I’m reading a book partially set during China’s Cultural Revolution, the time when Mao’s regime brutally purged traditional and capitalistic concepts in order to align the population around Communist ideology. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Highly educated people as a group were first and most severely affected; in order to survive, they had to renounce their incorrect beliefs, confess their wrong-thinking ways, and accept assignment of new vocations, often as field hands or in manual work crews.

Confession and renunciation was usually public, with the target on a stage accompanied by those who enumerate the person’s errors and demand specific confessions. For example, a university physicist was required to renounce Einstein’s theory of relativity because it was reactionary, and the big bang theory because it allowed the possibility of God, a no-no for communism.

Many fought back in the early days, slow to perceive the danger. As the death toll rose, others started to say what was expected, yet without truly believing they had erred. Capitulators were repeatedly questioned and tested; this was not a one-time appearance, but rather an ongoing process, an attempt to ensure abject compliance.

Eventually, some of them started to believe what they were saying, surely a form of insanity.

In the book one person refuses to comply at all, and is ultimately beaten to death by his questioners in front of an audience that includes one of his daughters. His other daughter turned him in and provided damning evidence. His wife, also a former academic, has become insane.

So, pretty intense stuff, right? Now imagine how I reacted when on the news, the news of our actual world today, I heard senior elected officials and political appointees lie under oath about an event with multiple independent confirmations. Of course I speak of the negative comments by Trump about immigrants, particularly the reference to “shithole [SHY thol] countries.”  I was stunned to hear people with expertise and gravitas calmly stating that they did not hear any such remarks. A global firestorm of outrage has ensued, time-critical and sensitive negotiations are derailed, yet these sycophants would have us believe nothing happened.

I doubt these people are being specifically threatened with job loss, but the implication is that they believe this astonishing behavior is expected in exchange for keeping their jobs, or receiving some sort of access to power.

China’s Cultural Revolution was a disaster for that country on many levels. Apparently, we are not as far from making similar mistakes as I had assumed.