When the Olympic Games kicked off in Beijing and the arguments commenced over how one should respond to such an event being held in an authoritarian, human rights-violating state, it was difficult to know where one’s sympathies would be best invested. The ardent protesters who rattled off China’s various crimes, who criticized its role in the Darfur genocide, and who railed against the ban on ethnic Tibetans working the events most certainly had their hearts in the right place. But so did those who argued that there was reason to restrain the outcry; that the Olympics are supposed to represent a supra-national ideal; that there was value, too, in proving that national pride could coexist alongside civilized, rule-driven competition.

The supposed lesson of the restraint camp was, of course, that if we can mutually respect our nation, our fellow countrymen, and our international competitors in the swimming pool or on the uneven bars, we can do it in the politico-economic sphere as well. Since the Games commenced last week, however, an entirely different set of far more cynical lessons has been on display, courtesy of the Chinese themselves. From faked CGI opening ceremony fireworks ^[1] to “16-year-old” gymnasts ^[2], China has squashed the arguments of the supra-national idealists like it squashed the Tiananmen Square protests: ruthlessly, decisively, and with a brazen disregard for how bad it makes them look on the world stage.

The first question that comes to mind is: should this come as a surprise? It isn’t as if China thinks we’re ignorant of their internal repression and human rights abuses. It also can’t be that we think those gymnasts are 16. Coming as it has in a time when formerly communist Russia has brutally flexed its own muscles for the world to see, not only should none of this come as a shock, but it can be read as part of an emerging and consistent theme. Hubris, these days attributed almost exclusively by most of the world to the United States, is not indigenous to America. Communist empires were never exactly humble and, despite their deceptive makeovers, their post-’89 incarnations aren’t either. China’s behavior at the Games reminds us that, in the great game of power politics, looking big is often more important than not looking bad.

Recall the words of China’s vice premier Li Lanqing: “The winning of the 2008 Olympic bid is an example of the international recognition of China’s social stability, economic progress, and the healthy life of the Chinese people.” How telling it is that winning the bid wasn’t ample recognition. In addition to that, we also had to see how big and bright their fireworks are, how fit their young women are, and how patriotic their citizens are. But why the overcompensation? China is, after all, a large nation full of talented people, many of whom are no doubt proud of their country. The answer is because communism breeds paranoia and paranoia creates an almost pathological need to lie and propagandize.

Never mind that the last century has to have any one-party state feeling insecure — like history isn’t on its side. Insecurity, too, forces people and nations to do the most absurd things to prove — mostly to themselves — that they aren’t inadequate. But a central insight about the totalitarian mindset, from Orwell to Koestler to Conquest, is that these dynamics aren’t perversions of the system: they are in its DNA. A one-party authoritarian state can’t survive on anything but lies to itself, lies to its people, and most of all, the hubristic projection of power and the image of power for its own sake.

As for playing by the rules, friendly competition, and mutual respect, the message from China is clear: forget it. These Olympics have been a reality TV political lesson for the world. As we all know, reality TV isn’t really real. But the truths it tells about our culture by way of its content constitute as harsh a lesson in cultural decay as any. China’s spectacle isn’t a portrait of decay, but rather one of an ascendant culture of power, illiberalism, and lies.

Mao once said that a question of first importance is who one’s enemies and friends are. This is advice that Americans, especially those who have forgotten what it means to have enemies in the world, should be heeding. Many of those same Americans have also grown comfortable blaming the bad behavior of any foreign nation on United States policy. Again, it’s worth consulting the chairman himself, who once wrote that liberalism is “extremely harmful” and “corrosive.” Those institutions that allow us to confront our leaders and to openly debate our values and ideas are considered antithetical to the unity of the party. This isn’t a question of what the U.S. has done to China to make them this way. It’s a matter of what China is at its core.

The deceptions at this year’s Olympics merely scratch the surface, but one hopes that as they have played out in front of a world audience, the happy-go-lucky one-world supra-nationalists have been taking notes. It isn’t that theirs is an ignoble or worthless goal. In light of the disasters wrought by zealous nationalism and chauvinistic ideologies, it’s an ultimate goal. Sadly, it remains a question of who will play that game and who is simply not interested.