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Could he change your mind? Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images
I was recently at a party when someone I hadn’t seen in a while said, “I found out that two of my cousins are actually Trump supporters. Like, actual Trump supporters. Seriously. Like they actually support Trump. I couldn’t believe it.”
I couldn’t believe it. It’s one thing to talk with disdain about your political opponents, but how striking that she genuinely couldn’t fathom that Trump supporters are real, or at least that any would find themselves in distant relation with her. This political species making up about a half of the American electorate (not to mention his international admirers), it is at best irrational to impute such an unlikelihood to this kind of discovery. But given our desperate need (in the service of everybody calming down a bit) for proactive efforts at understanding each other a little better, the development of this sentiment may well be a kind of vice.
Forget for a moment any moralising about charity in politics and think strategically. Perhaps your only concern is, understandably, keeping him out of office. Fine. But to defeat something, you must understand it. And treating this quite plausible political threat as a kind of strange alien which does not so much befriend as contaminate our loved ones, and which can have no other explanation than as a manifestation of our most base intolerance and bigotry, probably isn’t quite “steel-manning” the opposition.
Political hatred is nothing new, of course, and there will always be more and less antagonistic periods in the US’s continual development (remember that the vice president used to be whoever came second in the election, an entertaining policy to imagine active in the last few presidential cycles), but something does seem decidedly more openly nasty about modern US politics; gone are the days of clandestine bitterness — now even the pretence of propriety has been dropped in favour of common name-calling.
There are probably two reasons for this. The first is that Trump is a genuine anomaly. He swears. He insults. He asks Theo Von what cocaine is like. He attempts to prevent democratic elections. He is a convicted felon. Worse still, he appears to bring out the worst in otherwise generally professional politicians. (The recent dick joke made by the spotlessly charismatic 44th president at the DNC can hardly be blamed on Trump, but it is difficult to imagine him doing the same at the expense of John McCain or Mitt Romney.)
Why has such child’s play become so politically mainstream? The answer perhaps lies in the second reason: social media. Politicians are the nervous hostages of voters, who at present are the nervous hostages of malicious algorithms designed to cultivate self-assurance and righteousness with artistic precision.
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SubscribeIf find the young woman’s reaction to her cousin’s support of Trump rational. There is no more disgusting figure in the public sphere than Donald Trump. It still seems irrational to me to like someone like him much less want him to run the free world.
This column strikes me as blaming the victim. Those of us who are sane enough to see him for what he is are not the problem it is the other half who are so full hate, anger and resentments that they have created a cult of personality around a t**d, and what is sickening is that they do it partly because it elicits reactions like the young woman’s at the beginning of this column. I’ll try to understand those discarded by globalization and neoliberalism, after Trump has left the scene.
There is a lot to dislike about woke Democrats but whatever they do is nothing compared to what Trump might do if he wins the election.
“nothing compared to what Trump might do if he wins the election.”
Which is what?
Yes I remember this sort of argument before he was elected last time. The fact that he conducted himself in a perfectly democratic if idiosyncratic manner with rather less foreign drama than has occurred during Biden’s tenure seems to have been totally forgotten by these pearl-clutchers.
He did make a major effort to subvert the election result, and stay in power even though he had lost. He was not particulary efficient about it, but being disorganised and incompetent does not make him any more ‘perfectly democratic’.
What exactly was the “major effort”?
Trump tried to pressure election officials to ‘find’ enough votes to make him win, to pressure state officials to return ‘alternative’ slates of electors that would not vote according to the number of votes collected, and to pressure the vice president to refuse to follow the procedure for validating electino results. You know all this.
Yes I do and you’ve taken the line of him looking for votes out of context. But he did pressure Pence to reject Electoral College votes or send the results back to the states. Which is enough to say he tried to subvert the result,
I would like to agree – but it leaves us with a problem. I saw it first with Berlusconi. I honestly believed that anyone who liked him had to be either 1) dishonest, or 2) stupid. Trouble is, from that starting point you are unable to convince anyone who sort of likes him to change their mind, or indeed make any sensible political deals with them. No understanding – no empathy – no way of convincing. If we want to move things ahead and keep some kind of functioning democracy we need to do better than that. Unfortunately.
