Propagandists on Parade

"The future is certain," the Soviet joke goes. "It's the past that keeps changing." This wisecrack and its variants hit at one of communism's central absurdities: The doctrinaire Marxists believed they had the key to understanding all of human affairs, but they constantly had to conceal their many mistakes. As the party's ideologists understood well, reconstructing the past is one of the most powerful ways to shape how people understand their identity and influence what they will do. That's why China held a massive military parade this week commemorating the end of World War II and why so many of America's and Israel's critics are recasting that war as an American mistake. Both want to weaken American public support for the grand strategy that made the United States a superpower. Fresh off the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization's latest meeting, Xi Jinping enjoyed a display of China's might on Wednesday. After arriving flanked by Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, Xi unveiled some of his country's newest weapons. Laser air-defense systems, air and underwater drones, and previously unseen intercontinental missiles rolled by them.

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