I would first read a specific reply for context on my position overall before you read rest of my post here:
Pakistan never claimed that is secular western democracy, so. The comparison with India thereby becomes all the more forced.
defencehub.live
You seem a nice person (@paula1963 and others too), you approach this from a good faith point of view I can tell.... and it would take too long for me to respond to each point you make in detail that I once used to do (though I share and sympathise with a good number of them).
It all feels like steps I have to retrace for umpteenth time in some big circles....so let me tell you what I see from the tree I have long since climbed due to weariness/wariness on the ground...scars to show for it, many from friends even.
I come at this these days from a bigger (increasingly anti-politics) picture.
I am firmly anti-politics now but I studied/study it very closely (along with human psychology increasingly as this is very tied to it).
Just like I am anti-war but I study that subject (war) very closely too. Humans love this stuff and I have to live with seeking out the largest full picture as possible so I may survive them as best I can, and they may also survive me.
In this instance part of the bigger picture (in immediate time context) involves the drastic change in obama's approach in 2012 compared to 2008 and the precedent it set for particular vein in democrat hypocrisy right now...given the immense role as I see it in bringing about Trump winning in 2016.
I am a "right-winger" so I have various bias baked into me, let me just put that out there (though it would take a long long post to explain all my similarities and differences with the "mainstream" American right, political compass test definitely cannot do it).
But none of it excuses any of the garbage tendencies/elements that have been and/or are part of the right (esp "alt-right") now. Those are splattered all across world media daily. I feel it isn't so much the case for the equivalents I see from the left, but that is my subjective opinion.
In any case I can go on an anti-Trump and/or anti-republican rant too like I have before, it just needs the proper moment. His behaviour over the last couple months has been especially egregious.
But the thing is when I go after Trump or any politician or leader or public figure, I am punching up in power chain...I am just a nobody. What i HATE is when politicians and people with power punch down (on nameless public) like I am seeing all the time now (well before and past Trump)...all to turn some other nameless public against them on some issue....more than they were naturally inclined previously.
For most part my reply was to
@VCheng more specifically, we go way back...he knows where I come from and I know where he comes from broadly...so I tend to air out specifics without much context (that I would usually provide to audience) when I answer him and others I know like him...because its a bit like an old friend, you dont have to say the quiet part out loud etc...because they already know.
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But moving on (might as well flesh out my anti-political context as I see it), I value honesty and credibility (based on action on well reasoned logical principles). That is literally the only thing I care about now, Left vs Right is a politician game to divide voters for their advantage in bargaining strength. This is why I am big fan of folks like Jimmy Dore ( hardened but very consistent, truthful lefty) for example.
But beyond foul political winds and interpretations (past and present), I would say conservatism and progressivism needs to be studied across the whole gamut of a country's history (in this case the USA) to be put things into proper perspective.
The democrats/progressives through the history of the US since their formation + consolidation under Andrew Jackson have always valued harnessing swift change/action....sometimes quite impulsively and recklessly.
They have always thus aligned their populism generally with the easiest reliable working class votes throughout history.
The republicans/conservatives likewise look to the solid establishment and the constitution. i.e a more rooted approach. These days identified with "country club" approach and/or more "social" conservatism....they are also capable of doing this quite recklessly from stick-in-the-mud/snob standpoint.
Elements of this are all found before Andrew Jackson, the war of 1812, the federalist papers (and constitution).... to the very declaration of and American war of independence (and the arguments before during and after it on how to balance rooted power with heady passion).
Things first came to a real head in the civil war. Someone asked earlier when the United States were united. It really was in that war (as we understand the country today) for a number of reasons.
It was the war that changed the parlance from "These" United States to "The" United States.
A very long subject to get into sufficient depth to describe (regarding the specifics of what I am talking about)... so I won't but here's a nice piece of music that captures the emotions of the time:
You will note the president that preserved the union at that juncture was a Republican...and the near entirety of the enfranchised South was Democrat (before and after)
You reference the KKK in your reply, a populist movement of its era (after reconstruction spectacularly was abandoned after the Grant presidency and jim crow ushered in)...especially during the 1920's.
