There are a wide variety of reasons that can be explored and discussed but the way you’ve framed the question suggests such a narrow worldview that one feels it would be a wasted effort.

Did you think someone was unaware that India’s use of English stems from colonialism? Because otherwise I don’t understand what you’re saying.

It would be naive to assume otherwise. Most curriculums, including many Western, do not cover colonialism. So there are, as remarkable as it may be to you or me, many who don’t know.

English is a language that is used in certain institutional settings due to the legacy of colonialism. It’s not commonly used by laypeople, especially within regions with common linguistic roots because that would be unnecessary.

Due to it being a particularly diverse region (ethnically, liguistically and culturally) Indian people in India don’t generally refer to themselves as such except when they need to be understood from a foreign perspective. That being said its not really that different from a German referring to themselves as die Deutschen. People in Germany are not running around calling themselves German to each other.

I agree with you. When the language is used, which tends to be within legacy colonial institutions, the term India is used. That’s just not a common circumstance.

It does out of a sense of pragmatism rather than any deeper association to national identity. English is not an indigineous language to India and was enforced upon the populace for a few hundred years. Indian people do refer to themselves as Indian when speaking English, but not when they’re speaking an actual Indian language, which I assume is similar for countries like Germany etc.

*with their anglicized names

India, for example, has been traditionally referred to as Bharat (depending on language root) domestically and among the 100s of languages and dialects used there the name India is never used. Similar to Deutschland and Germany.

Yeah I don’t love that though many Western nations especially the US have a de facto second and third tier population through historical subjugation and predatory capitalist practices (African Americans and Indigineous people come to mind). My overall point being no empire is really “good” and so morality is only one consideration when doing business with a nation. The US entered multiple illegal wars and is committing war crimes in the Carribean today but that does not stop its allies and others from continuing to do trade with them.

Unfortunately you can’t kill an idea. The West dabbled in white supremacy for most of modern history (see race based caste in America and South Africa, race based chattel slavery, phrenology etc) and still does to some degree so Nazism was inevitable in many ways.

Leopold Amery, the empire’s secretary of state for India appealed Churchill for aid as British engineered famines devestated Bengal (such famines killed 100 million people during the colonial era). The great hero of the West responded by calling Indians a beastly people, blaming them for “breeding like rabbits”, saying the diverted grain was better kept for “sturdy greeks” and wished death upon Gandhi.

Amery wrote in his diary: “Naturally I lost patience, and couldn’t help telling him that I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s, which annoyed him no little.”

If these are the people we venerate and we continue to teach incomplete histories, is killing every Nazi going to be enough?

Now is not the time to fall for fearmongering.

I surmise that much of this alarmism around China is to promote continued dependency on the US.

Look at where a friendly relationship with the US has left Canada.

Canada is strong enough to stand on its own two feet. It doesn’t need to be a vassal of the US or China.

But it absolutely can do business with both countries in ways that are domestically beneficial. In fact it would be wise to.

Every empire commits human rights abuses. The US was built on and is expanding their abuses now. The West had no issue building empires on human and drug trafficking (colonialism). Morality is absolutely a factor when we think about who we do business with but it certainly is not the only factor. If we claim it to be the only factor then we are hypocrites.

There was perhaps a naivete around social progress then because economic needs were better met across the board (not for everyone, but on average). The presumption was that social progress would be linear. I was young then so I didn’t know that economic hardship could undo social progress with a snap of the fingers.

It’s Interesting to watch an empire just give up its place at the top of the world order. I can’t say it’s only time it’s ever happened in history but it’s still such a bad look but also not unexpected given how self absorbed Americans had become.

Internal inequality and corruption negatively impacts a nations ability to project power globally. America voted for this. Now we all get to watch China casually walk into the top spot.

Don’t worry it’ll for more than a generations. China is already a peer competitor and what America had going for it was incumbency as the global unipolar hegimon. Trump has openly reliquished this position and, regardless of who succeeds him, it’s not something that can be easily restablished.

Winning goodwill back is almost certainly not going to happen. Even with assurances, other countries will feel as if they’re only one election cycle away from potentially unfair treatment. The only way we go back to American unipolarity is another world war which America somehow gets rich off of like WW2 or achieving artificial general intelligence before anyone else.

I think the leaders of the US understand this which is why they’re pushing for higher military spending everywhere and also going hard on AGI, no matter how far fetched it is in the near future at least.

It’s actually in some ways refreshing in a sense that the US is embracing its role as imperial villain in many peoples stories. Shocking to people that live in America sure but to anyone that has experience with America’s foreign policy as an external entity it seems like America is finally accepting itself for who it really is and embracing its decline in a sort of reverse coming of age manner.

If you’re saying you want a better world for everyone then we’re in agreement.

I won’t speak for people whose parents lived in the West in the 50s, that’s not my experience. But I hope that they also want shared global prosperity and safety, which is not how I’d describe the past 75 years or more.

You’re right but you’ve also framed this in the most inflammatory way possible.

The life being described by OP was very much a privilege of a vast global minority. Sure it’s something everyone should have but it’s not something that’s ever existed for most people.

