What is wrong with America

It's such a pity that the whole world is in a mess. It was created by a singe nation. America. The greatest country in the world has led the world into a mess that was completely uncalled for. For decades we have revered America and aped everything American. Now suddenly the whole world wakes up to realize that most of what they so proudly espoused was actually a pile of filth. A hell of a lot was wrong with America and no one ever realized it.

There is no denying that Americans have been pioneers in a vast majority of fields. Their values of individualism and enterprise have given the world a lot of what it holds dear in terms of true advancement. But that doesn't give a nation the licence to engineer disaster. And that is what America has repeatedly done during the course of its dominance of the world. It has created unprecedented crises time and again.

America, for all its cries about being the champion of democracy and responsible leadership was the first and only nation to use a nuclear weapon against the civilians of another nation. The Atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the origin of the nuclear arms race. Then came Vietnam where America conclusively proved that it doesn't deserve to be the self-righteous leader of the free world that it claims it is. Iraq and Abu Ghraib were shameful corroborations of the irresponsibility of the Americans.

The current financial crisis is America's doing. A nation that doesn't save and spends what the rest of the world invests in it is also the same nation that claims it has the right business lessons for us. America is a nation founded as much on credit as it claims to be on 'liberty and justice for all'. Borrow to spend is the philosophy that the Americans have followed for so long and so shamelessly while driving the world into an economic cesspool. If we claim that an economy is booming just because people are borrowing more to spend more, then there is something fundamentally wrong with the Economics that the world has taught itself.

BIG is a synonym for America. Because Americans want everything big in their lives. They drive obscenely large inefficient fuel guzzling cars, eat unhealthily large meals, carry extra-large bodies and do just about everything on a big, albeit unsustainable scale. This is what they have taught the rest of the world through their capitalist corporations and their political dominance. Even the most staunch capitalist would admit that capitalism is founded on the twin emotions of greed and fear. The interplay of greed and fear is what fuels the economic cycles in the world today. But the scale on which these interactions have been affecting the world order in current times is simply appalling. Screw ups of the magnitude that we are witnessing today would never have been possible without the "BIG" thinking that Americans typically bring to the table.

Every culture has its own unique traditions that get ingrained in its psyche over a period of time. A distinct identity of a race evolves from the experiences that the race collectively participates in and the reactions of people from that race to what happens to them. America has thus developed a culture of free-thinking individualism. Americans, through their historical upbringing have a sense of unbridled ambition that is fuelled by a desire to do more for themselves. No holds barred consumerism is only a by-product of this tendency that Americans have developed over the decades.

I do not dispute the fact that there is much to learn from our American friends. They are probably the only civilization that truly respects the sanctity of the individual and holds his rights to be sacrosanct. Americans respect enterprise and risk-taking more than any other people in the world. That having been said, one would do well to remember that no single model of living would fit the whole world today. We are all distinctly diverse in our own ways and socio-economic models can never be imposed on any race without disturbing results. We need to come up with our own models of living and working based on the cultural identity and values of our own race. There are things that we are certainly better at that we must seek to leverage in order to hold our own and excel as a nation or a civilization.

Last, but not the least: God seriously bless America.

Chuck Norris

I've always wanted to be Chuck Norris. Why?

1. Some kids piss their name in the snow. Chuck Norris can piss his name into concrete.
2. Leading hand sanitizers claim they can kill 99.9 percent of germs. Chuck Norris can kill 100 percent of whatever the fuck he wants.

3. Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands. They are now The Islands.
4. Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.
5. Chuck Norris' calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Chuck Norris.
6. Chuck Norris can speak braille.
7. Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
8. Chuck Norris doesn't cheat death. He wins fair and square.
9. Chuck Norris can delete the Recycle Bin
10. Chuck Norris can slam revolving doors.

The list is endless. Keep watching this space for more Chuck Norris facts!!

