What has the world come to?
That is not a rhetorical question -- I’m really asking. Once again: What has the world come to? There is a farcical element in the air, a certain ridiculous je ne sais quoi that has been, of recent, pervasive in the political and social rhetoric which has continued to permeate the global conscience.
And how does one react to this nonsense? If the world wasn’t so intent on spinning itself into a whirlpool of dung, perhaps, just perhaps, we could watch it as we do a sitcom rerun, remove ourselves from the mix and laugh.
Let us begin at where we all began: At home. Bangladesh, home to such endearing titles as the Most Corrupt and the Most Densely Populated, is no stranger to comedy.
The entire nation is an homage to slapstick, with the soft Bengali language having disintegrated into a plethora of staccato bursts and the people and traffic swerving away from each other to constantly, somehow, miraculously, not hit each other and erupt into a ball of flames and death.
But the government and the overall political nexus aren’t free from ridicule. First, there was the Facebook, WhatsApp, and Viber ban. Instagram, too, was not spared.
This move is an apparent attempt by the government to “nab militants and prevent terrorist activities in the country.” The PM herself has gone on to say that this will allow us to “arrest the perpetrators.”
Really?
This article, if I am lucky enough for it to have made the cut, I will share on Facebook for all my friends and 13 followers to see. I am not a hacker, nor some tech whiz, nor some 180-IQ, computer source code programming Mark Zuckerberg-esque prodigy who has sneakily bypassed the block.
I will use a simple VPN software -- one of thousands -- that does some magic (I presume it reroutes the IP address or other some thingamajig) and voila, I am on Facebook as if the Bangladesh government’s power over my social media domain had never existed.
Then, for the state minister for posts and telecommunication to go on and say this “saves lives” and that the Paris attacks could’ve been avoided if Facebook had been blocked is nigh on ridiculous and worthy of further ridicule.
Not to mention the fact that modes of communication are not restricted to these more popular apps. I wonder what sexy photo these religious extremists are sharing over Instagram to bring our young children over to the dark side.
Moving on, but sticking, still, close to home, a few days ago, some “youths” (aren’t they always the ones carrying out the fantasies of violence of the old?) opened fire on a Shia mosque, killing the muezzin and injuring a plethora of others. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, though this has since then been refuted by Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan.
They had also taken the credit for the previous attack on the Hosaini Dalan previously in the year. And the foreign killings. And the attack on the Christian priest, too, if I’m not mistaken?
And, if I’m allowed to move out of the country and into Beirut, IS has made its presence felt there with a few suicide bombings just recently. And further still, across the European border and into Paris, IS seems to have carried out France’s most horrific terrorist attack in decades.
Is it just me, or is ISIS kind of an attention-seeking, credit-stealing diva? I am, of course, not claiming that IS was not responsible for any of these attacks; a perfunctory foray into the Paris and Beirut attacks leaves one with enough knowledge to make a justified accusal against ISIS. After all, the terrorists had screamed Syria’s name before blowing themselves to bits and some, though EU nationals, had come into Europe with the refugees.
If all of ISIS’ claims are true, then they have a reach that is bordering on universal. Everywhere and anywhere you turn, there is ISIS, like some creepy, distantly related uncle. Their almost apocalyptic motto pencils them in less as terrorists and more as caricatures of what the West wants to believe they look like, and how they act.
They kill more Muslims than non-Muslims, welcome Western intervention within their own country, recruit soldiers with Nutella, convince teenagers in cushy, first-world homes to leave and become wife-slaves (redundant?), burn jazz instruments, and have a cat-themed Twitter account that literally says “I can haz Islamic State, plz.”
I cannot be the only one who recognises the absurdity of the existence of such a laughable group. And one that has succeeded in scaring the pants off of the West.
Speaking of the West, if again I am allowed to make the venture, and this time across the Atlantic, we find a dialogue regarding our supposedly brave IS heroes between the latest GOP candidates. On one hand, we have Ben Carson, but on the other hand, there is this: The wig-wearing, TV show-hosting, Rosie O’Donnell-feuding, racist, bigoted, unapologetic Donald Trump.
One must ask oneself (no, they really must): How has such a man been allowed to go to the top of the Republican polls? This is a man who has repeatedly made a fool of himself, and it seems that the more shenanigans he participates in, the more percentage points he accumulates (though there has been a recent dip). Has the American right completely lost its head?
This guy “retweets” facts and figures without checking them, mocks disabled people while his supporters cheer, ridicules a man for being fat because he was protesting his pledge to remove food stamps, makes the insane, unproven claim that Muslims were cheering during 9/11 (which he says he saw with his very own eyes), has called Mexicans “rapists” for which he recommended a “border wall,” and has imitated, mockingly, how Asians speak.
Come. On.
What is truly scary, though, is that Trump has been successful in hoarding a significant batch of supporters. Logic suggests that this kind of popularity won’t last, but the direction in which the world seems to be headed doesn’t leave much room for that kind of objective analysis. Scarier still is some of the overheard talk at one of Trump’s rally, which included calling an Indian guy “ISIS” and the regular vein of “Kill all Muslims.”
The cause for all this insanity, not just in the States, but across the rest of the world and in our own homes, may be a lack of free and open spaces in which people can exchange ideas objectively, thereby creating a culture of fear and duality. Too many stupid and arrogant people have been allowed to rise to power and to control the minds of other similar people and make them stupider still.
But what can one do except watch as the show goes on? People die, history rehashes itself, narratives are diluted, distilled, turned into propaganda. But if we’re in a good enough mood, maybe we can provide the laugh track.
To quote Aravind Adiga’s protagonist from The White Tiger (censored): “What an effing joke.”