Opinion | America is living under the threat of a Mao-like figure – Donald Trump

What’s the truth at the heart of the endless impeachment drama in Washington? While Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been compared to Mao Zedong, it is surely US President Donald Trump who outdoes Xi with his paranoia and constant disruption

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Published: 3:00am, 5 Nov 2019Updated: 5:24am, 5 Nov 2019

The stars and stripes of the American flag, as if sliced by partisanship into bipolar bands of red and blue, never seemed more at cross purposes. Only true haters might find pleasure in the state of the country now.

In the House, as if ploughing through a field of empty dreams and lame tweets, Democratic crusaders for the impeachment of President Donald Trump proceed with little to stop them – unless the American people become too spiritually exhausted to care any more, or can’t bear to watch, or are waiting for the national election next November before getting emotionally involved. Republican loyalists, a sad phalanx of partisans, hide behind platitudinal patriotism.

But if you step back from the unseemly sight unfolding in Washington – or if you were viewing, say, from Asia – the American psychodrama is hard to beat from one aspect: that so much of it plays out in public light.

You might have thought that, by now, even the otherwise insatiable might be sated, but no. Like the anti-government, pro-democracy demonstrations and street battles in Hong Kong, the show in the US goes on, heading for some historic big bang or deflating denouement.

For those who come to the spectacle with hungry eyes, a feast awaits. Some news shows have never seen ratings lifts like these (a gladiator circus always brings people out). From dawn to dusk, and sometimes through the night, new events pop up on the American screen even while old ones are still being marketed as news.