The View from Afar on Trumpistan
Nothing, perhaps, makes you feel as isolated and powerless as watching your home and country go through mind-warping stupidity and veer towards fundamentalism and autocracy while you labor abroad, 10,000 miles away from family. It’s like watching your own life on video, while living it elsewhere, a parallel existence. The similarities between where I am now – Kazakhstan – and where I am from – the US – are becoming more and more pronounced. Unfortunately.
This country has not been noted for its embracing of democratic institutions. It is euphemistically referred to as a “one-party” democracy, with that one party being the plaything of one person, the current president. One man who forwards a nationalist agenda, bullies opposition, eradicates them when necessary, does not believe in a free press, freedom of speech, freedom of the right to assemble, monitors members of target religions, seeks to eradicate labor rights, fronts a group of aging oligarchs who run the country through “elected” proxies and who control the majority of the country’s wealth and resources, and has close ties to Russia, though these are strained at the moment.
Which country does the above mini-screed refer to? Hmmm….
Nothing, perhaps, makes you feel as isolated and powerless as watching your home and country go through mind-warping stupidity and veer towards fundamentalism and autocracy while you labor abroad, 10,000 miles away from family. It’s like watching your own life on video, while living it elsewhere, a parallel existence. The similarities between where I am now – Kazakhstan – and where I am from – the US – are becoming more and more pronounced. Unfortunately.
This country has not been noted for its embracing of democratic institutions. It is euphemistically referred to as a “one-party” democracy, with that one party being the plaything of one person, the current president. One man who forwards a nationalist agenda, bullies opposition, eradicates them when necessary, does not believe in a free press, freedom of speech, freedom of the right to assemble, monitors members of target religions, seeks to eradicate labor rights, fronts a group of aging oligarchs who run the country through “elected” proxies and who control the majority of the country’s wealth and resources, and has close ties to Russia, though these are strained at the moment.
Which country does the above mini-screed refer to? Hmmm….
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