After President Donald Trump signed two bills in support of Hong Kong in its ongoing struggle against communist China’s oppression, thousands of pro-democracy activists staged a Thanksgiving rally in gratitude to the president’s gesture. They waved the American flag and posters of an image from his Twitter account: a picture of the boxer Rocky Balboa with Trump’s head.
Yes, the very same image that outraged the left in America inspired liberty lovers in Hong Kong.
The Persuasion Master
The left and its media acolytes think that Trump is an incompetent buffoon, so when they see him tweeting a picture of himself as a muscular boxer, they believe he is crude, impulsive, and possibly insane. Others who are trained in the art of persuasion, such as cartoonist and author Scott Adams, see skill at an exceptionally high level.
Half the job of persuasion is to get attention and being memorable. Trump does this in spades. He simplifies and uses images or visual language. What message does his Rocky Trump image convey? He is a fighter.
Thereby, he reinforces one of the primary reasons people voted for him in the 2016 election. A typical conversation between a never-Trumper and a Trump-supporter went something like this:
“He is so rude.”
“Yes, but he fights!”
“He lies and exaggerates all the time.”
“Yes, but he fights!”
“He has no experience in politics.”
“Yes, but he fights!”
With a tweet, Trump has now captured that sentiment in a single, powerful, memorable image.
Reagan
There are striking parallels between Trump and President Ronald Reagan. When he stood in West Berlin in 1987 in front of the Berlin Wall and said his famous “tear down this wall” phrase, few at the time realized that these were historical words. Intellectuals and the media, then as now, dismissed the president as a bumbling buffoon, a hillbilly, a talking head.
But those words used powerfully persuasive language and echoed across the Iron Curtain. They gave an oppressed people the moral courage to take down the “evil empire.”
More than 30 years later, Trump is providing a similar inspiration to the people of Hong Kong, where he tells them that he is a fighter. The message they hear is that he fights for America, he fights for liberty, and he even fights for Hong Kong.
China not Happy
In Asia, the Hong Kong bills are synonymous with China losing face, and the communist regime responded with the usual leftist tactics of branding the U.S. as racist. The American response to this face off was to approve another anti-China bill – this time the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act condemning the religious persecution and detention of one million ethnic Muslims in West-China.
Decoupling Likely
Currently, Trump is in friend mode with China. He praises President Xi Jinping publicly, which allows him to put more pressure on China behind the scenes. However, the recent anti-Chinese bills dramatically increases the likelihood of a decoupling from the Chinese economy. China cannot accept any deal that involves losing face.
If that happens, Trump has no need to be friendly with Xi, and can be more vocal in his support of Hong Kong. It is impossible to predict what will happen, but history teaches us that moral strength matters. Before Reagan took office, Western politicians believed that the best that could ever be achieved against the Soviet Union was status quo. Only ten years later, after Reagan’s two strong terms, the Berlin Wall was gone, Germany was reunited, and the Soviet Union had disintegrated.
China is far weaker than people think, and although it is unlikely, before you know it, Trump may help make Hong Kong great again.
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