History has not been kind to Chairman Mao’s tyranny and lunacy. One of the many consequences of The Great Leap Forward is that it is estimated to have led to between 15 and 55 million deaths in mainland China.
Is it fair to compare it with MAGA?
In many ways yes.
The Great Leap Forward promised China could rapidly transform itself into a powerful modern industrial nation. MAGA similarly frames politics around restoring lost national greatness: “Make America Great Again.” Both use a story of decline, humiliation, enemies, and dramatic renewal. The emotional structure and fanaticism it nourishes is all very similar.
Mao’s campaign depended heavily on Mao’s personal authority and ideological certainty. MAGA is also unusually personalised around Trump; loyalty to him often functions as a test of belonging within the movement.
The Great Leap Forward punished scepticism, rewarded inflated production claims, and often sidelined technical reality in favour of ideological enthusiasm. Historians identify false reporting, coercion, and impossible targets as major contributors to the disaster.
“False reporting“, well gosh that could never happen here … right?
How about “coercion“?
Yep, they tick that box also, just ask James Comey.
Mao believed political will could overcome material limits: backyard furnaces, communes, mass campaigns. MAGA’s economic nationalism is very different, but it also has a strong belief that national will, tariffs, border control, and executive action can reverse deep structural trends.
Maoist campaigns often blamed failure on class enemies, saboteurs, rightists, or insufficient revolutionary commitment. MAGA rhetoric often blames “globalists,” immigrants, China, the “deep state,” liberal elites, or disloyal officials. The similarity is not the named enemy but the political pattern: complex problems are explained through betrayal by hostile forces.
Tyranny is tyranny, and so the political-family resemblances are indeed there. We can all see his Maoist style mass campaigns that promote a myth of national rebirth, leader worship, suspicion of experts, pressure on institutions, scapegoating, and confidence that political will can override complexity.
History will not be kind to either the orange tyrant nor his cult of fools that enabled it all.
Daniel Boris – Trade Talks
Clay Jones – He’s not the smartest cookie. #Trump #China #Xi
Moving on, so how have things being going with Iran this past week?
WarGames
Nobody gets community noted quite like Junior
Clay Jones – MAGAts even make war weird. #IranWar #PeteHegseth #Iran #KamikazeDolphins #Trump #MAGA #SharksWithFrickinLaserbeamsOnTheirHeads
Cathy Wilcox – Clown Show
“I really don’t think about Americans’ Financial Situation“
Some of us have known this since day one and have been trying to tell you all. What is different is that this past week he actually said it …
Meanwhile the reports that he said this will be deemed “Out-of-Context“, or “Fake News” in 3, 2, 1 … and there it is …
The evidence that this is true has always been there …
Daniel Boris – Not His Problem.
Clay Jones – Trump says he doesn’t think about Americans’ finances. #Trump #MAGA #Ballroom #ReflectingPool #TrumpDeArch #Putin #JeffreyEpstein
Nick Anderson – The Sisyphean Cost of Living
Daniel Medina – Trump doesn’t think about U.S struggling at all. While the economy tanks & the illegal Iran war goes on, he sounds like Nero fiddling while Rome burned: detached, self-obsessed, and indifferent to the people paying the price. #politicalart #epstineclass #classwar #taxtherich #wealthinequality
Corruption on a truly epic scale
This has been happening …
So this is coming up soon …
- Link to article
- Quote: “Freedom 250, like everything Trumpian, is about dividing America, not uniting it. It’s there to tell us that there are “good” Americans and “bad” Americans. The good ones are Bible-believing Christians. The bad ones include media that reported accurately on the fiasco of the Iran war, for example; anyone who criticizes Dear Leader; and, of course, those who fail to adhere to the nation’s supposed founding faith“
Daniel Boris – Another Trump scam?? Shocking! “590,000 buyers paid $59 million for Trump’s gold phone — not 1 has shipped and refunds look unlikely” finance.yahoo.com/markets/stoc…
But wait, apparently the Trump T1 phone really is beginning to ship this week, and get this! his “Made in the USA” phone has been produced in China, by a Chinese company.
It’s selling for $499 yet it’s merely an outdated T-Mobile REVVL 7 Pro 5G smartphone put into a gold shell. You can tell by checking out the T-Mobile phone on eBay or at Walmart where it is a little over $100.
Yes, Trump has totally scammed his base yet again! … and they still don’t wise up.
Meanwhile, the convicted felon continues to project like a movie theater!
He also has the little scam running, and the judge is demanding that the lawyers explain “How is this not a scam?” …
But as a quick update Goldman advises that Trump settled (with himself) for a $1.7 Billion slush fund for his allies — including 1/6 rioters — because the judge was going to toss it.
Yep …
Oh come now, you know how this actually works. This is Trump, he’ll probably pocket most of it.
