The perverse morality of Bangladeshi society shows transparently in this case: sleeping around is horrifying, yet burning people alive on the streets and buses never shocks, and the perpetrators are voted into office again and again. Nobody recalls that in opposition, the governing party used morally dubious methods to unseat the ruling party. Bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred politics receives a complete stamp of approval: disapproval descends on the premature loss of hymen.
The other extreme case comes mostly from America. During the pandemic, crowds of Americans in 30 of the 50 state capitals protested against stay-at-home orders, with Donald Trump urging them on to "liberate" their states. The far-right spied an opportunity to spread propaganda and get its message across. "They have carried out Zoom-bombings (ie, interrupting video-conference meetings), encouraged others to infect police officers and Jews and sought to disrupt government activities, including New York City's 311 line for non-emergency information and National Guard operations." Some have attempted terrorist acts. On April 6th, for the first time, the State Department labelled a white-supremacist organisationthe Russian Imperial Movement (RIM)as a terrorist group. While the vast majority of protesters are ordinary Americans, demonstrations against state over-reach has drawn "radical libertarians, militiamen and Second Amendment die-hards who worry that lockdowns will lead to tyranny and the confiscation of firearms." The Second Amendment itself sounds bizarre to foreigners: it runs counter to the notion of the state possessing a monopoly of violence. No doubt that was the intention: to reduce that monopoly. The protests have equally confused outsiders who think that the participants are muddled in their thinking, or worse.
The pandemic has engendered conspiracy theories: from the claim that the virus is not as bad as reported to the claim that public officials and government bodies like the CDC are not to be trusted. More disturbing are the anti-vaxxers who now link stay-at-home orders and the hoped-for-vaccine as assaults on liberty and freedom. Heidi Munoz Gelisner, a leader in anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protests, told the New York Times, "we have always been about freedom." (It must be noted, in passing, that anti-vaxxers are also to be found in the Dutch Bible Belt.)
To recapitulate a previous observation: " Free speech, media freedom and internet freedom are least important in the world's biggest democracy and also in one of its youngest - India and Tunisia, respectively, according to Pew. Only 32% Indians believe it is very important that people can say what they want without government censorship; only 37% feel similarly about the media reporting the news without government censorship; and a measly 25% believe it is important for people to be able to use the internet without Big Brother breathing down your collar. The respective figures for Tunisia are 33, 32 and 27%; for Sweden, they are 83, 82 and 80% and for America, 77, 80 and 71%.
Government-as-problem is a view that won't or can't be shared in places like Bangladesh. For most of us, government is the solution, and there can never be too much government. Born taxpayers are unlikely to hold a different view.
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