2026-02-13
Determining health of a democracy is non-trivial because propaganda cuts both ways
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- Contains politically sensitive info
- I live in India and I have made an intentional choice to not comment too directly on Indian politics, for reasons of my own safety.
- target audience - I have at multiple times found myself in video call discussions with people of other countries where people have made snap judgments as to the health of democracy of my country or their country or any country for that matter. This post is written for them, keeping my mind simulation of them in mind. For privacy reasons, I can't reveal who these people are.
Main
- The most important general lesson to remember is maybe the following.
- "People of your country are being fed a lot of propaganda as to the state of my country, and people of my country are also being fed a lot of propaganda as to the state of my country. You cant trust your own opinions at face value and you also cant trust the opinions of me or people like me at face value."
- I suspect this lesson is true across all pairs of countries on my geopolitical alliance matrix. If you live in nuclear-armed country Alicistan (or its geopolitical sphere of influence) and I live in nuclear-armed country Bobistan (or its geopolitical sphere of influence), then the above lesson is probably true no matter which country Alicistan is and Bobistan is.
- The propaganda is large on all sides, it includes every media house and every wikipedia article and every movie and every freedom of democracy index and every other source you might currently be relying on, to form opinions. Successful propaganda is like the air you breathe or the water in the fish tank, it is so subtle yet so absolute that you stop realising it is even there.
- I do recommend actually travelling to other countries and talking to people there to find out. But even this is not enough, because you are not in their fish tank yet. You don't consume the same media they do, you don't have the same life stories, you don't have the same friend circles and so on. Ultimately only if you spend atleast a few years at minimum, in two different countries, do you really have any chance at understanding how pervasive these fish tanks are.
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