That a white president, especially from the Right-wing Conservatives, was going to face scorn from the coloured voters, there was no doubt – the white-cop-black-victim hype and Obama’s questioning of the jury decision (as an elected President, no less) to play to the race gallery, saw to that. There was no doubt either why the hordes of young city women went against him when a largish group of women came out of the woodwork accusing him of sexual misdemeanours, only to vanish after the election campaign.
Trump’s chauvinist statements of decades back when it was normal grooming for young men were over-hyped, even as blatant and legally proved cases of exploitation of women (Bill Clinton) were brushed under the carpet. But it was the concentration of Blacks in ghettos that did Obama in, because even though the majority of the country’s votes were for him, they were concentrated in ghettos; state-wise Trump won. Then followed a bitter, wrathful and often petty Left media campaign against Trump even though a lot of his decisions were just extensions of earlier American policies, including the restrictions on immigrants from countries with a terrorist background (Obama too had laid similar restrictions). No surprise there, for media too have their business to run – they are not philosophers. All’s fair in politics.
But then there were some regressive turns of events – Linda Sarsour, a hijab-wearing Islamist ended up as a leader of sorts for the feminists. Young women, who had been fighting for decades for freedom, ended up celebrating a Hijab day – the very symbol of women’s subservience. This amongst others, continue to surprise bystanders as educated, supposedly modern youth continue to be blind-sided and oppose everything Trump does, ridicule everything his family does, but worse, support regressive causes. So what happened?
Unlike what is generally assumed, Political and Social wings are two different aspects of a democratic society. While the Political spectrum ranges from Left (Communism-Socialism) to Right (Capitalism-Fascism), the Social spectrum ranges from Left (Liberals) to Right (Conservatives). Though it is possible to be a Liberal Capitalist and a Conservative Communist, the overarching terms -Left or Right – often result in groupings of Left-Liberals and Right-Conservatives in common lingo amongst the uninformed.
In the US, the Democrats achieved this alignment through the young women. Liberalism is primarily driven by women in all societies because it is first their independence that is at stake. And where the young women lean, the young men too – it is the law of nature. By building a misogynist narrative around Trump, they ensured that scores of young, working women lean against him. In effect, the Political and Social Lefts were aligned in the US.
One might ask, what has this got to do with India. It has. We have a developing parallel in India. Young, educated women in the urban colleges are increasingly being fed a similar narrative by the leftist media. Well-heeled, English speaking, fashionable young women, especially those who rely on media for their work – actresses, activists, writers – are supporting fake Leftist misinformation narratives out of the need for self-preservation, not ethics. This, coupled with the misinformation spread by certain compromised media, is producing a generation of confused liberals in India. The nation may pay a high cost for this trend if motivated, young, educated women do not dig deeper into political game play and check this dumbing down of the youth. Are there any takers?
