Tag: Politics

They Taught the World to Rise. And then Forgot How.

America loves a good story about itself. Freedom, liberty, rebellion, all sung in a major key and wrapped in a flag. They turned revolution into a genre, democracy into a Broadway soundtrack, and tyranny into something that only happens somewhere else.

For years, they sang along to Hamilton like it was gospel. They memorized the verses, quoted the lines, cosplayed on TikTok, cried over the Founding Fathers recast as rappers, a nation rediscovering its roots through rhyme. “Rise up!” they cheered, fists raised in theaters that cost more than a week’s rent. “History has its eyes on you!” they shouted, and then went home to post about how democracy works best when everyone just calms down.

They turned a revolution into karaoke.

What could have been a cultural reawakening became merch, mugs, magnets, tote bags. They treated it like nostalgia porn, not civic scripture. Hamilton made them feel brave for three minutes at a time, but not brave enough to stand up when their leaders turned liberty into a punchline.

And here we are, a government once founded on the act of defying tyranny now bending to a tyrant who rules by resentment and applause. He doesn’t wear a crown; he wears grievance. He doesn’t demand fealty through divine right; he earns it through fear. He’s convinced millions that oppression looks like fairness and equality looks like persecution, the oldest trick in the imperial playbook.

The same Americans who quote “Not throwing away my shot” on Instagram are now throwing away their rights, willingly, comfortably, with flag emojis. The same nation that fetishizes freedom lets it erode inch by inch, as long as someone else pays the price: immigrants, queer people, the press, the poor, teachers, women. Anyone whose existence complicates the myth of greatness.

But at least something is happening. Seeds have been sown and they’ve grown. Not everyone’s asleep.

There are pockets of resistance, people who still remember what courage feels like. Activists, journalists, students, veterans, mothers, workers, ordinary Americans trying to shake a system that’s calcified around comfort and cowardice. You can feel them humming under the surface, restless, angry, aware that something is deeply broken. They want to rise. They just don’t know what will make them finally stand.

Maybe they’re waiting for a spark. Maybe for a face, a name, a moment that makes rebellion feel possible again. But revolutions don’t schedule themselves, and waiting is a luxury the oppressed can’t afford.

Instead, everyone’s sitting around pretending democracy will course-correct, that the institutions will hold, that the next election will fix it, that accountability will come “through the proper channels.” Meanwhile, those channels are being rerouted, blocked, or bought. The republic’s on fire, and half the country’s still asking for the fire marshal’s permission to panic.

What America needs now isn’t another election cycle. It needs new leaders, ones who aren’t complicit, compliant, or conveniently silent. The revolutionaries of old didn’t wait for permission; they became the permission. They didn’t play by the tyrant’s rules; they rewrote them.

The irony is that the script already exists. They’ve been singing it for years. Hamilton told them exactly what to do: rise up, speak truth, make noise, leave a mark. Instead, they’ve isolated it as entertainment, something to consume, not something to live.

The country that once burned tea over taxes now shrugs as billionaires buy politicians in bulk. The land that preached “no taxation without representation” now lets votes be stripped and districts redrawn beyond recognition. The people who belt “freedom” before every game are fine watching it die, as long as the anthem still plays before kickoff and nobody is taking the knee.

It’s not that America forgot the revolution, it’s that it’s scared of what remembering it would require.

Because to remember is to act. And acting would mean admitting the system no longer works as promised. It would mean standing up to neighbors, bosses, governors, cops, to comfort itself.

They don’t know or don’t realize that this is what’s written in their own Declaration of Independence:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

And if this post somehow gains traction among Americans, I can guess what’s coming: the replies calling it “unfounded,” “uninformed,” or “too simplistic to understand the nuance of American politics.” But there’s nothing nuanced about the erosion of freedom, or the spectacle of cruelty being televised daily. There’s no complexity in racism and fascism when it’s parading down Main Street with a flag and these days they’re not just carrying the Star Spangled Banner, they’re flying the Israeli flag alongside and calling for allegiance to that other country ahead of their own.