We just have to win one more election.
And then you will do what? Disenfranchise the 48% who are willing to vote for Trump?
Correct. In order to achieve totalitarianism.
Benjamin, old chap, I invite you to go back and read the first two paragraphs of the piece again.
Then, perhaps, go and look in a mirror.
Just a suggestion.
He apparently doesn’t understand the gist of the article, but rather proves the authors point quite well. It would be fascinating to peruse through Mr. Greco’s feed. Likely a compilation of MSNBC and CNN posts.
A confirmed case of TDS. This comment is a good example.
I always thought that term should apply to people who vandalized the capital building in his name. The only people who are deranged are the one who support him.
What Trump might do?
If you recall, Trump was in office from 2016-2020. What did he do that was so threatening?
No new wars? Lower taxes? Low interest rates? The Abraham Accords? Low unemployment? Full oil reserves? Space Force?
There is no reason to apply facts and refer to reality with such folks. They are victims of algorithms and simply can’t see it. They all have in common the belief that Mr. Trump was not already the POTUS and displayed none of the behaviors they insist will happen this time. The same ones, by the way, that they warned about in 2016.
He tried to steal the election.
How did he try to do this?
Those of us who are sane enough to see him for what he is
Which is what exactly? Use small words so that I might understand your emotion, because it’s an argument. Trump was president once before. NONE of the dire warnings of what would happen came to pass. Not one. His opponents, meanwhile, did and continue doing several of those things. And here you are again, pearl-clutching over what Trump “might” do. Trump’s not the guy insisting that you use certain pronouns to ignore the obvious. He’s not the one whose office colluded with social and legacy media to silence certain voices. He’s not the one putting opponents in jail.
There is a lot to dislike about woke Democrats but whatever they do is nothing compared to what Trump might do if he wins the election.
The Trump haters said this before he was President and he did nothing that they predicted. Now, you are doing the same thing but have wisely left it wide open. After all who KNOWS what anyone MIGHT do.
I find your comment either Sophomoric or intentionally slippery…possibly both.
I’ve read this a few times now but i’m finding it hard to connect the dots. It seems to suggest that algorithms are behind feeds, then somehow jumps to the idea that we are fed people to converse with, then separated by selective algorithms, that somehow alters our understanding of words and what they mean so we develop a different vocabulary from our opponents, and then we’re confused by a person who negates our view of the world, and this is why political discourse has become childish.
It seemed like the entire contents of a refrigerator was thrown against the kitchen wall in hopes that some would stick.
It was kinda sorta an interesting essay, but we’ve heard most of this before.
I just can’t understand what it’s about.
You first post suggests you more or less do.
Do you mean unwittingly understood?
I find him impossible to listen to and impossible to watch. Ponderous, plodding, usually aimless, always pointless.
So he’s not dangerous? He’s not to be feared? He’s not a Nazi? Which is it?
None of those things.
Just a kid who manages to be both annoying and dull.
Take this for example: “Really, though, social media is best described as a utopian paradise. I mean in the etymological sense: utopia from ou topos, “no place”. Paradise from paradeisos, “enclosed park”. A place that is not real, and at the same time a walled garden. Less a public square, whose contents are contingent and out of your control, and more a private estate designed from the ground up to keep out anything which may disillusion you of the space.”
translation: social media is an echo chamber
—but I want you to believe that my undergraduate prolixity is knowledge, nuance even, so here are all these unnecessary words.
I take the author’s point, but actual Trump supporters?
He was using that phrase in a descriptive way of how anti-Trumpians think.
Maybe if Americans could look beyond their own backyard for once, they might realize he’s not a genuine anomaly. There are a dozen Trumps across the world right now today – in Argentina, El Salvador, France, Brazil, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy. It would be a lot more productive if people started asking why there are so many Trumps in the world right now.
Well, perhaps – but this is to reduce this essay about the universality of the effects of social media to a single issue.
