Arundhati Roy on elites and the State in India:
[T]his democracy has created a situation in which the elites are fused with the state; they see and think like the state. They always want to be ministers or policy makers. They are never citizens who are angry or outraged or protesting. They’re never at the at the receiving end of power; they are at the disbursing end of power.
Sound familiar?
This from an interview with Roy in the new (March 2009) issue of The Progressive.
Roy has also written eloquently about the attacks in Mumbai: “What we’re experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds.”
One wonders: if Mr. Obama sends more American soldiers to Afghanistan and leaves 50,000 in Iraq, what will our own next experience with blowback look like? And what will the cheerleading of our own media elites sound like? Foolish questions. We already know.