THE POLLS WERE WRONG

The pundits are all trying to say something intelligent about the US elections. They are trying to explain why the predicted ‘blue wave’ was such a huge blue tsunami.

In state after state, the polls predicted very narrow races, but in the end, the races were not narrow at all. Polls predicted Talarico over Paxton by 1.2%, but he won by 12%. What happened?

The only explanation is that, somehow, people who declared themselves for Paxton/Trump in the polls secretly voted against him. Why?

Picture a small rural community in Ohio. Everyone expects you to think a certain way. If you said you were against Trump, you might have your tires slashed or your house vandalized. You dare not tell a pollster that you would vote Democratic.

But, down deep, you realize what a complete disaster Trump has been. Maybe the rest of your community excuses his child rapes, but, really now, you can’t support child rape, so you secretly vote against the Trump candidate.

Think of a pollster in a strongly Christian community, where one nominal Christian is having doubts about his faith. He would not dare tell the pollster of his doubts. That is like a MAGA cultist, who must give lip service to Trump, but on a secret ballot, he may vote against him.

Trumpism is, of course, a religion, so the comparison I just made is quite appropriate.

Now, our voter realizes that there were lots of people like him in the community, who publicly praised Trump, but down deep knew what a horrible person he was and voted against him.

Maybe now, or in the future, people will be less afraid to say what they really feel about Trump, in the knowledge that a lot of people think the way they do.

The same applies to GOP members of Congress, who have kowtowed to every whim of the President. They now know that their constituents hate Trump as much as they do, so that they are a bit freer to oppose Trump’s madness.

These GOP members also realize that one of Trump’s strongest holds over them has been the threat of ‘primarying’ them. This threat diminishes as Trump becomes more of a lame duck. No more primaries for another year and a half. A Trump-backed primary opponent may not be the same danger that it has been in the past.

To be sure, 40% of the population still approve of Trump. They are still a threat. It has become conventional wisdom that these MAGA cultists have always secretly harbored thoughts of racism, cruelty, and authoritarianism, but that Trump was able to bring those feelings out in the open. ICE still has that huge budget to commit horrible crimes with impunity. Now that the genies of racism and sexism are out of the bottle, it may be difficult to put them back in.

A CAMPAIGN VOID OF ISSUES

Heading into the final week of campaigning for the US elections, I find the level of personal nastiness and lies has plunged far below what I ever expected. We see Trump calling El-Sayed a radical ‘jihadist’, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and an advocate for Sharia law. We have him calling Talarico a sexual pervert and (gasp!) a vegan, forcing Talarico to eat meat on camera just to defend himself. And, of course, there is the Ramaswamy fiasco, where Trump defends the attack ad on a survivor of child rape.

Talarico eating meat

The media can criticize the GOP, but the sad fact is that Trump and his cronies know that appealing to the lowest common denominator is effective. He got elected the first time, partly because of (not in spite of) his “grab ‘em by the p***y” remark. He got elected the second time partly because of his lies about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats.

Trump knows that descending into racism and bigotry actually works. His people don’t care about issues; they care about schools giving sex-change operations to children (total = 0), or about transgenders in girls’ sports (total = at most 11, but probably 0).

At a Trump rally last week, his fans attacked, beat up, and sent to hospital an opponent wearing an Epstein files shirt, while Trump applauded and the crowd roared “USA! USA!”

What really saddens me, therefore, is the depths to which the American know-nothing psyche has sunk.

That’s the tragedy of America. People care more about non-existent culture-war scare tactics than they do about the economy or the war in Iran.

Well, SOME people do, namely, the MAGA cultists, who number a consistent 40% of the US population. If they turn out to vote, they can gain political power, and Trump knows it.

I have been watching interviews with Trump supporters on Facebook. It’s very common to hear, “He keeps his promises.” When asked which promises he keeps, they usually can’t think of any. When asked, “What about his promise to end the Ukraine war on day one?” they usually say, “I don’t know much about that one.” One lady even stated that the Ukraine war is fake news, that is doesn’t exist at all. (So Trump promised to stop a fake war?) Of course, the Epstein files are all just fake news. Not only do MAGA not care about the big issues, but they don’t even KNOW (or choose to ignore or deny) what those issues are.

