Monday, November 15, 2010

A Sense of Release

Heartening to see the crowds greeting Aung San Suu Kyi the other day on her long-delayed release, and her looking so amazingly well. The worry is that it might result in those who released her from house arrest changing their (small) minds.

Also heartening that the news was 'trending', whatever that means, on Singapore's version of the Yahoo main webpage. In contrast the lady didn't warrant any mention at all on the main page of the American version.

2 comments:

Trebuchet said...

I think all great powers are, by their nature, houses divided against themselves. As their scope of action expands, so to does the chance that various tendencies will turn out to have contrary expressions.

This is especially true as great powers begin to decline. Right now, the US is both a self-proclaimed bastion of democracy and a self-proclaimed driving force of wealth generation through capitalism. The two are contradictory, since one would disenfranchise the other.

So when political prisoners are released via non-US agency, Americans aren't interested — it doesn't score points for either side of the US internal competition. It's not a Repub or Dem triumph and hence is enigmatic to the vast majority, and not even interestingly so.

Brian Connor said...

This analysis is so spot on as to skewer its target for good.