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Some history-changing events or trends were easy to see as they started unfolding. Just consider the various actors and their real motives and objectives. 
Democracies, imperfect as they are, had opportunities to react and either prevent or mitigate nefarious developments, or they could just choose to not care.
I saw through #putin when the assassinations of critics first started. (NB. he already had neoimperialist track record!)
I've watched #CCP's *actions* through the eyes of its victims while listening its manipulative win-win BS. (never in doubt)
I knew America's 'Iraq adventure' would, besides a few other things, destroy #USA's standing in *most* of the world... (the wild exhilaration of Chinese nationalists was the icing on that cake)
#trump? One of the easiest characters ever to see through... (which makes all that followed all the more shocking...!)
As a natural 'liberal democratic' friend of tolerant and secular Indian republic — always an ideal — I've watched the rise and rise of the intolerant hindu nationalist populism with concern and sadness.
I didn't foresee the Gov't of #India assassinating a political (religious) opponent — a citizen of #Canada —on Canadian soil and then revelling in its ability to execute the deed and to taunt the elected leader of the 'target country'. With apparently most of India 80% Hindu population — including the opposition — celebrating this new-found audaciously extraterritorial muscularity.
️ (me=fail)
June 18, 2023 — the day Hardeep Singh Nijjar was gunned down outside a Sikh gurdwara in Canada — may well mark brave new #Hindustan's coming-out party.
Now, I get the "why" without accepting the act's necessity. It's the "how", "where" and what followed that mark a new era. A hindu-nationalist India is *not* even interested in being full buddies with liberal democracies on a 'fundamental' level.
This actually exhaustively explains #Modi's solid attachment to the #CRIBS#BRICS alternative formula and Modi taking India into the "Shanghai Cooperation Organisation" (SCO) in 2015.
But just how far down the rabbit hole is the dominant Hindu electorate willing to follow, with "the greatest democracy's" closest allies consisting of a motley crew #AxisOfDespots whose sole unifying drive is "liberal democracy delenda est"?