Biden took office on Jan. 20, a day when the mutual attitudes between U.S. officials and citizens were diametrically opposed to those of four years ago. When Trump was inaugurated, the number of people who watched the video on the Internet was 4 million more than the number of votes Trump received; while the number of people who watched Biden’s inauguration yesterday only accounted for 16% of his vote count and 4% of the U.S. population, and the inauguration was completed in a state of near military control. Such a strong contrast shows that the social situation of officials not believing the people and the people not believing the officials has been formed.
First, the Epidemic is used as a pretext to replace the people with the military
One of the biggest features of Biden’s inauguration this year is to replace the people with the military. The government’s excuse was that there was an epidemic this year, so everything had to be kept simple and the number of people attending the inauguration had to be reduced; that is, the so-called “State of the Nation” event was organized on a lower scale.
This argument seems reasonable, but it is not. The number of people invited to the event was reduced to 2,000, and other people were not allowed to move freely in downtown Washington. However, there are 25,000 more National Guard troops at this event than there were four years ago. Since the epidemic was used as an excuse to keep the public out, is it true that military personnel are not infected when they gather in mass in the city of D.C. and that the health of the military is not a concern? Or is it that military personnel are naturally immune because they are in uniform?
In fact, the authorities’ “avoidance of the epidemic” is just an excuse. They are afraid that people who do not support them will come to protest, so they have come up with the idea of using the military instead of the people. If they really want to avoid the epidemic, they can cancel the gathering of all the people, including the military, and do not need to arrange a car tour from Capitol Hill to the White House, but just organize it indoors with three or five people as a ceremony. The real concern of the officials is that if they open up Washington and let the people participate in the event freely and spontaneously as they did during Trump’s inauguration four years ago, there will inevitably be images that will embarrass the authorities, because Biden is, after all, the first president in the history of the United States to take office without a transparent election in a presidential election.
In authoritarian countries, clear paths are commonplace. In late 1988, when I was in Western Europe, I was passing through Moscow in the evening, and Gorbachev’s motorcade was coming out of the Kremlin, and I was standing on the Red Square facing the exit of the Kremlin. And this year Washington has done more than those countries have ever done.
This year, on January 20, a cordoned off area was set up in the city of Washington, with checkpoints lined up so that pedestrians were not allowed to cross freely. The wide lawn of the miles-long Mall on Capitol Hill leading to the Lincoln Memorial was filled with flags to prevent people from lingering, and military personnel were stationed three steps from a post and five steps from a sentry post, as if they were enemies. The dozen or so subway stations in D.C. were all closed. Restrict the public to participate in this official ceremony, using the military instead of the public to hold the inauguration, in the history of the United States this is the first Time.
Second, political screening, the military also to prevent
This event, the authorities are really in a high state of tension, it is not only to prevent the people like a river, in fact, the army also dare not fully trust. Although the National Guard that gathered in Washington came from various states, which are not unified with each other, and the soldiers from each state do not know each other, and do not take spontaneous collective action, the official government is still not at ease. The other day, Peter Navarro, the former assistant to the president, released three official reports on election fraud before he left office. The title of his third report is, “Yes, President Trump Won: The Case, Evidence & Statistical Receipts” (Yes, President Trump Won: The Case, Evidence & Statistical Receipts). While the authorities are now silent in response, who knows if the military reads it, and what goes through their minds? So, although the authorities are counting on the military to “protect” them on this day, they are still suspicious of the military.
And so, for the first time in American history, a special political screening of military personnel on duty in Washington, D.C., took place. The military police within the military may be concerned about whether the officers and men are loyal to their military duty and loyal to their country when they are on foreign duty, but there seems to be no precedent in the United States for the military to require them to be loyal to a particular faction within the country when they are on domestic duty, and to conduct special political screening for that purpose. This practice is very common in communist countries, and this year the official government in the United States has steadfastly copied the practice of those countries by politically screening the officers and men of the state National Guard who are ordered to duty in Washington, D.C. Not only did they check their personal backgrounds and who they voted for in last year’s presidential election, but they also checked their emails and social media communications, resulting in 12 service members being deemed politically unreliable and stripped of their duty assignments.
Such a heavy-handed approach to military personnel naturally raises the hackles of the military. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Jan. 18 had criticized such political censorship as disrespectful and offensive to National Guard officers and soldiers.