This past week he also posted this utter lunacy, and yes it really is a total clown show …
Clay Jones – Who won’t Donald Trump accept a bribe from? #Trump #UFOFiles #EpsteinFiles
Ann Telnaes – It’s easy to only be focused on Trump’s ever increasing unhinged behavior but his Republican enablers in Congress haven’t changed their tune. And they are the main reason he’s still in office. anntelnaes.substack.com/p/speaker-jo…
Multiple layers of Lunacy and utter incompetence
A total shit show …
Vanity projects are now the top priority …
There was also this insight that anybody advocating for EV tax credits is promoting propaganda, and apparently that includes 10year olds …
- The kid has learned a valuable life lesson: GOP politicians are total cultish idiots
Election Lunacy
Brian points out the very obvious – SCOTUS is totally corrupt …
He is also still totally fixated on the 2020 result being fake …
- And this was the CIA in 2020 when the president was (checking notes)… Donald Trump?
Nick Anderson – Mail-In Voting
Clay Bennett – Redrawing the map
Daniel Medina – VA voted to allow gerrymandering in order to counter right-wing gerrymandering. Despite that, the VA Supreme Court struck it down in a partisan decision. We cannot keep this up if we want to pretend we live in a free and fair democracy. #Gerrymandering #EndGerrymandering #GOP #MAGA #FreeElections
ICE Gestapo updates
- Link to article.
- Quote: “Whether you’re studying mass deportations today, whether you’re studying mass deportations in the first Obama administration, as I did before, or whether you’re studying mass deportations in the 1930s, as some of my friends in economics have done, you see the same pattern of results: which is that mass deportations are not only harmful for immigrant workers themselves, but they’re harmful for U.S.-born workers and the labor market more broadly,” East says.
- Link to the actual research paper – Labor Market Impacts of ICE Activity in Trump 2.0
Instances like the following send a very clear message …
- Link to article
- Quote: “On March 23, a federal judge ruled that Estrada Juárez’s deportation was unlawful, and she was able to return to the US on March 31. Estrada Juárez shared her experience with WIRED.“
MAHA – Alternative “Science”
Dennis Goris – It’s here
MAGA Christian Cranks
The nuttier right-wing religious fanatics within the MAGA cult are as always doing their thing, and so here are this week’s samples.
- The country did not die under Biden. What died was MAGA’s ability to distinguish between “my preferred candidate lost” and “the Book of Revelation has begun.” Now they’re staging a National Mall prayer rally and calling Trump’s return a resurrection, because apparently Jesus’ greatest miracle was foreshadowing the electoral college.
- Hageman’s claim is not just wrong. It is the kind of wrong that requires a forklift. It takes three of the most infamous white-supremacist movements in modern history and tries to relocate them across the political spectrum like she is rearranging furniture in a burning house.
- When you consider what these groups openly believe, you can only assume that she believes her target audience really is stupid enough to buy into this gaslighting … but hey, they initially voted for her, so her judgement on that may be correct.
Dale Partridge says that “not only does liberalism make men gay, it makes them incapable of thinking.“
- Saying “liberalism makes men gay” assumes being gay is a degradation or failure of masculinity. That is not an argument; it is just homophobia dressed up as political commentary.
- It is also a classic ad hominem move. Rather than engaging liberal ideas, policies, or arguments, he attacks the people who hold them: they are supposedly feminized, gay, or mentally defective. That lets Dale avoid doing any actual reasoning. We can only assume he does that because he has no actual reasoning to deploy.
- When he has claimed is impressive because he managed to disprove his own sentence while still typing it. Apparently his masculinity is so fragile in his worldview that a tax policy and a Pride flag can knock it unconscious
- Women do not exist in the shadow of their husbands. They exist in the same sunlit world as everyone else, usually doing three jobs, remembering everyone’s birthdays, and quietly preventing men like Dale from accidentally microwaving a fork.
Rick Green says the Democrats “do such evil” that “maybe it’s time for the party to be destroyed.“
- “Democrats are so evil they must be destroyed,” says Rick Green, bravely standing against such demonic schemes as cheaper prescription drugs, roads that don’t collapse, renewable energy jobs, voting rights, and women not being state property. Truly, the republic trembles every time a senior pays less for insulin.
Mark Meckler claims that fascism is “literally the endgame of all liberalism”: “All liberalism ends in fascism.”
- Fact Check: Liberalism, in the political-theory sense, is built around individual rights, equal legal status, consent of the governed, and limits on state power. His deeply weird claim is on par wit somebody claiming that vegetarianism is the endgame of a barbecue.
- Are there really people who are so deeply stupid that they will accepts what he is saying? (No, you really don’t need to answer that).
Dale Partridge declares that “homosexual adoption must be outlawed”: “To allow a child to be placed in the home of a sexual deviant is a national tragedy.”
- Yet every single time on an almost weekly basis it has been the clerics and religious youth leaders who go to jail for child sexual abuse.
- Meanwhile, in his universe the real crisis facing children is obviously not neglect, abuse, poverty, foster-care instability, or adults using kids as props in culture-war sermons. No, no. The emergency is that two loving, vetted adults might provide a child with safety, meals, bedtime stories, school runs, medical care, and unconditional love — but in a way Dale finds aesthetically upsetting.