It gained its maximum (2nd) ascendancy during and after the Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) presidency. The 1st one (Bedford and gang) was put down brutally by Grant (Union general + Republican) when he was president a long time before it. Hard to believe today but for long time blacks were a solid+staunch republican voting base (where they were not disenfranchised by Jim Crow). Read up on Frederick Douglas for example.
Back to my point, he (W. Wilson) was a noted progressive of his era you can still read the newspaper archives about (describing him as such).
In fact even the modern day era he is often championed on a number of things for being "progressive".
His idea (of which you can read at length) of what the constitution + institutions were though was properly abominable (IMO) as they conflicted with his desire to see expanded executive power.
I think most can see the danger of this concept...seeing how it would be abused just a couple decades later in another country (in Europe) for a totalitarian takeover.
He (Wilson) was after all a president that "progressively" screened "The birth of a nation" right there in the white house...and deeply appreciated its racist message...for he simply saw where the power of its time lay (and it is why jim crow continued far longer than it needed to)
I can go on at length about this phenomenon next covering the great depression, WW2, cold war right up to my living memory starting in the 90s. I can cover the bad policies of FDR and LBJ regarding this same phenomenon. One must read all perspectives of the story and gather the evidence to understand it well.
Suffice to say (IMO), at their raw forms, the democrats are who charge and harness populism/sentiment for more charging/change for the sake of it (whether good or bad) and the republicans lean toward traditional resilience and stoic rigidness (whether good or bad).
The phenomenon on many issues is thus the democrats use A to get to B to get to C...and they would rather you forget about the A and B...because C is the most important thing now (even if it conflicts with the ideology they promoted with A to cultivate A reliably at the polling booth back then)
Thus when long-abandoned (or taken for granted) and chastised A eventually seek political representation with the republicans...the democrats are reminded deep down of what their ideology (to court A) once was (or still is)....even if A has long changed, reformed and adapted themselves in other ways and are completely new set of people (but still carrying some old identity markers).
This is why you cannot look at Trump (or anyone political really) in isolation. With him there is a democrat story in the immediate political realm preceding it (I can explore the Obama era at detail regarding this, but its long topic)
Plus his own raw-populist tendency that democrats traditionally harnessed (just the populace they harness changes from era to era) and thus which upsets them (they prefer to dish it out but not take it back) and the establishment/media at large.
They (dems) are after all the standard bearers of progressivism, they will set the definition for it (in current immediate memory/culture) and not anyone else.
The republicans likewise are the standard bearers of conservatism, they will set the definition for it and not anyone else.
In essence progressivism is the populism that is in vogue with the current crop/era of democrats...w.r.t US.
Conservatism is likewise the constitutionalism/stoicism that is in vogue with the current crop/era of republicans.
This is how the democrats pick and choose what they dump on the republicans history wise to be on the "correct side of history" today.
They keep moving/trailblazing (to expand the concept of democratic populist power at any cost), republicans keep picking up the pieces to stitch it into their existing notion of preserving the republic at any cost. Centrists/moderates traditionally act as bridges for each side.
It is all very much reflected in their party names (that again people often just think are names rather than explore the ideology underneath both historically).
They are very much the pitcher/trend-setter, and the republicans the receiver/follower.
What can I say about me w.r.t that? I guess I have an inclination to that which is old rather than new (w.r.t politics)...but to only some degree as I like to hear the argument/debate for both with all the evidence, morality and reasoning possible.
This is all precisely why you get a pete seeger song I referenced in earlier reply "Which Side are you on?" being sung among a democratic-action vein of its time (against the country club/corporate/oligarch coal mine), but in a region of Kentucky (Harlan county* as stated in song still there to see today on map) that is ironically HEAVILY GOP/conservative today.
They are literal example of people (ancestors of today's people there) that once fought for unions and working class liveable wage in one era, but long abandoned to republicans to pick up because they are too "socially conservative" for democrats to handle given new groups they have moved onto (given they have long moved onto new identity politics to exploit for votes)
Trump was/is (IMO) a pent up release of many folks on the conservative side that were fed up of this (and all disturbia variant with accrued flotsam and jetsam in modern post cold war era).
