LIBERALS CHOOSE UNREAL FICTION OVER REAL FACTS

Liberals by definition are ones who are open to the other point of view. They respect and accept an opinion other than their own. So naturally, you will start wondering who these people are? And how can the left and left of centre thinkdom qualify to call themselves liberal. After all they accept only one truth - their truth and respect only one opinion - their opinion. So how can they be liberal? This is what is at the root of all the troubles in the liberal world. They are not true to their own ideals and not open to the alternate point of view even when it stares glaringly at them. Time and again they have tried to prove that the facts are unreal and the fiction of their fantasy world is real. They behave predictably in herd like manner despite claiming to be free thinking intellectuals.

 

The National Herald case is a glaring example of unreal facts and real fiction. The case filed by Dr. Subramanian Swami alleges that Young Indian Ltd (YIL), a charitable company owned by Sonia, Rahul, Motilal Vora and Oscar Fernandez has taken over the assets of the National Herald newspaper owned by Associated Journals Limited (AJL) in a malicious way. AJL owed the Congress an accumulated debt of 900m rupees and so the Gandhis used Congress party funds and YIL banner and took over AJL including all its real estate, located in prime locations in Delhi, Lucknow, Mumbai and other cities, all worth more than 20bn rupees as a remittance of their 900m rupee loan. The accused are unable to tell the Enforcement Directorate (ED) how they suddenly became rich owners of property worth 20bn rupees ( 1 bl = 100 ml) and still they insist that they are innocent! Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have no proper answers to defend the indefensible to justify their grabbing of the properties of the National Herald and other newspapers under of the AJL. The agitation of Congress in Parliament and outside is only because a handful of party men feel their first family is above law. Unfortunately the not so loyal G23 even thinks otherwise and refuses to join their agitation.

 

After Congress the next Liberal stronghold is of TMC in Kolkata. They have no answer to the loads and loads of cash and gold that are tumbling out of the flats of one of the girlfriends of their respected leader – 540 million of rupee in cash and gold 56 million rupees to be exact. Besides this the lucky girlfriend has more than 10 flats in posh districts of Kolkata and several other bungalows and farm houses all over the state in rural Bengal! And the Enforcement Directorate is still digging not only this lady but chasing several other girlfriends of this minister. The TMC does not care to explain the obvious – the vulgar accumulation of ill-gotten wealth, but their concern is the misuse of the ED for political vendetta! Yet another liberal party ignoring real facts and harping on unreal fiction!

 

The Mahavikas Agadhi lead by Uddhav Thakrey is similarly not ready to explain why three of their senior ministers are languishing in jail following corruption charges, with no satisfactory answers to their misdeeds, but they too are gravely concerned about threat to federalism caused by misuse of ED by the central government! Again facts are unreal but fiction is real!!

 

The Chidambrums, the Muftis, the Abdullas, the Satyendra Jains, the Sorens are all neck deep in corruption and at various stage of drowning in legal quicksand. Their misdeeds are bright and obvious as daylight but instead of answering the questions of the ED they are unsuccessfully challenging the authority of the investigating agency and crying foul against the central government for investigating their corruption! They want us to believe their fiction – that they are squeaky clean and it is the central government which is harassing them out of political vendetta!  The liberal echo chamber with their loyal gang of former retired beurocrats, journalists, NGOs and activists are tweeting like mad trying to spin their fiction web.

 

A contemporary science writer Gary Zukar once said ‘Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is what is based on our precepts. What we perceive is what we look for. What we look for depends on what we perceive. What we perceive depends on what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what our reality is.’ So now you know why our Liberals are so damn sure of their fiction and why the obvious facts do not impress them. They will always believe their quixotic fiction. They are not prepared to abandon their world of false sense of perception and listen to the alternate point of view, something they ought to do if they are truly liberals!

 

Had it not been for this attitude of painting their corrupt facts as unreal and their liberal fiction as real, the Indian opposition does not seem to be in a crisis. If one considers all non-BJP coalition parties together, the opposition still controls twelve out of thirty state assemblies and comprises more than 55 percent of the national election vote share. Indeed, in almost one-third of parliamentary seats in the 2019 general election, the BJP was not even competitive i.e. it won less than 25 percent vote share or finished outside of the top two spots. These seats represent large parts of southern and eastern India, where the BJP—unlike the earlier dominant Congress—has struggled to break through. Still the opposition is in constant decline. This only suggests that our liberals have been fatally wounded by their corrupt practices, which are seeing the legal daylight now and painting their future even darker. In the last decade India has changed, talent is in demand and privilege matters less and even big political families are no more beyond the reach of law. What is further bad news for our liberals is the public is fully behind the law enforcement agencies because they feel that it was corruption in high places during liberal rule that kept India poor and ‘Garibi hatao’ merely an election slogan.

 

It’s time we admitted that not only the liberals but we humans are not rational creatures. What, then, motivates us, if not the cold hard facts? Our minds are driven by bias. Once an initial bias has been developed, it is extremely difficult to change one’s mind. Think of it like wearing reality-warping glasses: once a biased person reads or listens to facts, they will either use the information they receive as reinforcement of their beliefs or dismiss it as being bogus and condescending. This irrational behavior of the human mind was first noticed in studies conducted at Stanford University in the 1970s. Since then, countless other studies have shown that our irrationality is deeply embedded in our anatomy through evolution and that we act on emotion rather than rational facts. Our lack of logic stems from our evolutionary desire to belong. Straying too far away from the herd, even in search of shelter or food, immediately lowers your chances of survival in the wild. By sticking to our opinions, we subconsciously signal to our surroundings that we are an inherent part of the herd. We belong. And in this respect, trying to convince someone to change their mind is equivalent to trying to convince them to leave their tribe. How would they survive without a community?

 

Our brain has mechanisms that constantly work to protect our ego, worldview, and sense of identity. When our worldview is challenged, the same part of the brain in charge of processing physical danger is activated. Our voice of reason was also developed through evolution and this in turn helped us to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups. Our liberals also suffer from the “illusion of explanatory depth” - a term used to describe a situation in which a person who is relatively ignorant or un-knowledgeable in a certain field imagines himself as competent, masterful, and skillful- even though he is far from it. They see their warped world with their tinted glasses and then go about writing books justifying their fiction. Then again when we are processing information that supports our beliefs, it gives us a surge of dopamine – the happiness hormone. If you agree with me I am happy and you are my friend, if you disagree we are enemies. Democracy is the most evolved state of polity. In a democracy we argue to learn, not to win. And our liberals invariably argue to win. They are always right, come what may!

 

Our liberals have chained themselves to the wall of a dark cave in which fire burns in the middle and casts their dreadful shadows on the walls. They perceive this shadow to be reality and are not prepared to come out of the cave and face the glorious sun of truth. So long as they refuse to come out of this dark cave of falsehood voters will keep on ignoring them. Indians are not prepared to go back into that dark cave with them once they have experienced the benefits of sunshine.