A Conradian world

In the world of post-2020 elections, words such as government, democracy have lost their historical meaning

“The words one knows so well have a nightmarish meaning in this country. Liberty, democracy, patriotism, government — all of them have a flavour of folly and murder.” These words were written by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in his novel, Nostromo. While the novel is set in a fictional South American republic of Costaguana — but fact and fiction, it seems, have seamlessly diffused into each other.

In America today, we are probably living in the world imagined by Conrad. In the world of post-2020 elections, words such as government, democracy and the like have lost their historical meaning. The country is seeing well over 150,000 people get hospitalised every day, and more than a 1,000 lose their lives daily, yet the head of government refuses to do any work, does not take any questions from the press and spends his day watching television and tweeting lies. Oh, and playing golf on the weekend. Conrad also spoke about the folly of what we call the government. The machinery of the government today is being used to ensure that the party in power stays in power — no matter the cost. Unprecedented actions from the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense are making people anxious about what may happen in the next two months. In the list of words that Conrad wrote well over a 100 years ago, the most troubling is patriotism. What is being called patriotism right now by the most loyal fans of the President has nothing to do with country, the republic or the Constitution. It is now a synonym of loyalty to an individual and his ego. Country, democracy, government are all irrelevant.

For those of us who saw the unpredictable nature of the presidency in the last four years, expected to some extent, the erratic attitude of the incumbent if he were to be defeated in the elections. He has lived up to the expectations. What has been more disturbing, however, is the leadership of the Republican Party and its elected officials who are unwilling to support the democratic process. Instead, they are either shying away from saying anything at all (let the boss turn his Twitter ire against them) or releasing such carefully crafted statements that they can be interpreted in a million ways. They are undermining the very system that enabled them to succeed. Those in the Republican Party, who have aspirations for future offices are bending over backwards to demonstrate their loyalty — not to the Constitution or the process, not to the evidence or the facts — but to the President. It is remarkable to see how a system painstakingly built by successive generations over 200 years can be undone by an individual and those who wish to appear most loyal to that individual.

In many countries of the world — including Pakistan — utmost loyalty to the party leadership is taken for granted. It is expected — and there are occasionally some reasons given for that, including party discipline and a unified voice to enact policies. But we have seen, in Pakistan and elsewhere, what blind loyalty to the leader does. We have seen what happens when justice becomes a tool for settling scores in the hands of the powerful. We have seen what happens when the trust in the entire system is eroded by an individual (whether a person or an institution), and when a whole bunch of powerful people get in line flaunting their loyalty cards to poison the very well that nourished them. That story doesn’t end very well.

In the Conradian world — words and terms lose their meanings. That world has thrived not just in 20^th century fiction but in the 21^st century reality. America, it seems, was just late to the party.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2020.

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