Viswanathan K's Thoughts

There’s this blogger who goes by the moniker Southern Punk. Recently, he (she?) wrote a thought-provoking post titled “Why does Rome keep showing up?” . As American power (hard and soft) seems to be on the decline, more and more parallels to the slow decline of Rome are common.   He then brings up that famous Roman phrase, “Bread and circuses”. “Most people think it means entertainment. It doesn't. Not exactly. The bread kept people fed. The circus kept people occupied. The point wasn't the games themselves. The point was attention .”   Attention. Nowadays, the US government “seems to communicate through spectacle” only . “I don't remember a time when everything felt this performative… Sometimes it feels like we're living inside a never-ending competition for screen time.” He contrasts that with how things used to be. Once upon a time. “I miss the idea that government was supposed to be boring. Boring meant people were working. Boring meant budgets were...

America’s erratic actions and constant policy shifts make a lot more sense when viewed from the lens of what Noah Millman calls the “Thucydides trap”. “(It refers to) a situation where a rising power and an established power facing a possible power transition each make moves that, while individually rational, ultimately lead to a catastrophic war that proves ruinous to both powers’ fortunes.”   With Obama, America tried a “pivot to Asia” approach to counter China, i.e., increase the focus on China and its neighbouring countries, reduce the focus elsewhere (The pivot to Asia is why the US didn’t do much/anything when Russia invaded Crimea in 2016; why Obama signed the nuclear deal with Iran). Obama was being pragmatic – it was clear that the assumption that the only road to economic prosperity went hand in hand with democracy and other Western systems was not true. China was prospering without democracy; and showing signs of not wanting to be part of a system dominated by the...

How did ancient Rome change from being a Republic to a monarchy? Not to take “credit” away from Julius Caesar or Augustus Caesar (who cemented the transformation), but a contributing factor is what Andrew Sullivan mentions: “Little abuses of power in the Roman system slowly multiplied, as rival factions exploited loopholes, or made minor adjustments, for short-term advantages.”   The other “model” for changing a Republic to a dictatorship is the (German) Weimar Republic which was overthrown by Hitler. That was a short-lived Republic that collapsed under the weight of sanctions and war damages imposed by the victors of World War I.   America, says Sullivan, if it were to stop being a Republic, is likely to go the Rome way, many small steps adding up over time. And Presidential pardons is looking like the most likely candidate for abuse. He points out other Presidential pardons have been questionable too, from Clinton (his half-brother) to Trump (his son-in-law’s fathe...

I read this amusing, informative, cynical and analytical post by Pranay Kotasthane on the US primaries to decide the opponent against Biden. The latest charges against Trump go to the very heart of the democratic process: “That when you lose an election as an incumbent, you transfer power to the winner.”   And yet, Trump is still the lead runner among the Republicans. And he is not polling too badly against Biden either. Which would suggest: “(The) danger doesn’t seem to matter to the Trump supporters and maybe to American voters too.” The prosecution only makes him come across as the persecuted one. And so Kotasthan writes only half tongue in cheek: “We must be ready for a scenario where Trump runs his campaign from a prison and wins. And then pardons himself.”   Then he makes an interesting point about criminals in governance: “We Indians have had a long experience of voting for politicians indicted for crimes.” But none of our criminals break one partic...

An Indian student from Pune named Siddhesh jotted down his initial observations about the US where he has gone for higher studies: “To be fair, I haven’t experienced any culture “shock” per se. Exposure to tons of American pop culture and the internet helped make sense of a lot of things. But there have been plenty of surprises - some hilarious, some puzzling, some impressive.”   His first comment is about the “bigness” of everything: “Every single thing here is at least twenty percent bigger than it is in India: street widths, road signs, cars, people, footpaths, beverage sizes, houses, wall posters, general equipment, food servings, lawns.” On the language front, he writes: “Spanish seems to be almost sort of like a second official language here.”   After a lifetime of Indian beverages, not surprisingly, he says: “I have to say this - for a country this obsessed with coffee, the cappuccinos really aren’t that good.” The absence of neighborhood shops take...

Anyone who’s seen both the US and Western Europe knows that they are very different places, an ocean apart literally and figuratively. Andrew Sullivan, a Brit journalist who turned American points out the many, many differences . The first difference is the past v/s future looking tendency: “(America) is often simply of an escape from the past into a country addicted to the future… Most nations, especially the England I knew, are defined by history, saturated in its remnants, places where one is never far from the echoes of those who have come before.” That mindset extends into the individual level as well: “(In America) Where you had come from was nowhere near as interesting as where you were going… (as opposed to) the way Europeans defined themselves by what they were rather than what they could become.” This mindset may also explain why America is a melting pot: “I wanted no group identity. I wanted — and I was utterly unconflicted and unembarrassed about this — assimila...

“No taxation without representation”. And the Boston Tea Party. That’s about all I knew about American independence. Until I read Barbara Tuchman’s awesome book, The March of Folly . It all started with the Seven Years’ War, a war over who controlled America: the British, the French or the native Indians. The British won; and so America became a British colony. After that arose the fairly reasonable question in England: shouldn’t the colony pay for its continued protection from the native Indians and the resurgent French? The Americans, however, didn’t think of it that way: they felt the money would be used to pay British troops to act as “a rod and check over us”. The seeds of mistrust were sown. The topic of taxation brought with it an unintended debate. Unlike most other colonies, the inhabitants of America (leaving the Indians aside) were British citizens . And so they asked for the “Englishman’s right not to be taxed except by his own representatives”. How come the Engli...

I’ve heard my dad say on multiple occasions that there is something about this land that generates tolerance, a certain kind of philosophy, certain kinds of religions, a search for spirituality…you get the idea. So it was kind of amusing when Om Malik wrote this comment : “Despite our problems, I am an unabashed believer in America, which to me is more a philosophy than just a landmass.” Me too. Philosophies like capitalism, even if that is sometimes of the “greed is good” variety; or individual freedom; or free speech; or the Silicon Valley belief that anyone can become a billionaire. So are India and America the only two philosophies juxtaposed on landmasses? Or is this just crazy talk that Indians do, wherever they are?

Recently, there was news that the Indian government wants to write its own operating system (OS) for use in national security contexts. The belief is that it would be proprietary and hence harder for hackers and terrorists to break into to steal data. While there is no guarantee it will come through or be better at security than what’s in use today, it does raise interesting possibilities. America has a history of items developed for defense purposes that eventually got used in the civilian domain. The most famous example of that is the Internet itself which was designed as a structure/format using which American installations could communicate even after a Soviet nuclear attack. Given India’s increasing tendency to copy/paste everything from the US (the good, the bad and the ugly), here’s hoping we too create similar spillover effects from military into civilian areas. Whether or not this OS effort succeeds.