Chapter 521: Fake Democracy

After Diwu Lun made the decision to hold a "public referendum," his Nine Ministers exploded into an uproar, each stepping forward to remonstrate.

"How to deal with Wang Mang — Your Majesty can decide that alone. Why must the common people be dragged into it?"

From Geng Chun to Dou Rong, everyone felt Diwu Lun's move was far too frivolous. Geng Chun went further: "Letting the masses decide great affairs of state — that only happened in the tiny city-states of the Spring and Autumn period. I recall the Zuo Commentary records that in the Spring and Autumn era, when Wu coerced Chen into attacking Chu, Duke Huai of Chen summoned his countrymen to deliberate. He had those who favored Chu stand to the right, and those who favored Wu stand to the left."

"And the result? Among the people of Chen, those whose fields lay in the west, near Chu, all wished to follow Chu. Those whose fields lay in the east, near Wu, all wished to follow Wu. Those without land simply stood with their local factions."

In Geng Chun's view, this proved that the common people understood nothing of current politics; they cared only for their own short-term interests, or blindly followed the crowd.

To entrust great affairs of state to their judgment — was that not sheer folly!

Dou Rong concurred: "Indeed. Hence the ancients said, the foolish are blind to what is already accomplished, while the wise perceive what has yet to sprout. The people may not be consulted when a venture begins, but they may share in the rejoicing when it succeeds."

The people may share in observing the result, but not in planning the beginning — well said. So Diwu Lun, the far-sighted "wise man," naturally had no need to share his own thoughts with the "fools" constrained by their era.

But some things still needed to be made clear; after all, the work ahead required his ministers to do the legwork. Diwu Lun simply said: "Think back — Wang Mang himself relied on four hundred and eighty thousand people submitting petitions before he could receive the Nine Bestowments and become Duke Who Pacifies the Han, launching his enterprise to supplant the Han. Wang Jujun exploited public sentiment."

"Since it was the common people who pushed Wang Mang onto the imperial throne, then only by the hands of the common people can he be pulled down from his position as the so-called legitimate Son of Heaven!"

"In the past, it was said that water bears the boat. Now, it shall be water capsizing the boat."

"Would this not be far more justifiable than simply deciding his life or death with the posture of a victor?"

Political legitimacy is a thing profoundly mysterious, which is why emperors ancient and modern have desperately sought heavenly omens and auspicious signs, or even ancient, famous ancestors, to serve as their basis.

The various Han regimes categorically denied the Xin Dynasty's legitimacy, viewing Wang Mang as a usurper. Yet Diwu Lun, in order to proclaim that Han virtue was already exhausted, had to acknowledge the Xin Dynasty's orthodoxy. But that created a thorny problem: how to handle the succession between Xin and Wei. When Diwu Lun raised his army, he claimed to comfort the people and punish the tyrant — "executing a single villain" made a rousing slogan, but it was ultimately too radical. In this age, the bond between sovereign and subject was like a thought-imprint; the gentry, behind his back, constantly cursed him as a disloyal subject.

And now, here was a perfect opportunity to resolve the difficult problem of legitimacy inheritance between the fallen dynasty and the present one.

Diwu Lun addressed his ministers: "The Book of Documents says, the people are the root of the state; when the root is firm, the state is at peace."

"Mencius said, a feudal lord has three treasures: land, people, and governance. Among these, the people are most precious; the altars of state come second; the sovereign is least."

"That the people are the foundation of the state's safety, the root of its survival, the source of its rise and fall, and the key to whether a sovereign is tyrannical or enlightened, strong or weak — this has been common understanding since antiquity."

"The reason Wang Mang met his downfall was that he only paid lip service to serving the people, while his reckless currency reforms and the Five Equalizations and Six Monopolies were all divorced from reality. The root cause? He was far too self-righteous, and toward the people, he held no reverence!"

With earnest gravity, Diwu Lun said: "A warning from the cart ahead. Therefore, as our dynasty is newly founded, I fear only one thing — and that is the people of the Central Realm!"

This politically correct speech, though hollow, was after all something the ancient classics had preached again and again. The ministers could hardly openly oppose it, and could only murmur their assent and withdraw.

To put it plainly, Diwu Lun had decided to build upon the "people-as-root" thought in the classics and go one step further, anchoring the legitimacy of political power above to Heaven and below to the people.

In the past, public sentiment pushed you, Wang Mang, up to replace the House of Han — that was your legitimacy as Son of Heaven. Now, you have made a complete mess of the realm; public sentiment demands you step down, so roll off that throne — you are now merely a commoner! Diwu Lun knew this move stabbed right into old Wang Mang's lungs, leaving him in agony worse than death.

Yet public sentiment was an even more metaphysical thing. As a shameless politician, what Diwu Lun needed to do was to make it concrete, simplified, and manipulable — hence this "public referendum."

Don't tell me — don't tell me anyone actually believes Diwu Lun is genuinely trying to implement "democracy"?

