After a lifetime of observing media and politics from afar, 23 years of seeing it up close, and 2 years of being actively involved in it, I can tell you one thing: Nobody gets it. It’s the same story as the elephant and the blind men of Hindoostan. Everyone is right. Everyone is wrong. And everyone is cocksure.
Stock pickers & chartists in stock exchanges and psephologists & political commentators in the media are basically the astrologers of modern times. They make bold predictions based on the same data their counterparts make exactly opposite predictions on, each claiming that the other is misreading the room and their science is flawed. Of course, only one side is proven right over time at any given moment, and they (and their supporters) go away carrying a mistaken impression that they got it right because of some sort of science and an intelligent parsing of available information, when all they’ve seen work is blind luck.
Of course, all of them are 100% right 100% of the time after the fact, hindsight being what it is. They have such well-fitting explanations for what happened and why it happened couched in such beautifully articulate and sciencey language that one starts believing in their expertise, in spite of knowing better. And then, the cycle continues.
The truth, however distasteful, is that no one has a fucking clue what’s or who’s going to go down in the arena by the time the games conclude. Not the practitioners on the ground, not the spectators, not the commentators, not the organisers, not the referees, and sometimes, not even those who have fixed the match, smug in their prior knowledge of the outcome that’s been gamed by them. Even they can be gobsmacked with what turns up at the other end.
In the end, we are all just gamblers claiming there’s a science or at least a pattern behind the game we are addicted to, but secretly knowing we haven’t the foggiest while hoping for the best. At least this one last time. Oh God, please!
It’s all very serious. Until it is a distant memory to be written in history, mangled and twisted to suit whatever purpose of whoever is in charge when it is written. But only once it is in the rear view mirror. Till then, it is just funny. But not in a laugh-out-loud Joe-Pesci-in-My-Cousin-Vinny way, but a very scared, ominous laughter of the Joe-Pesci-in-Goodfellas way. ‘What do you mean I’m funny?’ It seems to ask. And you secretly hope it is joking. For real.
At the end of the day, politics has the knack of having the last laugh. At the expense of those who claim to know it. Like life itself.
P.S.: I have a theory about Trump and Modi, Elon Musk and Sharad Pawar, Rahul Gandhi and Kamala Harris, Boris Johnson and Bernie Sanders, and Amitabh Bachchan and Tom Cruise that relies heavily, as with most other ‘experts’, on hindsight and post ipso facto explanations that sound cool and insightful, but are in fact, as I said, just a bunch of opinions after the fact. Do you want to hear it (I will probably record a video)? It may not offer you insight. But it will be entertaining. Or I hope so.
