Seshadri Kumar Profile picture
May 11 18 tweets 9 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Just watched the #CNNTownhall with 2024 Presidential candidate and former President @realDonaldTrump , as well as the post-townhall panel discussion.

One thing is clear: #America is a broken country. It's split right down the middle.

(1/)
Racial divisions and #massshootings are peaking, the economy is cratering, #poverty and #homelessness are rising.

And meanwhile, the US government is involved in, or threatening to get involved in, wars from #Ukraine to #Taiwan to #Syria to #Iran to #NorthKorea.

(2/)
When they should be working on healing the divisions in their own nation. White vs non-White, Rural vs Urban, Rich vs Poor, drug addiction, broken homes - all these are tearing America apart.

(3/)
America is not the only country with problems. But other countries focus on solving their own problems. The #US starts and sustains wars with other nations thousands of miles away from its own borders instead of focusing on its own people.

Americans should ask why.

(4/)
The answer is that American governments do not work for the people of the US. They work for big corporations that sponsor election campaigns of candidates. And these corporations want to use US military power to extract resources from other countries for their profits.

(5/)
The American experience has shown decisively that liberal electoral democracies (LED) have failed.

They were envisioned as a means of having governments by, of, and for the people.

But LEDs the world over have been hijacked by the super-wealthy.

(6/)
Not only do the super-wealthy control the ruling politicians through campaign financing, they also own the media. People believe what the so-called experts tell them, on TV and in newspapers.

And all the paid "experts" tell the American people that war is necessary.

(7/)
LEDs, aka "#Democracies," around the world, work for the rich.

But only the US believes that it is necessary to constantly be at war with someone or the other.

And the paid media convinces the people of the US that wars are necessary "in the national interest."

(8/)
This is a lie. American wars are not in the interest of the people of America, but in the interests of the wealthy corporations that SELECT (not elect) the leaders of the American people through campaign donations.

(9/)
But because of their control of #media, they are able to convince (i.e., brainwash) ordinary Americans into supporting these wars.

America has learned very well from Joseph #Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda master.

(10/)
Other countries fight wars, too, but they fight countries next to them over real bilateral issues. #Russia and #Ukraine, India and #Pakistan, #China and #India, China and #Vietnam, #Armenia and #Azerbaijan, #Rwanda and #Uganda. Usually over pieces of land.

(11/)
Only the US travels thousands of miles away from their own borders to fight wars. Not to protect the American people, but to steal natural resources from other countries for the benefit of American corporations so that those firms ( not the American people) can get rich.

(12/)
It's tragic that ordinary Americans should experience so much misery while corporations should get so rich at the expense of the US taxpayer. Not only has the US #NationalDebt ballooned to $31.4 trillion, even the wars are fought by ordinary taxpayers.

(13/)
Ordinary Americans are bankrupting themselves and dying to make big corporations rich.

And they are doing so willingly.

This is the result of Democracy.

Democracy has failed America.

(14/)
Democracy has failed the people of every country that has adopted it, because it has invariably been hijacked by the wealthy. Just see the slums in #Mumbai next to super luxury skyscrapers.

But only American Democracy brings ruin to other countries as well.

(15/)
Be that as it may, I don't see anything changing. The US will continue on its downward spiral until the nation is utterly destroyed.

Because even when the country is utterly ruined, by and large, the wealthy will still be living it up.

(16/)
America is a living embodiment of the failure of liberal electoral democracy and its natural sibling, capitalism.

Because the corruption of democracy happens because of accumulation of huge amounts of wealth by private entities - i.e., through capitalism.

(17/)
Someone will ask me, "what's your alternative? Is it Communism?"

I don't know. But I know capitalism and democracy have failed the world.

Maybe no system, no "ism" can save humanity from itself.

(18/)

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More from @KumarSeshadri

May 11
India's so-called "liberals" have been shedding copious tears on the "injustice" of the SC verdict on the #ShivSena case.

Indian liberals are brainless and shameless.

The Shiv Sena was, is, and will be a bigoted party, whichever flavour you pick - Uddhav, Raj, or Shinde.