The author used the example of Trump to illustrate the.much wider point (something which used to be called “from the particular to the general” or vice versa). I thought at first he was guilty of rolling out the same anti-Trumpian tropes that many writers feel ‘obliged’ to do, but then realised he was simply characterising how anti-Trumpians view Trump.
Can we please take cognisance of the far more wide-reaching and interesting general.points being made about ‘the public square’?
Thanks.
Indeed. All the words said about the Trump supporting cousin could easily be used for a Brexit supporting cousin, for example.
Precisely this.
And I don’t think the phenomenon is symmetrical between the camps.
I would guess most Brexit supporters could have listed the arguments that Remainers espoused (whether or not the Brexit supporters found those arguments convincing).
On the other hand, I’d wager that plenty of Remainers:
(a) could not even imagine how anyone could support Brexit
(b) thought Brexit supporters were (at best) malodorous dimwits.
Not exactly reciprocal.
Bit too biased that IMO WD.
I suspect just as many Brexit supporters couldn’t espouse the alternative as Remainers vice versa. But neither you or I could prove either contention. All we can probably agree on is there will be some on both sides who can make a decent fist of it.
Gonna disagree when it comes to America. The ability to step into your opponent’s shoes and articulate their arguments is entirely one-sided in the USA (only conservatives do it). How do I know this? Because the mainstream media is all-in for Democrats (anti-Trump) so we know exactly what they think about Trump, and all the logical fallacies they are using to buttress their inane viewpoints. I do actually read Vox, The Hill, even the Guardian, politico, because I read realclearpolitics, – but when I tell my liberal cousin to check out the Federalist, heck, even realclearpolitics which has the best pieces from both sides – I get scorn. “Can’t believe you get your news from those sites which are just cultists and kooks. Disinformation. ” Literally if someone says “We need more open debate,” I guarantee you you are talking to a conservative.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers” and it applies to those of a religiously self-righteous disposition as well. Satan is clever that way.
Agree with an element of that, but I’d contend you may put too much stock in the out front rhetoric associated with political yah-boo. Centrist parties the world over have moved their positions as a result of Populist politicians and their successes. That is not an entirely bad trend. Whether enough for some another matter, but it has had an impact.
I go to union websites, mostly during elections. After a while they want me to pay and I just can’t bring myself to do it.
That’s fair.
Thanks JV, always considered you fair-minded.
You can get a public square if you go to different websites. If you just check your facebook you’re just going to see a mirror.
Aside from a ill-considered effort to pause the certification of an election about which his opponents bragged in Time magazine of conducting a “shadow campaign” against him, please cite the actual tyrannical actions taken by Trump during his time in office. For instance, did he try to suppress political or pandemic related speech on the internet or attempt to jail his opponents by way of spurious show trials? Conduct a shadow campaign, maybe?
Your point is a significant digression off the article DL, but also the initial point was about Trump supporters not Trump himself. For myself I can well understand why a large proportion of voters would support someone like him, saying stuff like he does, given how US capitalism fails so many. He has a unique comms skill unlike many.
The bit less easy to comprehend is how the same folks come to believe he’ll actually do anything fundamental about it. That’s slightly different to whether one sees him as a Devil incarnate. He’s not. He just won’t deliver.
Well he threatened to jail Hilary Clinton from the get go! The idea that Trump is some victim in this polarisation is absurd. What Trump supporters hate is that the other side fought back, using the same “unfair” tactics, and is for the present is more powerful. A lot of this amounts to little more than whining.
This is actually the opposite of what politics is about, which is to gain and and wield power. Or you could also deploy speak softly and carry a big stick rather than the opposite! I
I’ve argued before that Trump has been an absolute disaster for any conservative anti progressive cause. Firstly he is lost three elections out of four for the Republicans and every single one if we talk about the popular vote. Secondly Trump often seems only tangentially and indeed transactionally interested in the issues that so enrage much of his base. His real business is himself, and even there is complete inability not to just react and to moderate and control what he says – that lasted only a few days after the assassination attempt just determines the majority, who are NOT his base, against him.
It would be a lot more productive if people started asking why there are so many Trumps in the world right now.
