Arun, would you run slaves if profit is all? Or is it just you and me, who are so wonderfully ethical?
I don't buy the "propaganda machine" argument. That's like blaming the British for Chinese smoking opium, or the Colombians for the Americans snorting cocaine. Germans liked the Nazis. Of course there was some propaganda, but there's nothing like a willing listener to accept the propaganda.
People line up by the billion to willingly absorb the propaganda of all sorts of charlatans. They WANT to believe it, so the charlatans give them what they want to believe.
Americans want the oil. They want high-paid jobs. They know they are superior, just as Indians are superior to British, Japanese are superior to everyone else, Maori are superior to Pakeha, the French look down their nose at everyone and Bubba the Babbling, Yiwu the Mad and a billion Chinese clones should rule the world.
Ergo, the Americans believe propaganda which says they get the oil, blow up the terrorists and anyone collaterally associated and the Indians and Chinese do NOT get "their" jobs.
As you imply, human nature hasn't changed a lot in the last few centuries.
Look at this propaganda: "Hey, there's a big dude in the sky who runs everything. I went up the mountain and had a private conversation with him and he told me I should run a religion and tell youse what to do and that you should give me money and the girls". People flock by the billion! They love it. They are in the club, the others are out, they get a piece of the action, the bad guys get the burning at the stake.
If you can get people lined up for that, you can get them to go along with some jingoistic nationalism at the drop of a dime, or at least a $20.
<Till 1750 China and India contributed a huge chunk of world's GDP and have supported huge populations. All the diversity and richness of Indian life and culture predates the British arrival. >
Until 1750, the USA was run by Chinese emigrants living in wigwams hunting buffalo. The world's GDP before 1750 involved growing rice, barley and wheat, catching fish, some farming of cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks and goats. With a bigger population, of course China and India had a bigger GDP.
Then capitalism, free enterprise, science, habeas corpus, financial systems and all that good stuff was invented in Europe and especially in Britain and mostly in England. Away they went! England was the workshop of the world. Not in the sense of China which is now the workshop of the world, but in a low-paid sweatshop sense, rather than a creative technologically driven high-paid sense as was the case in the industrial revolution when people abandoned rural life for the premium jobs in the best-paying economy on Earth.
Of course India and China had lots of culture. Smart people don't just sit in the dirt. They come up with things. But being suppressed by Big Boss Man who takes everything, there's not a lot they can do except tinker with culture. Look how little happened in England while Big Boss Man sat in castles with serfs tilling the dirt and wearing his military uniforms.
<The Puritans (and other refugees) from Europe were trying to acquire Liberty from the monopoly churches there. So it had a special meaning to them. In "backward" India, there was the freedom to choose your religion.>
Not really. The emigrants to North America, Oz, NZ, Canada etc were seeking opportunity and prosperity more than freedom from religion. They took their religions with them. Freedom rates low everywhere on Earth. Nowhere is Libertarian or even remotely close to it. The USA is not free, contrary to conventional cant. Nor was it ever free. Sure, there was wild west freedom, but it very quickly became more of the same.
No dalits? There's a lot of smoke for no fire: dalits.org
Class, caste and community are complex everywhere. That's human nature. Dalits are Marxists? I suppose that's likely as the people at the bottom of the heap like the Marxist propaganda, even though they must secretly know it's propaganda.
One big thing people ignore is the eugenics programmes being run in China and India. In 2000 years, there are two things left - knowledge and DNA. India has the world's biggest eugenics programme running [in a single country, though we are actually all just one big 6 billion person eugenics process]. A billion people seething away.
Knowledge and DNA are the two biggies. India is leading the world in DNA and brain production, with more kilograms of top quality brain produced per year than anywhere on Earth, including China. India isn't producing the knowledge. But the brains is a good effort. There's specialization everywhere these days. Those smarties will soon link up to cyberspace and DNA and knowledge will find each other.
It's not an official programme. It's run at the grass roots. Women and men selecting and breeding, do or die.
The Africans were running a big one too, but AIDS is stopping that one. Indians are more successful.
I note too that Utar Pradesh Brahmins, and related, seem to have a good dose of Ashkenazi Jew DNA which combined with Moroccan/Bedouin would produce the smartest people on the planet.
Unfortunately, they are swamped in a morass of socialist mediocrity. Hopefully that will change and India might yet lead the world. The brains are lurking there. They just need to be combined with Bedouins and turned loose.
Mqurice |
