We know, as our liberal and progressive friends never cease to remind us, that Diversity Is Strength. If you doubt this, you'd better keep your doubts to yourself, if you want to keep your job, or, in the future, stay out of prison. The fact that Diversity Is Strength has, unfortunately, not yet been entirely taken in around the world. In Muslim-majority countries, to be among the 'diverse' is dangerous -- even being diverse-Muslims, like the Ahmadis, is no piece of cake . [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmadiyya_in_Pakistan ] and can even cost you your life [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Ahmadis ] But Diversity is Strength, of course. Let'sall say it together, to drown out the doubts of the rightwing reactionaries: All together now: Diversity is Strength!!! Lest you think that it's only Islam that doesn't seem to appreciate that Diversity is Strength, just cross the border from Muslim Pakistan, where Diverse-Christians and Diverse-not-orthodox-Muslims face persecution, to Hindu India. And here, we find, once again, that Diversity is Strength: [https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/22/india-muslims-coronavirus-scapegoat-modi-hindu-nationalism/] This may be behind a paywall, so I'll quote the first paragraph or two: All together now: DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH!!!! Islamic countries, Hindu countries ... surely there is someplace where the Diverse are not persecuted? How about Buddhism!!!! Many an American hippie airhead took up this lovely, peaceful religion a few decades ago. Surely Buddhists appreciate that Diversity is Strength! So, moving on, we leave Hindu India, and cross over to Buddhist Sri Lanka, where the majority are Sinhalese, but with a mainly-Hindu Tamil minority ('mainly' because there is a significant Christian presence among the Tamils of Sri Lanka). And sure enough, here too, as our liberal/progressive friends chant, Diversity is Strength!!! [QUOTE...by 1977 most Tamils seemed to support the move for independence by electing the Tamil United Liberation Front overwhelmingly The elections were followed by the 1977 riots, in which around 300 Tamils were killed There was further violence in 1981 when an organised Sinhalese mob went on a rampage during the nights of 31 May to 2 June, burning down the Jaffna public library—at the time one of the largest libraries in Asia—containing more than 97,000 books and manuscripts. ... Since 1948, successive governments have adopted policies that had the net effect of assisting the Sinhalese community in such areas as education and public employment. These policies made it difficult for middle class Tamil youth to enter university or secure employment. The individuals belonging to this younger generation, often referred to by other Tamils as "the boys" (Podiyangal in Tamil), formed many militant organisations The most important contributor to the strength of the militant groups was the Black July massacre, in which between 1,000–3,000 Tamils were killed, prompting many youths to choose the path of armed resistance.[/QUOTE] Now ... do I sense a certain uneasiness among the Diversity-is-Strength crowd? Overcome your doubts!!!! All together now ... DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH!!!! This post is too long!!! But there are so many more examples proving the truth of what our liberal/progressive friends believe, that Diversity is Strength! So we'll have to wait before moving back to the Asian mainland, and looking for more examples proving that Diversity is Strength. (And then there's Africa!! Worth a couple of dozen posts, even if two or three countries are put into each post, all proving that Diversity is Strength.)
I just read a book saying that the reason why ethnic riots occur is because of parties using ethnicity for political advantage. When there are more political parties it means diversity is a good thing because they get respected. When there are just two parties and the government doesn’t rely on the votes from the minority, riots happen.
Yes, I would agree with the basic idea that it's politics, political parties, and in particular, demagogic political leaders, who light the fuse. It's not the case that where the terrible pogroms have occurred, the different ethnic groups were always at war with each other. But the potential is there. In fact, you read, over and over again, when journalists interview dazed survivors, something like "I don't understand it ... we always got along well with our [Serb, Croat, Bosniak, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, German, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian, Buddhist, Armenian, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Hutu, etc etc etc] neighbors." But the potential was always there. Once a national politician, perhaps responding to some incident, gives the signal, then the criminal element thinks it has a license to kill, and the peaceful majority are afraid to intervene to stop them. Sometimes decent people try. Here's an example of a very decent man, who ought to be enshrined in the list of martyrs for human decency in the 20th Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Reihl-Kir
We can't do without them. "Elites" will always rule us, because some people are smarter, more aggressive, more able to attract support, than others. The trick is to try to control them so that they don't screw things up for the non-elite. Thus the concepts of limited government, division of powers, Constitutional rights, etc. And: note that many of the really TERRIBLE crimes that the elite commit, are when the 'elite' in question appeals to the worst qualities of the masses of his supporters: all of the nationalist/racist/genocidal leaders from Germany to India to Rwanda, were appealing to the masses of their own tribe. They were displacing earlier elites who had the vision to try to take their multi-tribal situation, and make the best of it, by appealing to something that transcended tribal loyalties. Thus, before Mr Modi in India and his horrible Hindu nationalist party, the national leaders of India were determined secularists, trying to build an India that included all its religious/ethnic groups. It's the only honorable thing you can do, when you find yourself in the leadership of a country that is multi-tribal. It's a situation that has been handed to you by history, and so you try to make the best of it. What I have never understood is, the leaders of a country that was lucky enough NOT to be multi-tribal, who then decided to turn their country into a multi-tribal one. What were they thinking? Did they want some excitement, in otherwise bland and boring lives? If so, they've sure achieved it!
Elites doesn't mean someone in the illuminati. It means like your next door neighbor that goes door to door during elections trying to get support for candidates. In terms of why do people want immigration? Because if you want to expand your workforce you need more people to work. Also soft power is a thing.
Like my next door neighbor? No, it means the Republican owner of a chicken-gutting factory, who doesn't want to pay decent wages to his fellow citizens. He can't move overseas to get things done cheaply, so he brings 'overseas' here. As an abstract proposition, this is neither right nor wrong. This country was built by people from abroad coming here, and becoming citizens and becoming good Americans ... at least as good as the rest of us. With mass illegal immigration from Latin America, that is NOT what is happening now. The Republican base has become aware of it, and is going to stop it if they can. Soft power is indeed a thing. Not sure what you mean by this though. However, it's the main power we should be applying to various nasty countries, which will, with economic growth, also experience a social transformation, undermining the nasty people who rule them. Play the long game.
Exactly. The slow, voluntary, 'diversification' of a nation, with all the diverse bits modernizing into rational democratic culture together -- and with 5% of one kind, 2% of another, 3% of yet another, is one thing. When a nation goes from being nearly 100% of X, to 80% X and shrinking and 20% Y and growing, and where that Y has historical reasons to resent the X, and gets the lowest-paid jobs and living conditions in their new country ... under the conditions of modern communications technology which allows the Y to keep in close touch with its 'homeland' ... then watch out!!! Then there is the issue of 'genuine' refugees ... people fleeing death in their homelands. The fact that the advanced nations have not been able to design a solution that would offer these poor devils a safe haven somewhere is terrible testimony to how far our international civilization has to go.
Yeah I’ll be honest defining elites that way took me a while to wrap my mind around. Technically we’re elites in a way.
