Pankaj Mishra Quotes
Democracy, loudly upheld as a cure for much of the ailing world, has proved no guarantor of political wisdom, even if it remains the least bad form of government.
Mishra, Pankaj. Age of Anger: A History of the Present. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
When ambassador to Great Britain, he was very supportive of the British Fascists, and was an admirer of Adolf Hitler. Once war with Germany was commenced, Kennedy predicted that England would lose the war and became a fascist puppet state controlled by Germany. He opposed Lend Lease and the other efforts of the Roosevelt administration to assist England to fight off the Germans. Ironically his oldest son died in a dangerous volunteermission fighting Germany in the War. Kennedy's earlier pro-German views ended his political career and was an embarassment to his sons when they entered politics.
There are some who have argued that the United States 20th century of world dominance was an empire. Perhaps so, but it did not have most of the characteristics that Thucydides and most others thought of as characteristics of empire—occupation of nations, rule by the Imperial country, privilege in other nations of the Empire, control. Most important, in historical empires, money—in the form of taxes or goods was commandeered by the Empire for the mother country. The US taxed no one, and money flowed the other way in the most generous sharing of foreign aid in human history. The United States had great influence and was able to exert economic and sometimes military pressure on many nations of the world; American culture was adopted by many nations, but America rarely behaved as Empires historically did.
Pankaj Mishra is an Indian essayist and novelist and a recipient of the 2014 Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction.