Living beyond your means

Just when you think you've seen enough of the present financial turmoil that the world has gotten itself into - another snippet of news flashes across indicating that yet another giant has fallen and yet another index has breached an all-time low. The real surprise these days is when markets are in the green. And even then that is always accompanied by a feeling that this is only temporary and that things are going to be bleak again soon. If you ask experts they will give you a hundred esoteric reasons for the current crisis. Most of those are likely to involve cryptic academic terms(well cryptic to people like me anway) like 'subprime', 'liquidity', 'leveraged', 'toxic asset' and the like. But what no one will be willing to tell you is that we are simply living beyond our means.

I have indicated in previous posts too that the greatest problem with our lifestyle today is that it is unsustainable. For a number of reasons. To start with, we simply do not have enough resources to support the kind of life that we're selling to more and more people by the day. By creating an aspirational lifestyle modeled on cowboy capitalism we're simply stretching the limited supplies of most everything that we have on this planet. Space, clean air, fuels, water - you name it. To further complicate matters man invented something truly ingenious to masquerade as a resource - money. Look how we've built an entire industry out of just that. What every self-respecting Wall Streeter will tell you is that he manages money for a living. So much fuss about something that isn't even backed by gold anymore. Yes, the Gold Standard has long been replaced by Fiat Currency. In other words if you hold a billion dollars of cash in your account and feel mighty pleased with yourself, don't - it's just paper.

What is even more baffling is that some of the people who claim to be champions of the free market and the pioneers of the super-capitalist economic model, find themselves in a soup today. America is crumbling, and how. Make no mistake. This is the very nation whose policies and lifestyles are aped by most of the developed and delveloping world today. And one fine day you wake up to realize that they're wrong anyway. What the Americans have managed to do for so long and so desultorily is live off the rest of the world's money. By promising the world that America is the best place to put your money, they have bloated themselves on the savings of effectively the whole of the global economy. And now they're going down, it's only natural that they should take us down with them.

What if things had been different? What if someone drove some sense into the heads of those hedonistic Americans early enough? What if their politicians weren't the spineless, goading buffoons who simply refused to say at any point of time that the party was over. What if we didn't idolize Wall Street managers who seemed to be the perfect success stories till only yesterday? What if...

The fact remains that there is an urgent need to rethink the lifestyles and economic models that we have been espousing as superlative for the past century. Anyone who has watched 'An Inconvenient Truth' or knows more than zilch about the environment will tell you how we are at the crossroads on this planet today - we could take the bumpier road which entails responsible living or we could take the glistening tarmac that leads to a planet ravaged and overstretched by the gluttons that its inhabitants would have become by then. The choice is ours to make.

The Ob-Man Cometh

I've been planning to write about Barack Obama for some time now. Just haven't brought myself to doing it. I started out having mixed opinions about this man - and my opinions were coloured by the fact that India's equations with the Republican establishment in Washington are at an all-time high and that India stands to gain significantly from a continuation of that regime in the United States under the leadership of John McCain. But Obama, the man, has changed it all.

The story of Obama is one that holds universal appeal to anyone who thinks that democracies really work and that in a land of freedom like the USA or for that matter, India, anyone with the right attitude and skills can make it... and make it big. Obama stands for what he has preached to millions on his campaign trail - Hope. His two books - The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from my father are said to be remarkable memoirs of an even more remarkable man. They bring to light the challenges faced by most anyone who is born into a life akin to that of Obama - a life of struggle and trials. It didn't help that he was an 'African-American' in a predominantly white nation. What truly brings out his character is that Obama has succeeded thus far, in spite of the odds that he has been faced with.

The story of his life, at least the initial part, is not unlike that of any young man facing many challenges - financial instability, experimenting with drugs and the like. What distinguishes Obama is the choices he made when faced with the same situations that all of us are faced with. Obama, for me, is the greatest beacon of hope in the 'free' world. While he has had his share of not-so-proud moments along this campaign, he's more than made up for those few and far between occasions. And yes, I hope that he becomes the next President of the United States. Despite the fact that he may not be Nuclear-Deal friendly. Despite the fact that he may clamp down on outsourcing. A good man deserves to be on top. Let us not believe otherwise because of our personal prejudices.

