Latest news with #Tamas
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Elon Musk claims his America party will change US politics. Experts disagree
'You want a new political party and you shall have it!' Elon Musk declared in early July. The world's richest man is never one to shy away from grandiose statements, and he continued: 'When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.' The America party, Musk hopes, will be a viable alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties: a political organization that can influence the future of US politics. He has mooted running candidates for two to three Senate seats and up to 10 House districts. Given the tight divide between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, Musk believes capturing the small number of seats 'would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws'. Given there is consistently strong support for an alternative to the Big Two parties, it should be a good idea, right? Wrong, said Bernard Tamas, professor of political science at Valdosta State University and author of The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties. 'At this moment in American politics, I see no evidence that you're going to get another party winning seats in Congress and actually being able to have an impact in the government,' Tamas said. Related: Trump says Musk is 'off the rails' and calls his new political party 'ridiculous' 'It's not just the money that Democrats and Republicans have. They have all the resources. They have the money. They have 150 years of structure. They have all the professional politicians, and they have all the consultants, and they have all the Madison Avenue ad companies working for them.' The whole concept of the America party seemingly came together in a matter of weeks, following the famous row between Musk and Donald Trump. And as with many ideas born out of spite and fury, certain elements appear to have not been fully thought through. for example, is already registered to someone else, who now appears to be trying to sell the domain name for $6.9m. On X, which Musk owns, @AmericaParty was already taken, so the new venture had to opt for @AmericaPartyX. It's not yet clear what the party will stand for, beyond opposition to Republicans' ballooning of the national debt. Musk has yet to elaborate on the 'contentious laws' his politicians would challenge, and there is no party platform or manifesto. In any case, third parties have rarely, if ever, been successful in the way Musk envisages. But where they can make a difference is in highlighting issues and pressuring the main two parties to act. 'In terms of the parties that really had a big impact, they didn't win seats,' Tamas said. 'The job of third parties is disruption. It's to sting like a bee. It's to cause pain.' Tamas pointed to the Progressive party in Wisconsin and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party, which managed to win key victories over relief for unemployed constituents and banking reform in the state, as examples of political groups that have managed to inflict such a bee sting. That doesn't appear to be what Musk is going for, however, despite there being an opportunity for a stinging insect. 'Here you have the Republican party moving farther and farther to the right, and farther and farther in this kind of Maga direction, with nobody in the Republican party in Congress willing to stand up at all to Trump or this movement,' Tamas said. 'It's a perfect opening for a third party. This is what it looks like historically. But you're not going to replace them. What you do is you attack them for this. You're trying to pull them back towards the center. 'This is how the third parties have always succeeded. The idea is you cause them pain, and what they do, if it works, is they shift back towards something that reflects more what the public wants, or deals with the issues that the third party is bringing up.' Parties that have pursued the getting-people-elected approach have fared less well than the pain-inflictors. Forward party was founded by Andrew Yang, who had previously run for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 2022, with the slightly call-to-arms style slogan of 'Not left. Not right. Forward.' These days the party barely features on the national political landscape, although it does continue to bleat out social media content – a recent 4 July post on Instagram attracted almost 40 likes. At its inception, Forward party figures claimed both the Republican and Democratic parties had become too radical, and said their new venture 'can't be pegged to the traditional left-right spectrum because we aren't built like the existing parties'. Somehow, a promise to not really have a firm ideological stance on anything isn't a very sexy pitch to voters. Among the 'elected affiliates' named on Forward's website are the former mayor of Newberry, Florida, a town of 7,300 people, and a man who 'is responsible for sanitation and utilities' in the Connecticut borough of Stonington – population 976 people. There is widespread support for a third party. Polls have repeatedly shown that people want a third party. But what that looks like remains to be seen. In Musk's own survey on social media asking if people wanted him to start a new party, only 65% said yes, and 34% said no, although a poll in early July showed that 14% of voters said they would be very likely to support the party, with 26% somewhat likely. There are already issues with the America party becoming a viable third choice. Musk is approaching eccentric political advisers, including Curtis Yarvin, a rightwing tech blogger who has argued American democracy has run its course and the country should instead be run by a dictator-esque CEO. A more fundamental problem with the America party is unique to Musk: people really don't like him. A poll last week found that 60% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Musk, compared with 32% in favor. America shall have a third party, Musk declared at the start of his new venture. But does America want this kind of third party, with these kind of aims, run by this kind of man?
