Our good place

Sometimes one feels the universe has run out of script and is improvising, brashly, recycling material from sitcoms. Politics everywhere runs without a script, but ours crossed over long ago into zebras with trunks, elephants with as many limbs as tarantulas, and abusive bunny rabbits.

The series that fits this country's history, and my lived experience, like a glove is The Good Place. Spoiler alert: if you've always meant to watch it but never had the time, here is your chance. Stop reading, go watch it, then come back. As the rest of this piece will prove, neither it nor I are going anywhere.

For everyone else, a quick summary. Eleanor Shellstrop is a selfish, ordinary woman who dies and wakes up in 'The Good Place', a pastel, utopian afterlife. The architect, Michael, welcomes her, but Eleanor realises she was mistaken for a saintly human rights lawyer. To avoid 'The Bad Place', she begs her assigned soulmate, an anxious ethics professor named Chidi, to secretly teach her how to be good. They're joined by Tahani, a condescending wealthy socialite, and Jason, a silent monk who is actually a clueless DJ from Florida, also sent there by mistake. In the finale, Eleanor realises the truth: this is the Bad Place, an experimental torture chamber built on psychological torment rather than fire and brimstone. Trying to hide the fact that they're imposters, the four humans organically, perfectly, keep ruining each other's peace, over and over, for a long time. Whenever one starts feeling safe, things fall apart and the torture resumes.

Watch this same play run at home, across the border, and on the world stage, in that order. Now Pakistan. How many times have we felt we'd made it, only to relapse into the same hopeless place? Take the recent Iran-US mediation.

As the war began, pundits sympathetic to the opposition's cause, or to foreign interests, started spreading rumours that the country was opening its airspace against Iran. Violence erupted on cue, one episode nearly causing a diplomatic incident. When the leadership made an effort to quell the rumours and assuage hurt feelings, clerics and media weaponised their own words against them, this while the media was supposedly being controlled. Sure. But by whom?

Then the leadership dazzled us, not by becoming a frontline state in another war but through open, selfless pursuit of peace. But before the MoU could be signed, the same local cohort suddenly discovered our internal problems, our law and order situation, our economic vulnerabilities. In an age of supposed repression, no less. The question is: if the voices spreading despondency are free, who exactly is being repressed, by whom and why? And before anyone tries to connect this to any party's narrative, here is a direct rebuttal: parties that allowed themselves to spread despondency in the past, and fell from grace for other reasons, don't count.

For a better example of coincidence, pay heed to what was said on television across the border. Filter out the abusive hyperbole and the talking points here on the ground were only recycled, polished versions of the same. The cohort couldn't use the same language because that would spoil the carefully crafted fiction of repression. Is somebody taking notes apart from this scribe? Hard to do when you're programmed not to notice.

If this was happening locally, notice what was taking place globally. Suddenly international media was remembering Osama bin Laden. Therein lies a tell. India has for decades believed that bringing up one name can define a nation of 240 million: Dawood Ibrahim. It did define a nation and its simplistic thinking, but that defined India, not Pakistan. So Osama's sudden return to international media was the same tired dog whistle we had heard when India failed to produce evidence implicating Pakistan in the Pahalgam incident. Suddenly the international press got interested in overanalysing Pakistan's role as peacebuilder rather than the main parties to the conflict. An image of a pariah state, desperate to break the mould, too eager to please, conniving and bribing to achieve its objective. The coverage wanted you to believe Pakistan was the main villain of the story, and Israel, Iran and the US only inconvenient footnotes. Wonder where else that narrative resonates? Got it in one.

Then came the diplomatic effort to sideline Pakistan. When Iranian political leadership and the US Vice President insisted on keeping Pakistan in the loop, they were viciously attacked by hardliners within their own respective systems. What The New York Times' Ahmadinejad story has shown us, at least through intention if not through evidence, is that the first choice of your rival for their Manchurian candidate would always be the hardliner, not the moderate or the reformist. To be clear, I am not assuming he was recruited. I am saying the story makes the desire to recruit him abundantly clear.

Why, you ask? Because it is difficult to question their loyalty when they have the most powerful megaphone. Their states rely on them by default, out of sheer narrative-building laziness. They can be turned into the worst caricatures of their nation for domestic consumption, and the actions of the entire impulsive tribe can be controlled through them. Would you have doubted the loyalty of a Holocaust-denying, fire-breathing hardliner if he was recruited?

Back to the point. Once the MoU was signed, efforts to undermine it resumed in earnest. War has resumed, and this fresh push to drag Saudi Arabia and Pakistan into it is another tell. From best case scenario to worst, in a heartbeat. Similar things happened domestically after the high generated by Marka-e-Haq/Operation Sindoor.

In good conscience I cannot blame the enemy. It's their job, and this proves how effective they are. However, this cannot succeed without local support. I know there is no dearth of useful idiots either, but not everyone is that. If the problem has metastasised beyond repair and everyone is in on the joke, forward me the memo. Remember, a conspiracy of silence is a conspiracy too. I resent the prospect that if everyone wants to sink the ship, being loudest against it, I should go down with it. Let me build a raft and get out.

But if all is not lost, if you have risen in rank through merit, refused to be recruited, and noticed the anomaly but don't know what to do about it, then stand by. Your moment will come, along with the relevant guidance.

Here is what actually changes things in 'The Good Place'. The moment the Soul Squad names the Bad Place for what it is, stops hiding from its own flaws, and start working toward the real thing.