That is precisely why people are not asking and have no interest in finding out. Examining the question would lead to some uncomfortable answers and require a great deal of explaining from people not accustomed to accountability.
The assumption that Trump is bad is an artifact of the manipulation this article is ironically avoiding.
“Examining the question would lead to some uncomfortable answers and require a great deal of explaining from people not accustomed to accountability.”
I’m not sure it would. They would, and already do, assume the people who disagree with them are just uneducated or hateful, and that any politician who appeals to these people is a populist grifter who misleads thick people with disinformation in order to further his own career.
I couldn’t agree with the author more and I’ve said it here several times. Leave all social media platform. Leave and never go back for any reason. You find out very quickly that you lose nothing of value and get your life back. It’s a total waste of life.
Does that include UnHerd’s comments section?
For me (in the UK) it has been worrying to see these social media trends being played out across broadcast news and newspapers.
It might of course be down to an inadequate education system, leading to poor quality critical thinking, as evidenced by our current crop of politicians and journalists.
Undoubtedly definitions do vary because of different social pools developing and indeed deliberate efforts to subvert the conventional definitions. “Democratic” used to describe a totalitarian system or “Liberal” to describe an illiberal approach. The algorithms certainly feed me views I tend to find sympathetic rather than antagonistic but we don’t just receive views from pure algorythmicaly driven feeds.
I was considering the different reactions to writers here who are certainly not all selected by algorithm to appeal to Unherd’s readership. One of my favourite authors here is Kathleen Stock who doesn’t see the world the way I see it or have the same tastes or political leanings that I have but is usually intelligent, interesting and nuanced and humorous in her perceptions. As a result she receives favourable comment to her articles from the readership. In contrast the article by Anil yesterday that received a storm of negative comment despite being like Kathleen Stock an academic with a leftist bent. It seemed the readership felt actually insulted to have been presented such a superficial, sneering article lacking balance and nuance.
The quality of Anil’s article was so poor that ironically it led to negative posted comments that attracted likes at a fairly unusual level. It certainly stirred up the readership, not I think because it challenged any perceptions as I doubt the readership had any preconceived admiration for Tommy Robinson, but by being perceived as so far below the intellectual level that Unherd presents through the likes of Kathleen Stock. What was the purpose of Unherd selecting Anil’s article?
In real life the feed is people you work with and socialise with, the places you visit (supermarkets transitioning from ‘summer’ to ‘halloween’), the schools your children go to, plus any media you use. You have feeds whether you’re on social media or not, and often feed that you ‘curate’ yourself by picking and choosing who you interact with.
For example, what this means is that someone in the public sector will have a ton of pro-government reinforcement because their job and the job of their colleagues relies on government spending and a framing of government managing people’s lives. Unless they actively try to step out of their bubble, the views they come across will be dominated by pro-big government (ie ‘leftist’ views) and they would be surprised by anyone taking a ‘rightist’ view because they would meet such people so rarely – and possibly only as ‘customers’. Information bubbles are entirely natural and not limited to online.
If you are at least aware of this, then you can try to expand your worldview and keep alert to the biases and priors of your milieu. You might not be able to correct it (it’s not going to be formalised statistical sampling) but at least you have some clues as to why other people are making different judgements to you.
Quite right. The old phrase “birds of a feather flock together” occurs.
The author seems blissfully innocent of the crucial relationship between “Seriously-Like-they-actually-support-Trump-I-couldn’t-believe-it” Syndrome and the vast expansion of the tertiary ‘education’ Lefty sheep-dipping that has transformed politics in America and the rest of the West in the last thirty years. And is even more toxic than social media. I wonder if he’s read The Diversity Delusion by Heather Mac Donald….. Detailed, rigorous and copious, it is a devastating expose of “how race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture.” This competitive victimhood narrative originated in academia but now oozes daily from the liberal media and has progressively been absorbed as orthodoxy in each and every one of our institutions, all the way from schools to armed forces. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
Lefty sheep-dipping – nice turn of phrase. I think I’m going to use it when I can if that’s all right.