That’s why Trump’s campaign strategy is to go to Red states and stir up red-meat MAGA fears. He knows that independent voters are going to vote against him anyway, so he figures that the only way to win is to frighten the MAGA cultists into turning out to vote in droves. That has been his winning strategy all along. He knows that his MAGA cultists can carry enough electoral votes to win, even though they are in a popular-vote minority.

It’s a bit different this time, because Senate races do not have electoral votes. People vote statewide, and the popular vote wins the state. On the other hand, every state elects two senators, so a MAGA state like Wyoming (pop. <600K) has the same political clout as, say California (pop. > 39 million).

If American politics have descended into culture-war, hot-button scare tactics, then Trump knows that he can destroy the economy, launch forever wars, and oppress non-white immigrants with impunity. Even if the Democrats win both houses of Congress, we can look forward to at least two more years of destructive policies that the MAGA base will not even know about, let alone care about.

IMPEACH TRUMP? FORGET IT!

As the US midterm elections approach, there are more and more cries to impeach Trump once the Democrats gain control. Impeachment is just one of the silly ideas being bandied about, but let’s start with that one.

Impeachment does not mean removal from office. It’s more like an indictment.

Impeachment means nothing in practice. The House votes to impeach, and then the Senate votes to remove the person from office, requiring a 2/3 vote. That will never happen, even if the Democrats control the Senate. Impeachment will not remove Trump, so it becomes meaningless, just like Trump’s first two impeachments. They made a statement, but that’s all.

The other main outcry is to invoke the 25th Amendment, which says that a President can be removed if he is deemed unfit to hold office. How is this done? Here is section 4 of the 25th Amendment:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

So Congress itself cannot invoke the 25th Amendment. The Vice President must initiate it. J.D. Opportunistic J.D. Vance might just do so if he figures that he will become President. However, you’d also need a majority of the Cabinet:  Pete Hegseth?, Kash Patel?,  Todd Blanche?  No way! The important point is that Congress has no say in invoking the 25th.

I think we can safely assume that Trump cannot be removed legally. How, then, will the next Congress play out?

Even if Democrats control both houses, the Senate usually requires 60 votes to overcome the filibuster. That’s highly unlikely, unless they go through the ‘reconciliation’ process to bring it down to a simple majority for passage. This applies only to mandatory spending bills.

Republicans used reconciliation to pass the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, which will strip millions of Americans of their health insurance, Medicare, etc. In theory, Democrats could equally use reconciliation to repeal the BBB, but then Trump would just veto it, and his veto could not be overridden.

Congress could vote on de-funding the notorious Ballroom, or the Arch, but No, Congress will not be able to pass any meaningful bills. So what can they do? Couldn’t Trump just veto their actions?

Their most important activity will be the committee oversight process. They can hold hearings on sensitive topics and subpoena witnesses, maybe including Trump himself. A precedent has been set by subpoenaing Bill Clinton to testify, so they have a strong case for hearing Trump.  They can certainly call Epstein victims to testify publicly. They can probably bring shed light on Trump’s pay-for-pardon racket.

The House can hold hearings by itself. They have no need for the Senate. Therefore, the outcome of the Senate races is immaterial.

Apart from holding hearings, however, there is little they can do to bring Trump and his cronies to justice. The Department of Justice is still completely beholden to Trump, and they won’t lift a finger to prosecute him, no matter how strong the evidence against him is. By the way, Trump’s subservient DOJ can still stonewall the release of the Epstein files, no matter how much Congress or the courts bluster.

I think that the main way through the legal labyrinths will be to prosecute through state and local courts. For example, a lot of evidence is coming to light about Epstein’s Zorro ranch in New Mexico, so that state government could bring charges.

The advantage to state prosecution is that Trump cannot pardon anyone, especially himself, on state and local convictions. Presidential pardon is reserved for federal crimes.

Look for the next two years to be an endless stream of investigations and hearings. Remember how the Republicans grilled Hillary Clinton over and over again, all to no avail? They even admitted that the purpose of the hearings was to hurt her.

But don’t look for any meaningful legislation to be passed.

ON PUBLIC EXECUTIONS

First, I’m always amazed that the ‘pro-life’ group is virtually the same group that supports the death penalty. Huh?

