Burma, America, The World, Art, Literature, Political Economy through the eyes of a Permanent Exile.
"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. Sometimes we must interfere. . . There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention . . . writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the left and by the right." Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Speech, 1986, Oslo.
This entire site copyright Kyi May Kaung unless indicated otherwise.
Donald Trump, a President who never
met a dictator without falling in love, must have felt both utterly intrigued
and slightly shorted by his visit with Hungarian President Viktor Orban today.
Orban had been frozen out of both the Bush and Obama White House and State
Departments but received the singular honor of an Oval Office meeting today.
One the one hand, Orban is a part of the small-ball, slow-creep
authoritarian movement, not the splashy, missile-parade style of Kim Jong Un.
He lacks the cutthroat Great Power Player musk that comes off Russian strongman
Vladimir Putin in waves and makes
Trump weak in the knees. He’s not a sweaty
backwater warlord like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. No, Orban is a more subtle flavor, a kind of bijou strongman. A source of
fascination for Steve Bannon, the architect of much of Trump’s nationalist
populist claptrap, the prime minister is a proud advocate for what he calls
“illiberal democracy.” Trump’s envious nature must have been in overdrive
today.
