Sunday, 7 March 2021

The US of A - discussions about its so called strengths and otherwise.

 


Anantha Sayanan

yes
Aparna Krishnan
! they have nothing right.. the most indebted country in the world..the most diseased country.. the country with so less peace and so much violence.. the country with a hand on every bloody conflict around the world (either the originator or the accelerator)
Govt after Govt has been drooling and running behind these goofs, for what ever reason, best known to them.
prolly to get the 1% here in India too that fat!



  • Aparna Krishnan
    Yatha praja, tatha raja. I think most of my eastwhile classmates are in that land of milk and honey. And much of my family also, I am sorry to say. No government drove them there !
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    • Radhika Rammohan
      Aparna
       - why does the dominant paradigm in the world or policy made by government have to prevent your friends and relatives from living in US? The question I would ask is, how much scope is there for dissent? Many foreigners settle here in India for various reasons of their own. They contribute to this society, often in ways that Indians do not in bringing about change. Is there some kind of moral high ground about *not* living in America? Does staying back in India automatically imply dissent against capitalist exploitation which America has perfected?!
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    • Radhika Rammohan
      One last question -- is there in your opinion, anything good that USA has contributed to the world
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      As to whether USA contributed anything good to the world (my world, as also yours incidentally, is the villages) I really need to break my head over. Some day when I'm bored to death I will !
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    • Rajiv Ramnath
      I must disagree. When I came to the US I was completely taken by how hard and diligently most everyone worked, and how downright generous, good and without artifice most people were. Those folks and their attitudes are still very much here, to some extent hidden by the loudness of the media and beaten down by the current political climate. This is a country with tremendous people and great resources. For this reason, if the world is to be changed it will likely need to start here.
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      Rajiv
      . My interest is my country, and its a country where much needs to be done. I only claim the energies of the people of this land for this land. I have no fight with Africa or Carribeans or Americas. There would be great people there sure.
      As to y… 
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      But when Radhika asked me about the good America has done for the world, I'm actually clueless. India gave Ayurveda , the Gita (to me a seminal work of philosophy), the concept of austerity, a Buddha. When I think of America what strikes is modernity, industrilization, capitalism, consumerism, an economy built on war weapons trade, fomentation of wars of specious grounds. And the fact of the genocide on the ashes of which the country was built. And that to date 
      Rajiv
      , the "downright generous, good and without artifice people" are not demanding that those broken treaties be honoured with compensation, at cost to their own economy is need be ??
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    • Mark Johnston
      Not sure I'm the right person to ask as I am probably one of the rebels not the patriots. So called advances have mixed impacts, even the humble bicycle has the ability to increase inequality. Aspects of culture maybe (although of course this is commonplace in all cultures). Our local theatre has recently revived and will take on tour a play called "The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil". This looks at how the population of Scotland were removed from the land in the name of progress, privilege and greed, it includes many songs and passages in Gaelic. It was first made by a radical Scottish theatre group in the 70s called 7:84. The name of the company reflects the fact that seven percent of the population own eightyfour percent of the land. A situation which has worsened in the last forty years since it was created.
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      Cultural strengths are there in every country. And inventions have also be made in every country. When we look at what a civilization contributes maybe we look for values, attitudes, philosophies, And structures. Not personal attitudes like 'hard work and honesty', which again are there everywhere. But those with larger implications like simplicity and austerity, which may yet save a world on a very short fuse.
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    • Mark Johnston
      To me the principles behind gram swaraj can be helpful within any region or culture in the world. I'm being the devil's advocate here but perhaps without Gandhi's experience of unjustifiable British rule and his time in Britain and apartheid in South Africa he may not have felt the need to develop his Indian rooted ideas, ideals and actions which, in my view, remain hugely important to all our futures.
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    • Komakkambedu Himakiran
      Good about the USA? Sure, most of the people there are as naive as the rest of the world. People who praise the U.S. need to first read,
      A People's History of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
      EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
      A People's History of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
      A People's History of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      Komakkambedu Himakiran Anugula
       But I want 'one good thing' USA has given to the world - if it exists, as Radhika asked ! Here I can list Ayurveda and Gandhi-and-GramSwaraj. There ?
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      Radhika
      , you got your answer !! Thanks Hima !!
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    • Komakkambedu Himakiran
      No wait, Barbeque, it's purely American!
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    • Mark Johnston
      The Americas (mostly south and central) have given India tomatoes, potatoes, chilli, corn, chocolate, peanuts and many fruits and vegetables now integral to much of "Indian" cooking and eating 😉
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      But the essential and dominating image in the 3rd world today is the imposing mustaches of the KFC Sergent as he looks down at hoi polloi from his cutouts. From high above glass walled KFC restaraunts where well heeled patrons walk in, while the poorer gentry gaze from outside the glass walls. I do not question KFC, I question my country people.
