a big deal.

I was only 10 years old, but, despite my mothers reluctance to let me watch movies with sex scenes, she explained that it was important that I experience Boyz. After the credits rolled, I understood why.

Ostensibly the story of three friends, Tre, Ricky and Doughboy, growing up in South-Central Los Angeles, it showed how white supremacy set the conditions that ended in neighborhoods devastated by crime and, ultimately, violence. Not many white people are featured in the film, but the impact of whiteness on Black life permeates the screen.

This is evident when Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.) interacts with Los Angeless finest. As a child he sees how even a Black police officer doesnt take his father, Furious (Laurence Fishburne), seriously when he reports a home break-in; when Tre is older, the same officer pulls a gun on him during a routine traffic stop. He quickly learns that the cops are there to neither protect nor serve him or his neighbors. What Singleton shows us about the relationship between the police and Black residents may be well understood now, but at the time it was rare for the Black communitys view on policing to be so well embodied by Hollywood. I was always taught to be wary of officers as a young Black man, but this was one of the first times I saw the rationale for that fear onscreen in a major American film.

Tre may be the focal point, but it is through Furious that Singleton makes plain his ideas about white supremacy.

Early on, Furious takes a young Tre (Desi Arnez Hines II) to the beach for some father-son bonding time. They talk about girls, sex and life. Then Furious mentions his time in Vietnam. (Surely Singleton was thinking of the young soldier Fishburne played in Francis Ford Coppolas Apocalypse Now while he filmed the scene.) Dont ever go in the Army, Tre, he says. Black man aint got no place in the Army.

I sat up in the theater because this was the exact conversation Id had with my grandfather.

An Army veteran who had fought in World War II, M.C. Murray and I talked about how he felt the country let him down upon his return. He expected things to be better but was forced to fight again, only this time, the enemy was American racism. He even talked to me about how his experience left him with the realization that there were two worlds in the military: one for white soldiers and another for Black ones. That Boyz scene, though brief, is full of that history. It shows us that Furiouss ideas about race were shaped by his service and that his treatment in the armed forces haunts him.

It is clear that Furious has left-of-center Black ideas with that exchange, but it is only later in the film that those ideas are spoken of with clarity and boldness. Thats when Tre and his best friend Ricky (Morris Chestnut), now high school seniors, take the S.A.T., then visit Furious at his office, a financial services firm that helps local residents buy their own homes.

The boys go with Furious to a street corner where the older man makes plain his (and Singletons) ideas about how Blackness is affected by white supremacy. This moment introduced me to a phenomenon that has come to shape the lives of Black people in the country for the next 30 years. The promise and theft of the American dream from Black families provides the backdrop for the films prescient message about changes that were coming to Black communities across the country.

Gentrification is what happens when the property value of a certain area is brought down, Furious says in a monologue that would be preachy if it were not delivered by one of the most talented actors of the 90s. They bring the property value down, they can buy the land at a lower price, then they move all the people out, raise the property value and sell it at a profit. A bystander played by the brilliant Whitman Mayo blames the declining property value on Black youth selling drugs. In response, Furious voices what this movie has been trying to tell us all along: Black people are not the ones who bring drugs into the country even if they are the ones dying every day.

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This is the scene that takes a pretty good film about Black life and makes it into a great one. Today, gentrification has dramatically altered the community represented in Boyz N the Hood and Black communities like it around the country.

On the surface, the film appears to be about Black crime and Black children coming of age, but just outside the frame Singleton is saying something more. Systemic racism is the real villain in this movie. It is a theme that he would revisit both in Poetic Justice and Rosewood. It is what sets the stage for Ricky to be killed at the end of Boyz and is the cause for the crime and nihilism embraced by Doughboy (Ice Cube). The characters choices start to make sense. They are either embracing the chaos that surrounds them or trying to escape it.

In essence, this is a postapocalyptic world. Except what was destroying their landscape wasnt an alien invasion or a virus. It was ravaged by white supremacy.

Singleton saw this 30 years ago, and his message remains as important now as it was then.

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Boyz N the Hood at 30: A Vivid Examination of Racism at Work - The New York Times

The UEFA European Football Championship final, like the rest of the tournament, took place at the wrong time. The tournament was set to be held in 2020 but was postponed until the current year. In fact, the games were not hosted by a single European country.

The reasons behind this time-space anomaly are well known. Many sports, political, social and cultural events had to be postponed or canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, Covid-19 still gnashes its teeth worldwide.

Just when we had started to relax a bit (I have to say that many experts were actually cautioning the public against showing any complacency), new mutations of the virus started to appear. Meanwhile, the phenomenon of anti-vaxxers became more acute.

Its a big problem. Vaccination resistance has come in the wake of Covid-19 denial. To be sure, not all Covid-19 vaccine deniers refuse to believe that the virus actually exists.

Some are intimidated by vaccines in general, others are concerned about unknown side effects because the vaccine was developed at an unprecedented pace, others cite ideological concerns (the profits of the pharmaceutical industry), while others have been anti-vaxxers all along and have been unwilling to inoculate their children. (Paradoxical as it may sound, I know people who refused to have their kids vaccinated yet lined up to have the Covid-19 jab. The will of deniers is unknown.)