Nuance is what people invoke when they’re too scared to pick a side. What’s left now isn’t nuance. It’s clarity. The kind that history forces on you when you’ve waited too long to act. Maybe history really does have its eyes on them. It’s just wondering what the hell they’re waiting for.

Megawati: Indonesia’s political system doesn’t recognize oppositions and coalitions

Megawati Soekarnoputri is once again lecturing the nation from a podium padded with nostalgia and selective memory.

At PDIP’s 6th Congress in Bali, following her reelection as party leader until 2030, she confidently announced that “there’s no such thing as opposition or coalition in Indonesia’s presidential system,” arguing that such dichotomies belong only in parliamentary governments. She then doubled down, framing Indonesia’s democracy as one “based on the people’s sovereignty and the Constitution,” and insisting that PDIP would now act as an “ideological balancing force” rather than opposition.

It’s the kind of speech that sounds profound until you remember how politics in this country actually works.

Let’s start with the basics. Coalitions are not just a feature of Indonesia’s political system, they’re a structural necessity. You need them to qualify for the presidential race. You need them to pass legislation. You need them to govern. There is no constitutional path to power without them. The electoral threshold makes sure of that. So Megawati’s insistence on semantics changes nothing about how political parties operate in practice. If anything, it’s an attempt to overwrite the obvious with rhetorical fog.

Without a coalition, Megawati wouldn’t have had Prabowo Subianto as her running mate in 2008, the same Prabowo whose party just beat hers in the 2024 election, and who spent a solid decade as the loudest, most confrontational opposition to the Jokowi administration, which PDIP dominated. Never mind that in the final years of Jokowi’s term, Gerindra’s loyalty in that so-called coalition was visibly eroding.

That same “nonexistent” coalition also helped put Jokowi and Ahok into City Hall in Jakarta. And let’s not forget, oppositions, even if not enshrined in constitutional vocabulary, have existed and operated for decades in this country. Political parties outside power have always criticized, challenged, and scrutinized those in it. They hold press conferences. They file lawsuits. They propose alternatives. That’s called being the opposition, regardless of whether Megawati feels like saying the word out loud.

Oppositions and coalitions in Indonesia are as inevitable as Jakarta’s traffic jams, they only disappear during Lebaran holidays when no one’s around. So why deny them now?

Well, it’s hard not to notice the timing. Megawati’s sudden interest in redefining Indonesia’s entire political vocabulary coincides, coincidentally, of course with President Prabowo’s decision to grant amnesty to PDIP’s Secretary General who was convicted for bribing officials to parachute a party-hopping politician into parliament and sent to 3.5 years in prison. That politician has since gone missing. For five years. But sure, tell us more about constitutional purity.

This is the kind of gaslighting that only works when everyone else agrees to play along. Megawati wants to position PDIP as above the fray, “a critical balancer,” not opposition, not loyalist, just… conveniently in between. But you don’t get to erase the last 25 years of your own party’s behavior and pretend the entire system is suddenly different because you’re not in charge anymore.

Megawati still sees herself as the matriarch of Indonesian politics, cloaked in Sukarnoist symbolism and mythic authority. But at some point, that legacy turns into a liability, especially when it’s used to blur history, dodge accountability, and deny the very dynamics that made her party viable in the first place.

If PDIP wants to stay relevant in a post-Jokowi, post-victory Gerindra era, it needs more than ideological posturing. It needs to stop pretending that the system it thrived in doesn’t exist. Because it obviously does.

And it’s probably a sign that the party needs new leadership and direction. As it stands it will never not be known as the party of whatever she wants it to be.

Indonesia declared war on the One Piece flag

In what might be the most unintentionally self-owns in modern governance, parliamentary leaders have claimed that the Straw Hat Jolly Roger — the beloved skull-and-crossbones from One Piece — represents separatist tendencies and is being used by shadowy forces who want the Prabowo government to collapse (the news even made it to Screen Rant of all places). The flag has since been targeted for criminalization, under the claim that it’s “provocative,” “disrespectful,” and “threatening national unity.”

