A somber thanksgiving

A few years ago, when I was living in India, my mom, sister and I visited the Gateway of India, a beautiful arch that represents the heart of Mumbai. On a given day, one can see people from all walks of life conduct business there and it’s just a wonderful, bustling place. While there, we decided to visit the nearby Taj Mahal hotel. We may not have been able to afford eating there but the building itself is magnificent. So, Wednesday’s terrorist attacks on the hotel, as well as 7 other locations hits a little too close to home.

Watching the news coverage has been a little surreal. The ethnocentrism of the various media outlets is disgusting. Every major broadcast has prominently discussed the deaths of Americans and other Westerners while adding the deaths of the brown people as an afterthought. It is being speculated that the attackers sought out those with American and British passports, even though there is no official evidence for this. This may come as a shock to Westerners, particularly those in the US, but not everything that happens in other countries concerns us. Believe it or not, developing countries are autonomous entities that run independent of Western involvement.

Even with all the chaos though, Indians have come through. The people of Mumbai, particularly, have seen much worse (like with the ‘92 Mumbai riots) and with each attack, the city residents’ have picked up the pieces and moved on. Resilience is now a way of life.

If, and this is a huge if, Pakistan is involved in these despicable terror attacks, India must say enough. Enough of talking to a country that has repeatedly reneged on peace negotiations, enough of dealing with an administration that is not serious about goodwill and diplomacy. India should not negotiate with a country that harbors terrorism and hate towards others. At the same time, I hope that the response is not some sort of military strike, either in Kashmir or Pakistan. History is on India’s side and it must show restraint and strength.

-Indira

The old gang’s back!

Yesterday, President-elect Obama revealed his core economic team and mercifully, Larry Summers will not be our Treasury Secretary. That’s the only silver lining, though. Instead of Summers, Obama has chosen Tim Geithner to head the Treasury and this selection is rather bewildering not least of because Geithner was a major architect of financial deregulation, the source of our economic worries. Same with Summers. Even more disturbing about Obama’s economic team is that it demonstrates the influence that Robert Rubin, former Citigroup chairman and Clinton Treasury Secretary, has on Obama. Both Summers and Geithner are protégés of Rubin and are just a handful of economic appointees with deep connections to Rubin. Such validation and recognition of Rubin comes at a time when Citigroup faces serious financial woes, largely his doing.

When he was Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent.

That being said, Obama’s centrism is not a major surprise. To those following his campaign closely, it was apparent that Obama and McCain weren’t all that different on economic issues. So, it is pretty funny that some liberal bloggers are in a tizzy over the disconnect between Obama’s supposed progressive rhetoric and his actions. Heh. Clearly, they haven’t been paying attention.

-Indira

Embracing the stupid

I was watching the Colbert Report last night and the interview guest was none other than NYT columnist Thomas Friedman. For the record, there are very few people I deeply dislike and Friedman happens to be one of them. Over the summer, I was forced to review some of his writings for work and believe me, nothing is worth it. First off, Friedman is just an awful writer.

The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that’s guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.

What makes the writing even more painful is the ideas expressed. Friedman’s simple views on globalization, economics and the environment are an embarrassment to his profession. People often forget, however, that Friedman’s biggest ideological failure was his unabashed cheerleading of the Iraqi invasion. All the pre-invasion predictions made by him about creating a democracy in the Middle East have, well…we know how that turned out. Yet, Friedman in all his profound stupidity, is embraced by the media establishment, academia and college students. Why? What exactly about Americans makes us so eager to embrace the simple and the intellectually bankrupt? Moreover, what makes us so willing to forget Friedman’s big blunders, blunders that killed and maimed thousands of Iraqis? Are we so blind to not notice that Friedman is morally culpable for the deaths caused by the invasion insofar as he prominently advocated for the Bush doctrine while attacking anyone who dared disagree with him?

What intellectual hacks like Friedman don’t get is that their views are not created in some vacuum, independent of public policy. Politicians often use the “seriousness” and “nonpartisan” nature of political commentators, Friedman included, to legitimize policy proposals and make them more appealing to the skeptical public. Friedman misused his power as the foremost “foreign policy expert” in the country and advocated for policies that have turned out to produce the biggest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. Yet, he hasn’t paid a price for this.

Friedman’s pathetic track record speaks for itself- he continues to write for a prominent newspaper, secure book deals, appear on TV, speak at colleges and receive fancy commendations. What gives?

-Indira

Obama and identity politics

An interesting debate is brewing over President-elect Barack Obama’s resignation from the Senate recently. With Obama’s departure, there are no blacks in the Senate and there is pressure for Gov. Blagojevich to appoint a black person to replace him. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I’m glad this episode highlights how far we have to go, in terms of racial equality. Particularly after the election, there was this narrative that electing Obama ended a “racial barrier.” We aren’t even close to doing that. Large swaths of the black population still suffer from institutionalized racism, whether it be failing public schools or the criminal justice system. To that end, appointing a black person may help ensure that these issues are addressed.

Still, I’m uncomfortable with the notion that the only way a black person can get elected to the Senate is when another black person drops out. The Senate isn’t a quota system and ideally, we should have a number of minorities in public office. I also don’t want minorities elected to office with the purpose of representing an ethnic or racial constituency. Our public officials represent all Americans and while it is true that some issues (like poverty) affect a disproportionate number if minorities, you don’t have to be black to get that.

No easy answers here…

-Indira

Finally, some good news

I’ve been suffering from a rather serious case of senioritis lately. I’ve been missing classes and I have a 8 page paper due today and I’m only at page 3. Oh, and my IDS column is due in a few hours as well. Yikes. But, there is some good news in the midst of this mayhem. I’ve been accepted to the 2009 Teach for America Corps! Beginning in August 2009, I’ll be teaching middle school math (4th-8th grade) in South Louisiana for two years and I’m stoked. And humbled. The achievement gap statistics in the state are sobering. Worse yet is the grinding poverty.

34,118 children growing up in East Baton Rouge Parish in families who are living below the poverty line. Of these children, 17,059 will graduate from high school by the age of 18 with the math and reading skills of an above-poverty line eighth grader.

I don’t pretend to be a miracle worker here. I know that I will not be able to help all the kids in my classes but for god sakes, I’m going to try. A good day, overall

Bobby Jindal, here I come!!

-Indira

A thank you note for Bush

I wrote most of this column about a month ago but was waiting for the right time to publish it. Well, here it is. An excerpt-

Thank you for drawing attention to the fact that we need a president who respects the Constitution. Indeed, as someone who claims to detest judicial activism, the liberties taken with the laws of the land, including spying on Americans and suspending habeas corpus rights, have been stunning. What better way to repudiate your ideology than to elect a constitutional law professor?
…

On a personal note, as a reformed conservative, thank you for ensuring that I never regret the day I stopped referring to myself as a Republican. Who would have thought that after everything, President Bush was the best thing that ever happened to us liberals?

Read the whole thing here.

-Indira