When I was in high school, we had debates over the death penalty. The argument for the penalty always boiled down to ‘deterrence’. If potential murderers know that they will be put to death if caught, they may think twice before killing someone.

I don’t think that the deterrence argument is valid in practice. A potential murderer doesn’t think he will be caught and executed. For this and other reasons I am strongly against the death penalty.

However, if you give the ‘deterrence’ folks their due, it seems to me that any executions should be public. It makes no sense as a deterrent to kill a criminal in secret. The public has got to see with their own eyes the consequences of killing someone. I’m sure that a lot of people will attack me as barbaric for supporting public executions, but so be it.

Hegseth wants not only a public execution, but death by firing squad. Why not have an execution by lethal injection, where the murderer simply falls asleep into death? A firing squad seems a bit barbaric to me.

Cruel or unusual punishment?

I have always questioned that word ‘unusual’. If ALL criminals were shot by firing squads, that punishment would be almost daily and far from ‘unusual’. I think the framers of the Constitution goofed on that one.

Is a firing squad cruel? Perhaps. It could at least be gory, if blood flowed from the gunshot wounds. If the marksmen were not too accurate, it might take the criminal some time to die in agony. Therefore, a firing squad is potentially cruel, so I would vote against that. Again, lethal injection seems the humane way to go.

On the other hand, a public execution should have spectator appeal. Lethal injection clearly does not. Other methods like hanging or electrocution, or even the guillotine are pretty barbaric and cruel. Maybe a well-trained firing squad would cause instant death, and would therefore be humane but still entertaining to spectators.

Politically, the death penalty is highly discriminatory against poor people and minorities. That is another reason that I oppose the death penalty. Public executions would make the process even more political and discriminatory, as public authorities must decide which executions of which kinds of people carries their political message. Already, it looks as though the current criminal up for execution is a Moslem. That is already a political statement. I doubt whether a white Christian would be publicly executed.

In sum, I am strongly against the death penalty but IF it is permitted, in order to have a deterrence effect, it should be public. The only question then would be what is the most ‘humane’ but still deterrent form of the death penalty.

The above discussion is far from what I’m hearing in the media today.

RAPE IS NO BIG DEAL?

Ask anyone in the United States, “Is child rape OK?” 100% will say “no.” And yet, 40% of Americans approve of Donald Trump. If you ask them how this is possible, the answer (probably fudged and hemmed and hawed) is that Trump is doing so many wonderful things for the country, like deporting criminal immigrants, policing crime-ridden cities, and fighting communism, that rape can be overlooked. Trump has successfully distracted the country from the Epstein files.

The answer of all MAGA culists is therefore, “Rape can be condoned and tolerated because other factors are more important.”

What are the some of the factors that MAGA considers more important than rape? We can list them pretty clearly:

                             Banning transgenders on girls’ sports teams

                             Banning gay marriage

                             Detaining, torturing, and deporting to Africa brown-skinned immigrants.

A candidate who has raped children but who vociferously opposes transgenders will win the election.

The real issue, however, is power – especially white nationalist and Trump power. Keeping Trump in power overrides all other considerations. It’s hard for even MAGA cultists to deny that Trump is a child rapist, but that, along with the Epstein files, can be overlooked. MAGA cultists can disagree with Trump’s policies, but they must keep him in power, no matter what.

I keep hearing these interviews with Trump supporters on social media. I’d guess that most of them have no idea what Trump’s polices actually are, or sometimes they can spout Trump’s litany of lies, like his stopping 8 wars. When asked to name one war that Trump stopped, they almost always fail.

Meanwhile, the anti-woman culture continues to grow apace, led by rapist-in-chief Trump and Supreme Court Justice Cavenaugh. The Cornell 7 case sparked outrage, but text messages suggest that such gang rapes were the norm at the Chi Phi fraternity house. Victims of gang rape are afraid to speak out, because they know that their complaints will be swept under the carpet, and that they themselves will be subject to smear campaigns and even death threats. After the Cornell 7 outrage fades from the news cycle, it will all go back to normal.