Is it something that can be had again? Absolutely. But we can dream bigger than bringing it back for just Americans/Westerners (even if the West only got there via exploitation of others).

I appreciate the explanation. It’s important people know the difference. My understanding of communism is that it requires the complete abolition of private property while under a socialism private property and corporations are still permitted.

Cold war era propaganda led to civilizational programming that broke the minds of boomers on this subject. Boomers tend to lean hypercapitalist with a very “boot strappy” mindset ie. they did it all on their own. Collectivism is generally not a part of their worldview. It’s the rugged individual or bust. We’re all crabs in a bucket and the ones that get out are just inherently better. Out of many, comes one. It’s all bullshit.

America is the least socialist advanced economy Western nation but yes you can argue programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are socialist.

Perhaps being targetted by ICE could qualify. Being brown could help in this scenario.

If the US is untrustworthy then so is NATO. The US accounts for two thirds of NATO’s defense spending and the bulk of NATO’s high‑end capabilities (strategic airlift, nuclear deterrence, advanced fighter fleets, and extensive overseas basing) are provided by the United States.

If the European component of NATO were as capable or financially solvent, the situation in Ukraine would be very different right now. Instead they are desperately trying to meet the 5% of GDP defense spending target to maintain US engagement while appropriating Russian frozen assets to divert to Ukraine, which implies a less than solid footing both militaristically and financially.

This is solid geopolitical analysis.

The India blunder cannot be understated. This is one of the fastest growing large economies in the world and its struggles in the past half millennia are more a blip in history than the norm. This similarly applies to China and its century of humiliation.

Multiple US administrations were carefully and measurably courting India over the past several decades which Trump undid essentially overnight.

India has a very strong history of trust with Russia which dates back hundreds of years but more recently the USSR directly supported India when the US sent nuclear armed vessels into the Bay of Bengal in support of Pakistan during the '71 Indo Pak war (before either India or Pakistan had nukes). Portugal also tried to keep one of it’s Indian colonies (Goa) after the end of WW2 which India took by force. Western nations intended to collude through the UN to force India to give the territory back but the USSR vetoed the vote.

Blunders like this generally come from not knowing history and it feels like Western leaders both in Europe and the US are no longer knowledgeable.

A few months ago Kaja Kallas, the Vice-President of the European Commission said: "I was in ASEAN meeting, and Russia was addressing China, like: ‘Russia and China, we fought the Second World War, we won the Second World War, we won the Nazis…’ And I was like, ‘Okay, that is something new. If you know history, then it raises a lot of question marks in your head… but nowadays, people don’t really read and remember history that much.’

Completely diminishing the obvious sacrifice of both countries, having been the two countries with that suffered the most casualities (25 million in the USSR and 20 million in China).

If these are the top minds in the West then we are absolutely cooked.

You’re absolutely on point about Ukraine and the Istanbul process also. One can only imagine how many peace processes have been undermined by the idea of the West being an ally and the might of the West being a reason not to compromise.

European attempts to freeze Russian assets in Euroclear and use them towards Ukrainian military efforts also seems like an act of desperation and it’s no surprise that Belgium has essentially said they will not comply unless other European powers also take on the liability involved.

At the very least Zelensky has said today that they are no longer going to pursue NATO membership which is a step towards reality based geopolitics.

It’s a very optimistic outlook. I hope you’re right.

What’s uncomfortable for countries in the Western hemisphere is that upon shifting to a multipolar or “spheres of influence” model of the world (which was the norm preglobalization), America will continue its imperialistic tendencies to claim some form of dominion over Canada Mexico and South America. The latest foreign policy strategy document from the Trump administration seems to harken to the Monroe Doctrine (which was a warning that colonization of any further territory in the Western hemisphere by European powers would be viewed as a threat to U.S. security). It seems like Trump sees the Western hemisphere as “belonging” to America on some level.

I also don’t see the US competely discarding neoliberalism when it comes to tech / services, where it still dominates. That requires some type of openness to the world otherwise they won’t be able to continue to enforce their IP rights. When someone makes a Doordash order in Kathmandu, they want some portion of that transaction flowing through both Silicon Valley and their payment processors (Visa, Mastercard etc). How will the US respond when socialism spreads and those countries make their own versions of these services? Hard to imagine they would respond reasonably, especially since their approach to any resistance up until now has been to stage a coup. Old habits die hard.

The US was isolationist during much of world war 2 and had a “cash and carry” approach towards selling arms to US allies during the initial part of the war. After much deliberation this became a laxer lend-lease arrangement that had been against the desires of the American people, who did not want to be a creditor in a conflict that had its center stage in Europe and were worried the Brits wouldn’t be able to pay back. These financial arrangements made the US incredibly wealthy, essentially extracting centuries of colonial and slavery based loot from the Brits, which allowed it to become the global hegimon it is today (for now) and brought an end to the British Empire. It took the Brits sixty years to settle the loan.

“To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal”

While the US came out as clear winners, many postcolonial nations are grateful that the war absolutely decimated the British Empire financially. Every seven days, a nation celebrates its independence from the British Empire. Though it was their inability to continue administrative operations in the colonies (due to financial decimation) that led to some very questionably drawn borders that have played a role in many present day conflicts.