Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Is the idea of NATO and joint Western defence fraying? T.Greer wrote a balanced, well-thought post on the topic. Change in views, in the list of what matters etc can be very disruptive. “Sons dishonor their fathers. Daughters rise against their mothers. Ancestral ideals are cast aside, and possibility staggers forth from its long captivity, ready to wreak vengeance on mankind.”   Fourteen years ago, well before Trump , ex-US Secretary of Defence, Robert M Gates was worried that joint Western defence was at risk. Since World War II, he said, the US (politicians, voters) felt that keeping Europe “whole, prosperous and free” was beneficial to America. But that mood was starting to change, he warned: “If current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders—those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me—may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost...

As Biden clings on and insists he will run again for President, the American left isn’t unanimous in putting up a different candidate. Even as it is increasingly likely that concerns about Biden’s mental faculties in a second term will cost the party the election. Surely Biden cannot be the best/only option in the Left?   This reminded me of the Deccan Herald editorial about the deadlocked French election recently. After the first round, it looked like the Far Right would come to power – I’ve been hearing this since I was in college: the French Far Right will do best in the first round; alarm bells and media frenzy will start; the remaining parties will pair (gang?) up; the Far Right won’t win; and France will heave a collective sigh of relief. It turned out the same this time too. Except, this time, nobody got anything close to a majority. And yet, the editorial says: “(The French election) revives the hope that the lurch to the Right the world over is not inevitable, espec...

What do the terms, “left” and “right”, as used in politics, mean? Let’s start with the origin of those terms because that gives a general feel of those terms – the underlying theme, so to say.   In The Righteous Mind , Jonathan Haidt says that the two sides diverge wrt a fundamental question of governance: “Preserve the present order, or change it?” In 1789, at the French Assembly, the delegates who favoured ‘preservation’ sat on the right, while those favoured ‘change’ sat on the left. “The terms right and left have stood for conservation and liberalism ever since.” From that, it is obvious why the terms “conservatives” and “liberals” are used as synonyms for the right (preserve) and the left (change) respectively.   The terms are a bit unfortunate because the word “conservatives”, even when used in a political context, gets mistaken for religious conservatism. Even though the side that favours retaining the existing system may not be religious at all. Somet...

Academics are left leaning in most countries. As Jonathan Haidt wrote : “Most people know that professors in America, and in most countries, generally vote for left-leaning parties and policies.” A recent survey in social psychology showed a left to right ratio of 14:1! This would by typical of the ratio in most academic circles. But does that even matter? Yes, because of the not-too-uncommon perception that professors are right because of their degrees and qualification (the halo effect) rather than the strength of their arguments. That’s when it hit me that academics being left leaning is a non-issue in the sciences: nature is the way it is; and your opinions don’t change the truth. And in sciences, facts, theories and experimental data will win the day…eventually, if not immediately. But does the left leaning matter in the social sciences? Yes, says Haidt, because it leads to a “political diversity crisis”: “(Such a lack of diversity would mean that academics) contin...

When I see the shell shocked reaction of traditional media to the rise of social media as the way to voice and influence opinions, it reminds me of these lines by Scott Alexander : “People very reasonably ask – hey, I notice my side kind of controls all of this stuff, the situation is actually asymmetrical, they have no way of retaliating, maybe we should just grind our enemies beneath our boots this one time. And then when it turns out that the enemies can just leave and start their own institutions, with horrendous results for everybody, the cry goes up “Wait, that’s unfair! Nobody ever said you could do that!” Another trend driving this transition is what Freddie deBoer cites : “Conservatives have been arguing for years that liberals essentially want to write them out of shared cultural and intellectual spaces altogether.” (Replace “conservatives” and “liberals” with the relevant words from your context). And the reaction of traditional media that is being marginaliz...

In general, acts of oppression are done by the majority against the minority. In general, tolerance (if not respect) for other religions is a good idea. In general, the rich exploit the poor. In general, rule by the majority creates the risk of marginalizing the minority. The key point, however, is that these are just rules of thumb, they are not immutable laws of physics. So it makes sense to periodically check if they still hold true. Or, as with anything in the social world, check if something that started off with the best of intentions is now getting exploited by politicians and common man alike. The left leaners must have started with many such rules of thumb which were perfectly valid when they were formulated. Unfortunately, they stopped doing the periodic checks for continuing validity, and instead started treating the rules of thumb as if they were written in stone. At least that’s what I believe has happened. How else can one explain the stance of the left le...

Many people react to the whole problem of “fake news” saying that they’re not so dumb as to believe anything they see or hear. Of course, they’d check up on what they read, they say. The mistake in that stance should be obvious. If that’s all it took to identify fake news, why are so many people falling prey to it? Is it even remotely possible that you alone are the kind who questions and checks while others are suckers who fall for whatever lie is told to them? Danah Boyd points out that fake news operates in a far more subtle manner : “It’s subtle content that is factually accurate, biased in presentation and framing, and encouraging folks to make dangerous conclusions that are not explicitly spelled out in the content itself. That’s the beauty of provocative speech: It makes people think not simply by shoving an idea down their throats, but inviting them to connect the dots.” On the Net, Facebook and Google are most people’s sources of news. They want you to come back, s...

Is the majority always wrong, simply because it is the majority? Conversely, is the minority always to be excused, simply because it is the minority? These questions are increasingly becoming the major fault line between the left and the right in more and more countries. Things have gone so far that Roger Scruton says that: “The great difference between left and right, in every matter that impacts on our survival, is that the left turns against us, whereas the right believes that, on the whole, we are not to blame for wanting to hold on to our way of life.” Remember the mass scale molestation of German women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve? Sadly, for many, it was unacceptable to call out the ethnicity of the perpetrators (Arab and North African). Turns out reports of a similar assault on women in Sweden during the We Are Sthlm music festival were suppressed because the assaulters were ‘so-called refugee youths primarily from Afghanistan’. In Sweden: “If you mention anything n...

The word “intellectual”, as used in India, never came across as a positive term to me. It never seemed to mean people who think, analyze, look at historical successes and failures of different approaches and the why’s behind different actions. It just seemed to mean a left-leaning world-view, not necessarily communist, but definitely socialist and never capitalist. Here is Julian Sanchez’s take as to why that might be the case world-wide: “One thing to bear in mind is that even informed and intelligent people do not typically arrive at their political views by an in-depth review of the evidence in each particular policy area. Most of us can only be really expert in one or two spheres, and in others must rely heavily on those who possess greater expertise and seem to share our basic values.” Or perhaps, as Sanchez says, intellectuals are people who genuinely believe in the power of words and advice as guidance to governments: “If the best solutions to social problems are ge...