What quality Trump has, better than any street thug.

 An NBC News interviewer asks:

Whom?

Iran's Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi.

"Do you trust Trump?"

Anyone hearing this question would laugh, and laughter is the fitting response.

Along with a counter-question: who is this Trump that he should be trusted?

Asking again, in bewilderment: why would anyone trust Trump, or why should they?

And pointing out precisely what quality Trump has, better than any street thug, that would earn him respect.

It was a question that inspired contempt for the one asking it.

So on hearing it, the only path left to anyone is to stifle a laugh at the questioner's wretched plight, a maddening fate.

A mocking laugh that comes only at the sight of a foolish king's nakedness.

A mocking laugh at the questioner's servility toward a naked occupying power.

A laugh at a question that the occupier's shoe-lickers love to ask.

Araghchi should have replied that he didn't understand the question.

With the counter-question: Trump is not the name of some new god or avatar to be believed in, is it?

Araghchi should also have asked back whether there is anyone in the world, or could ever be, who trusts Trump.

Is the questioner mistakenly calling the fear of military might "trust"?

I don't know.

People fear thugs not out of trust but out of distrust.

Fear of thugs comes from the insecurity that distrust creates.

Did the NBC questioner fail to grasp this?

Is the NBC questioner sugar-coating with chocolate the act of cowering and cringing before a threat, and calling it trust?

Is the fear produced by someone's distrust and suspicion of Trump "trust"?

The fear of the danger this reckless man creates, and the submission that fear breeds: is that trust?

Submission born of fear is nothing but helplessness.

Lambs do not trust or respect wild beasts; they distrust them.

Sensing danger through that distrust, they fear it in advance.

Not just Third World countries like India, but even many European countries known as the First World are living in fear.

When military power is in a fool's hands, everyone should be afraid. That is America and Trump.

Especially when that fool uses his weapons and power:

To portray wisdom as foolishness,

To turn the wise into fools,

To pass off truth as falsehood,

To punish truthful and good people by branding them extremists and terrorists.

Someone who tries to rule the world driven by profit alone will cause any kind of harm.

Someone who decides good and evil, right and wrong, solely to benefit himself and his cronies.

The fear is of the weapons and power of this foolish, vile man and his gang;

Beyond that, no one has any faith in his or his gang's justice or truth.

Everyone else lives in fear caused by the fool and his folly, and in the helplessness that fear brings.

Then in the servility that helplessness creates, in spinelessness.

The language of their servility is not that of wisdom, courage, principle or dignity.

Either it is falling silent, for lack of any alternative, against the aggressor's aggression.

Or it is a cruel, sportive "neutrality" of silence.

They become dogs waiting outside Trump's doorstep for the scraps, bones and thorns they imagine he will toss to them.

Abbas Araghchi did not say he failed to understand the question; he should have.

Saying he didn't understand the question would have been the best possible answer.

He should also have answered by asking back: why should anyone trust Trump, does anyone in the world actually trust him, would they in any way?

But as Iran's foreign minister, within what his judgment allowed, he did something else instead.

Another firm reply:

"Our trust is in ourselves."

A dignified, spirited reply that does not lick the shoes of occupying powers: a reply overflowing with Araghchi's wisdom.

A firm reply that their faith lies in God, in divine truth, in social justice, in non-exploitative ideals of faith.

Not that anyone, Iran included, should trust outsiders:

Not the enemy who lies in wait to attack, not the one who hunts down the weak, attacks them and steals their wealth.

Not the one who attacks and exploits the unarmed while they are still unarmed.

Not those who wear the veil of deceit and hypocrisy.

Not those who, veiled, call you to talks and attack you during the talks and under cover of them.

Our trust is in standing with heads held high, without cringing before occupying fascist powers, and in ourselves, standing that way.

They are in the octopus-grip of the BJP. In the Dhritarashtra embrace.

 The courage of cats that drink milk with their eyes shut.

That was the courage of Suvendu Adhikari and Himanta Biswa Sarma.

That was also the courage of the BJP-allied chief ministers in other states.

That was the courage of the Election Commission and those inside it.

That was the courage of the Supreme Court and High Court judges.

Shut your eyes, pretend not to see, pretend there is nothing to see, and pronounce your verdict. Then make those verdicts the law and system of the country.

Make it appear that Sanatana Dharma means misconduct, theft, and lying.

All of this while being thieves to one another, and those who cook gruel for thieves and hold the torch for them.

That is why Nitish Kumar, Chandrababu Naidu, and Sushil Kumar Shinde stay silent even now, as if their mouths were stuffed with cotton.

They are firm in the courage of proving that with power, weapons, and the media in hand, any lie can be made truth and any ordinary man can be made a traitor.

Whether through SIR or voting machines, those who stood with them, gained power, and still hold power all share this same courage: the confidence that they will win and make others win. Joseph Vijay of Tamil Nadu is no different.

That was also the courage behind the deceitful games of Amit Shah and Modi.

Those who once stood with the lie and shared its sweetness can never leave afterward.

They are in the octopus-grip of the BJP. In the Dhritarashtra embrace.

In the octopus-grip and Dhritarashtra embrace of the BJP and RSS, which ensures that in due course they destroy all of them, until every one of them becomes the BJP itself.

The foolish courage of the cats is that, because they shut their own eyes, no one sees or knows anything.

The futile courage that, because they themselves are in darkness, others are in darkness too, and no one else can see or know anything.

But everyone who is not a cat sees everything in the light.

They are watching in broad daylight as these cats drink the milk, and, along the way, knock over and smash all the vessels that are the constitutional institutions.

What other fate was there for the vessels, the constitutional institutions, once they fell under the control of these cats!!!

Those who saw it were saying so as they watched.

From a distance.

But the cats, the thieves, pronounced that those who say the vessels have fallen are merely enemies of such vessels.

Whether through SIR or voting machines, this rigged game of Amit Shah and Modi, played through the Election Commission, has so far won victories for the BJP at the Centre, for Suvendu Adhikari, for Himanta Biswa Sarma, and for the non-BJP allied chief ministers in other states. It did so by foreseeing every calculation in advance and arranging it all to neutralize every kind of anti-incumbency sentiment.

It even manufactured a verdict that made Modi win by that route, though he would have lost in Varanasi.

It implemented, completely and precisely, the written and unwritten rule that the leaders of thieves and thugs must be protected by any means, and must win.

Even so, the number of onlookers around the cats has grown immense.

But the cats, though they know all this, behave as if they don't.

Pretending not to know, as if nothing has happened, as if nothing will happen. That is all the cats do.

They kept denying, and they keep denying.

Those who stood and watched are backed by hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence.

What they call out is what they themselves saw.

The courage of these cats, these thieves, is the belief that when you shut your eyes it becomes dark, and that this darkness can seal every loophole and hole.

So the cat that drank milk with its eyes shut is, now and always, confident it can keep drinking that way.

The cats, believing themselves safe on the single excuse that they drink with their eyes shut, still keep drinking the milk with their eyes closed.

Cats that don't catch mice, and are determined never to catch mice, keep smashing the vessels that are the constitutional institutions.

The cats are now emboldened by having made it so that, from here on, the claws in their hands are power, and so are the constitutional institutions they destroyed by using that power.

Cats who firmly believe that lies repeated with the help of power will become truth.

Using a society that understands nothing and carries hatred and envy, they prove it: the cats who drank milk with their eyes shut, who are still drinking, who destroyed the constitutional institutions.