Just kidding, it sucked. By the middle of the 60s, Mao was afraid that China's revolution was running out of steam, and he didn't want China to end up just a bureaucratized police state like, you know, most of the Soviet bloc. And the Cultural Revolution was an attempt to capture the glory days of the revolution and fire up the masses. And what better way to do that than to empower the kids? Frustrated students who were unable to find decent, fulfilling jobs jumped at the chance to denounce their teachers, employers, and sometimes even their parents, and to tear down tradition, which often meant demolishing buildings and art. The ranks of these Red Guards swelled, and anyone representing the so-called Four Olds – old culture, old habits, old ideas, and old customs – was subject to humiliation and violence. Intellectuals were again sent to the countryside, as they were in 1942.