Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #173 - US Electoral Battles - Of Pimps and Adultresses
(Image by Thomas Skirde from Pixabay)
“No matter how many men you kill, you can't kill your successor.” ― Seneca, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero
The problems in the present always look larger than those faced by our previous generations. We think the world is violent today, but have no idea of the level, monstrosity and depravity of violence in the last 20 centuries.
People were picked up and made to fight to death for mere amusement. Timur in his own lifetime killed 17 million human beings, which was 5% of the world’s population of that time. Genghis Khan killed 40 million human beings, which was 11% of the world’s population. Between them, these monsters killed over 15% of the world’s population!
All that with just swords and spears! No bombs.
Let that sink in.
What we are seeing today is just a fraction of that.
The bigotry of the centuries gone by were as mind-numbing.
Hypatia was the greatest great philosopher, astronomer and mathematician of her time. Her father, Theon of Alexandria, was a remarkable mathematician himself and had studied and worked in Alexandria. It is said that his commentaries and works on Euclid were so authoritative, that whatever we read on Euclid, the mathematician, today, is perhaps from the mind of Hypatia’s father.
IN March of 415, on one of her rides through the city, she was blocked by the believers and as she stepped off her carriage, carnage started. Under the guidance of the Church magistrate, Peter, she was first dragged through the streets to the Church.
In the Church, her clothes were ripped off and with the broken pottery pieces, they cut open and flayed her skin. All this happened while she was still breathing.
And then while alive, her eyes were gouged and as she lay dead finally, her body was torn into pieces.
The Church of that time and its writers after that focused on the eroticism of Hypatia.
Not her ghastly murder.
That is why if even today the Palghar saints meet the same fate, then we are ourselves to blame.
For, in the beginning of 300 AD, no one could have believed in Alexandria that the traditions of scholarship enriched by Archimedes, Euclid, Eratosthenes (calculated the circumference of Earth), Aristarchus (heliocentric model of Solar system), Hipparchus (astronomer), and Calimachus (poet) could ever go away.
However, by the beginning of 500 AD, no one could have believed that such a civilization and society and its scholars had even existed!
We have far better situation today than our previous generations had. Let us learn to bring the world to a much better place.
Not keep complaining about our misfortune, that has been a natural phenomenon in most of the human history.
US election when pimps and adulteress were hurled around
In the 1828 US elections, one of the Presidential contenders, the US president at the time and running for another term was accused of pimping out an American girl to the Russian Czar. Meanwhile, the wife of the contender was called a “convicted adulteress.” That was because she had married the contender before her divorce with her previous husband was finalized. Rachel, the wife, died before the contender, who won the Presidency had his inauguration.
"May God Almighty forgiver her murderers, as I know she forgave them, I never can," he announced!
Rachel’s husband who became the President was Andrew Jackson, the 7th US President. The incumbent President who lost the election, and was accused of being a pimp was John Quincy Adams, the 6th US President.
John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams and won his election as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party. When these two parties were together.
And, we think that this election was bad with dirty accusations and innuendos all over.
The American politics was never clean or nice or with nice gentlemen running for Presidents.
Yet, the country has survived. It has fallen and gotten back up all the time. That is how it’s DNA for intense individuality via federalism and rule of the people and not of an aristocrat or a ruler.
That is why the country will not go down so easily.
The problem this time, however, is that the inroads by the outside forces is very deep and extremely compromising. From Congress men and women to the police, the media, and the businesses, the infiltration is devastatingly depressing.
No one can stop the impact of an idea on minds that depend on their thought as the most important tool of insight.
Social media has allowed the disrupting forces to do their job with more precision and much faster than before. And, they have the money this time.
That is the scary part.
the gridlock and the divisions
If the current direction of the states that are taking forever to get their tallies in place is any indication, then we will see very close, almost equal electoral votes on both sides.
This tells you the battle between the media and the private networks in terms of sharing the message and the credibility of either. That despite all the attempts to bury and ban one side - apart from the rampant electoral fraud - it still emerged strong enough to almost beat the other party.
It also tells you another thing that is a critical concern for the future of the United States. It is no longer united.
It’s torn through the middle into two.
There is no meeting ground.
Either you are on this side of 270 or that side. There is no one left whose heart bleeds for the United part of the States anymore.
And this interview by Tulsi Gabbard last year explains the malaise so well.
The streak of independence and self-interest which helped the US democracy to always fend for itself may actually become the very reason for its downfall. Because of the chasm that has torn the entire edifice into two halves.