There is an attitude out there that males have an uncontrollable urge to have sex with any woman, and therefore they can be excused if their hormonal urges get out of control. A typical example is the phrase “boys will be boys”. I have always felt that the Moslem countries are on to something, by keeping their women completely covered up in public. If the women uncover, males might lose control of their hormones and rape them.

Would a man be tempted to rape this?

Most men are constrained by social norms to refrain from sexual abuse, but men in power feel that those constraints no longer apply, and they can give full rein to their hormones. In fact, rape becomes an instrument of power. Trump’s famous statement about ‘grabbing them by the p***y’ actually  goes further; “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. […] Grab them by the p***y. You can do anything.” This is a statement about power, above all. The Epstein files are filled with powerful men, who are exercising and demonstrating their power by committing egregious acts with impunity.

In summary, it’s not that Americans support rape; rather, they consider it so unimportant that many other issues supersede it. The elite and powerful commit rape as power trips, mostly just because they know they can get away with it.

WHY DO BUDDHIST MONKS CHANT?

We just had the monks’ house-blessing ceremony for our new house. It raised many questions.

monks chanting at our house-warming

It was positively medieval and other-worldly. Of course, that’s the point: to perpetuate the continuity of traditions that date back at least a thousand years. Also, religious ceremonies in general are designed to transport people from the day-to-day profane world into the sacred universe beyond our sensory physical world.

Some of the ritual acts can be interpreted in the same way that they are in almost all religions. For example, the monks sprayed us with holy water. Obviously, this is a purification rite. They also showered us with flower petals. I suppose this relates to the abundance of life, fertility, etc.

Many religious ceremonies mark ‘rites of passage’ which are breaks in day-to-day time to mark certain spiritual mileposts – marriage, births, death, etc. Moving into a new house is a similar rite.

Most religious ceremonies are similar, and follow the prescriptions outlined above. Buddhism, however, has some odd quirks, because Buddhists don’t pray to gods.

Buddhist ceremonies are known for their chanting, maybe half in the ancient Pali language, and half in the local Khmer language, so that most people don’t really know what the monks are talking about. In Christianity and other religions with gods, chanting asks the gods to ‘bless’ (whatever that means) the house and its occupants. This can’t be the case with Buddhist monks, who don’t worship gods as such, nor can it be a petition to the Buddha, who was not divine.

Rather, it would seem that the chants are themselves magic words that somehow affect the house and the residents. Many religions believe in the magic power of words. Burning the Quran is blasphemy, not because it burns some paper books, but because it destroys the sacred written words therein.

But why, then, couldn’t the householders chant their own magic words? Who needs the monks?

Recall that, during the Middle Ages in Europe, the priests prayed on behalf of the commoners in Latin, which the commoners could not understand. In most religions, the priests are the go-between between the gods and the people. Through their rigorous training, the priests learn to communicate with the godhead, and to transmit messages in both directions between the gods and the people.

Buddhist monks appear to fulfill a similar role, but there are no gods to communicate with. Rather, the monks have access to the spiritual world outside our physical world. The words of their chants reflect ‘meaning’ in the spirit world, which is an intermediate communication between the spirit world and the people, who themselves are unable to access the spirit world.

When I was in university, I had to read Mircea Eliade’s ground-breaking book, The Sacred and the Profane. Eliade argues that religion is based on a sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane. According to Eliade, for traditional man, myths describe “breakthroughs of the sacred (or the ‘supernatural’) into the World”—what he calls hierophanies.

In this way, the monks’ ceremony, with all its chanting, symbolism, and magic, is a typical hierophany, in which the sacred breaks into the profane world. No gods are necessary for this religious experience.

A NEW, SELF-SUFFICIENT WORLD

Trump’s tariffs, the oil blockade, etc. have destroyed what was left of the interconnected world economy.

Until recently, a car assembled in the US, for example, contained hundreds of parts from all over the world. A vast web of arrangements allowed parts to be shipped from one country to another. We really had a global economy.

The world has learned that all that cooperation was just an illusion. It didn’t take much to destroy the trading network.

Trump thinks that a tariff levied on, say, Canada, is a punishment on Canada. It’s really a punishment on US companies and consumers, who must pay the tariffs, leading to higher prices. Trump’s tariffs, therefore, are shooting himself in the foot. Canada’s only loss is that, with higher US prices, people will not buy as many of their products. Too high a tariff, and Canada will not sell ANY products.