Mea Culpa

Free India is Sixty-one. It's been an Odyssey of sorts - a long and eventful journey for a nation that is truly unique in its identity. That identity too has undergone a transition. We have moved on from being a land that was the spiritual watershed of the world to one that is on the brink of modernity - we're both proud of our past and secure of the present. We have great hopes for the future and a passion to prove ourselves on that stage of the world. But as much as we might want to take heart from the fact that we have moved forward by leaps and bounds in a number of areas since 1947, there are just too many departments where we have shamed ourselves. No. I will not go into a detailed autopsy of the nation's failures. What I will do is fix blame. And I am convinced that the blame lies squarely with one person. Me. India isn't what it should be today because of me, because of my inaction as a citizen. I have failed. And so has every other human being who resides in this country, smug in her air of self-righteousness. The real culprits are those that sit in the comfort of their homes and complain about everything that is not what it should be. We're all wimps. Resigned to our lives of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in a nation where we see only problems and no solutions. The roads aren't the way they should be? Well so what're you doing about it? Have you filed an RTI petition to find out what went wrong? The quality of public health is dismal? Have you done anything to ensure that things change? Well if I haven't, then I also lose my right to complain. Democracy, my friends, is a two-way street. Your duty is not limited to voting once in five years. If you want all the services that you expect from a functional democracy you have to be active enough to ensure that you get them. It is the bare minimum expected from a citizen. The obvious question that comes into mind here is: How can I, a single helpless soul make any difference to a whole system that's composed of countless people and has a lot of inertia going for it? It's simple really. Do your bit and encourage others to do the same. That's the essential nature of a democracy isn't it? The whole thing works on the assumption that everyone will do their bit and that all of it will add up to something larger than the sum of its parts. James Surowiecki calls it 'The Wisdom of Crowds'. As part of a crowd of a billion plus people, all you have to do is make sure you do the bare minimum expected from you. If everyone does the same, there's simply no way the will of the people won't prevail.

Capitalist Coffee

I have nothing against coffee. Or against capitalism for that matter(well most of it anyway). But I can't stand the way the two combine to represent that which is not right in our lives and times. Truth be told I like my coffee. I just don't like the way it's been commercialized into something way cooler than it really is. Coffee is coffee. When you start charging us fortunes for obscure variants of the same darn beans, you're overdoing it. These days people sell coffee as if it's part of a whole new lifestyle. Dude! What kind of loser do you think your customer is? We have better things going on in our lives than your stupid 'thiswillblowyourmind'ccinos.

I especially hate it when you go around telling me that this or that brand of coffee is a specialty that you've imported specially for me from half way around the world. Now hold on a minute. Either of two scenarios is possible here. Either you're lying, in which case eat shit and die. Or you're suggesting that you shipped something as trite as coffee over thousands of miles just to sell it to eager dimwits who'll roll their eyeballs and lap up your pseudo-special cup of capitalist coffee. In which case don't bother selling your stuff to me. I ain't buying. Literally.

And it's not just coffee. These days everyone from everywhere in the world wants to sell us everything. There are guys who want to sell us three McMeals a day. And unfortunately for a few of us, they manage to stay in business. What most of us fail to understand here is that we're being sold a lifestyle which is not only unhealthy, but also unsustainable. For all of capitalism's great boons, this is something which is simply not acceptable. You can't try to get the whole world to eat your way simply because you can sell it cheap by leveraging your huge industrial supply chains. It'll screw up the planet. If you think about it, you're suggesting that food which is consumed at Point A be produced and shipped over from Point B, on the other side of the globe, just because someone's figured out a way to do the whole thing profitably. There's something so inherently wrong about this that in the long run, it could challenge a whole lot more than just our health.

To be continued...