You often hear people saying, Why should I get the shot if everyone else has? And this is the argument put forward by the more moderates. At the same time, its infuriating. If theres something colorful or even amusing to the wacky conspiracy theories, the let-others-have-the-jab attitude is just exasperating, because it is evidence of excess egocentrism and extreme ignorance about the risks stemming from that attitude.

The same unbearable egocentrism is shown by the parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. If other children are vaccinated, you will often hear them say, why should I vaccinate mine?

For some people there is something rebellious in saying no, in negationism as a way of life. However, it may well be an indirect expression of nihilism. Because it is at its core a negation of life itself.

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Denial as a way of life - Kathimerini English Edition

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME VIDEO!The Tomorrow War, directed by Chris McKay and written by Zach Dean, sees the present embroiled in a war that hasnt happened yet. By way of time travel, expendable civilians are drafted, and the public is lathered in nihilism due to not only the foreknowledge of a hopeless future but to not even being able to enjoy their present ignorantly. To quote a quotable guy, Ive seen the future, brother. It is murder.

One of those drafted is everyman Dan Forester (Chris Pratt). He is likable because he makes funny faces at children and has trouble landing a job a market-tested mannequin with rounded edges and white teeth. Dan has a history with the military, so hes able to handle a gun, which means we can skip the training montage and go straight to the wham-bam-thank-you-maam. In this case, the maam is referencing the spiders from mars, or whatever they are, and the thank you is facetious. The wham-bam is clearly gunfire.

the present [is] embroiled in a war that hasnt happened yet.

Its no surprise thatThe Tomorrow Warhas the complexity of a maze on the back of a cereal box. The problem is that its no more fun than a maze on the back of a cereal box. Theres an entire genre of action films that seem to be vague relocations of one another. Each entry seemingly covers all the same bases but in superficially different ways. McKays production falls snugly into this category without protest. None of the set pieces are inventive, and the dialogue is either overly serious or hacky ha-has. In addition to the bland everyman at the center of the story, all the supporting characters are soulless mouthpieces.

If Pratt wants to truly hang around as a Hollywood star for a long time, hes going to have to raise his standards a little. The thing about the movie stars we remember is that they actually made good films, even if they werent all awards-worthy. For example, between 1967 and 77, Clint Eastwood wasnt churning out stuff likeThe Tomorrow WarandJurassic World. Instead, he was starring inDirty Harry,Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,The Outlaw Josey Wales, andThe Gauntlet, just to name a few. These are unpretentious, wildly fun titles with provocative characters. It can be done, so why does it seem action tentpoles are all interchangeable nowadays?

Might it be possible to turn your brain off and enjoy the movie? Yes, but you could also turn your brain off and swallow a hamster. You could turn your brain off and do a lot of things. What kind of argument is that? And whats the point when youre streamingThe Tomorrow Waron a service that has hundreds of other films to watch, many of them more exciting and imaginative than this one? Youre not being forced to watch it and must, as a defensive maneuver, cognitively reframe it in your mind. Skip the mental gymnastics and watch something else. Or buy a yo-yo.

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The Tomorrow War - Film Threat

Dont try to bully China, or youll get a bloody nose. That was the Chinese president Xi Jinpings warning to the world on the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said William Yang in The Independent. Xi told a flag-waving crowd that anyone who tries to oppress China will have their heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.

The celebrations included a dazzling re-enactment of the CCPs early struggles and its recent achievements. They glossed over the grim era between 1950 and 1970, when Chairman Mao Zedongs policies killed millions and pushed China into extreme poverty.

Yet Xi seems increasingly to be a leader in Maos mould: in office since 2012, he has abolished the two-term limit on the presidency and tightened ideological control, using technology to monitor citizens. A government unit pushes a party-approved version of history, with contrary views demonised as historical nihilism. State media fosters a Mao-style personality cult around Xi Dada or big daddy, said Ian Williams in The Spectator. His approach, though, owes more to strident ethnic nationalism than communism.

Under Xi, China adopts two rather different tones abroad, said Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph. Claiming to pursue dialogue and harmony, it has infiltrated hundreds of Western universities, businesses and other institutions. The tone changes abruptly, though, if anyone raises questions about its theft of intellectual property; its treaty-breaking assault on the liberties of Hong Kong; or its Belt and Road Initiative a massive imperial project giving it control of transport routes and natural resources around the world. Then, with angry threats and boycotts, the CCPs true face is revealed: of a totalitarian regime bent on global domination.

The West has misread the CCP for 50 years, said Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times. Ever since Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon first engaged with it, the fantasy was that if we traded with communist China and gave it a seat on the UN Security Council, it would absorb our values. It didnt, as its rising militarism and genocide against the Muslim Uighur minority show.

China now feels strong enough to challenge the US economically, and maybe even prevail, said The Times. But Party control will always be a brake. A society without freedom of speech cannot count on innovation. A nation without internal criticism cannot correct mistakes or fight corruption. China may be hailing the Party as the institution that has made it great. But the CCP faces an uncertain future.

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The true face of the Chinese Communist Party: a totalitarian regime bent on global domination? - The Week UK