- If Dale Partridge wants to talk about “deviance,” let’s start with the actual deviance here: looking at loving, qualified parents and deciding the problem is that they are not straight enough for his theology. Gay people building families is not perverse. Religious bigotry dressed up as child protection is.
- This is classic conspiracy rhetoric: invent a collapsing civilization, blame domestic opponents for it, then point at a minority group as the invaders waiting in the wings.
- Incoherent BS does not even begin to describe a narrative in which Democrats are supposedly such committed Marxists that their master plan is to abolish religion, destroy capitalism, and then politely hand the keys to society over to… religious theocrats?
Jesse Leon Rogers calls on Christians to “take territory” by gaining control of school boards and city councils and then “evicting the wicked” while “replacing them with godly leaders.”
- The one rather glaring flaw in his plan is that it is the Christians that do this that are the wicked.
Pastor Shane Vaughn cheers on the GOP effort to expunge the impeachments of President Donald Trump.
- It’s a weird stance for him to take because Vaughn also steadfastly insists that Trump was never impeached.
Victor Marx says that if he is elected governor of Colorado, the very first thing he will do is “consecrate the state back to God.“
- Colorado does not need a governor who thinks the first emergency is that the mountains have insufficiently registered for church. It needs someone who can deal with housing, water, wildfire risk, schools, roads, health care, and the cost of living.
- His oath is to uphold the Constitution, not to sprinkle holy water on I-25 and declare the potholes spiritually defeated.
- The state belongs to all Coloradans: Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, the “spiritual but not religious,” and everyone who just wants their snowplow to show up on time.
Doug Wilson says extraterrestrials and UFOS are “spiritual apparitions designed to mislead and deceive” created by Satan.
- Apparently Satan, prince of darkness, has nothing better to do than cosplay as a glowing Frisbee over rural Nevada. Not war, greed, corruption, or human cruelty, no, his master plan is to hover near an Air Force base, blink three times, and make a retired plumber named Gary call into Coast to Coast AM.
- Maybe, just maybe, some UFO sightings are drones, aircraft, weather phenomena, hoaxes, or people misidentifying Venus after two beers. But sure, Doug, let’s go with: ‘The devil invented interstellar decoy lights because he’s worried people might become too interested in astronomy.’
Media Madness
This is where we are now …
- Not once has another reporter stood up for a colleague subject to this behavior. Not once.
- They prefer to retain access to his flow of BS instead of challenging it.
Even More Political Cartoons from the past week
As always, there are many excellent cartoons that are speaking truth through art. Artists are on the front line.
Why all the deeply weird Late Night Social Media Rants from Trump?
Natalie Harp is why. She panders to every fantasy this good “Christian” man has and “works” with him well into the night.
She is reported to work “extremely closely” with Trump …
- Link to article here.
- Quote: “
Finally
Hantavirus Is Not the Next Covid, But Try Telling That to the News Media | The Daily Show
3,083,233 views 12 May 2026 #Hantavirus#DailyShow#JonStewart
Jon Stewart dives into the hantavirus cruise ship panic sweeping the news cycle, the landfill visit that appears to have sparked the spread, whether we’re getting a pandemic sequel, and the media’s eagerness to sensationalize the virus while health experts urge calm. Plus, Trump gets his own version of the golden calf, and cruise ships offer free norovirus. #DailyShow#JonStewart#Hantavirus
- 0:00 – Jon Stewart’s TDS Welcome
- 0:26 – Trump’s MAGA-Based Remains Unfazed Despite Low Approval Rating
- 2:06 – Reports of a Hantavirus Outbreak on a Cruise Ship
- 6:22 – The Media Causes Panic Over Hantavirus
- 10:43 – Media Shows Passengers From the Cruise Ship Being Transported
- 14:33 – Hantavirus Takes Over Airwaves, Blocking Mother’s Day Coverage
Handshake Dominance | Trump: I Only Say The Truth | Fox News In China | The Snack Crisis
1,992,764 views 15 May 2026 #Colbert#StephenColbert#FoxNews
The Chinese and American presidents shared an uncomfortably long handshake, Trump told his one billionth lie, Fox News star Bret Baier reported on the future of fast food, and the Iran war is causing major problems in the world of potato chips.
Since May 21 looms, the date that Colbert does his final episode on CBS, let’s do a double dose of Colbert this week.
You Can Take A Man’s Show, You Can’t Take A Man’s Voice – David Letterman On Colbert’s Cancellation
1,054,851 views 15 May 2026 #Colbert#Comedy#DavidLetterman
“I have every right to be pissed off,” says legendary “Late Show” host David Letterman upon his return to the Ed Sullivan Theater. Watch as he ribs Stephen Colbert about keeping the theater so cold, and stick around for two more segments with David Letterman!
… well OK, a triple dose, they go up to the roof and start tossing CBS property off it …