This is fake democracy, real dictatorship! How naive must one be to believe such hypocritical nonsense as "I am merely gathering evidence and submitting the case for judgment to the presiding magistrate"?

The reason Diwu Lun staged such a grand spectacle was simply to give the world a sense of participation, to turn the masses into accomplices in judging Wang Mang, thereby weakening the moral constraints that the old inertia of "the bond between sovereign and subject" imposed on him.

In reality, whether Wei soldiers, Red Eyebrow captives, or the common people of Luoyang and Chang'an — even if Colonels herded them and local officials barked at them to go to village altars or county courts and cast a tile to the left or right, seemingly casting a crucial vote —

after casting it, the Wei soldiers would still have to march their weary steps to every corner of the land, spurred by the few dozen mu of farmland allotted to them, to besiege cities and seize territory for Diwu Lun, many of them filling the ditches and ravines.

The Red Eyebrow captives would still return to the fields, donning the shackles they had once thrown off, faces to the yellow earth and backs to the sky, toiling at farm labor that would never end.

And the common people, after all the bustle and excitement, would still have to return to their lives, worrying about their family's grain rations and taxes that could never possibly be abolished, generation after generation, without end.

They could change nothing.

They could decide nothing, because even the matter of Wang Mang's life or death ultimately remained clutched in Diwu Lun's hand.

The only thing that would remain was that, many years later, the soldiers and civilians who took part in this "referendum" could still boast to their descendants.

"Back in the day, your old man here — I cast a tile and decided an emperor's life or death!"

This, perhaps, was the one seed Diwu Lun could plant for posterity by doing this. "Water capsizing the boat" would no longer be hollow words on the lips of the elite, but would become a fact that had once been realized. Perhaps it could encourage later generations to give it a try, and a hundred or a thousand years hence, to do something even bolder…

Pulling himself back from his reflections, Diwu Lun saw Zhang Yu, his face full of hesitation, wanting to speak but holding back.

"Zhang Yu, what are you worrying about now?"

Zhang Yu bowed and ventured boldly: "I am charged with monitoring the ministers and generals and gathering intelligence. I am Your Majesty's civet-cat, and I always feel this realm is crawling with rats. I only fear that one day, if a great villain emerges, he too will learn this trick of Your Majesty's — invoking the name of public sentiment, imitating the referendum — to seize power and profit. I fear he would become a scourge just like Wang Mang!"

"Who would dare?" Diwu Lun shot him a glance. "Are you pointing at the Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers, or some general?"

Zhang Yu was greatly alarmed: "Your Majesty is brilliant and divinely martial — in this age, naturally no one would dare. But…"

Zhang Yu's meaning was clear: but what after you pass away? Diwu Lun believed he could live as long as Diwu Ba, but even that had an end.

After death — of course, let the floods rage!

Diwu Lun did not say it outright. Zhang Yu's lips were not tight enough; the man had not yet settled into his final shape and might still change in the future — might even become the very "great villain" he now feared. Who could say for certain?

Only after everyone had left did Diwu Lun write this passage in his "diary" — the one that locking for a hundred years was not enough for, the one that absolutely had to be taken into the grave and locked for three to five hundred years, or else his unworthy descendants would surely burn it.

"The First Emperor of Qin hoped Qin would endure ten thousand generations; it fell in the second, its seven ancestral temples destroyed."

"Wang Mang hoped the Xin Dynasty would last thirty-six thousand years and even fixed the era names in advance; it fell in a single generation, its nine temples burned."

"If my sons and grandsons prove incompetent at governing the realm, have already become estranged from the common people, and are toyed with in the palm of a powerful minister's hand — then ambitious men are welcome to change the dynasty!"

"If they are toppled by a grassroots hero among the people borrowing the force of public sentiment, that would be even better."

"When the people once again suffer calamity, they might recall that they once decided an emperor's life or death. With the first, there will be a second."

"I earnestly hope that, two hundred, three hundred, five hundred years after our dynasty has awakened the people's minds, the people will have the courage and insight to press my descendants down beneath the guillotine, or hang them from the ornamental pillars of the capital, and hold a true public trial of an emperor!"

As everyone knows, the one who inherits your ideals to the greatest degree and brings forth the new is often not those unworthy descendants who must do the opposite of their ancestors to assert their existence, nor those who rigidly adhere to ancestral institutions.

Rather, it is the hero who grows and strengthens within the husk of your dynasty, seizes the moment, and ultimately replaces it.

"Just as Liu Bang was to the First Emperor of Qin."

Diwu Lun closed the diary and said softly:

"And just as Diwu Lun is to Wang Mang!"

…

The first to carry out the referendum were the main Wei forces stationed near Jiyang. They had gone through a series of major battles and were currently resting and reorganizing in the area, waiting for grain from the west to arrive in successive shipments before moving together with the grain carts to garrison places like Suiyang in Liang Commandery, which had already offered their submission.

