How Rude is My Valley

                                                               How Rude is My Valley

Two analyses of American reactions to their President and his speeches and a third  one on the release of a new film Fahrenheit451 jolted me out of all hopes of a return to liberal democracy not only in US but in all other parts of the world. This is because all the three analyses highlighted the trend in US towards an endorsement of all White’s support to authoritarianism. What we see in India  is also very similar to what is happening in US. With political discourse plummeting to an absurdly pathetic no holds barred level in India, it is frightening to contemplate what will be in store for us in the coming months in the run up to the 2019 elections.  The world is no longer witnessing a clash between left, right and centre or between capitalist, socialist and liberal ideologies that primed intellectual debates in the past. In today’s world the polarization is between accepted social norms of polite speech and civil behaviour, and the new norms of openness and directness that allows no separation between word and sentiment. 

In this discord of polemics of behaviour, where  both the old and the new norms have their respective positives and their drawbacks, it will be naïve to privilege one over the other based on subjective judgement of right and wrong with regard to standards of behaviour and speech.  As years roll on and generational changes follow, there can be no one prescriptive formula determining how we conduct ourselves in our engagement with others in society.

 Let us see the three specifics that US is debating today which shockingly and yet truly endorse a new norm that looks askance at all norms of decency and politeness.  President Trump’s rudeness that is legendary has gained a new and refreshing appeal among the Americans precisely because he is blunt and says what he feels without varnishing the truth. He does not hide behind polished, civil language as he cynically dismisses it as a cushion to state polite falsehoods. He wears his blunt honesty on his sleeves, refusing to cloak uncomfortable truths in civil discourse. President Trumps’ rudeness is now seen as an assault on hypocrisy that is subtly used for “stultifying political correctness.”  America which has till now been the champion of liberal ideology with its advocacy of individual freedom and protection of civil liberties from arbitrary authoritarianism, is gradually becoming critical under President Trump for endorsing a tolerant and indulgent spirit of accommodation that had given America the pride of place in the world. America had embraced the concept of  the  salad bowl, allowing the integration of the many different cultures unlike the more traditional notion of remaining a cultural melting pot where generation of immigrants had abandoned their indigenous culture to get assimilated into American society. The distinct feature of America is its acceptance of different cultures and providing them the space to keep their own distinct qualities. But democracy has come under a cloud in America as it has happened in other parts of Europe. There is a creeping fear of democracy in danger overtaking us in India as well.

 What has caused this shift from democracy to some form of authoritarianism even if that may not be a full blown dictatorship?  The strength of democracy rests on its expansiveness to accommodate many different opposing ideologies. So the threat to democracy can never be from clash of political ideologies as their presence sustains it, but due to the strong leaning towards one particular ideology. It is not right versus left, capitalism versus socialism or conservatism versus liberalism but a perfervid return to a single ideology that brooks no opposition. This happened in Stalin’s Russia and Mao Tse Tung’s China with their single political ideology of communism. A similar kind of increasing political polarization towards right has made it difficult for other political ideologies to co-exist, with the danger of destruction of democratic norms and institutions in US, Europe and India. Trump’s campaign pitched fiercely for the native white Americans who are shown to be under threat from non white immigrants. Trump’s coming to power was founded on reserving jobs for the Whites from the non Whites. In an article on   “The Trump Effect”, Noah Berlatsky finds a correlation between white American's intolerance and support for authoritarian rule because American whites have been brain washed into fearing democracy that had benefitted all the immigrants and marginalized people. This fear is at the root of Americans preference for an authoritarian rule in place of their commitment to democracy. They do not see Trump’s politics of America First and America for Americans( minus the immigrants) is a sleight of hand subtlety by which he juggles and changes ethno cleansing into a most magnanimous virtue. Similarly in India the PM’s and his party’ call for  a Congress and opposition- mukht Bharat resonates with the single ideological passion of Hindutva  that puts paid to all other ideologies that are either left or left centric or secular and liberal, making it a return to a single party rule that goes against the norms of democracy.

 The second analysis is about Trump’s rudeness as against the accepted political correctness.  Keith Koffler writes: “Trump’s rudeness is strong medicine, but it’s an invaluable antidote to a poisonous phenomenon.” His defence of talking straight from the heart is to fight hypocrisy whereby one speaks a language that is acceptable as per the norms of decency and politeness.  Here is a paradox for democracy survives only when truths are told and debated even if they are hurtful , but at the same time there is a thin  line that separates  hurtful sentiments from intemperate and foul language. Trump says he speaks about deeper reality and refuses to couch them in artificial niceties. Trump’s shrill trumpets sounded shocking in the beginning, but have now come to be accepted as refreshingly straight and honest. Being uncivil as being brutally honest has become the norm. We see this happening in India when the leaders use harsh and uncivil language that is parrot-like echoed by their followers. Social media is full of abusive mockery of the opposition. Civility, thy days are over. Incivility, thy days are come.

 The third reference is to the new release of the dystopian film Fahrenheit 451 based on Ray Bradbury’s novel. Dystopian, the antonym of Utopian (which aspires to impracticable perfection) refers to anything that is of a dire or grim nature. Dystopian novels were popular between the 1930s and 1950s as they reflected the anxieties of a rapidly changing technological society. The irony is that those things which trigger our anxieties today reflect the now rapidly changing society of the Information age. Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451” is about how the destruction of books aids in the removal of ideas and free will. The film has made a slight deviation and shows the destruction of hard drives and servers on which the books have been uploaded.  The film ironically shows how in this age of information overload, news and entertainment stare you on your face as the walls in all the rooms serve as giant screen beaming  the television programmes. Bradbury’s book had raised the anxiety of a world where insipid entertainment would lead to ignorance and indifference. This message still resonates though ironically his book now turned into a TV special shows TV viewing as the cause of it. It decries the watching of television, the mindless engagement with Facebook and Twitter and the modern obsession with the social media using crass and abusive language and spreading fake news . The book blames the demise of books on the shortening of our attention spans. But what is frightening about this adapted film  version of Bradbury’s novel 'Fahrenheit 451' is not that it portrays a dystopian future  but it portrays a society has come to accept it as normal.

All newspapers and magazines are full of gratuitous advice about how to live life. In a nutshell, most of them tender new standards totally at variance with the norms that had  till now prevailed, almost to the point of questioning ‘What is in a norm?’. A recent leading newspaper suggested an alternative way to live happily by reveling in imperfection, an anti thesis to classical norms of perfection and beauty. The writer makes a case for imperfection by citing Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”. The alternative world view that has become the norm today is to look at the cracks and not at the light. The justification is that there is no perfect world that is delightful and enduring and therefore we honestly accept and embrace imperfection.  Keatsian chiasmus  “Beauty is Truth, truth beauty”_ (satyam, shivam,sindaram) does not hold water any longer.  Liberty, Equality, Fraternity are unattainable goals and therefore better to discard liberal values and subject ourselves to rule by authoritarianism.  Better to be brutally honest and speak with no artificial politeness and nicety.  If Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley is a paean to an innocent age of the past, How Rude is my Valley is a paean to our Information age.