He was what the democrats were doing to them (over a long time), except he could do it to the democrats in far shorter time....given he is cut from the same populist cloth as them (just arguably more raw) but has no wash DC nicety and elitist upbringing/buddy-buddy within that confine.
This is why it felt off-putting to so many, the wires were getting crossed from the neater, simpler arrangement of before (esp for political class). It is also why he endeared to many outside the political system (many were not traditional republican base either) and were sick of it.
But past all of it, the long term lying by the political class w.r.t the foreign wars and debt creation symptoms was getting intolerable on the ground.
So for many, Trump felt good payback (even if they didn't care for him or even hated him personally), thats the gist of it.
Everything else good or bad is simply good or bad. No side (in well founded and entrenched democratic republic) has any real greater share of either...it is just who can control info flow and context better to the population. Democrats have made the most headway on it since the Reagan era ended for a number of reasons (IMO).
If you or anyone understand this, you essentially can understand half of what American politics (and politics in general) is at its core....and why things are seemingly pulling apart now there (and elsewhere).
There (IMO) needs to be another grounding on civic nationalist centrism (and not one forced by old school defined existential threat like what USSR managed to do during cold war). But its all much easier said than done now given the zero-sum investment into narratives by all.
Given what has been said, twisted and distorted in various degrees, it would need the rational undoing of that by all sides. Very hard to do.
But doubling down all-in finger point blame toxicity is far easier, and far more conducive to todays supercharged hypercharged "smaller" + "louder" world.
It seems both are resigned to it, but one (dems) know how to manipulate it far better to get their side of the story as the default one in the overton window they pitch and set with far more relative ease.
To get the other side of the story is generally not easy given the volume and seeming chaos now.
Even the mere ability to entertain a thought but not share it (the very definition of an elevated mind), once taken for granted before.... is something receding further and further among too many these days I feel.
A real pity but maybe an inevitable cyclical constant for humankind at large.
Anyway I hope you continue to read what I write on other stuff (dunno if its just here or you followed on PDF), please give a thumbs up on those so I know you like them. I hope I have explained my position on politics a bit better for you.
Politics stuff I often just agree to disagree lately. Its not worth getting into it too much. I just air some thoughts out I have (I am not portraying them as some absolute objective truth just so no one gets the wrong idea)
It is merely all take it or leave it (I never try to get anyone to agree with me, much less everyone)...and if anyone wants to, they can debate it + correct me (but I myself have personally lost interest in it mostly, esp the details).
It is just my perspective and opinion in the end after all (At this snapshot of time in my lifetime, it can change later, like its changed from before).
I am grossly imperfect and definitely fallible...I have no great vantage point, this tree is only as high as I can climb and the only one I could see within the area I reconnoiter and traverse.
I have no absolute way to measure this all...I only have what I have seen, read and lived. My existence is particularly finite in time and space, like every other human.
It might be nice in a way if we could all have a do-over and put in new input conditions for each one of us...and see what of us turns out different and the same...and extend that across time and space to entire nations, course of events and histories.
But alas we do not live in such a reality...and we would lose all notion and perspective of uniqueness and concrete individuality and core identity.
We only exist in the downstream....each and every one of us.
But its just awful (IMO) politicians (of any stripe and colour) are supposed to serve the public, but reality is the other way around.
I have gotten tired of giving just about anyone with power a pass till they actually earn it (extremely rare).
I like the powerless like me, they are on the ground with me, I will identify with them (agree or disagree on whatever issue) all to my last breath on earth....whatever their imperfections and flaws (again like me!), I appreciate they are slugging out life just like me.
When they do bad, I call them out....like I would expect them to call me out if I do. But we are all in the same boat down here getting shafted good from the overlords....who are
very selectively called out on just about anything....and get away with everything regardless.
But in a way we are all born in it, its the only thing we have ever known. We seek order by our free will and thus power dynamics are inevitable.
Pete Seeger Harlan county song (Deep republican territory now) verse:
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there.
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
My daddy was a miner,
And I'm a miner's son,
He'll be with you fellow workers
Until this battle's won.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
www.reuters.com
