Liberals Are Dead! Long Live The Liberals!

I’m not sure if you’ve heard but word on the street is that there’s an important species about to become extinct in Pakistan.

Even if you’ve not seen one yourself, chances are you hear about them every single day. Nary a day goes by without reading about this particular breed of being in every single newspaper and magazine published here. We’re collectively bombarded about this group’s existential crisis so much that it seems that it is perhaps the most important group in Pakistan.

If it’s not obvious enough, I’m talking about the so-called death of liberals in Pakistan. Liberals as a species are dying and soon enough will be extinct. I should know because I am one. Suddenly we seem to have woken up to the idea that our existence is under threat because of some amorphous, intractable, violent monster also known as the “Other”.

Because we are the educated, well-heeled lot, having had access to all institutions this country has to offer, we obviously know better than “all of them” who are the illogical, dangerous lot out to kill us. Of course we do not blame anyone but them for their lack of education, opportunity and “middle class” mindset. Had they just tried hard enough like we all did, they too would have been smarter, successful and better smelling. And of course to ‘us’, they are a unified, homogenous entity with an agenda: the liberals versus the non-liberals, the hoity-toity versus the hoi polloi, the You-and-Me’s versus the All-of-Them’s. There’s no one left in between ‘us’, the enlightened, and ‘them’, the emboldened!

The audacity of these non-liberal sorts is getting appalling. Why, just the other day I was at the signal waiting for the red light to turn green, when the pesky little kid started cleaning the windshield of my car without my consent! Have they no manners? And that irritating lady who simultaneously continued rapping at my car window while I was just trying to listen to my music in peace? The woman had no sense of privacy or decency! How dare they intrude on my life? I certainly do not intrude on theirs, do I?

What could possibly be more ridiculous than forty thousand of these illiterate buffoons showing up on the streets to celebrate the murder of one of us? Is there a more stark proof of how utterly outnumbered we are on the streets of Pakistan? Our once impervious, protected space has been hit by a stampede, and now ‘they’ are not taking no for an answer.

As if that wasn’t enough, now more and more of them want better wages. Worker strikes have become commonplace due to some bizarre imagination on their part. (That must be it, right?) They have suddenly realized that they should get the sort of wages us liberals do without getting even remotely more educated or talented.

I went to a meeting recently where concerned liberals who owned these companies were discussing how to get rid of their employees with minimum inconvenience. One of the smartest liberals in the meeting said that we should tell these workers to “suck it up”. Because this particular clever liberal owns an NGO and had obviously thought a lot about poor, ignorant people, we all thought it was indeed an astute observation.

I’m not sure when we ceded political space to these goons we love to hate, but I have a dreaded feeling we never really participated in the national conversation in the first place. This intellectually superior group of ours (or the most recent mutation of it anyway) was always too busy to attend a political rally, too pensive to distribute pamphlets door-to-door, and far too wise to mingle with the masses. It is beneath us to persuade the proletariat, dahlin’.

So how do we escape this horrible situation? How do we ensure that our dying breed survives? We’re not willing to reproduce as much as them. We’re not willing to become less intelligent or attractive either. We don’t even want to meet these people to learn about their survival instincts. (Natural selection, anyone?)

The only way we can overcome this existential threat is to utilize a three-pronged approach. First we need to build an even more robust infrastructure that keeps the non-liberals out of our space. We need to have more clubs, hotels, restaurants and airports that are exclusive and inaccessible to anyone who does not subscribe to our liberal lifestyle. Secondly, we need to make private education and private healthcare even more expensive. The former will ensure our liberals are smarter and richer, and at least a few them can employ critical thinking if there is an extreme need for it. The latter will ensure that non-liberals die out by way of natural selection. Lastly, we need to continue writing and ranting in English newspapers (like this one) so that fellow liberals are aware of our dilemma. Everyone needs to know just how bad things are for us now that we can’t even publicly announce that we will not fast or pray at work.

I’ve done my part in helping to save us by letting you know what’s really plaguing our country. I can now relax in liberal complacency and enjoy being the cleverest liberal on the block.

Speak now or forever hold your piece.

This piece was published in The Friday Times on 11 March 2011 and also be read here.