Time Magazine in its list of ‘Next Gen Leaders 2017’ included a rather surprising person, Gurmehar Kaur. The darling of Liberals was awarded the title of ‘Free Speech Warrior’. Apparently, one can threaten teenagers of a lawsuit for a meme and yet be a warrior for Free Speech. In much the same way that Hijab and the Burkha are symbols of Women Empowerment of course. Well, it’s a Liberal’s world and in the Liberal World, you can get away with absolutely anything as long as you call yourself a liberal and pay lip service to the ideals that liberals espouse in <<<the current year>>>.
There are enough reasons to speculate that Gurmehar Kaur’s inclusion in the list was a consequence of a recommendation by a certain someone from a certain political party or a certain organization with certain interests. The collusion between political parties and the Media is of course no secret. The scandalous collusion between the Mainstream US Media and the Hillary campaign was for all to see. And yet, one could see, the mainstream media shrugged it off like it was no big deal and went about its job of bashing Donald Trump over highly dubious reasons with renewed vigor. One must realize that the media for all means and purposes is a political entity without any accountability that comes along with being legitimate politicians. They are in reality the propaganda wing of the establishment, which may or may not be the political parties themselves, whose primary job is to create narratives, often out of thin air. But the current crop of journalists are so utterly incompetent, so utterly devoid of talent that they fail spectacularly at the one job they are supposed to be good at.
The inclusion of Gurmehar Kaur in the list of Next Gen Leaders by Time Magazine was little more than a desperate attempt to create a narrative out of thin air.
At a time when the liberals in India are taking a severe beating politically, they are desperate for heroes. And since there was no one in the horizon, they decided to create one for themselves with the stroke of their pens. In the age of Social Media, they are severely overestimating their power, and more importantly, their capabilities. I find it difficult to believe that the creators of the list actually think Gurmehar Kaur is a Next Gen Leader and if her inclusion in the list actually reflects their opinion, then it is really symbolic of the pathology of their worldview. If that is indeed the case, then the inclusion of Gurmehar Kaur in the list reveals the bubble that the entire media fraternity is living in and the widening gap between the media’s perception of reality and the actual reality. The Intellectual Yet Idiots (a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb) at Time Magazine call Gurmehar Kaur a ‘Next Gen Leader’ but if they were pressed to give their readers an account of the extent of her influence among the Indian populace, they will be left pretty embarrassed. But then, if the IYI class were actually capable of feeling any shred of embarrassment, they wouldn’t be so wrong all the time.
One is forced to ask, if Gurmehar Kaur is a Next Gen Leader, then where exactly are her followers? If we are to call someone a Next Gen Leader, then the said person should command a strong follower-ship among his or her generation and the bond between him and his followers must be one of loyalty and he must serve as an inspiration to many. It is safe to say that most people who support Gurmehar Kaur indeed do so because of their hatred towards the BJP and its supporters. They see her as a stick they could beat BJP with, nothing more nothing less. The bond between Gurmehar Kaur and those who support her isn’t one of loyalty, it’s one of mutual convenience. She receives the attention that she craves and they get the stick. And which person in her right mind would call Gurmehar an inspiration? What exactly are her achievements? Battling ‘trolls’ on Social Media? It’s no big deal, everyone does it every day of the week and none of us expect a medal for it. Her image was created for a certain purpose and when the purpose is served, she will be discarded and none of her so called supporters will miss her.
The days are gone when the media could create a hero out of anyone. We are in the age of Social Media and their lies are busted even before they could spin their next yarn. But the real trouble begins when they themselves begin to believe their own lies and it’s becoming increasingly clear that they are fast losing touch with reality. It’s no wonder that the international media failed so spectacularly at predicting the Brexit and the US Presidential elections when one sees them elevating someone as irrelevant as Gurmehar Kaur to the stature of a Next Gen Leader.
There are plenty of stupid things that the Intellectual Yet Idiots in the Mainstream Media have decided to promote in recent times. The list of those stupid things includes biological falsities such as ‘Gender is a social construct’ and biological impossibilities such as ‘A man can menstruate’ and ‘Women can have penises too!’ Gurmehar Kaur is the latest addition to the list. If people can really believe such impossibilities, then it’s not really surprising that they can bring themselves to believe Gurmehar Kaur is a Next Gen Leader. Because really, at the heart of things, Gurmehar Kaur is another logical impossibility: A Leader without any Followers. And Liberals absolutely love to throw their weight behind a logical impossibility.