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The India comment I made referred to their prism through which many have been able to see Western culture is the West. The highly educated Indians I meet (which are the vast majority whom I meet) use English with a decidedly British slant (grammar, vocabulary).
Hence the influence as they enter this century as a country with an overlooked but massive potential (possibly greater than China, in my opinion). As to whose language precedes whose, I know English is a latecomer, no joke. Isn't Sanskrit the mother of all known major languages? I'm not sure.
As to no power ever being benevolent, I agree. As they act in their own self interest, giants swat a LOT of ants.
Are mitigation, participation, and communication mere bagatelles?
I think not.
My adopted cousins told me of many more horrors than just the plague visited upon the First Nation Peoples', as they call themselves. Children separated from their parents, forced into schools where whippings would occur if they spoke their mother tongue. 40+ years ago, that one in particular remains a bill that cannot be paid.
My cousin, a fairly large man and full blooded Algonquin, greets me with a hug and a wry "Okay, you are one white man who can stay on my land. The rest of you go home!"
Still, 30 years ago, could Obama have been a serious candidate?
I think our progress, while still bloody, is informed by those very mistakes of the past.
Serious discussion is occurring on alternative fuels in the US election debate. It's no longer left to the far, far, far out left, who essentially demand a return to an agrarian society.
Commercial spaceflight is around the corner.
I think Obama has a chance to be a tipping point (as defined in Malcolm Gladwell's excellent book of the same name) as a Connector & Salesman.
I think Clinton was starting in the right direction, until he was hounded by a hysterical right to sticking his dick into everything he saw. Well, okay, he would have done that anyway, but I could care less.
Then Bush.*Cue dramatic music*
Did the Presidency become something you bequeath to your retarded children? Unfucking believable.
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Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
-Noam Chomsky
Love is a verb, not a noun.
-My Mom
The function of genius is to furnish cretins with ideas twenty years later.
-Louis Aragon, "La Porte-plume," Traite du style, 1928
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