It could happen to you...

Feral display of raw emotions

Between 2002 and 2004 millions of Venezuelans signed petitions calling for a vote to remove Hugo Chavez from office. Signatories were not anonymous and during the petition campaign Chavez supporters hinted darkly that there would be retaliation. Chavez was in fact forced into a recall election, but unfortunately he won (not one of democracy's better moments). After the election, the list of signatories was distributed to government agencies in an easy-to-use database. The database included the names and addresses of all registered voters and whether they had signed an anti-Chavez petition. Technology thus provided Chavez supporters the information they needed to retaliate.

Technology cuts both ways, however, and in a truly remarkable paper, Hsieh, Miguel, Ortega and Rodriguez match information in the petition database to another database on wages, employment and income. What the authors find is shocking, albeit not surprising. Before the recall election, petition signatories and non-signatories look alike. After the election, the employment and wages of signatories drop considerably, about a 10% drop in wages relative to non-signatories. Survey evidence conducted by the authors is consistent with retaliation by Chavez supporters especially in the form of job losses in the public sector. The authors estimate that the retaliation was so widespread, many workers were pushed into informal employment, that the Venezuelan economy was significantly damaged. [link]

What would be the normal reaction of people who think their side won? Naturally one would feel elated and buoyant. Something like the picture above, look at the very natural reaction. There will of course be some amount of put downs. 

The reaction of the secular socialist intellectuals was anything but. There were essentially two different flavors of responses, each revealing something deep about their personalities.

In the first type of responses we saw a deep desire for validating their intellect through popular mandate. It goes beyond that - it is quite clear that they would not stop at that - they want us to genuflect before them. As one great philosopher had once observed, to these men the satisfaction of a pride is infinitely more alluring than the satisfaction of an interest. 

We can only guess what drives this but are deeply distressed by this attitude. These men do not realize that the tone of their message constantly betrays their true intent. Every article they write validates our view of them. Socal has a post on Chindu explaining this. 

We found the second flavor of responses somewhat amusing although some may find it shocking. It goes something like this - our Government is at the center, so you people take a hike. This shows among other things a complete lack of understanding of democracy. We do understand where these people are coming from though. True democracy ceases to exist when Government size exceeds a certain threshold. Then democratic power merely becomes a tool for usurping resources, in this case awards, recognitions, plum posts. Out goes the famed bipartisanship or "reaching across the aisle" of their current icon.

These evil little men are not much different from the evil power grabbing politicians they support except in their desire to be what they consider intellectually acceptable. Both are trying to use political power as a shortcut, some just for money/power while the others for money, fame and settling their private scores.

No matter how much paper and bandwidth you waste explaining the "vision", these men won't find it. Just like before BJP came to power, they could not find any evidence of extreme poverty and misery, nor could they find any genocide or riots. If anyone in India needs to introspect, they are the ones. Especially since "their government" is in power and they will be running policies for five more years. Just to recap a few key items: Are we there yet?, Two places, Air Force One (I) and many more in the archives for those who care to read. 

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This was however a pyrrhic victory for most socialists in India since their favorite Left parties got decimated. We foresee this factor driving a deep chasm between the pure power grabbers and the committed.  No more playing good cop - bad cop, no more excuses.

As far as the inner circle of the secular party is concerned, they were completely taken by surprise at the almost landslide (under the circumstances) victory for Congress. This was far beyond their expectations. Yogendra Yadav announced that he is taking a hiatus from election predictions. The only thing that could be said positively about his predictions is that the general direction was somewhat correct. He didn't see the rout of the regional parties. Neither did he predict such a convincing victory.

These elections will also create a significant problem for the aforesaid intellectuals. We have a feeling many of them had to discard the copies they had written down bashing Hindus in anticipation of a comeback by BJP! It will be curious to see if Meera Nanda types will still be able to get book contracts on BS theories.

As the dust settles, the secular intellectuals are slowly reaching a consensus about what led to the victory. If you said NREGA, loan waiver etc., try again. Yep, the victories must only be  attributed to the Queen and the Prince. We can only pity those intellectuals that for all their bravura, ultimately their role is relegated to that of a court jester. So much for "debate".

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Coming back to the original thoughts, do not get conned by the euphoric and occasionally generous displays into letting your guard down. Don't get fooled by the baby faced politician with the spotlight on, focus on the hideous people surrounding him, somewhat in the background. What goes on in Venezuela goes on in India too, perhaps a lot more so. Many bloggers have "withdrawn" their posts about Rahul Gandhi's educational credentials. Among them is a blogger who specializes in educational advise for the youth, and who recently debuted on a TV show. She used to be a BJP supporter, if not very vocal, she never tried to hide it. 

It is quite clear people are not taking chances.  

As we saw in the witch hunting cases involving Sonal Shah and Balakrishna (original post, follow up), the legal intimidation of a blogger by Barkha Dutt of NDTV, the fascists will go to any extent. When they find a prey, they drop all pretenses and hyperbole about "human rights", "justice" etc. and attack with all teeth and claws bared. After all, election victories for them are just another opportunity for extracting their pound of flesh.