Lebo said results could be several days late, because each state is in charge of running the election in its own jurisdiction. “And then within states, counties can do it differently,” he explained. “So you have different rules for how you can vote, different rules for when you can go, different rules for how votes are to be counted.” This means in some states, ballots received by mail after election day will not be accepted. These states, Lebo explained, will likely have all of the votes counted on election night. “But some states will allow votes that are put in the mail by election day that will still be coming in afterwards,’ he said. “And then some states will have provisional ballots that they will still be counting for days afterwards as they sort things out.
“So it could be a mess.” (Source)
With different systems, partisan establishments and mindsets, and no central authority to call the shots; the chances are that any finality to the elections this time may not even happen.
It may remain a permanently tainted election!
An election whose results will tear apart people far more than the campaigns that led us to this point.
No real conclusive winner, who will always be shrouded in controversies and lack of credibility for his entire tenure. And, no matter what he does, he will never be accepted.
The next President will end up tearing this country apart by his mere presence. For, he will remind the followers of his opponent of how he got there.
When managing just over 200 million voters has made the American system to break down so spectacularly, the losers in India - the egregious and shameless people who still insist on being called journalists have this to say.
It is as if this woman is either smoking her brains out or has been lying under a dark rock for the last many years.
She actually has the nerve to compare the Indian election with over 4 times the size of voters and system with that of the US.
I know when needs to deliver when one is paid enough. But like this?!
nota bene
Corona Capital: The Delhi High Court Thursday rebuked the Arvind Kejriwal government over the rising cases of COVID-19 in the national capital and stated that the city could soon become ‘corona capital of the country’. Observing that the Delhi government has gone completely “haywire” on the pandemic, the two-judge bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad pulled up the AAP govt for taking the health of the citizens for a ride. It said that it would deal with this issue separately. (Source)
Hammer headed fighters: France has agreed to equip Indian Rafale fighters with air-to-surface Hammer all-weather smart weapons apart from air-to-air MICA, METEOR missiles, and air-to-ground SCALP stand-off weapon. The Hammer is a fire and forget weapon that can be launched from a very short range to a very long range of 70 kilometers without the availability of GPS and has a high resistance to jamming and target location errors. According to senior officials, the Hammer contract was signed between the two governments in September 2020 and the weapons in large numbers will be delivered to the Golden Arrows Squadron of Indian Air Force station in Ambala by the end of this month. (Source)
India vaccine by February: A government-backed Covid-19 vaccine could be launched as early as February - months earlier than expected - as last-stage trials begin this month and studies have so far shown it is safe and effective. Bharat Biotech, a private company that is developing COVAXIN with the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), had earlier hoped to launch it only in the second quarter of next year. (Source)
Exodus from the US: it appears many are ready to throw in the towel and get out of the United States. International Living has seen a 1,605% surge in traffic over the last four months on its website mapping out how to leave the U.S. From the pandemic to a contentious election season, one can only guess at why many may be thinking about packing their bags for good. (Source)
Electoral battles on the streets: At least 60 protesters taking part in a march against President Trump were arrested in Manhattan on Wednesday evening as the nation waited a second night for an outcome to the presidential election. The arrests occurred at around 8 p.m. as protesters made their way through streets in the borough’s West Village neighborhood. Fires had been set in areas where protesters were gathered, according to a New York Police Department spokesman. The spokesman didn’t say if protesters had set the fires. (Source)
Black Tiger: An extremely rare black tiger has been spotted in India by a stunned animal lover. The species, otherwise known as the melanistic tiger, can only be found in Odisha, India, and experts claim there are only seven to eight of the animals left in the state. Amateur photographer Soumen Bajpayee pictured the predator, which is on the verge of extinction, in eastern Odisha. The melanistic black tigers are only found in Odisha state and their numbers have drastically declined in recent years, according to a 2018 Tiger Census Report. The majority of the black tigers can be found in the Simplipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha. The reserve first reported the presence of melanistic tigers in 2007. (Source)
questions of life
Seeking is about asking questions. But it is also about listening to your inner self and coming to destinations when you see them.
Spirituality is the journey of a skeptic. Not a cynic. The problem with most people who are the so-called rationalists, if they aren’t ‘bought’ as they are in India, is that they are cynics.
Here is an interesting small TED video with some great some lazy questions. But the insights are worth going into. Highly recommend this.
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