So let’s get this straight: a cartoon pirate flag — flown initially by angry truck drivers protesting against what they claim to be unjust safety laws — is now being treated like an act of sedition. Because in a country that refuses to hold corrupt conglomerates accountable, it’s easier to demonize drivers than fix the system. And it’s easier to vilify a pirate crew from a manga than face public anger that refuses to stay quiet.

The real kicker is that any One Piece fan can see it from ten thousand nautical miles away.

The people trying to ban the Straw Hat flag? They sound exactly like the villains in the story.

The rhetoric, about order, unity, suppressing dangerous symbols, and punishing those who question authority, is textbook World Government. This is Gorosei energy. This is the Tenryuubito clutching their pearls because the commoners dared to speak. This is CP0-level control tactics dressed up in nationalistic language. And just like in the manga, it’s not about real threats. It’s about protecting the illusion of stability, no matter how rotten the core has become.

The Straw Hat Pirates in One Piece aren’t the enemy. They’re the ones who sail against corrupt institutions, take down slave-trading elites, and expose the lies propping up unjust empires. Sound familiar? In that universe, flying the Jolly Roger isn’t an act of terrorism — it’s an act of refusal. A refusal to bow, to comply, to play along with a system built to exploit and erase.

And now here in the real world, when working-class Indonesians adopt that symbol in protest — not even violently, just by putting it on their trucks, on their front yards, on their cars, flown atop mountains and volcanoes, etc — the state starts echoing the exact same paranoia we see in the story. The same language. The same scapegoating. The same absurd claims that any challenge to the hierarchy must be criminal, foreign-funded, or anarchist.

It’s actually impressive, the level of irony involved in banning a flag that literally represents resistance to authoritarian overreach because you think it represents resistance to authoritarian overreach.

This isn’t about a flag. It’s about power — and who’s allowed to speak against it. It’s about fear — not of pirates, but of symbols that resonate. It’s about the ruling class realizing that a bunch of truck drivers with anime decals are suddenly more culturally relevant than their entire media machine.

In One Piece, the Jolly Roger is a symbol of freedom, loyalty, self determination, and righteous rebellion. It flies over ships that break chains and challenge tyrants. In Indonesia, it was flown by people tired of being silenced, manipulated, gaslit, and taken advantage of, and now the government wants to treat them like enemies of the state.

If that’s not the most perfect, painful parallel between fiction and reality, I don’t know what is.

So go ahead. Ban the flag. Call in intelligence briefings. Threaten legal action. But just know, you’ve officially cast yourself in the role of the very villains this generation grew up learning to resist.

The funniest things out of this? Vice President Gibran wore a Jolly Roger pin during an election debate last year (while also wearing a Naruto inspired denim jacket) and there is a parody version of the flag using the sideways logo of Indonesia’s 80th anniversary of the Independence Day declaration. Because it really does work and drives home the point much further.

By the way, Deputy Home Minister Bima Arya said nobody is banning the flag (never mind that the parliament leaders are rushing to ban it and demanding law enforcement to act against those flying the flag) and people are still free to fly it as a form of expression. When the government can’t even get their messaging right, nobody should surprised that people are doing what they do.

When Reporters Become Collateral in an Unpopular Executive Decision

So here we are: The Washington Post announced it won’t endorse a candidate this US election, and the fallout is immediate. Readers are canceling subscriptions in droves, about 200,000 and counting according to NPR, and reporters are left scrambling on social media, pleading for them to stay. As a former journalist, I feel for the reporters caught in this mess. This isn’t just an editorial call they can shrug off. It’s a hit to their credibility, their income, and their professional mission.

To me what’s important isn’t whether a media makes a political endorsement because we live in a time when these decisions don’t matter like they used to. Media endorsements don’t carry the same weight as in previous decades. What matters to me is when they did it. I said on Threads the other day,

The issue isn’t that they will not endorse but that there’s a decades long tradition to endorse one candidate over another and not just for the presidential candidates, it’s often local candidates too. That the boards of two major US papers already drafted the endorsements only to be spiked by their billionaire owners is what matters because it’s too close to Election Day. They could have announced the stance weeks or months ago but they didn’t and now they’re causing a scene.

