>The protesting citizens do this as a plea for help from the national government. They know that the true believers in the national government need to be kowtowed to.
Could the plea for help from the national government be sincere? My understanding is that in early Soviet history, many people were sure that if Lenin/Stalin knew about the awful things local commissars were doing, the great leader would surely order such acts to stop.
Obviously by the Brezhnev/Andropov years very, very few people would be so gullible as to believe such, and I suppose that it's awfully late in the history of the PRC and CCP to expect otherwise of the Chinese, but the thought at least came to mind.
Another way to interpret this would be a (much, much more serious) counterpart, in the US and the West, during the past half decade of the de facto necessity in most parts of online discourse of prefixing anything that is not left of center-adherent with "I hate Trump, but".
Could the plea for help from the national government be sincere? My understanding is that in early Soviet history, many people were sure that if Lenin/Stalin knew about the awful things local commissars were doing, the great leader would surely order such acts to stop.
Obviously by the Brezhnev/Andropov years very, very few people would be so gullible as to believe such, and I suppose that it's awfully late in the history of the PRC and CCP to expect otherwise of the Chinese, but the thought at least came to mind.
Another way to interpret this would be a (much, much more serious) counterpart, in the US and the West, during the past half decade of the de facto necessity in most parts of online discourse of prefixing anything that is not left of center-adherent with "I hate Trump, but".