Even after Trump has left, and his crazy tariffs withdrawn, the world will remember just how easy it was to destroy the entire global trading system. They will remember how trust was broken, and treaties revoked. They will hesitate to rush into new agreements that may be broken.

The world will realize that Americans elected Trump, twice. Thus, Americans can and will elect officials who will break agreements. It will take many years for America to regain the trust of other countries, who will mistrust America and American voters as a whole, not just Trump and his cronies.

According to the classical economist, David Ricardo, free trade is beneficial to both trading partners. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage states that if one country, say Brazil, is good at producing one thing like coffee, and another country, say Canada, is good at producing something else, like maple sugar, then both sides benefit by trading those products if they focus on producing what they are good at. Without such trade, consumption of those products would be impossible, or at least more expensive.

I lived for 4 years in Lesotho, surrounded by apartheid South Africa. In those days, the entire world was boycotting South Africa. The boycott forced South Africa to become amazingly self-sufficient. That included even being the only country in the world to be able to produce gasoline from coal. [They had plenty of coal, and no country would sell them oil.] South Africa had the geographical and climatic diversity to produce just about anything on their own.

The apartheid South African example may signal the future of the world economy. If no country can depend on trade with another country, because of war, tariffs, etc., then countries will retreat into protectionism and self-reliance. Life will become much more expensive, and many products will disappear from the market. Americans cannot produce coffee, so a ban on trade with coffee producers will result in a ban on coffee in America.

Be prepared for a world of self-reliant countries, where many products will not be available at all, while others, manufactured within the country, will be much more expensive.

SHIVA IN CAMBODIA

I was taking my morning walk in the gardens behind Wat Kandal in Battambang, when an Indian-looking guy came up to me saying “Shiva, Shiva”, and pointing to a remote corner of the gardens. There I found a new statue of Shiva, complete with his identifying symbols of the trident, the third eye, and especially the linga. It didn’t look like the typical Khmer style of statue, so I figured it was placed there in the past month by the local Indian community.

It struck me that Shiva statues are rare in Cambodian pagodas these days, but I realized that it hadn’t always been this way.

In fact, in early Cambodian Hindu times, Shiva was perhaps the most important of the Hindu gods. By the time of Jayavarman II (770-850) on Phnom Kulen, Shiva had reached such importance that the king developed the concept of deva-raj, or god-king, in which Jayavarman II believed himself to be the incarnation of Shiva. The amazing carvings in the streambed at Kbal Spean were largely about Shiva, so that the stream became known as the ‘valley of the 1000 lingas.’

Lingas at Kbal Spean

The website hdasianart.com describes the linga as:

Simple in form yet vast in meaning, the Khmer linga represents both the cosmic principle and the spiritual foundation of kingship, fertility, and divine presence. https://www.hdasianart.com/

At the heart of each state temple—such as Phnom Bakheng, Baksei Chamkrong, or Pre Rup—stood a linga consecrated with the name of the reigning monarch, effectively identifying the king with Shiva.

This practice, known as the Devaraja cult (“god-king”), transformed the linga into a cosmological anchor:

Shiva remained the most important god to the Khmers for another two centuries. Banteay Srey temple near Angkor Wat was built by two royal courtiers (but not by any king) in 967, and was dedicated to Shiva.

Shiva linga at Banteay Srei.

Suryavarman II dedicated the well-known temple at Preah Vihear to Shiva in the 11th century, although later it was converted to a Buddhist temple.

When Suryavarman II moved to the Angkor area, he built Angkor Wat in the early 1100s, but this temple was dedicated to Vishnu, not Shiva. From then on, Shiva was relegated to a minor role, especially when Cambodia became more predominantly Buddhist.

It has been widely discussed how Cambodia could be a Buddhist nation and still retain the Hindu gods.

Sadakata’s explanation is the fact that Buddhist cosmology has become, spiritually speaking, irrelevant. More precisely, he says: “Buddhist cosmology is a spiritual legacy of the past, yet it remains a force capable of stirring the imagination of people today. Like old ceremonial garments no longer worn, it retains an attraction for us and can transport our minds to the spiritual world of ancient and medieval people” (Sadakata, 1997: 177).

