October 24
GUEST: S. Shankar, Chair of the English Department at the University of Hawaii, novelist, and translator with an interest in postcolonial literature, talks about the US caste system and how it compares to India's rigid social hierarchy. His most recent book is Ghost In The Tamarind.Does America have a caste system?
Most people know that the US is a caste system, with ever fewer at the top, and millions at the level of untouchable homeless. The media furnishes the mythology that keeps us from rebelling: work hard enough and you will get rich too.
But the odds are just too overwhelming, and most citizens have simply lost faith. It doesn't help that the very rich now take everything, and only spend their billions on buying politicians. Both parties have the same monkey on their backs, the need to spend hundreds of millions to get elected. Politicians and lobbyists are really the same class. Both work to fashion laws benefitting the very richest.
Can a democracy really be a caste system? Most people know the answer to that as well. Democracy is the corporate narrative rather than the reality in these united states. The election of Trump is one sign that the public's faith is gone. He was going to drain the swamp, but was only capable of a cruder version of the status quo. There are those who miss the Obama era. But is a well groomed and articulate lier preferable to a vicious, neurotic clown? Both are products of an unravelling system of hyper neoliberalism and unvarnished kleptocracy.
