Absurdities and atrocities

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Voltaire wrote that.

Absurdities come in all types.

Claims like how the Hindu god Ganesha is evidence of cosmetic surgery in ancient India. Or that Karna in Mahabharata was a result of advanced genetic science and technology. Or, absurdities like how the noise from wind turbines causes cancer, or about building a wall at the Mexico border as a solar wall so it creates energy and pays for itself.

In the theatre of the absurd that politics is, it turns out that if you can make enough people believe in absurdities, well, you can make them commit atrocities too.

Atrocities like lynching non-Hindus for eating beef, or even for expressing love across religions.  Atrocities like caging mothers and separating their children from them.

Of course, Voltaire did not make that observation in the context of "democratic" politics.  It was about faith. About organized religion.  In contemporary India, there is an unholy mix of religion and politics, which then leads to "politicization of health care."

In the political theatre where logic and evidence have lost to populism, the leaders have spun many absurd stories that have been well received.  Think about how an entertainer kept repeating the absurd claim that former President Obama was born in Kenya, and that perhaps he is even a Muslim. It worked, and we now have people dying even as the sociopath refuses to take any responsibility and while manically dissing health care experts.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

This is all the more the reason why we should teach Voltaire and Socrates and more in higher education.

The first step is to remove from office the absurd who are in office and committing atrocities!