h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Good entry for something we often tend to forget about.
But it's something rather too big to forget about!
I think that there isn't really a change of government anwhere.
The Germans have always had a Kaiser, even though we call him chancellor today. The Russians always had a Czar. What did for Gorbatshov was that he was not czarish enough.
The English always had a monarchy, cum or sine parliament, and very sensibly never pretended otherwise. The Americans wish they had one.
And China, so it seems to me from where i stand here on that most western peninsula of Asia, always had an emperors court with a huge burocracy functioning slowly but fairly surely, that could be geared to this or that, as the times demanded.
And so, as you've shown so well, no Walls need to come down in this transition from communism to capitalism.

We Americans do think someone ought to be doing those old traditions like royalty thing, just so it's not *us*.