The timing is everything here. Only 11 days before the election, the paper killed a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, saying it’s a return to their “roots” of neutrality, as they did until about 50 years ago. But the newsroom is in uproar. Famed reporters like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have called the move cowardly. Others, like former editor Marty Baron, went further, saying it’s a betrayal of democracy itself. Many readers opined in light of the decision that the Post’s slogan, “Democracy dies in darkness”, wasn’t a slogan but a mission statement as the newspaper has decided to tun the lights off to let democracy stumble in darkness.

Meanwhile, there’s Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner, defending the decision as “principled.” He argues it’s about restoring trust in journalism. But here’s where things get complicated. The same day the Post cancels its endorsement, Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, had a meeting with none other than Donald Trump. Even if it’s a coincidence, it’s an unfortunate look, especially considering that endorsements were a standard practice at the Post until… well, about five minutes ago. When Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal at the Post in the ‘70s, then owner Katherine Graham stood tall defending their decision to run the story and expose the illegal actions of President Nixon which led to his resignation. Bezos on the other hand, has no such conviction, fearing retribution by Trump in case the 34x convicted felon ended up winning re-election, and jeopardizing his government contracts and other opportunities for his companies.

And it’s not just the Post. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times made a similar choice, dropping its own endorsement after its billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong intervened. His daughter, who supposedly has no influence at the company, defended it as a “family decision” tied to frustration over Harris’s stance on the genocide happening in Palestine. Curiously, a feature series titled, “Case Against Trump” was canceled by the newspaper at his behest. Yet again, we’ve got a big decision, tied to editorial independence, happening at the last minute with little transparency.

USA Today has joined the ranks of papers sitting this one out. However with outlets like The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and the Philadelphia Inquirer still endorsing candidates, it seems the media landscape is splitting down the middle on this issue.

Readers, for their part, feel they’ve been sidelined. Canceling subscriptions is one of the few ways they can register their frustration with decisions made behind closed doors. But the fallout isn’t falling on Bezos, it’s falling on reporters who had no part in the decision. Now, they’re essentially forced into being spokespersons for an editorial shift they didn’t ask for, defending a stance that most of them probably would have argued against.

So, what’s the way out? Instead of reporters bearing the brunt of management’s hasty decision, maybe they could actually join with the readers on this one. Push back internally. Make it clear that if big decisions like this one are going to reshape their relationships with readers, they need to be more than last-minute top-down calls. They could demand a seat at the table, a voice in decisions that impact their integrity and the trust of their audience. Some members of the editorial boards and newsrooms at both the Post and the LA Times have made their strong opinions known even to the point of resigning.

In the end, the future of journalism doesn’t just depend on what’s reported, it depends on how these decisions are made. If the Post, the LA Times, and other major outlets want to regain trust, they need to do more than make calls from the top. Credibility is built on transparency, respect for journalists, and a genuine acknowledgment of the readers who make their work possible.

The New Hope was a vehicle to build a new Empire all along

One can’t help but marvel at the efficiency with which fairness, empathy, and democratic ideals are being obliterated through the masterful manipulation of legislations and regulations by those in power to cement their grip and undermine public interest and scrutiny.

Who needs checks and balances when you can simply rewrite the rules to your advantage? Censorship, surveillance, and suppression of dissent are just the icing on this authoritarian cake, effectively silencing any opposition. It’s almost impressive how swiftly and thoroughly they’ve dismantled the democratic framework, leaving little hope for a resurgence of true democratic governance.

Been saying for a while that ASEAN is a largely irrelevant organization of geographically adjacent nations that share very little common interest and barely a common goal. 

Anwar is probably the first regional leader to implicitly admit its irrelevance while Indonesia has always been a champion of ASEAN’s appearance of a united front made up of human rights violators and corrupt governments who are careful not to offend each other out of fear that their own dirty laundry become exposed and openly addressed.

