Our polarized and fragmented political worlds

Over the decades, I have gotten used to editors rejecting my commentaries.  The latest is merely that--the latest.  Disappointing, yes.  But, to use the words of the current President, it is what it is!

One of the rejections was about the polarized political environment and television "news" channels catering to their audience.  A first version of this was rejected back during my California years.  A decade into my Oregon years, I wrote again about it in 2012, and yet again it was rejected.

Re-reading the piece, well, I stand by it ;)

I concluded there,"We have no choice but to get used to the reality that most Americans—and the rest of the world, too—will increasingly live in polarized and fragmented political worlds."

That was in 2012.  Well before tRump!  Over the past four years, the fragmentation has become severe.

I have always hated living and thinking in a bubble.  This is why I used to read the WSJ, even if I cursed it most of the time.  I engaged with Republicans and have even shared many meals with them.  But, that was all prior to the summer of 2016.

I terribly miss that pre-2016 world, and I know that it will never come back.  After all, the tRump voters have made it clear, to borrow from Taylor Swift, that they are "gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate."

Here it is for you to read my rejected 2012 commentary:
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When I was new to this country, C-Span fascinated me for its uniqueness—it provided politics in the raw without filters of any kind, and offered me multiple perspectives that I could not have ever otherwise followed.  It even seemed rather quaint that the channel would list separate phone numbers for Republican and Democratic viewers to call in with their comments and questions.

At C-Span and in the real world, the old days at least held out a possibility of conversations across political or religious lines and about the issues of the day, both profound and trivial. 

Now, as much as the common water cooler has been replaced by individualized water bottles, news sources and discussion forums have also become customized.  Thus, it is now easy to remain within our own narrowly defined identities, whatever they might be and, thereby, shut ourselves from anything that does not correspond to our views of the world.

Professor Cass Sunstein wrote about this rapidly emerging trend back in 2001—eons ago in the modern digital timelines!  Sunstein wrote then that one of the vices of the exponentially expanding modern communications involved “the risk of fragmentation, as the increased power of individual choice allows people to sort themselves into innumerable homogeneous groups, which often results in amplifying their preexisting views.”

Empirical evidence confirms this.  In a research paper, Shanto Iyengar of Stanford and Kyu Hahn of UCLA note that “although an infinite variety of information is available, individuals may well limit their exposure to news or sources that they expect to find agreeable. Over time, this behavior is likely to become habituated so that users turn to their preferred sources automatically no matter what the subject matter.”

Fragmentation in the news media will then be a logical outcome in such an information world.

As a matter of fact, this is already the case in India.  .

In the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the two main political parties are represented through their leaders Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi.  Interestingly enough, they both also own stakes in two television cable channels.  The channel “JayaTV” is aligned with Jayalalitha, while “SunTV” is pro-Karunanidhi.   

These channels offer the usual entertainment staples of dramas and movies.   The political slant of the two channels becomes obvious during the regional news programs.  When Jayalalitha is in power, SunTV is forever critical of the government, and the roles reverse when the political fortunes shift! 

It is equally fascinating that the audience is also fully aware that the news from these two television channels is not unbiased.  Thus, news items that are highly critical or laudatory are then appropriately scaled by the viewers!

It appears that this model is being rapidly adopted by other political leaders and parties across India.  In Gujarat, for instance:

Weeks before Gujarat gets into poll mode, the state BJP is set to launch its own TV channel called ‘Namo Gujarat’, eponymously named after CM Narendra Modi.

Perhaps then all we need is a similar sort of full-disclosure of political affiliations from “news” organizations in America. Those who are upset with Fox News and MSNBC will, I am confident, be ok with them if these and similar media outlets stopped pretending that they offer objective and balanced news and analysis and, instead, came out of the news closet and revealed their true political colors.

As Sunstein argued years ago, such fragmentation might not advance the cause of healthy democratic participation.  Instead of having constructive conversations where differences are articulated, we then end up with “shoutfests” where the objective is not to listen to differing views but to drown out the opposing voices. 

