When Comfort Replaces Conscience and Power Learns to Divide
When Comfort Replaces Conscience and
Power Learns to Divide
In recent days, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement activity in the Twin Cities has drawn renewed attention to
the direction of governance in Minnesota and across the country. These actions
are not occurring in isolation. They reflect a broader political strategy that
relies on fear, division, and selective enforcement to consolidate power, while
avoiding responsibility for the real problems facing ordinary people.
History shows that societies
rarely lose their moral compass through sudden collapse. They lose it slowly,
when people become comfortable enough to stop questioning authority. Corruption
fades into the background. Injustice is rationalized. Citizens move away from
demanding accountability and toward defending identities that make them feel
secure. This is how power learns to operate without resistance.
We are seeing this pattern
clearly today in both the United States and India. Despite different political
systems, the strategy used by current leadership is strikingly similar: divide
people along identity lines so they stop asking difficult questions about
governance, inequality, and accountability.
In the United States, leaders
such as Donald Trump have normalized a politics built on grievance and fear.
Immigrants, minorities, journalists, and critics are portrayed as threats,
while structural failures soaring healthcare costs, corporate concentration,
stagnant wages, and declining public trust are pushed aside. Loyalty replaces
truth. Anger replaces policy. People are encouraged to defend an idea of the
nation rather than confront the behavior of those who govern it.
In India, Narendra Modi has
overseen a similar shift, where religion and nationalism are increasingly used
to define who belongs and who does not. Criticism of policy is reframed as an
attack on the nation or on faith itself. Dissent becomes disloyalty. Minorities
become convenient targets. Meanwhile, inequality deepens and institutions meant
to safeguard democracy weaken. Identity once again becomes a shield against
accountability.
This erosion is made possible by
a deeper human tendency. When life becomes slightly comfortable, people stop
focusing on justice and start protecting their ego. That ego is shaped by group
identity political affiliation, religion, caste, race, education, or wealth.
Once identity replaces ethics, defending the group becomes more important than
distinguishing right from wrong.
Religion plays a particularly
dangerous role in this process. Across faiths, sacred texts speak of
compassion, humility, and peace. Yet people are often willing to commit
extraordinary cruelty in the name of God an unknowable entity defined as
perfect. Criticize someone’s appearance, food, or success and they may shrug it
off. Question their God, and defensiveness can turn violent. Faith becomes less
about spirituality and more about dominance. Even perfection is turned into
competition: my God, my nation, my identity is superior to yours.
Ancient societies once understood
the value of questioning. When texts like the Vedas were composed, open
dialogue was encouraged. Knowledge emerged through debate, observation, and
logic. Without modern technology, people advanced medicine, governance, commerce,
and philosophy. Spiritual inquiry was not enforced through fear, but explored
through reasoning and experience. Life was less obsessed with accumulation,
less driven by artificial scarcity, and less consumed by the need to dominate
others.
Modern systems have inverted
these values. Scarcity is manufactured. People are encouraged to fight over
symbols while corporations extract wealth quietly. Governments benefit when
citizens argue over identity instead of demanding accountability. Leaders who
divide do not fear the people they fear unity.
This is where fear becomes a
governing tool. Under the banner of targeting “undocumented workers,”
enforcement in the United States has expanded in ways that extend far beyond
immigration policy. Agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement are
increasingly perceived not just as law enforcement, but as instruments of
intimidation. The goal is not only removal, but silence.
I know this not from headlines,
but firsthand. A white American man, a Trump voter, became openly critical of
Trump and attended a rally in Minneapolis. Shortly afterward, ICE agents came
to his home. He is not undocumented. He is not an immigrant. His only offense
was dissent. Whether this visit was coincidence or intention almost no longer
matters. The message it sends is unmistakable: opposition carries risk. When
enforcement agencies are perceived as tools to discourage criticism, fear
spreads quickly. People begin to self-censor, withdraw, and comply not because
they agree, but because they are afraid.
This is how morality erodes. Not
through open brutality alone, but through quiet intimidation that makes people
look away. When citizens begin defending power out of fear rather than
principle, democracy becomes hollow.
The truth remains unavoidable. No
matter how powerful someone becomes, the fundamentals of being human do not
change. The richest person on earth still eats, cleans, sleeps, and loves like
everyone else. Power changes the setting, not the substance. No leader is
divine. No nation is infallible.
The real danger facing both
America and India is not disagreement. It is complacency. When people stop
questioning their government and start defending leaders as extensions of their
identity, conscience is slowly replaced by comfort. Faith becomes a weapon.
Nationalism becomes an excuse. Fear becomes policy.
Societies do not fall because
people are evil. They fall because people become comfortable enough to stop
caring.
The question now is not whether
leaders are dividing people. They are. The real question is whether citizens
will continue to defend that division or recognize it for what it is: a tool of
control used by those who fear accountability more than they value unity.
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