Narendra Modi and the Donald Trump Parallel
I have these ongoing debates with my dad on Narendra Modi. And that got me thinking of the parallels with Donald Trump. No matter what they did or said, they are extremely popular during election campaigns. And even win. But how can that be? How can such things happen in countries with a free press, with freedom of speech? How can it happen in a growing country and a rich country? Howard Kurtz points out how aggravating Trump is to his detractors: “They struggle to understand why he pays no penalty when they blow the whistle. What they don’t quite grasp is that their attacks only make him stronger. This is not to let him off the hook for mistakes, just to recognize that Trump has completely rewritten the rule book, infuriating those who thought they enforced the rules.” Those lines would apply equally to how many feel about Modi. But why doesn’t all this “blowing the whistle” work? Matt Taibbi talks of an increasingly common approach these days: “(A common approach is...