Third, the retransmission hits reflect social reality
For people who watched the inauguration event via the Internet, there was little difference between Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, and this year’s event on the same day, both of which were watched remotely by the public individually. However, the number of viewers for both events tells us exactly how the American public views the two presidents.
The top 9 YouTube broadcasters for the inauguration included major U.S. television and other media outlets such as CNBC, ABC, Wall Street Journal, CBSN, NBC, PBS, C-Span, SkyNews, etc., with a total of 12.83 million views as of 8 p.m. last night, and they were mainly Biden supporters, accounting for 3.9% of the U.S. population, the vast majority of Trump supporters do not watch the event. Of the Biden supporters or people in the middle who watched the event, 2.3 percent of the total hits were for those who stated their attitude, a quarter of those who disliked it, and three quarters of those who liked it.
The situation was very different four years ago, when YouTube listed 10 stations – NBC, ABC, PBS, CNBC, CBSN, New York Times, C-Span, SkyNews, BLR and NJ.com – with a total of 67.24 million views, 5.2 times as many as this year and 20.8 percent of the U.S. population. The total number of clicks for the 2017 inauguration campaign was slightly more than the 62.98 million votes for Trump’s election in 2016. Of the total number of clicks, those who stated their attitude accounted for 1.5% of the total clicks, while 17.2% of those who stated their position disliked it and 82.8% liked it.
These two sets of data illustrate several things. First, voters like to watch the inauguration events of candidates they support, while they do not like to watch the inauguration events of candidates they oppose. So, the inauguration event of the elected candidate is watched mainly by those who support him; however, it is also watched by some of the voters who do not vote for him, as was the case in 2017 when the number of clicks was 4 million more than the number of votes for Trump’s election. Secondly, whether a presidential candidate is popular with society can be observed by the inauguration event viewing hits. If the number of inauguration event hits for the elected candidate is close to the total number of votes for the elected candidate, it means that the elected candidate is indeed sincerely welcomed by voters; on the contrary, if the inauguration event hits for the inauguration candidate are only a fraction of his vote count, it means that he is actually not popular with society. Again, the number of people who watched Trump’s inauguration exceeded the number of votes he received, while the number of people who watched Biden’s inauguration only accounted for 16% of the votes counted. Did they vote in a confused manner and regret it afterwards, or did they not really vote for Biden, or were they not allowed to vote in the first place, so naturally they could not watch the video?
From one heart of the government and the people to a different heart of the government and the people
The video content of the inauguration campaign is similar on all stations. Generally speaking, viewers do not need to change channels twice or more, so watching this kind of video is a “one-time consumption”, and the total number of hits will not be repeatedly counted as “consumers”. A person clicked on the video, regardless of whether he watched it or not, it means that this person has seen it, which is also equivalent to voting once in the general election, so the total number of clicks can be used to roughly estimate the number of votes for the inauguration. Viewed this way, it is clear that Biden’s real vote count last year was no more than Trump’s 2017 vote count, and certainly not more than Trump’s last year’s vote count.
Analyzing the click-through rate data of the two inauguration campaigns, one can understand why the government and the people were of one mind when Trump was elected, but the government and the people were of a different mind when Biden was elected. The click rate data only reflects half of this official-public dissidence, that is, the number of Biden’s real supporters is actually limited, and the government knows very well that the inaugural event may be run badly without the support of the military; and the other half of the official-public dissidence is not reflected by the click rate data, because Trump supporters are not interested in watching Biden’s inaugural event reports, but their dissatisfaction is obvious, and this is what the government is more This is what the government is more worried about, so there was a military-controlled inauguration event.
The current divisions in American society are clear. To say that the government and the people are divided simply means that there is the possibility of a social backlash in society. How that possibility is treated is a critical test of the political system. In a true democracy, the government should respond to public opinion, cede power, and allow the political forces preferred by the people to govern. If the government insists on holding on to power and not letting go of it, and keeps suppressing the disobedient people, it will only provoke a greater backlash, and then it will move from government-public dissent to government-public confrontation. Both the Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet Communist Party have gone down this road since they came to power.
The U.S. democracy has been hollowed out in the recent election process, and it is being watched to see if it will turn to confrontation between the government and the people. A few members of the ruling party have already raised the slogan of Communist-style “political cleansing,” but can they dominate the United States? I am afraid that no country in the world, except Beijing and the authorities in Pyongyang, would like to see such an outcome. If the current ruling party in the United States continues to “progress,” it stands at a three-way intersection between the Beijing model and the model designated by the founding fathers of the United States.
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