The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Thursday 10 November 2016

DISTURBING SIGNALS FROM 2016 US ELECTION

Glass ceiling: The world’s most successful democracy was closest to undo one of its historical wrongs – by electing its first female president – but the glass ceiling remained intact on this front – and what is ironical is that the US has elected a president who has had a life of making misogynistic and sexist remarks. Now the US will have to wait for at least another four years if it has to correct that ‘historical social anomaly’.

A divided nation: The world had never seen society in the US so divided, at least in decades, since the days of segregation and counterculture. Okay, there is always this division – a group chooses this, the other one goes for that – but this all is at an electoral level. What is happening in the US after Donald Trump’s victory is suggestive of deep fissures in the US society. There have been violent protests in many states and though its over 24 hours, they are only going up.

No Obama mention: Though Donald Trump delivered a graceful victory speech beginning it with the words of thanks for Hillary Clinton who had called him to accept the poll outcome, he didn’t mention Barack Obama even once – like some words for his predecessor who led his country for eight years before him. Though Obama and Trump have had differences and Barack Obama candidly accept it, he did call Donald Trump to congratulate him immediately after the final results came in. And we all know, going by the life lived by Obama and Trump so far, Obama is a towering person compared to Trump.

A growing chasm with more than ever have-nots in the US: It is being said that the class who felt left out by the political elite of the US who rules the power corridors of Washington – the blue collar workers, people of small town and rural America who still feel the pain to manage their lives and families after the 2008 global economic crisis went en masse to elect Trump – even registered Democrats – even those who had voted for Obama in the previous two presidential polls. This poll outcome shows that all is not well and the US is no more that model of society that the world looked up to. Okay, there are other reasons and groups who have voted for Trump as well but a Trump victory propelled by have-nots of America (by American standards) tells us that disparity is rapidly growing there.

A fear psychosis that is pushing people to check immigration options to other countries: There are plenty of reports that many in the US are scramming to check immigration websites of countries like Canada or New Zealand.

The class wars: The fact that Donald Trump won even if he openly talked against Muslims and immigrants and was seen as a divisive figure when it came to racial discrimination tells us that the US society is somewhere breaking down and it is needed to be healed immediately. What Trump did may be now a past from his campaign rhetoric but we should not forget that there were plenty of people in the US who saw an appealing person in Trump because of this rhetoric only. Also worrying is the pieces of analysis which say that this Trump victory is because Trump’s predecessor Obama was a black American in a country of predominantly white people. The growing incidents of attacks on black Americans support it. And when it comes to Hillary Clinton, we should not forget that before being anyone else, she was seen as a Democrat of the Washington circle who once worked with Barack Obama.

Hillary is still the popular choice: Now, in 2012, Donald Trump had tweeted to let the world know that how much he despised the electoral college. He had said, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” Now it is this electoral college only that has given him the US presidency because Hillary Clinton is the winner of the popular vote. Going by a latest Forbes report, Hillary has got 59,926,386 popular votes, more than Trump’s 59,698,506 votes. That may not be much but statisically it places her on a high pedestal.

Disturbing! Isn’t it? Let’s hope that these signals get the required correctional measures (and the healing) soon.

©SantoshChaubey