Yes of course! Niceturnsofphrase-R-us
Wondering when my comment will appear
The reasons for our current societal malaise are complex – and social media is at least partly to blame – but also the gathering together, in campus hothouses, of millions over-cosseted middle class youth, entirely unmoored from the real world, has an awful lot to do with it.
Yes, but how much of the ‘millions over-cosseted middle class youth, entirely unmoored from the real world’ is due to social media?
The Leftist academia sheep-dip that I am talking about here long pre-dates social media.
Perhaps, but it is much worse for having been amplified over the internet.
Actually, use social media platforms to build out your organisational ideas. Are you right-wing lawyer, who wants to explore ‘human rights’ abuses further – like the Rotherham atrocity, for example – then social media is a must. Momentum and visibility,
The Rotherham abuse was reported in alternative media five years before the MSM picked it up and that was only because a police officer threw their career to make the point that nothing was being done by authorities, often related to the offenders
The site that first reported it was the now defunct National Front organisation, a true far right group
Everything else being labelled as fair right is just right of centre
Perhaps a typo in your response but the term ‘fair right’ sounds like it could catch on.
“Fair Right”
I like it! ….even if unintended. You might’ve inadvertently started something here!
I am drawn by the similarities between Social Media and Religion. Both are examples of self reinforcing group think. I guess the great difference is that Social Media does not promise Nirvana whilst most religions sell the prospect of that as a central part of their offering. Social media is also clearly a man made construct, whereas religions tend to promote the idea that they are inspired solely by the divine. Both Social Media and Religion can provide succour to their adherents. However, Religion has certainly also resulted in much division and bloodshed. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Social Media doesn’t give rise to similar outcomes, although I fear it already has
I like that analogy. In a similar vein, i liken liberal progressives to religionists (a thought which many religionists would no doubt be horrified to countenance); both are utopia-seeking belief systems.
It strikes me that the most healthy and self-sustaining democratic polities, from Athens and Florence to the the Swiss Cantons have always understood the crucial role of Sortition in regulating and revivifying the oligarchic and factional tendencies innate in popular institutions. That is to say, the selection of public officials at random. In ancient Athens it was simply assumed to be obvious that without Sortition Democracy would degenerate into Oligarchy.
Well, In modern Mass Democracy where straw-poll legitimacy has penetrated and pervaded almost every aspect of life (and combined insidiously with what is called Consumer Choice), the same principle of Sortition must be applied far more widely. Not just in the political sphere but also in the social, the cultural and even the personal spheres as well.
It is why insitituions such as the local pub, the parish church, neighbourhood sports and social clubs and literary and cultural societies are so invaluable. They compel us to interact with our actual neighbours on a basis of mutual respect and equality.
Refuse mediation. The refusal of mediation is the path back to sanity and spiritual health.
Read primary sources, participate in un-curated social spaces, talk to your neighbours and eat-whats-on-your-plate culturally and recreationally, so to speak.
These are old truths, of course – ‘Charity (Caritas) begins at home’.
“(Trump) appears to bring out the worst in otherwise generally professional politicians – (The recent d**k joke made by the spotlessly charismatic 44th president at the DNC).”
Or this: He provokes them into dropping their “spotlessly charismatic” posturing to show us who they really are and have been all along. Geez, and why does the piece not identify the “d**k joke” speaker by name – Obama?
In 1972 columnist Pauline Kael stated that she couldn’t believe Nixon won the election over George McGovern. “No one I know voted for him”, she said. Political snobbery and cluelessness existed long before social media.
What specifically is a “democratic” election, and what is an example of Trump ‘trying to prevent democratic elections’. This essayist scribbles about things already thoroughly worn out, as some commenters have already noted, and his unsupported statement of attempted election prevention is bullshit.
I see that a Trump-is-evil advocate wants us to stop exchanging unmonitored opinions on the internet and get our beliefs from “reliable” sources like…. well, like him, I suppose. Why do I find this unsurprising?