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    • Komakkambedu Himakiran
      we are talking about the nation state of the US right? The Americas gave us Che too!
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    • Rajiv Ramnath
      The Wright brothers and the airplane, the polio vaccine, individual rights, defeating the Axis regimes in WW2, the Marshall Plan that followed, the transistor radio, the telephone, the Internet, Facebook (on which you are right now) ... As to KFC, it is a bit player in the US. It is you folks in India that have made it an icon of the West over in India (as 
      Aparna Krishnan
       says! :-)).
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      Well, your adopted country would have invented certian things, as did mine, and as has done another country. But which have contributed to a sane and sustainable world, and which are part (maybe useful side benefits) of a technological process that that spun the world out of orbit need to be understood. One needs to go to the essence.
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      And then, despite some good done - lets grant that for now - has the overall damage of this country not been far far vaster. From when it devastated a civilization on whose ashes it rose, to the current economy it sustains based on war weapon sales.
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    • Radhika Rammohan
      Aparna, it was a question for you -- I was not necessarily looking for an answer for myself. I believe that Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, the concept of individual freedoms and rights, fundamental right to dissent, to burn the flag, to dignity of work, multiculturalism, and a society NOT based on entrenched hierarchies are uniquely American -- as much as applepie, war for oil or KFC. I am not going to debate whether these are valuable to you or to Indian villagers. If they are not so be it. But in my opinion these are valuable to the world. I request you not to start on how evil the American military-industrial complex is, and how their companies exploit. I am well aware of these. But taking black and white stands on countries and cultures is not useful to me. Can you commet on how deeply entrenched are Gandhi, gram swaraj or ayurveda in India - without laying blame anywhere.
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    • Komakkambedu Himakiran
      Radhika
      : Most of us Indians who visit/emigrate to the U.S. are not exposed to the real American world. There is entrenched hierarchy over there too, and we thanks to our privileged education here, land pretty close to the top of that hierarchy. The median American income is around the 53K mark, that's for a household. If we leave out the blue collar Indian migrants, everyone else will be at an income level much much higher. The neighborhoods we choose to live are also reflective of the higher incomes as well as preference for safety & education.
      A few days in the projects, inner cities or even several Southern rural areas will make us pinch ourselves in disbelief. In most inner neighborhoods, the grocery store is a 7/11!
      Most of the rights you talk about aren't of American origin, but borrowed from the French amongst other societies.
      Of course, I'm not speaking for everyone who went to the US from India, but most of the people I know.
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    • Mark Johnston
      I'm afraid that the US was just a bit player in WW2, not getting involved to any real extent until the Soviets had, at a toll of 20 million of their people dead, defeated the AXIS forces. The US then joined in the mad dash for control of Europe and Germany once the threat had been neutralised. Not how history is taught in the US of course. They don't even teach that the US government deliberately and repeatedly refused to accept Japan's surrender until after they had tried out their new atomic bombs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not that the history taught in Scottish schools is any more accurate of course.
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    • Rajiv Ramnath
      I take your point, but there are limitations in what you write. For example, lend-lease kept Russia going in their war effort, and the US needed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to get political consensus around explicitly going to war.
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    • Komakkambedu Himakiran
      Radhika
      /
      Aparna
      : I forgot the most oppressed of all people in the world all through history, the native tribes of the US. Their condition is the worst, lower than the African Americans. Ever spend time on a reservation?
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    • Aparna Krishnan
      Radhika
      , American double talk, as shown by the living reservations today, is enough for me. I need no debate really, to analyse more 'deeply' their strengths and weaknesses.
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    • Komakkambedu Himakiran
      Aparna
      , do you know the only reservation that the Hindutva/Nationalistic brigade doesn't complain about in India? 100% for a few communities in Sanitation Jobs!
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    • Komakkambedu Himakiran
      By the way, Chennai has its own American style reservation for the natives, Kannagi Nagar!
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    • Mark Johnston
      It took Britain until nearly ten years ago to pay off its debt to the US government for the war, profit rather than ethics was the strongest motive for the loans. The internment camps where Japanese American citizens suffered after Pearl Harbour are surely a badge of shame. All modern governments look to money not morality to decide their basic policies and use patriotism and fear of the other to maintain the obedience of their populations. History gets rewritten. All populations are too subservient to state or market capitalism. Perhaps whilst we all want to find good in our own communities and good will certainly be there to be found we also should be as critical of our own (and our own or adopted communities) failings as we are of the failings of others. 
  • Sandeep Anirudhan
    and if we did this in india, how would we fare? better or worse?
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    • Anantha Sayanan
      will not be any different sandeep. the richest1% owns 53% of indias wealth! and the top 10% has 76% of the wealth!! so it will fatter on the top!
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