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ShareLike millions of other YouTube-watching, coffee-guzzling, EMI-paying people, I have become obsessed with the US presidential elections.
Let's get this spot on: I am talking Googling obscure statistics, logging on to the net from my mobiles, watching CNN 24x7. The race to the White House has become, well, my daily oxygen.
I scarcely need to remind you that America is the most powerful country in a unipolar world and the appointment of its Top Dog has engaged the world like never before? So while listening to the pointy heads, the anchors, the candidates and the Joe the plumbers thrash it out, I've discovered that I have developed a magical new gift: I can tell which way a person is going to vote even before they open their mouth! I kid thee not.
Forget the black guy from Chicago, the Indian from Detroit, the Filipino from New Haven or the Latino from California, each wearing their affiliations for a certain Mr O on their sleeves. They're low-hanging fruit for someone with a gift as new and nuanced and wonderful as mine.
I'm talking about the rumpled Brit diplomat, the preppy Ivy Leaguer, the peroxide suburban mum, the Hollywood Earth Mother, the investment banker down to his last Klee, and the unwed teenage drop-out mom -- yes, before they even utter a word, I can predict exactly who their candidates are.
Have I become a face reader? Have I channelled Deepak Chopra and evolved some new pathways of intuition that didn't exit before the Prezzy Race? Have I been inhaling some wondrous new substance that has bequeathed me super powers?
The answer is simpler and more obvious gentle reader. In the vacuum that is America today, with its near absence of any polarising doctrinnaire ideology between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, we have had to search elsewhere to recreate the yin and yang of daily political stand-offs.
Let's face it, the American Way has been rock solid liberal, free-market model. It's an article of faith, apple pie and all that. That is the starting point of political debate in the US. Close your eyes and on many issues, Obama and McCain are actually arguing for the same position.
Whether its Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Wall Street, there is not much difference. So if the two candidates more or less agree on economics and politics then where does that leave ideology, that life force on which the world turns?
You know what I am referring to -- the yin and yang, the pull and thrust between conservatives and democrats, liberals and noe-conservatives, includers and excluders, the bourgeoisie and bohemians.
My contention is that this body of feelings/ ideologies/ philosophies/ preferences -- call it what you will -- has now had to appropriate another arena. The arena of the way we live, love and choose to procreate and die.
Which is why, guns, abortion, the environment, and gay marriage have become the new battlegrounds of those who find themselves supporting McCain and Palin and those who can't help but root for Obama and Biden.
And which is why, sitting in faraway Mumbai I find that I can predict with alarming accuracy, just by looking at how old a person is, the lines on his or her face, the way they hold their heads, the thrust of their accents, or how a person is dressed, parts their hair, ties their scarf which candidate they support.
Uncanny? Incredible? A Fluke? No. It's the result of the convergence of ideologies in the economic and political arenas that's driven the debate to other spheres.
You try it too. You'll be surprised by how good you are at
Email: s_malavika@dnaindia.net