Many of the problems are the fault of the left and their drift into every part of our lives
The violence, both verbally with their overblown statements and actually though Antifa who see anyone who isn’t them as a fascist who is deserving of a level of violence that is unjustifiable
The weaponisation of words through political correctness and the abuse of the legal system, both in the US and the UK , Andy makes the debate more rancorous
That people cannot conceive that their fellow humans may have deferent views and feelings may be the fault of the teachers and the lefts march though the institutions
There is no debate , just sides to be drawn and consensus is seen as weakness, another failing of the left from its inception
It’s one thing to talk with disdain about your political opponents, but how striking that she genuinely couldn’t fathom that Trump supporters are real, or at least that any would find themselves in distant relation with her.
And people wonder how 1930s Germany could happen. These are the same people who actively cheered the firing of those who refused the jab, too, the ones who love to consider themselves the good guys.
“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”
– Bertrand Russell
This seems out of the realm of understanding of most, but you can actually say that someone is shocked to learn their cousin is a Kamala supporter too. Part of the problem comes from media, who purposefully paints Trump supporters to be in the wrong and the other side to be right. Media has a political position, and it further divides the electorate. When reporting on Trump’s idea not to tax tips, the coverage was negative, yet the spin was positive when Kamala said the same empty words. Maybe if you all quit stoking the flames, people can listen to each other instead of being led around by the likes of you. And yes, you are one of them for choosing to use the Trump example.
Maybe if the author realized that his framing of Trump and assumptions about Trump are the product of the utopian prison he correctly criticizes this,essay would have been less derivative and predictable.
Excellent article. I would add that pure spite is an underrated motivation for many, perhaps more often for those on the “right”. The problem with definitions is foundational: what does it mean to “support” Trump? Does that mean I want him to be my dad, or rabbi? Does that mean I think he is a gentleman? The decision to vote for either candidate is, or should be, hugely super-positioned atop a host of conclusions, perspectives, and policy goals. Social media had, for worse, democratized elevated and careful discussion of important topics, and reduced everything to something approximating local sports team affiliations.
Yes social media is terrible. But actually I know exactly what they mean by woman, and what I mean, and how pernicious their ideas are. I also know exactly what they mean by equity – and understand that they are reheating communist ideas that will end in mass violence and death.
Damascene conversions are v rare. A discourse where you completely change the others view are scarce. But what can happen is your position moves slightly and you be prompted to better understand another’s position, or at least grow some metaphorical muscle on explaining your own. We may not like admitting it, we may not even be aware entirely, but only the unthinking exhibit total stasis.
The challenge more often is whether you instinctively seek out pluralistic viewpoints to test yourself. Most don’t. The danger then is the rapid-fire echo-chamber effect of social media can take us quicker to unreflective division than the debate with mates down the pub used to.
While building your Utopia it’s important to remember that it doesn’t exist.
This was a great article. Truly refreshing to read.
You really shouldn’t have written that. It makes you sound like a high school sophomore and it inspires the kind of reflexive and deeply uninteresting defences of Trump that make every comments section worse. Moreover, it’s sort of crappy writing. “He attempts to prevent democratic elections” might be the worst sentence to appear in this publication, a publication that has become a landing spot for a lot of bad sentences lately.
Yes, I really am surprised, maybe I shouldn’t be, that the Unherd editors thought this was a good piece of writing.
One of these things is not like the others, and that thing is ‘woman.’
First, ‘woman’ is a noun, not an adjective. Someone can seem democratic, woke, or racist. No one can seem a woman. You can be more democratic / woke / racist than another person, but you cannot be more woman than another woman.
You either are a woman or you are not a woman. It isn’t a matter of degree, and it isn’t a matter of opinion.
‘Woman’ has only one meaning: adult human female.
“Disputed definitions are often the foundation of political disagreement” is a truism. But the definitions are disputed, especially in recent years, because ideologues give a novel — and always vague and subjective — meaning to a long-established term or simply invent a new term.
I’m perplexed as to why the often repeated advice to avoid mind numbing social media while including adolescent insults about a politician the author and his friends don’t like is worth the print space. It’s here, so it must be on some level valuable to someone.
