Polarized

If you thought India is polarized, take a look at the US. Granted, it’s election season, and this isn’t a truly representative time, but still…

 

Just 18 minutes into the first Presidential debate, the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden got so fed up with the constant interruptions from Trump that he snapped:

“Will you shut up, man.”

Biden probably said that in the heat of the moment. But the kind of outpouring of support his remark got shows how polarized things are. For example, Jonathan Capehart wrote an opinion-piece in the Washington Post titled “Joe Biden spoke for millions when he told Trump to ‘shut up, man’”…

 

In normal times, we acknowledge many decisions are hard, with no right answers. Like dealing with COVID-19: benefits of lockdowns v/s economic cost to so many. But come election time, everyone gets into black and white mode:

“Trump told attendees in Carson City that supporters of his opponent would surrender their “future to the virus,” saying: “He’s gonna want to lockdown.” “He’ll listen to the scientists,” Trump added in a mocking tone before saying, “If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression instead — we’re like a rocket ship. Take a look at the numbers.”

Apparently, things are so polarized that you can take shots at people you don’t like for “listen(ing) to the scientists” and nobody bats an eyelid.

 

Biden’s VP candidate, of course, is Kamala Harris. An atypical first name for an American. Normally, if a politician made a remark like that, it would be political suicide. Today though? Senator David Perdue said:

“Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever!”

Normally, people would dismiss this with an Americans-never-get-foreign-sounding-names-right shrug. But now you have folks saying it means a lot more. Like Indian-American Anand Giridhardas, who wrote:

“The obvious word for what Perdue did is “mispronunciation.” But I would like to correct that. The proper term is “dispronunciation.”… mispronunciation is people trying too feebly and in vain to say our names — and dispronunciation is people saying our names incorrectly on purpose, as if to remind us whose country this really is.”

 

“It’s not just us” is not a comforting answer. Neither is “It’s like this everywhere”. And yet both statements are true…

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