We, the Citizens
By Hugh & Colleen Gantzer
A word has been added to the vocabulary of Civil Disobedience: Replacement.
A Biden Government team found out who had spear-headed the siege to their Capitol. They were violent people, baying for blood, and determined to overturn the Presidential election. Initial suspicions pointed to fringe groups like the Ku Klux Klan. These, bed-sheet draped bullies ritually hate Blacks, Catholics, Jews, Gays and those who hold a University degree. The average US citizen is “a graduate” of America’s free High Schools and we have had personal experiences of their ill-informed outlook!
Out of this mass of biased Americans have grown vigilante offshoots of the KKK’s hate mantra. They are victims of the vicious and self-serving Fascist tactic of creating an enemy where none exists, whipping up false fears against this mythical creature, and then peddling the idea that their organisation, alone, can defeat this Godzilla.
Naturally, the team investigating the composition of the murdering Capitol invaders thought that the majority of these rioters were such misled, muscle-headed, goons. To the investigating team’s horror they discovered that most of these blood-thirsty besiegers were middle class professionals including some former members of the US Armed Forces!
Bewildered, the team asked itself, “What made these, seemingly, solid, stolid bedrocks of American society behave in such an insane way?” The answer was that these people believed that they were the bedrock of American society and, consequently, they had the right to rule! But social power structures in the US have been changed by the Brown Revolution.
Indians, fleeing the continuing lack of education and advancement opportunities at home, have created the influential Indian-American community. Most of the senior doctors, regularly interviewed by the major US TV channel, CNN, are of Indian origin. In spite of not being WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), their accents revealed that they were as American as Uncle Sam! This, coupled with the sudden ascent of Kamala Harris as the first woman and the first ‘coloured’ person to be a US Vice President, rang alarm bells among white supremacists. Their long-standing dominance of US society was under threat. They were being Replaced!
We have devoted more than half this column to this strange new topic. Does the fear of Replacement also account for much of the curious conduct of our state’s Netas? When our Netas decided to bring forward the heavenly determined dates of the Kumbh by one year, were they driven by a fear of being Replaced? The last CM was abruptly Replaced at the height of a terribly threatening new wave of the virus. Most importantly, he was holding the Health portfolio at that time. So why was he Replaced?
We, and the majority of Uttarakhandis, don’t know who engineered the Replacement of the former CM. Or, even who dared to interfere with the powerful influence of celestial movements. If you believe in the overwhelming influence of astrology on human lives, than the voters have the right to know who dared to risk the dangerous consequences of tampering with such powerful astrological forces. Alternatively, if you do not believe in astrology, then do tell your voters who decided to Replace the original date of the Kumbh with one that would expose millions of our citizens to the murdering influence of the virus. We voters are, of course, aware of the number of religious leaders who have died due to this seemingly rash and culpable Replacement of Kumbh dates.
Finally, every reasonably well informed person is aware that our health services are strained to breaking point. Our doctors, nurses and medical staff are exhausted. Did our responsible Cabinet really believe that it was imperative to Replace the state’s Minister of Health at this critical point? If the Replacement of the CM was so imperative, and the change over so amicable, could not the previous Health Minister have been persuaded to stay on? Or, is it easier to persuade the stars to change their celestial movements than to get Cabinet Ministers to agree in matters of public interest?
If our Netas can answer these questions, we will be happy to hear them. But if they can’t, then their alert voters, will know that they are merely Replaceable Puppets on a String!
(Hugh & Colleen Gantzer hold the National Lifetime Achievement Award for Tourism among other
National and International awards. Their credits include over 52 half-hour documentaries on national
TV under their joint names, 26 published books in 6 genres, and over 1,500 first-person articles, about every Indian state, UT and 34 other countries. Hugh was a Commander in the Indian Navy and the Judge Advocate, Southern Naval Command. Colleen is the
only travel writer who is a member of the Travel Agents Association of India.)
