I was looking forward to reading Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution by journalist Tania Branigan. China’s Cultural Revolution, roughly 1966-1976, was one of the bloodiest and most insane periods in the history of communism. It was an attempt to try and purge communist China of all Western ideas, from Christianity to capitalism. An estimated two million were killed, and 30 million persecuted and punished. While she’s a liberal journalist for Britain’s Guardian, Branigan is a very sharp writer. She’s a rational adult, — or so I thought. She would clearly describe the horrifying evil of the Cultural Revolution and not fall back on some hysterical comparison of Mao’s genocidal follies with … four years of peace and prosperity under President Donald Trump.

Right? Is that too much to ask?

Branigan doesn’t even make it through the Introduction without, yes, bringing up President Trump. The Cultural Revolution may have been bad, Branigan writes, but almost as awful is today’s modern equivalent.

[Oh, come on! If anything compares to the Cultural Revolution, it’s the woke idiocy sweeping out of our campuses and the cult-like policing against dissent from it in media and corporate America. But it’s also an ironic twist, because today’s Left still embraces Mao. I almost wondered when I saw Mark’s headline if that had been framed as a compliment. — Ed]