Spooky Mao Zedong (and Donald Trump)
November 2, 2024
by William P. Meyers

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Friday, November 1, 2024, I finally finished reading Mao, a Biography, by Ross Terrill. I then sat the well-over-400 page hardcover tome on the bookshelf next to Stanley Karnow's Vietnam. These and other books were the beginning of an outer row of the bookshelf, and so the spines were a bit over the edge of the shelf. Also there was no prop on the other side of Mao.

That night my wife and I were lying in bed watching Cobra, Season 3, on our large-screen TV. Suddenly there was a thumping sound. What was that? It was already a strange night because our neighbor had spotted a coyote in our complex grounds, a first for that (though I have seen them before further away, but in our neighborhood). I got up to check, thinking something fell over in the bathroom. No. Then I went into my office. The Mao book was on the floor.

Of course reading the book I had been thinking about Mao, and since I just finished the book he had just died in the book. Among many other thoughts, I had been thinking I would write a comparison of Mao to Donald Trump, because both were (at times) agents of chaos and actually had very similar personalities. And were losing their minds in old age.

This was one day after Halloween, and still All Saints Day. One thing I got out of the Biography is that it would be just like Mao to do something mischievous, if he could. So despite his centering in Chinese culture, and his atheism, Mao might have liked Halloween. I hear that it has become a popular festivity in China in the last decade or so.

Trump may well be elected President again next Tuesday, which I would consider a Trick rather than a Treat. We tend to think of Mao as a long-term, multi-decade dictator, but the reality was more complex. Mao was easily bored. He liked excitement. Being at the top of a huge communist bureaucracy was not really his idea of excitement. He had two tactics to avoid those boring responsibilities. One was to try to hand over power, or at least every day governance, to other people. For instance, to Liu Shaoqi, who was the Chairman of the People's Republic of China from 1959 until 1968. Chairman Liu fell from grace in 1969 and died in prison later that year.

Given that Donald Trump called on his followers to hang Mike Pence, you can begin to see the parallel lives developing. Both had scrappy parents who started at the bottom and made money in real estate. Though Trump's father made far more money, he was doing that in a far more favorable environment. Trump and Mao did fork apart in their childhood stories. Both were expected to work in their fathers' businesses, but Mao insisted on going away to school. Mao was a China first guy who joined with other Chinese rebelling against foreign interference in the early part of the 20th century. He became more radical with time, eventually becoming a communist party member. Yet he favored Chinese peasants as his revolutionary force, breaking with the dogma that only factory workers could lead a revolution, and that they would become internationalist in outlook.

Mao could be erratic, but also could get jobs done when he put his mind to them. Trump too. Both saw a lot of failures, Trump in business, Mao both within the Communist Party, and in their fight with the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek.

Neither man was inclined to monogamy. Mao had four wives and likely a larger number of girl friends. Trump was famously a ladies man, or manhandler, and has had 3 wives.

But above all, both men wanted to be the center of attention. The disaster known as the Cultural Revolution, in China, largely resulted from Mao not being happy that he was forgotten so long as the transition to a modern society was going smoothly. Trump preferred to play a successful businessman on a reality TV show, rather than recognizing that his businesses mainly failed. to the extent they succeeded, it was because of his father's money and supervision.

That said, there are numerous differences between the two men. Mao made himself, essentially, a new Chinese Emperor. Trump might like to be the first American Emperor, but whether it can do that remains to be seen. Mao died at the age of 86 in 1976. Donald Trump is 78 years old this year and likely has a few years to go. Both men were big and fat. Will America be subjected to Trump's equivalent of the Cultural Revolution? I suppose we will find out this coming Wednesday.