But then, as the old saying goes, the genie is, unfortunately, out of the bottle!  We have no choice but to get used to the reality that most Americans—and the rest of the world, too—will increasingly live in polarized and fragmented political worlds. 

The "double-chinned Mona Lisa" of Tamil Nadu is the Tamil "Mutti"

Some writers are gifted and they string together words that are simply charming, like this one:

You know you’ve entered Tamil Nadu when you begin to see Jayalalithaa’s face everywhere: a double-chinned Mona Lisa, her long, dark hair pulled back in a demure chignon. 

I will never again think about the Mona Lisa without associating that portrait with Jayalalithaa ;)

It is to the NY Times' credit that they have run a lengthy piece on "The frenzied, fanatical politics of Tamil Nadu, India."  How many readers will be interested in the politics of some place called Tamil Nadu, right?  We might blog, tweet, and snapchat, but all those cannot take the place of a NY Times or the Economist or the, well, you know my favorites ;)

To an insider like me, there is nothing new in that essay.  To a complete outsider, there are many names--multi-syllables at that--of people and places and the complex inter-relationships.

Tamil Nadu, which is where I am from, is a fascinating setting for all kinds of reasons.  Tamil, the language of that area, is the oldest living language in the world with a rich literature past.  Most old-time politicians, including the 92-year old Karunanidhi who is discussed in that essay, are well-versed in that literature and can be masterful orators too.  Jayalalithaa is everything that Karunanidhi is not--a woman, a Brahmin, fluent in English and Hindi--but otherwise there is no difference in their politics.

The two of them rule as if in a melodrama, having each other arrested, dropping snide insults and wild accusations, destroying each other’s pet projects.

One of the fascinating things about the politics in Tamil Nadu is this: the state has prospered despite all the antics of these politicians.  Not merely these two, but--and definitely--including the third and the biggest of them: MGR, who is extensively discussed in that NY Times piece.

You would think that given all this emotional mayhem, Tamil Nadu would be a mess, but in fact it’s one of the best-run states in India. Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, in their book ‘‘An Uncertain Glory,’’ an analysis of economic development in India, single out Tamil Nadu as a paragon of administrative innovation among Indian states, ranking it best in the country for the quality of its public services. Under Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi’s governance, Chennai has gained a reputation as the Detroit of India (in the car-manufacturing-hub sense, not in the bankrupt-and-abandoned sense). Her raw instinct for political survival was enough to put her in office. Once there, she revealed a surprising talent for administration. ‘‘She schooled herself, and to that extent one has to salute her,’’ the journalist Sadanand Menon told me. ‘‘She has worked to understand procedures, rules and regulations, policies.’’

If this cinematic and melodramatic politics with unprincipled and corrupt politicians makes for "one of the best-run states in India," one needs to worry about the worst of the states in India, right?

MGR and Jayalalithaa from an movie still, in the NY Times piece

To some extent, the presence of such a strong woman who is adored by mindless millions--men and women alike--has immensely strengthened women in Tamil Nadu.  Even the poor do not think twice about educating their girls or sending them to college.  Jayalalithaa is a good role model for female empowerment!

Sometimes I feel that the reason women in Tamil Nadu enjoy Jayalalithaa in power is that they see how she controls men, keeps them at a distance, falling at her feet.’’

Jayalalithaa was the "mother" well before Germany's Angela Merkel was nicknamed that.  The world is becoming ok, finally, with the idea that women too can be political leaders, and can be as good as, or as corrupt as, the men.  So much so that we are apparently ready to even have grandmothers as leaders, argues this essay in the Atlantic:

modern life seems to be suggesting another possibility for older women. Lately, a group of prominent 60-somethings—Janet Yellen, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, and Angela Merkel among them—has begun forging an alternate path: whatever the reason older women were put on this Earth, their example suggests, maybe the time has come for them to run it.

A modern day Leonardo da Vinci will have quite a few political Mona Lisa portraits to paint--some with double chins too, just as the male leaders had and do ;)