{"id":179,"date":"2016-05-11T21:42:38","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T21:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=179"},"modified":"2016-05-11T21:42:38","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T21:42:38","slug":"not-simple-su","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=179","title":{"rendered":"The Not So Simple Su"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">W<\/span>e\u2019re a land of strange people; we have this elaborate electoral process through which we participate in the creation of leaders and governments &#8212; arguably the best men among those presented to us (oh, women too, if the men allow it). We pick our leaders based on how well they manipulate us, only to then assume that they\u2019re all actually marble-brained halfwits &#8212; dumb at best, laugh-worthy at bestest.\n\nSo we giggle when a leader wears a hat with his own photo on it, or when he mistakes Bhutan for Nepal. We generate a river of memes and forwards when said guy compares an Indian state to an African country. And it isn\u2019t just us. When a Republican candidate in the US with a fluffy golden mop on his head says something as delightfully tone-deaf as, \u201cThe beauty of me is that I\u2019m very rich\u201d, we laugh condescendingly.\n\nThe slight fear that this guy could become the most powerful man in the world is offset by the realisation that he\u2019s a brainless bozo and that it couldn\u2019t possibly happen.\n\nThis is somewhat comforting. You know you have the option to complain and moan about how things are being run when you\u2019re secure in the knowledge that the guys running it are A-grade melons, while we have all the brainpower and knowhow to make India great again.\n\nLike clockwork, when resident tinfoil hat expert Subramanian Swamy says something silly, we chuckle and shake our heads: \u201cOh, that guy again. What\u2019d he say now?\u201d We forget that this is someone who\u2019s risen to prominence in a very Fountainhead-esque, Anupam Kher-ian way: it started, for the sake of the story, from an op-ed that was a hilarious satire of a deranged fanatic (come on, I refuse to believe he was in any way serious in that article) running a one-man political party.\n\nBut that was merely a teaser. It grew to hundreds of millions of court petitions suggesting bizarre conspiracies (from persecution to prosecution \u2013 badumtish), to increased media attention, to finally landing that coveted seat in the Rajya Sabha last month, from where he can effect real, meaningful, long-term change (shudder).\n<\/p><blockquote class=\"quote--center\">We don\u2019t realise that we\u2019re being played. We\u2019re puppets, characters in an imaginary, terrible novel, written of course by our old friend Chetan Bhagat, reduced to stereotypes with no trace of complexity.<\/blockquote>\nNow he\u2019s writing open letters to the prime minister, asking for the removal of the RBI governor on grounds of being \u201cmentally not fully Indian\u201d, since he continues to renew his Green Card (I\u2019m not sure whether that makes him anti-national or super-national). Comparing Swamy\u2019s delusions and paranoia to Donald Trump\u2019s, and writing them off under a very large umbrella, made of tinfoil and embossed with, \u201cTHEY\u2019RE ALL IDIOTS!\u201d in gold is the easy, tempting option. Except that it isn\u2019t true, is it?\n\nSwamy is often the subject of much ridicule among us self-flagellating arty-liberal types. But just in terms of his curriculum vitae, he\u2019s an academic whiz. He\u2019s authored piles of books and research papers; he\u2019s taught at prestigious institutes, shaping the minds of today and tomorrow \u2013 he also has a PhD in Economics from Harvard (!). And I\u2019m pretty sure all his degrees even have the same name written on them, despite the fact that I haven\u2019t yet come across any \u201csworn affidavits\u201d or bigshot politicians holding them on TV. His views can be rubbished, but certainly not his pedigree.\n\nTrump is a multi-bazillionaire; just his shoes probably cost more than the GDP of, well, Kerala and Somalia combined. He had so much money that one day he thought, \u201cAh, screw it, I\u2019ll just become President of the United States.\u201d Years of sexist, racist, classist classic bigotry (combined with extraordinary business acumen) can\u2019t just be filed under \u201cignorance\u201d. There\u2019s obviously something more sinister at play. It\u2019s a base-level way of connecting to a majority of people who think the same way.\n\nUs.\n\nCloser home, where our lovable leaders disgorge anti-women, anti-caste, anti-thought, anti-good-food rhetoric with so much affection, it is less important whether they actually buy that crap or not. What matters is that it hits home.\n\nThere\u2019s an ominous shrewdness in there \u2013 they\u2019re cunning, media-trained rabble-rousers. Shit-stirrers. I cannot accept that we live in a world where elected leaders genuinely believe that Indians invented space travel, time travel, genome technology, temperature-controlled toilet seats, and the meaning of life a billion years ago. We don\u2019t realise that we\u2019re being played. We\u2019re puppets, characters in an imaginary, terrible novel, written of course by our old friend Chetan Bhagat, reduced to stereotypes with no trace of complexity.\n\nThe thing is: stupidity is always endearing, idiots are always charming. And these guys, credit where it\u2019s due, have realised this. It\u2019s time for us, too, to recognise what\u2019s actually going on: A cynical ploy to disarm and then destroy.\n\nThey\u2019re the geniuses; we\u2019re the stupid ones.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like clockwork, when resident tinfoil hat expert Subramanian Swamy says something silly, we chuckle and shake our heads. But he has a PhD from Harvard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[62,63,64,65,66,67,292,293,294],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-arre","tag-arre-digital-platform","tag-arre-originals","tag-arre-reads","tag-arre-text-articles","tag-arre-website","tag-harvard","tag-phd-in-economics","tag-subramanian-swamy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Not So Simple Su<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Like clockwork, when resident tinfoil hat expert Subramanian Swamy says something silly, we chuckle and shake our heads. 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