Alagan Elavalagan, September 9, 2018
For some political powers, divide-and-conquer is the tool to rule. This uncaring approach enables the conqueror to distract the conquered, and to further weaken their forces if confrontations are induced between the divided parties by the conqueror. Carefully harbored and prolonged infights between these divided parties may even free the ruler from unwanted competitions and uprisings for a long time. In most cases, these induced fights continue to burn the divided parties even after the conqueror has left. This tool has been well used by the alpha-nations (superpowers) throughout history to rule the conquered or occupied lands.
But the present-day alpha-nation, the United States of America, somehow divided itself into two camps; one on the right and another on the left. Initially, only the politicians in America camped into two sides, in the name of party-politics based democracy. But the division did not stop there. It has grown into a monster that America may never recover from. Now that monster has turned the United States of America into ‘one system, two countries’; a democracy between the right-wing and the left-wing nations. And the wall between these right and left-wing nations is getting thicker by the day.
For a long time, Democratic and Republican party politicians in America have drawn the line to differentiate their ways of governing the country. But the citizens and the public entities of the US continued to monitor both sides, without any premeditated bias, and then only treated them according to their merits. Most importantly, most of the mainstream journalism remained partition free, or at least relatively free to serve the public in a productive manner. This had been the most important difference between countries like the United States of America and corrupted third-world countries. But things are changing and keep changing in the US very fast, and possibly no one can stop it. A growing number of Americans don’t read the other side, don’t watch the other side, and don’t listen to other side anymore and that not a solid foundation for democracy. This will lead to failed democracy, like the other third-world democracies.
In the absence of individually natured independent journalism, the members of the big-box media enterprises in the US slowly joined the divide-and-conquer feast. It is normal for the political parties to have their own propaganda news outlets. But the mainstream journalism that is supposed to inform the public with all they need to know and without any filtering has turned into extended private propaganda machines now. Profit through controlled crowds is the only motive for the big-box media enterprises. America’s big-box media enterprises, both the left and the right, are virtually political madrasas. And any journalist that crosses the left-right propaganda line or goes independent will go belly up immediately. Microphone, camera, airtime, columns all will be taken away from any journalist who fails to synchronize with the big-box media enterprises. There are some ex-members of big-box media enterprises who have already vanished after they failed to synchronize with their enterprise masters.
Though it is hard to pinpoint the fault point, democracy and freedom of speech fuel the fire in America. Freedom of speech is beautiful only when it converges the ideas into a fruitful future. Instead, freedom of speech in America becomes utterly useless, even deadly, when it diverges the ideas further and divide the citizens along the political fault-line permanently. A picture of third world political journalism is on the rise in the US.
After the politicians and the journalists, the public servants such as police, armed forces, intelligence department employees, and external affairs department employees are also slowly dragged into the partitioned political war. That is too characteristic of a third world nation. In a corrupt third-world, it is normal for the ruling party to promote the public servants who support the ruling party and punish those who don’t. In return, for their own survival, public servants gradually learned to camouflage their views and go with the ruling party of the time, even if the ruling party goes misguided, wrong, corrupt or criminal. No one can be surprised to see that kind of environment coming to the US slowly.
America has not been the only alpha-nation this world has had. There is a list of them in our recorded history alone. All the previous alpha-nations rose from the bottom and then, for one reason or another, went where they came from. Death to an alpha-nation can be caused by the enemies outside, enemies within, or combination of both.The primary enemies that seem to be bringing down America are the enemies within.
The United Kingdom was the last alpha-nation we had before the US. The British Empire was called the empire on which the sun never sets. Today that is not the case; it has lost most of its might. It too, never declared it was about go down. But now we know the United Kingdom may not be even in the first three powers. After the UK, came the current alpha-nation: The United States of America. (The USSR cannot be seen an alpha-nation since it never built a healthy economy though it was a super military power and had a very good pool of smart people. Domination in defense, economy (finance) and knowledge (education) are the three-primary foundation for an alpha-nation). Interestingly, during the Hindu festival of Navaratri (literally nine-nights), Hindus pray to Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge), Lakshmi (goddess of wealth) and Durga (goddess of strength), three days each.
The Unites States of America is now slowly joining that the pack of crumbling alpha-nations.Possibly, America’s peak of its might has been in the past, somewhere before the dot com burst in 2000.
The next alpha-nation, China, is not far behind. China has been building its economy, knowledge and defense slowly but steadily for last three decades or so.