Thanks for the thoughtful back and forth despite my provocative first comment. It's been flag-killed (possibly 50cent party? maybe just people disliking my abrasiveness) so this thread won't be seen, but I thought it was an interesting conversation.
> "Deng reforms came 12 years after cultural revolution."
I think this makes it seem less connected than it was and depends on what time you're talking about. The below excerpt suggests it was closer in time.
"Deng was publicly disgraced and criticized nationwide alongside then President Liu Shaoqi and was sent to work in a tractor factory in rural Jiangxi from 1969 to 1973. Deng briefly came back to power until the Tiananmen Incident in 1976, after which he was again stripped of all official titles and only kept his party membership.
Following Mao's death in September 1976, Deng outmaneuvered the late chairman's chosen successor Hua Guofeng and became the de facto leader of China in December 1978"
He also set term limits that were unfortunately removed by Xi.
> "Gerrymandering is used to tip the balance back towards 50/50. Wouldn't you think that whenever democrats come to power it should be their utmost priority to deal with gerrymandering? So they can win every time? But they don't want to win every time, because stability of the system which is prerequisite of their wealth and power depends on them loosing from time to time. And gerrymandering is useful tool for ensuring that."
I think this verges on conspiracy theory - democrats very much care about fixing gerrymandering (among other vote suppression tactics), it's just hard to fix. The recent failure in the Supreme Court makes it even harder. I think you buy too much into the idea that the current state is a preferred state that's quietly agreed on or seen as strategic, rather than a result of current incentives creating a local maximum.
> "Do you think people really neatly divide equally between the ones who want more progress and the ones that prefer things to stay as close as possible to the way they used to be?"
I actually wouldn't frame the right that way - I think they want different things (arguably even more revolutionary than the left in some cases), but I don't think they want things to stay the way they used to be. Given Trump's take over of the party it's not clear to me there's much consistent ideology there at all (at least among the voters)
> "Two party system can't loose a party. Can't even allow one party to fracture."
It's happened before with the Whigs and the 'know-nothing' party, but I generally agree that it leads to extremism and elevating people like Trump (which was the risk Washington was talking about).
> "And that would mean democrats winning all the time and we can't have that because that would ultimately lead to unrest."
Or it could lead to a center-right party that's more sane that can get a larger share of the population to vote for them. The Trump experiment was a risky one and resulted in a one-term presidential election and losing the house and senate. The margins were close, but the popular vote was not. Arguably gerry-pandering incentivizes this extremism and without it we'd have more moderate candidates that appeal to a larger amount of Americans.
I'd argue the risk isn't democrats winning all the time, but that currently a pretty small minority of people has disproportionate power in the USG - I think this can lead to instability over time too.
I agree with the Chinese concern of 'quenching every spark', but I'd be surprised if Chairman Xi gave up any power in the form of a 'second party' - it's very much against the CCP's rhetoric.