[Nowadays, Vishnu — the preserver — is the most common god in Cambodia. His image is found in homes and at city gates, as a protecting spirit.]

In this way, a statue of Shiva in Buddhist Cambodia is more a monument to the glorious Khmer past than it is an object of devotion or prayer. However, to Hindus from India, the statue is indeed an object of veneration and prayer.

TRUMP IS GOD

Many people view Trump as God in the same way that most religious people view their gods. However, my explanation of the common perception of God is not the normal one, so let me start with that.

For most people, shit happens. That is the default. Things normally go wrong. But once in a while, something good happens. That is when people shout “Allah Akbar”, and “God is good, always.” That one good thing in a sea of horrors is proof that a good God exists.

My favorite example of this was that airplane that crashed and killed some 200 people, but they found that one baby survived. The world media was full of “Praise God!” and “God is good”.  But wait… God just murdered 200 people. People didn’t even see that; the 200 victims can be ignored. The one surviving baby was enough to reassure people of their religious beliefs. I don’t think I heard anyone claim that the 200 deaths were just part of God’s mysterious plan. No one cursed an evil God for His 200 murders. No, the deaths were just ignored as background noise.

Another example is the patient in hospital with terminal cancer, and with all his relatives praying for his recovery. Normally, he dies, and no one blames God. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. But if he miraculously survives, it’s “Praise be to the all-benevolent God, who answers prayer!”

Now let’s compare this attitude with MAGA cultists’ attitude towards Trump. Trump can rape young girls, steal billions of dollars, and kill thousands of children, but that’s all default background noise as long as he can satisfy his cultists with a couple of things they like.

There are thousands of law-abiding immigrants in the US, but if Trump can catch just one brown-skinned illegal committing a crime, and if he can torture, detain, and deport them to some ‘shithole’ country, MAGA will be exuberant and will praise him to the skies.

He can bomb a school and kill 168 Iranian girls, and his followers just ignore it, but he can make a simple (meaningless) executive order ‘banning sharia law’, and his cultists jump for joy.

Similarly, there are thousands of transgender people in the US, leading normal lives, but if Trump can prevent just one of the small handful of transgender athletes from participating in girls’ sports, he is praised to the skies by MAGA.

The media keep crowing “Trump hits New Low in the Polls!” That’s actually false. Realclearpolling.com compiles all the latest polls and calculates their average. That average has hovered around 40% approval for months. There may be an outlier or two, either to the positive or negative side, but the results are consistent. 40% of the American population supports Trump, no matter what he does or what horrors he commits. Those 40% represent the religious cultists who think he is God and cannot err.

If we ask, “How horribly can he act before his base abandons him?”, we must conclude that there is no red line that he cannot cross. His followers simply ignore the horrors. Just as there are no horrors that God can commit that will cause His followers to abandon Him. Cult followers will accept anything, no matter how awful.

A.I. and DIGITAL BANKING

Everyone is talking about the future of AI these days. Most of the discussions I read or hear center around the loss of millions of jobs, as AI can do tasks that most human employees now perform. However, there are dozens of other ramifications, each more frightening than the last.

Today I saw an interview between Tucker Carlson and economist Richard Werner, that chilled me to the bone. Werner mentioned that the current digitalized financial system will become centralized to government control.

Your debit card or QR code already controls you to a certain extent, when you receive messages like, “purchase denied – you have exceeded your daily $1000 limit,” or “your account has insufficient funds for this purchase.”

When (not if) governments use AI to control your cards and QRs, awful things will happen:

“Your card has been blocked because you criticized our glorious leader Donald Trump. You can re-instate your card with a ‘contribution’ of $500 to the President.”

Or telling you what products you can or cannot buy:

“You are not permitted to purchase that product, because it was made in China.”

Or they can limit your travel or even your residence:

“Your card is no longer valid outside a radius of 10 km outside Columbus, Ohio. We suggest you move there.”

Since their AI has every single piece of data about you, you can be blackmailed or extorted. The government can control whom you associate with, or even whom you marry, simply by controlling your debit cards or QR codes.

______________________

Once you let your mind start conjuring up scenarios, the picture is downright mind-boggling – making 1984 and Brave New World and other dystopias look like free societies.