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Bruno Maçães Profile picture
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9 Jan, 4 tweets, 1 min read
How Trump Made the Fantasy Real. The Capitol Hill riot tore the veil between the right’s dreamworld and reality.
nytimes.com/2021/01/09/opi…
What I find interesting is that Right and Left share the fantasy. The Right lives the fiction that it is working to overturn the system, the Left actually believes it. They both move to a fictional world, of coups, conspiracies, resistance, etc. Both insist it is the real world
“Under a Democratic administration, there will be attempts to deploy law enforcement like ghostbusters crossed with pre-crime units, trying to prevent the very-online from impinging on the real.”
The very moment when the Right fantasy of a coup crashes, the Left picks up the shards and transforms a fantasy coup into a real coup that failed or was defeated, so the fantasy is reborn and lives on

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More from @MacaesBruno

Bruno Maçães Profile picture
25 Dec 20
Is it orientalist to speak of fundamental differences in the way different cultures think about the world? No, it is not. In fact, those who are ready to dismiss this possibility out of hand are the real orientalists. The Black Box: A Theory of China brunomacaes.substack.com/p/the-black-bo…
There is a fascinating example (assuming I have it right) of what I discuss above: 空心. This would literally be “sky mind”. A mind like empty sky, what in the West would be called consciousness, but 空心 you can directly experience through meditation, not a metaphysical concept
David Hinton at his best Image
Read 4 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
22 Dec 20
A bit of history: it was actually the EU that pushed Beijing to have a deal in 2020 as part of its toughening up on China since 2018. One could argue things have changed, but formally it’s a Chinese concession, not the opposite
Remember also that the EU made a wager in 2018 that it could get better results than Trump using its own methods. Many in DG Trade feel it worked and difficult to back away from triumph. In sum: a really critical moment for EU as a global power
.@jakejsullivan tweet raising eyebrows in Brussels: people will insist the EU negotiates its own trade and investment deals...
Read 6 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
22 Dec 20
Wasn’t Somaliland also part of the Raj?
The partitions (great maps) and the 12 successor states
I guess Sri Lanka should be included in the maps to make it 12 states
Read 4 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
17 Dec 20
Difficult to see the EU signing an investment treaty with China if Trump has won the election
Yes, the EU has been interested for a long time and China became more committed to the idea over the last two years. But there was still a lot of trepidation in Europe. Biden was reassuring:
1. Allies will no longer be unilaterally punished for their decisions by Washington. 2. Biden will recover the search for an embedded global order including China. The EU is just contributing to that
(...)
Read 6 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
15 Dec 20
If there is indeed an investment treaty between China and EU this month, buckle up for all the media stories on how the Belt and Road will take over the world (after having died last week)
Will be a difficult story for the EU to manage - at exact moment when it also wants to revive the transatlantic link
You may ask how the EU could sign a major international agreement with China during a pandemic that started in China. But that is in a way the point: businesses in Europe are drawing the conclusion that if the Chinese economy is thriving during Covid, then it can’t be avoided
Read 5 tweets
Bruno Maçães Profile picture
14 Dec 20
Final comments on @ft China story: 1. Database seriously underestimates loan books. Loans are not transparent and authors have a stringent requirement which will miss a large loan volume. This is not the way to proceed if you’re interested in China’s international position
2. Policy banks are not the crux of the Belt and Road. Much more important to look at commercial banks and FDI. That FDI is at the core of BRI was explicit from the start and only intensified in recent years
3. Infrastructure is only one pillar of BRI and not the most important one. Initiative is fundamentally about industry and technology. Industrial parks, value chains, acquisitions and trade are critical
Read 4 tweets

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