(1/)
Don't forget that #UddhavThackeray fought the election along with the #BJP. He split with the #BJP only when they refused to yield the CM post to him.

The alliance with the #Congress and #NCP was never about principle, it was for power. This was an unprincipled power grab.

(2/)
This is still the same Shiv Sena that supported the Babri Masjid demolition, that supported the installation of the portrait of #Savarkar opposite that of #Gandhi in Parliament (kinda like #Trump saying there are good folks on both sides), that engineered the #1993riots.

(3/)
Read 8 tweets
May 10
This tweet by a retired wealthy industrialist with too much time on his hands and no idea what to do with it illustrates what is wrong with India.

He extols the virtues of a clay water storage unit, the surahi, from the mid-20th century.

(1/)

Of course, while he lives in unimaginable luxury, the likes of which we can't dream of.

It's a foolish comparison, because the surahi can only store and cool water by a few degrees, whereas the fridge can cool anything, preserve food, and make ice (needed for his scotch).

(2/)
But that didn't stop Indian twitterati from going ga-ga over his tweet. Why?

Because if there's one thing guaranteed to give you applause in India today, it is hearkening to the past.
Our grandparents had the most wonderful life. Our country was great in the good old days.
(3/)
Read 26 tweets
May 8
Independent India has always been a vibrant democracy, except for the #Emergency years of #IndiraGandhi from 1975-77. That it has taken a decisive turn to religious majoritarianism under the #BJP and under #Modi since 2014 doesn't change that fact. (1/)
Democracy is not necessarily congruent with liberal values or even human rights. #Slavery was legal both in the democracy of Great Britain as well as the USA for almost a hundred years since the US' formation. Even a White woman was not considered equal to a man in America. (2/)
#Blacks in the #US did not have equal rights even after the abolition of slavery for another 100 years under #Lincoln, but we still think of the US in #1960 as a democracy.

(3/)
Read 35 tweets
Apr 30
Mukul Kesavan writes in the Telegraph:

"It (Ed: the #WrestlersProtest) is made easier by the socially mainstream identities of the protesting wrestlers...they aren’t guilty of being Muslim..."

Kesavan doesn't get it. It's not Hindu/Muslim. It's pro/anti BJP/Modi. (1/)
Those are the only identities that matter in today's India. Are you with Modi or against him? And it doesn't matter how much you supported his actions in the past. One strike, and you are out. You have to show unwavering loyalty. (2/)
And it's not the government or the party that is expecting this. It is the people of the country.

And if they think you are an "anti-national" (if you have ever criticized Modi's government) they will stop buying the products you endorse or watch your films. (3/)
Read 6 tweets
Apr 24
In five years, #JoeBiden will likely get the #NobelPeacePrize. But not because he did anything proactively for peace.

It is because a #Multipolar World will be more peaceful than a unipolar one, and Biden has done more than anyone else (albeit unwittingly) to further that. (1/n)
The US-led #sanctions against #Russia in response to the #UkraineRussiaWar have forced countries around the world to abandon the US dollar as a medium of trade. This is forcing the rest of the world (non-West) together. Banning Russia from #swift was most important in this. (2/n)
#India and #China desperately need oil. Because of sanctions, Russia is providing oil at cheap rates to both. Russia has now become India's largest source of oil, displacing Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Chinese imports of Russian oil have also zoomed upwards. (3/n)
Read 18 tweets
Apr 16
There are many liberals who were first shocked about the encounter killing of #AsadAhmed and then horrified by the killings of #AtiqAhmed and #AshrafAhmed in custody. I count myself as a liberal, too, but I find these criticisms bereft of logic.

A 🧵 to explain why.

(1/n)
We would all like our justice system to operate with full due process. But that it doesn't is shown best by the fact that the term "encounter killing" is unique to India. You don't hear this term in Western countries. Outside India, these are known as #extrajudicialkillings (2/n)
Liberal commentators have denounced the killings of these three gangsters without due process as the complete failure of the law and order system. They are right. But this failure is not new. The first encounter killing in Mumbai happened in 1982 in Wadala.

(3/n)
Read 11 tweets

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