Every part of the Wei army had some former Boar-Rush Braves among them. The eight hundred officers and men who had first followed Diwu Lun were already officers at the brigade or battalion level. Though their individual quality could no longer keep pace with the command structure, their loyalty was beyond question.

And below the battalion level, officers at the company level were often filled by the outstanding men among the tens of thousands who had risen with Diwu Lun at Hongmen. Their status was not as illustrious as their superiors', but they too were considered the emperor's "direct line," and had been allotted considerable farmland by accumulated merit — every one of them a small landlord.

When they heard that His Majesty the Emperor was letting the entire army decide Wang Mang's life or death, these officers — normally fairly steady — leaped to their feet one after another!

"This is wonderful news!"

The reason for such joy was simple: most of them had come from bitter backgrounds. They remembered their families freezing and starving under the Xin Dynasty's rule, or the brothers, friends, and fellow villagers who had dropped dead along the road after they themselves were seized as conscripts.

And once they entered camp, they were fleeced by Xin officials and lived worse than dogs and pigs. Had they not met Diwu Lun, they would very likely have perished on the march north to New Qinzhong, or died on the battlefields where they were sent to suppress the Greenwood and the Red Eyebrows.

Wasn't Wang Mang the cause of all this suffering?

Usually it was the new recruits in camp who poured out their grievances, but now it was the officers' turn. When they reached the most heart-wrenching parts, some could not hold back their tears.

Their stories also stirred up the common soldiers' own wretched memories.

"My family lived by the great river. I heard the reason the river flooded was that Wang Mang wouldn't let anyone block it."

"My family were hunters. Once Wang Mang's Six Monopolies came, we had no way to survive."

"My family ran a small trade in the county — just peddlers, men and women. Wang Mang changed the currency four or five times in a few years. We couldn't do business anymore!"

Even the opportunists who had joined the Wei army partway through — the sons of powerful families among the Ji Province troops, for instance — recalled the various "misguided policies" Wang Mang had used to restrict powerful houses during his reign, and righteous indignation swelled in their chests.

Powerful magnates, merchants, farmers, tenants, artisans, hunters and foresters — the more Wang Mang's reforms had harmed every stratum of society, the deeper their hatred of him ran!

Even those who had once been slaves could recall the tragedy: because Wang Mang forbade the buying and selling of slaves, their parents had been unable to sell off younger brothers and sisters, and the children had starved to death.

For a time, the "referendum" on Wang Mang within the Wei army was utterly one-sided. Even the young soldiers who had been too small at the time and had little grasp of Wang Mang's evils simply voted the same way as their officers and comrades.

In the end, the thirty thousand Wei troops near Jiyang cast a unanimous vote — one hundred percent. There was not a single man who did not wish Wang Mang dead!

The army was efficient; the referendum was completed in a few days, and the results were delivered to the Jiyang palace.

Wang Mang was staying there too. Diwu Lun had provided him with rather good treatment — effectively house arrest. He gave him the same food he himself ate, and even said, "The Old Man Wang spent years among the common folk and has already endured every hardship. At the end, he should still have some dignity."

He even gave Wang Mang books to read. It was said that as Wang Mang had followed the Red Eyebrow Army on campaign from place to place, he had searched everywhere for Confucian classics and texts that the Red Eyebrows had no interest in, and read through them.

Most of what Diwu Lun carried with him were lightweight paper books printed by the Privy Treasury in Chang'an. Wang Mang read tirelessly, as if he had forgotten his own peril, with the air of one who thinks, "If I hear the Dao in the morning, I can die content in the evening."

But his good mood was ruined by Diwu Lun, who deliberately brought the army's referendum results to show Wang Mang, and said:

"Old Man Wang, perhaps this is what Zhuangzi meant by 'every man has the right to punish him'?"

Wang Mang paid Diwu Lun no heed. He still believed that Diwu Lun was simply savoring a victor's smugness, toying with him like a cat playing with a mouse. He merely sneered and said, "Your soldiers naturally follow your orders. If they did not, would that not be strange?"

It seemed Wang Mang was still not convinced. Diwu Lun therefore smiled and said, "The Red Eyebrow captives' turn will come soon enough. The bond between you and them, Old Man Wang, is hardly shallow."

Wang Mang's hand, turning the pages, stopped. The Red Eyebrow Army — they were indeed the people the old man cared about most now. After all, this was the one and only time in his life he had ever gone "among the masses."

Would the Red Eyebrow Army remember the good deeds of "Old Man Tian" and forget the evils committed by "Wang Mang"?

Diwu Lun seemed intent on crushing Wang Mang's ideals and hopes one by one. He stood up, but before leaving, he turned back and said:

"Old Man Wang, let us make a wager. How do you think Fan Chong will choose?"

"Does the Giant Fan wish for Wang Jujun to die, or does he hope you will live?"

PS: Second chapter coming in the middle of the night.