Two Types of Change

The media is increasing unable to predict the outcome of an election: they didn’t see the BJP sweep of 2014, Brexit or now Donald Trump. But worse than that is the media’s unwillingness to take “responsibility for one's own unjustified arrogance and undeniable mistakes”, writes Damon Linker.

Citing the Trump election, he points out how the media seems to confuse what they would like to happen with what they believe was going to happen:
“Trump's campaign and personal behavior are so offensive to so many things that the members of these establishments take for granted, believe in, and valorize, that the thought that Trump could prevail electorally was close to unthinkable for most.”
Substituting a desire for a prediction is an amateurish mistake.
“None of the smart guys came close to grasping the truth — which is that they don't really know what the electorate thinks, and they don't know who is likely to vote.”

Time after time we are seeing this phenomenon, in India, in Britain and now in the US:
“If the political and media establishments were merely out of touch with much of the country, that would be one thing. But it's worse than that. They presume to know, they presume to judge, and most astonishingly, they presume that this will work out at the voting booth.”

It’s also amusing how Clinton used the same technique that Modi’s opponents used in 2014:
“Can anyone tell me what Hillary Clinton's campaign stood for?... Very often they seemed to boil down to a wholly negative message: Trump's a racist, sexist psycho! Vote for me, because I'm not him!”

But voting out of disgust and frustration for anything new, anything different can lead to disappointment. Check out Kejriwal in Delhi. Or the likely (negative) consequences of Brexit.

Narendra Modi, on the other hand, wasn’t just a vote against something; it was also a vote for something else, a something else with a track record in Gujarat. That track record and experience in governance is why a Modi does surgical strikes and now his surprise move against black money and counterfeiters: he knows what is possible, what is practical, and acts accordingly. Unlike one Kejriwal, who mopes and whines all the time.

So has America voted for a Kejriwal or a Modi? Only time will tell.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarNovember 11, 2016 at 10:08 AM

    It is true that overdoing 'leaning to left' invariably invokes a powerful 'we need leaning to right'. It is also true that overdoing of 'leaning to left' has in it the evil of the "holier than thou" attitude, a kind of moral superiority. Spiritually speaking in reality, to be precise underscoring the Buddha's message, neither overdoing left or right is proper; nor is moral superiority/assertiveness good conduct. Moral superiority feeling has its roots in one's ego, and that in this context comes with an assumed sanction for it; that is the trick maya (our great ability for delusion) plays on us and nearly all of us succumb to maya. Also, all of us live in our delusion with full conviction it is others who do it! :-) Ces't la vie!!

    Having said that, (maybe for having said that,) I am not entirely sure where I should place myself. I am, so to speak, center to left. I would side with the downtrodden in general, only because I have the capacity to feel. I do not care for any social activism, because invariably social activists carry a morally superior conviction and can easily blind themselves. They may not care at all for the feeling of those on the 'right' wing and their valid points. In that sense, they stop looking at the world with openness and compassion, as they are carried away by their 'leftist' solidification. This is called their 'vasanas' translatable as "character of a person due to existing tendencies and interaction through such tendencies - quite simple character is one's governing tendency due to one's past experiences". All vasanas, irrespective of whether good or bad, bind us to our subjectivity. Truth, at the core level, matters not any more because of that. That way, my vasanas are 'my being center to left'!

    Sure, I was apprehensive of Modi as to whether he is going to incite Hindu extremism. That is wrong, I still believe firmly. Since that does not seem to be the case, I only evaluate him for performance now. It is not disappointing. There are some like me. People like us do not endorse one party either. We are not pro-Congress. Actually we were fed up of Congress corruption and badly wanted a change, hence voted for BJP. Why, we were sure then (and now stand vindicated) that Kejriwal was good for activism but no good for administration.

    It is not that only right leaning people have proper balance in judging. As much as leftists feel morally superior, the rightists too have a superiority feeling in their own way, and they attack the other view in no less fierce terms. That cannot by itself mean truth and justice favor them.


    About Trump, yes he caters to certain demands and desperation of the majority people who feel threatened by sympathy to left. It is also true that overdoing of left, in its own way, has been there in the US too. Actually that helped deciding the issue. Strangely, the apprehensions about what Trump will do is very much there with many in the US right now, after his victory. This is an unusual happening in that country, where people accept the newly chosen President. His provocative way of talking is certainly behind it. Perversity it maybe (!) but I was happy Trump won because I was very, very, very curious to know how he would perform and where he would lead the most powerful nation, if he were to become the President. Let him make the pudding; we are here to have the 'proof of the pudding by eating it!' Cheers! :-)

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