On the election and more

One baffling features of the the presidential vote in the United States is the fact that even though voting is seemingly direct, each vote does not count equally. The electoral college system of counting votes assigns a different weight to each vote depending on which state it is cast in. Thus, if you are a Republican in Oregon or a Democrat in Tennessee, you might as well not vote because regardless of your choice the majority vote in your state will send all electoral college votes of your state the other way (that's how 'swing states' are born, and that's why the election of 2000 will haunt Democrats for a generation).

Thus, when election day dawned, most of my voter friends and acquaintances in California (a non-swing Democrat-voting state) weren't thinking of their presidential choice, but on how to vote on their mayoral, legislative, and initiative choices. The 'initiative' is a form of direct democracy practiced in about half of American states, wherein voters bypass the legislature via mass vote on citizen-proposed laws. Twelve propositions were on the ballot this year, ranging from disallowing gay marriages to promoting renewable energy.
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One strange initiative which voters passed this year was Proposition 2 titled Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, which lays down statutes for providing more cage space for animals and birds raised for slaughter or eggs. For a nearly total meat-eating nation, I find moral posturing by Americans on methods of slaughter laughable (as I have written before). What exactly constitutes cruelty - the act of slaughter or the pre-slaughter treatment of the animals? Based on these statistics, I estimate that Californians kill and eat approximately 4.2 million cattle, 1 billion chicken, and 12 million pigs each year....yet they voted resoundingly for Proposition 2. Beats me how being less inhuman passes off as humane (the term humane slaughter is the ultimate oxymoron). In the same vein, I find Americans' distaste for horse and dog slaughter baffling.

No better time to ponder on this passage from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (it follows a chilling description of an industrial hog-killing operation):

Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice?

Can't help repeating myself: Californians eat 4 million cattle, a billion chicken, and 12 million pigs every year. And then they go ahead and vote 'yes' on an initiative to provide more cage space for animals destined for slaughter, for humanitarian reasons.
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Another initiative on the vote this year, which also won, was Proposition 8, which restricted marriage between gay individuals - perceived to be a big loss for the gay rights movement. I was undecided about Proposition 8; not because I do not support gay rights but because I felt recognition of gay marriages by the state was a regressive step for individual liberties - the recognition of any marriages by the state seems wrong to me, and two wrongs do not make a right. The state should only recognize civil unions between individuals for tax and legal purposes; whether and who they choose to marry should be left to their own social and religious beliefs. Like religion, marriage is too personal a thing for the state to have a say in.
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There were strong lobbies and big money both for and against Proposition 8. The slogan that the pro-gay marriage side had chosen for their campaign was Equality for All. I find the slogan discomforting because of the semantic redundancy in the phrase (whats the point of the 'for all'?). It seems like a unintentional play on the classic refrain from Animal Farm, with its inherent logical flaw:

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal.

Also, I find it mildly amusing that the above proclamation in Animal Farm was made by pigs. Ironically, those who used the slogan in this election lost their cause, but the pigs won theirs (some extra cage space via Proposition 2)!

A white tiger reaps the grapes of wrath

A recently released book called Obscene in the Extreme captures a seemingly minor but significant chain of events that followed the release of the classic Grapes of Wrath in 1939.

Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, was set during the Great Depression and is an exposition of the pain and suffering borne by a family of sharecroppers ousted from the land they tilled in Oklahoma. Steinbeck held strongly liberal pro-labor, pro-union views, and the book showcases the rough treatment that the poor family receives at the hands of large growers in California where they migrate to.

The book was very well received (going on to win the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for Steinbeck) and was generally thought to successfully expose America to the plight of those affected worst by the Dust Bowl and the depression. However, the book was poorly received by farmers and growers who thought that the book went overboard with its depiction of living and labor conditions on farms in California and elsewhere.

An incident of note was a resolution passed by Kern County Board of Supervisors in August 1939 (Kern County being a part of California's booming fruit industry) banning the book in the county's libraries. The wording of the resolution included the allegation that the book:

"offended our citizenry by falsely implying that many of our fine people are a low, ignorant, profane and blasphemous type living in a vicious and filthy manner(and) presents our public officials, law enforcement officers and civil administrators, businessmen, farmers and ordinary citizens as inhumane vigilantes..."

(Read the quote carefully, for you will be asked to recount it shortly).

As a matter of fact, Obscene in the Extreme gets its title from a similar statement released by one prominent grower against the book. This grower, Bill Camp, also encouraged one of his workers to burn a copy of Grapes of Wrath in protest. The picture got wide publicity, iconized as symbolic of the threat to free speech (and the book was motivated by it, depicted below).


















The reason Obscene in the Extreme came to mind is because of a book review of The White Tiger that I just read on Mutiny.in. I have not read the book, but the review makes me squirm. Like Grapes of Wrath, The White Tiger is also set among the downtrodden, fictional or otherwise. The reviewer is apparently not happy with the book, and the reasons that he doesn't like it make me think of the Kern County Board of Supervisors. I quote from the Mutiny.in review:

"Beyond a certain point, (the descriptions in the book) become frustrating and annoying. There is a not a single good word about our country. All the narrator of the novel thinks about our system boils down to hopelessness.

Ministers can be bribed, politicians make empty promises, Government school teachers “spit paan” endlessly and pilfer money, policemen can be 'lubricated'...this is not simply oversimplification, but an obvious attempt to misrepresent or worse falsely and disapprovingly represent a huge chunk of people.

See the similarities between the two? The reviewer reminds me of the reasons why Fanna couldn't not be screened in Gujarat, why Salman Rushdie is still on the run, and why Obscene in the Extreme was written.