Indian Express
04-07-2025
- General
- Indian Express
7 must-read translated Indian novels that retain their soul
Written By Prachi Mishra In India, the landscape changes every few hundred kilometres, and so does the language. A phrase uttered in one village might sound completely different a district away. At times, it's a new dialect. At times, it is an entirely new language. Thus, in a nation woven together by its multilingualism, translation is not merely a creative decision; it's a cultural imperative. But with each act of translation, there is a silent risk attached to it, the risk of something slipping between the cracks. It may mean losing nuance, humour, agony, the rhythm of a sentence or simply the weight of a silence. But, as Ken Liu reminds us, 'Every act of communication is a miracle of translation.' And that's exactly why, when translation succeeds, it is rather more than ability. It is more like alchemy. Let us take a look at few Indian books that have traversed linguistic boundaries without diluting their emotional and literary content. Srinath Perur translated this book from Kannada to English in 2015. Ghachar Ghochar shows how unexpected wealth changes a family in ways people don't notice. The story's main character, who doesn't have a name, lives well in Bangalore now. He sees how money breaks down his family's sense of right and wrong. The made-up phrase 'ghachar ghochar' means a mix of feelings, values, and how people connect. Shanbhag writes without extra words, and Perur keeps this style in the translation. This helps readers feel the tight calm mood of the book. The main character asks, ''When the house is on fire, do you waste time chasing rats?' In just over 100 pages, this book shows how respectability can conceal rot, cutting straight to the heart of familial dysfunction. Against the backdrop of Partition, Tamas is a sobering portrayal of how communal violence is engineered. Translated into Hindi and published in 1974, the novel begins with the sight of a pig's carcass hurled outside a mosque, a minor action that has disastrous fallout. Bhisham Sahni himself translated the book into English so that nothing was lost in terms of tone or emotion. Through various characters – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and colonial officials, he reveals how riots are more planned and less spontaneous. 'The riots had not erupted,' he writes, 'they had been ignited.' With understated prose and unflinching honesty, Tamas remains one of the most haunting literary documents of Partition. Published in 1974, With the translation into English by Samik Bandyopadhyay, the novella stands as an intimate portrait of political violence that soon casts an enormous shadow across the reader's consciousness. Written in Bengali, it begins with Sujata, a middle-class homemaker, being asked to visit a morgue to identify her son who was murdered for being with the Naxalite movement and was given the designation, 'Corpse No. 1084.' Saddened, Sujata embarks on questioning her own position and privilege; she questions inaction on her part as well as society's gruesome acceptance of this injustice. 'I gave him birth. And the state gave him death,' she says, encapsulating the novel's emotional and political weight. The translation is stark and elegant, echoing Mahasweta Devi's fiery critique of state repression and class apathy. Moustache, a dark folk story set in Kerala's backwaters first came out in Malayalam in 2013. Jayasree Kalathil translated it later. The book tells the story of a man from a lower caste who grows a moustache. This facial hair, a symbol of upper-caste male power, causes wonder, jealousy, and dread. As the moustache gets bigger – like something out of a myth – Hareesh looks at caste, manhood, and fighting back. He does this through a dreamlike tale full of rich details. Kalathil's translation won the JCB Prize for Literature in 2020. People praised it for keeping the poetic feel and political punch of the original work. In the book, the moustache 'comes to life – growing rebellion.' By doing this, it becomes a story about getting back one's honor. This peculiar short Bengali novella from 1993, which Arunava Sinha translated to English, features a deceased aunt who lingers in the family's thoughts, both as a spirit and a symbol of resistance. The tale intertwines the experiences of women across three generations as they grapple with rich male dominance, and the weight of tradition. Mukhopadhyay's writing has a whimsical touch but also contains many depths blending the with everyday gender bias and pointed social commentary. Sinha's translation keeps the wit and closeness while bringing out its feminist undertones. 'It's not death that scares me,' says the aunt, 'it's forgetting.' It is a book that keeps reverberating after the slim volume is set down. Published for the first time in 1889, Indulekha is regarded as the first full-fledged Malayalam novel and continues to be remarkably forward-thinking for its era. Written in the midst of British colonial times, it is a narrative of an educated, smart Nair woman who goes against the norms to exercise her right to choose. O. Chandu Menon's incisively ironic voice and social commentary come into English translation through Anitha Devasia, whose translation maintains the Victorian-era vocabulary but brings the text to within reach of contemporary readers. The novel lightly challenges orthodoxy without discounting cultural identity. Its eponymous heroine's announcement, 'A woman with learning is feared by men who do not understand her', rings like a call across the ages. The Bride, written in Maithili in the 1950s, is both comical and sharp in its satirical thrust from the rural heart of Bihar. Harimohan Jha satirizes social customs of dowry, arranged marriages, and Brahmanical pride through the narrative of an overloaded scholar trying to cope with the absurdities of wedding negotiations. Translated into English by Lalit Kumar, the novel's humor and cultural particularity survive translation without sacrificing readability. Its appeal lies in how lightly it wears its satire, never compromising humor for sermonizing. 'Perhaps you know Panini's grammar,' remarks one of them, 'but unless you know how to please your wife's father, you are lost.' This Maithili gem is gently comic, sharply observed, and deeply rooted in cultural detail. In a land of many voices, these eight books remind us that translation is not just an act of language, but also an act of faith. When done with devotion, it enables stories to traverse not only geography but into new hearts, new readers, and new lives. Because the finest stories, wherever they start, need to be heard everywhere.
