

What Happens When a State Is Run by Movie Stars? - fractalb
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/magazine/what-happens-when-a-state-is-run-by-movie-stars.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0

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sremani
The movie-star to politics transition pretty much is run from late 60s and mid
80s. The two storied legends are MGR in Tamil Nadu and NTR in Andhra Pradesh.
J. Jayalalitha was protege of MGR and she took over after a internal struggle
after MGR's death. The present day India does have its movie-star to Politican
transition most of them are topped off at the most as MPs or MLAs, many tried
but nobody ever reached the zenith like MGR, Jayalalitha and NTR.

Movie stars in India esp. South tend to be super duper populists and when
Movies were the only medium of entertainment (they still are primary) they
wear their movie character out into the real world when they transform into
Politicians.

The results are mediocre, but this transition brought a Personality Cult or
should I say exaggerated that mentality, pretty much each politician in India
who is running for Chief Minster or Prime Minister runs as if they are the
"Savior" who will turn the 70 years mis-rule on the head.

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spiritplumber
[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3703](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?id=3703) Possibly related.

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kenjackson
I 100% thought this was going to be a conservative hit piece about
Hollywood/California. tl;dr: it's not.

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briandear
What do you mean "conservative hit piece?" Would you have used the term
"liberal hit piece"!if the publication were Motherjones or MSNBC? Your comment
reveals a lack of objectivity.

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Lawtonfogle
The publication doesn't even have to be taken into account. The movie stars
bit of the title makes one think California, and the 'what happens' gives a
slight negative implication when combined with movie stars (at least that was
my initial perception). Thus the title appeared to be casting California in a
negative light. Being California leans liberal, a negative article reviewing
the state would likely have a conservative lean to it. Thus the description
can lead to the assumption without even needing to see the source of the
article.

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mc32
There are at least two California's, the liberal one we all see and live in on
the coast and the more agricultural and conservative interior which we don't
hear about so much.

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thrownaway2424
... because nobody lives there.

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mc32
Nah... I think it's more because they don't have much access to media. They
are a sizable portion of the pop. But like most minorities, they are
underrepresented in popular culture and zeitgeist.

For most intents and purposes they are a "forgotten backwater".

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thrownaway2424
Do you think they are really under-represented, or simply proportionally
represented? 3/4ths of Californians live in on of the three big coastal
metropolitan areas. The other quarter of the people are spread out over an
area as large as Spain.

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rebootthesystem
> Karunanidhi promised free televisions for all. He won, and a freebie arms
> race commenced. Since Jayalalithaa resumed office in 2011, she has given
> away or heavily subsidized laptops, saris, fans, rice, cows, goats, food
> processors and bicycles, and branded all of it with her face and the name
> Amma

I know this is going to be downvoted to hell and back, but that's OK, somebody
has to say these things so you kids learn to think for yourselves rather than
be captive to the indoctrination you were subjected to in school.

That, the quote above, is the left wing's preferred approach to amassing votes
everywhere in the world. From Argentina through the US and on to India. Give
shit away to buy votes. In places like Argentina and India it migt have taken
the form of blenders and bikes. In places like the US it feels a bit more
sophisticated but it is the same thing: pander to unions and minorities. And,
just like in India and Argentina, the masses respond with votes. Once in
office the politicians drop their "little people" supporters on their heads
and proceed to enrich themselves.

The right wing has it's own set of issues, including seeing everything through
the eyes of religious fanaticism of varying degrees. Which easily buys the
votes of the religious masses.

Politics is such a mess. It is probably one of the lowest forms of the human
condition. It causes those in the game to have to devolve into despicable
beings for the all-mighty vote. Sick.

Think Libertarian.

Wake Up!

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mikeash
The tech workers who make up the majority of my friends and acquaintances are
heavily left-leaning. What is the US left wing supposedly giving away to them
to buy their support?

I think it's ironic that you go through this (IMO justified) rant about how
awful politics is, and then immediately turn around and propose your own
political philosophy as the answer. Sorry, but libertarianism is still
politics. I'm sure you have plenty of answers about how that's not true and
your way is inherently different from all the others, but they all say that.

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jerf
"What is the US left wing supposedly giving away to them to buy their
support?"

Moral authority over conservatives, and cleansing of the sins of racism and
other -isms and damage against Mother Earth by voting properly (and possibly
some targeted donations).

I'm not sure how to do a good Google search for this but you can find some
science on how people who perform token acts of environmentalism or race
consciousness then often account to themselves some "moral capital" which they
immediately spend, e.g. "Yeah, I flew to the mountains to ski but I recycle my
trash so it all works out."

Conservatives are of course selling purity (a concept that actually goes quite
deep; google "disgust" for some recent and fascinating research on this human
characteristic) and tradition, and feeding into outrage about various changes
going on.

Libertarianism (disclaimer: I mostly identify here) sells on the idea of
secret understandings that few people have, invoking the ancient "mystery
religion" [1] psychological programs that are actually surprisingly absent in
the modern world. Many variants also have more than a whiff of "if we just did
this ONE THING all our problems would be solved", offering an appealing
unified theory of why everything sucks so hard that has the advantage of near-
unfalsifiability since the realistic chances of any major libertarian polity
rapidly approaches zero as its size grows, while being very appealing
simplified. (See also gold-buggery... "one simple thing" that would fix our
whole economy.)

All the political positions are selling emotional appeals.

Oh, and in the middle of this tumult there's some policy things too, but who
really votes for those? Policies are tied together in really weird ways, and
there is a far greater of cohesion of beliefs into "blocs" than you'd expect
with a naive model of beliefs. Either our understanding of human psychology is
still really limited and there's some good reason that the various beliefs are
tied together, "team" voting is vastly disproportional in power vs. what it
theoretically should be, or some combination of both, as I could argue both
pretty well with various science results that have been coming out over the
past 10 years.

[1]: This is a technical term, BTW; you may have a fun time googling it if
you've never heard of it before.

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waterlesscloud
Best political comment I've ever read on this site. Gets to the heart of what
our politics are really about.

