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Moreover, if television can offer to a reclusive section of the population a semblance of proximity to a political world and a social reality to which they are unaccustomed, without having even to master traditional learning tools, the commercial dynamics and sociopolitical acceptability brings to the fore a discourse reflecting a mindset imbued with conformist views.

Zuhair Siddiqi, who had worked for the Civil & Military Gazette (a daily newspaper founded in 1872, which closed in 1963), observed that ‘government could, almost always, find support for its arbitrary action against a newspaper in one section or another. The support was generally extended in the name of “national interest, the glory of Islam, the ideology of Pakistan” or some other mundane consideration’.

“Pakistan’s past support for the Taliban in Afghanistan served to further their policy of ‘strategic depth’, i.e. to maintain a non-hostile and weakened Afghanistan, ensuring that neither India nor the USSR (now Russia), nor any other power, such as the US, Iran, or the Central Asian republics, could gain traction on their western border.”

“counter-terrorism response to militancy indicates that too many Pakistanis believe their problems derive from foreign interference, especially from the West… not with their own government’s inaction or incapacity. They are apparently willing to forego insisting on needed reforms in governance and development, in favour of a national narrative of Islam under attack from hostile outside forces.”

“the ideology-driven identity and nationalism have resulted in the emergence of an ideological state. What this has meant is that any criticism of this identity or any aspect of it is perceived as being anti-Pakistan. The fear of internal break up is so strong that any talk of ethnolinguistic nationalism is seen as threatening to Pakistan’s existence.”

“conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right—the feeling of living in a world with Shadow Lands, the feeling that every human misery is someone else’s profit, the feeling of being exhausted by predation and extraction, the feeling that important truths are being hidden.”

"… the more liberals seem to shrug and sneer and treat the whole package of worries like crazy-people stuff. Once an issue is touched by “them,” it seems to become oddly untouchable by almost everyone else. And what mainstream liberals ignore and neglect, this emerging alliance lavishes with attention.”

“Good brands are immune to fundamental transformation. Conceding to having become one at age thirty would have meant foreclosing on what I saw as my prerogative to change, evolve, and hopefully improve. It would have locked me into performing this particular version of me, indefinitely.”