UnHerd is just a collection essays by exiled Trots, raging against the club that won’t let them in anymore. You’re worse than the progressives that usurped you.
At the week end I was at a lunch where the subject of Trump was offhandedly brought up and his person and the character of his supporters casually dismissed. It reminded me, funnily enough, of how the same middle class English boys used to talk about Jews 60 years ago and how nobody demurred, not even I, who am part Jewish.
I chose, on this occasion, not to start an out and out row (of which I am well capable) but I waited until I got into conversation with one person who had not led on the subject of Trump and talked to him about India (which everyone knew that I have made my study) and caste. And I suggested to him that caste is present in most countries not least in the USA.
Trump, I reminded him, had been a Democrat and had known all the New York Dem machers, Schumer, Hillary etc. They and the Washington gang all flew his airline which he’d bought out of the Eastern Airlines shuttle. As long as he stuck to that and to real estate and then to entertainment and casinos there was no animosity to him. Even when he started his run for President, there was amusement and curiosity among the powers that be. How far could he go? This was more amusement, more newspapers sold, more TV viewing, more clicks.
But then it got serious. He sank one political dynasty, the Bushes. Threatened to bury the Clintons. The knives came out.
He had jumped the caste lines I suggested to my friend; and the friend did not argue. I left it there and do not know if he took that line of thought any further.
We humans are a social crowd, mostly. We like to go along and not rock the boat. Caste thinking and behaviour is always possible. With irrational stuff like TDS it’s only possible to take an oblique approach in conversation. ‘Argument’ goes nowhere.
OT here perhaps, but caste in India today isnot a frozen structure of erstwhile privilege ( as it seems to be in the West) but a dynamic category of electoral politics- where the hitherto oppressed are now empowered.
Whereas in the Western political paradigm the “swamps “seem to be stuck to the old elites merely in new identitarian garb.
Ithink you are contending that Dalits or “untouchables” have been liberated, that Hindus were oppressed until Modi, or both. Or likelier something more complex than your brief comment could cover. Please clarify and elaborate if you have time.
i wouldn’t say that many of the Old Elites wear “indentitarian garb” on most days. In the states, they still tend to be whites from old money, so identity politics won’t work in the way it would for an upstart like AOC or MTG (as ugly as the term is, she is “white-trash” adjacent). Of course the signaling takes place, but even many of those who play along see through those transparent robes—if not their own costumes.
The Indian Constitution was drafted by the Constituent Assembly headed by the great Dalit leader Dr BR Ambedkar. Caste slurs are strictly a non bailable offence in India since the 1947 independence. Besides the Constitution guarantees affirmative action and employment reservation for all hitherto oppressed lower castes- 50 percent of all government jobs and educational institutions of the State have reserved seats and quotas for these sections.
Till 1989 India was largely dominated by the dynastic democracy of Congress which was mainly dominated by upper caste and Westernised elites. In that year there was a strong movement for extending caste reservations and affirmative action benefits to the middle castes called ” Other Backward Castes”( OBCs). It wanted the implementation of the Report of a Mandal Commission which recommended as such.
This report was opposed by Congress but paved the way for a new generation of non elite politicians from lower castes. Not just Modi who is OBC, but several other humble background politicians like Mulayam Yadav, Laloo Prasad, Deve Gowda etc came to the fore.
Indian politics became mass and more non Western in its idioms and language as the Congress party lost its erstwhile dominance and regional caste based parties arose.
My Substack Chat and Notes section has more details.
You can also see my comments in the Jess Philips article for more.
Ok, thanks for your informative response. But I can’t locate your substack, either under your current or previous screen name.
https://sayantani15.substack.com/
Agreed, Sayantani.
Great observations. I would suggest that two essential parts of the backdrop are (1) that Western values since the 1960s have been dominated by the weak values, guilt and fear, and (2) our efforts to globalize as emissaries of American business and politics have catalyzed a Marxist-led mass revolution of other nations against the West.
Without these two disturbing social, political, and economic factors, social media would be just mean girls, gamers, pets, and birthday wishes.
There really is a world war going on, and social media are the nuclear weapons. It’s not just a war of words.