As long as this sorry excuse of an organization can’t even resolve a conflict within its own member state decisively, it will never be the substantial economic and political union it has always wished or pretended to be.

MPAA chairman Chris Dodd threatens to cut funding to US politicians over SOPA failure

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,”

This is an incredible statement from a former Senator who is chairman of the MPAA and is one year away from being eligible to directly lobby the government. 

CrunchFund partner MG Siegler has harsher words to say about Chris Dodd.

More on Chris Dodd’s statement.

MPAA chairman Chris Dodd threatens to cut funding to US politicians over SOPA failure

Hollywood drops support for Obama for siding with Silicon Valley

Hollywood drops its support for Obama? Maybe they need to update their business models like when the movies went to home projectors and then to televisions, then to video cassette tapes, optical discs, and now digital stream/downloads.

It’s technology. Adapt and make money off of it, or attack and be hated, reviled, and abandoned by the consumers.

These Hollywood big guns keep making boatloads of cash off every new technology that they decry, it’s almost like putting on a show for nothing.

Piracy is about access. Look at how the video game industry transformed itself with online multiplayer games. Video game networks like Blizzard’s Battle.net, Microsoft’s XBox Live, and Sony’s PSN are doing well fending off pirates by limiting access to only legitimate members.

Look at how the music industry is being converted into digital. Not fast enough to make money? It’s only been just over a decade since consumers began to embrace digital downloads and less than a decade since iTunes Music Store debuted. iTunes makes it really easy for people to acquire music legally. Spotify and Rdio are doing the same thing for streaming services.

Content business is going digital and Hollywood should have been working with Silicon Valley on how to make money off of that instead of attacking those who take advantage of their lack of foresight. On that note, how would you transform entertainment?

Hollywood drops support for Obama for siding with Silicon Valley

Apparently school is only for virgins

This sickening news came from Jambi, a city in Sumatra, Indonesia. The logic of Bambang Bayu Suseno, a local legislator, is that:

The idea is simple. Parents are obviously afraid of their daughters being deflowered before the time comes, so before they continue their studies, they can undergo the virginity test and automatically protect their dignity,” said Jambi legislative councilor Bambang Bayu Suseno.

He is proposing that female students undergo virginity tests before they can be admitted into public schools and existing students may be forced out if they were found to be no longer virgins. According to him, non-virgin girls are not worthy of education simply because they gave in to peer pressure. Note that he did not say anything about non-virgin boys.

While the province’s secretary spokesman rejected the idea, it is still astounding that someone at the legislative level even has this idea cross his mind. Education is a basic human right and to refuse anyone, virgin or not, is a violation and the law does not discriminate based on a person’s moral judgment.

The country has been drawn into the morality debate. The Minister for Communication and Information wants to block pornography to protect children and the eastern values of society and prosecute those who seek porn. Advocates of freedom of expression are being labeled as pro porn despite debating the principles of censorship rather than the content. An Aceh district chief wants to enact a bylaw making it compulsory for women to dress in a certain way to avoid inciting impure thoughts by men which may lead to rape.

This is Indonesia now. A country anchored in morality issues.

Update: The proposal has been rejected.

Apparently school is only for virgins

Why does our government seem so frakkin stupid?

A well thought out piece on why the Indonesian government is hell bent on pushing through the decisions that it has set out to do. Two examples are:

  • Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring’s crusade against porn on the internet to the point where he’s threatening to block BlackBerry services unless RIM filters out access to pornography from its channels.
  • Religon Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali’s war against the Ahmadis, an officially unrecognized Islamic sect declared to be illegal due to difference in teachings from the widely accepted variety of Islam in Indonesia.

Both ministers and everything they stand for are highly unpopular among the opinionated, critical and well informed group. Unfortunately, this group isn’t strong enough to force a change yet.

These decisions are being made because human and individual rights as well as supposed common sense are largely irrelevant or inconsequential to the rest of the people who just wish that these things were never brought up in the first place.

Why does our government seem so frakkin stupid?