debates

It’s lonely knowing you’re right. You’re met relentlessly by the simple-minded and trite. They never seem to wonder what’s right or wrong. We just know. 

  Dear Mr A K Balan I am writing to you because I feel that it is my duty to disabuse you of the ideas you seem to harbour of, and in the name of, Indian nationalism (and not just bark at the portentous approach of the peddlers of ‘nationalism’, the Hindutvavaadis). You are a […]

Create the meme. And keep repeating it. Don’t worry, Americans don’t read, research and have the attention span of a gnat. They don’t question connections alleged as to Putin and Russia somehow affecting and throwing the election. Why would a voter care what Podesta’s emails contained or alleged? It’s preposterous and redefines specious. And your MSM question not and nothing. 

Verity. Donald Trump will likely be one of the greatest Presidents of our republic. And Obama one of the most ineffectual. Meanwhile, Hillary apologists are trying to reconfigure the logic anent Trump’s appointees. They’ve nothing to say since abandoning the Russian hack bit.

   I am hoping to protest at whichever venue of the International Film Festival of Kerala that I can manage to go to, wearing a printed badge saying ‘DEAR SUPREME COURT, NO LOVE CAN BE FORCED’. Yesterday, six people who did not stand up when the national anthem was played were arrested. Sanghi elements and […]

Prolegomenon. Let us begin with an immutable fact of human behavior, specifically contemporary American behavior. Americans simply hate the truth. The troublesome truth, the uncomfortable and (dare I remind you) the inconvenient truth. Truth that bristles and frightens and awakens and piques. Truth that confronts us with the lie of contemporary fable masked as history. History, as Tolstoy reminds us, would be a wonderful thing if only it were true. Truth would be a wonderful thing if only it were pleasant.

Fake News? That’s redundant.

Fake News and Alt-Right are the latest incantations of the attempt to reroute discussion and illumination of fraud and governmental deceit. Before them was the granddaddy of deflection: the conspiracy theory. 

Learn to work the saxophone • I play just what I feel • Drink Scotch whiskey all night long • And die behind the wheel
In my years I have never seen anything quite like this. And for good reason.
Who am I? I spell out simply.

The most beautiful words ever enunciated and the most surely under threat of extinction. Broadly inclusive yet exquisitely imprecise. Magnificently vague in coverage yet the first line of defense against tyranny of expression and thought and the expression of the simple idea. The troublesome idea. The noxious and noisome. This is the essence of who we are as a republic. Let me explain and give examples accordingly.