Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appears as herself in an episode of Madam Secretary

The CBS series Madam Secretary (now streaming on Netflix) is a fine example of what happens when the American generation that came of age in the 1960s dreaming of an end to imperialism and colonialism fully completes its journey towards becoming the biggest, meanest, cringiest agents of the same thing. The only difference of course is that this crowd grew up armed with the verbal tools of anti-colonialism, and now knows how to speak the language of resistance, egalitarianism, diversity, and all the other good stuff while doing the absolute opposite.

This crowd, to put it plainly, is the new war establishment, trying to take over the world just like Brain and Pinky, but they are both more and less successful at it. They are more successful than our favorite lab mice in the sense that they do have a vast network of influence, an empire if you will, inherited from earlier generations that were open and honest about what they were doing and why (we think your skin color/religion/gods suck and we deserve to own your land/resources/labor/minds). But they are also less successful than them in the sense that it is easier to laugh at a cartoon than a cartel; a cartel of cultural and intellectual missionaries out to convince you that war is peace, ignorance is knowledge, and most of all, your struggle for freedom from their lies is, well, evil.

I began watching Madam Secretary yesterday, after reading a series of Tweets from Neha Srivastava on its bizarre (and yet not unusual) depictions of Hindus. While there is much that people from far corners of the world now united by exasperation at American television delusions of grandeur can critique about its fantasies of neo-liberal greatness rooted in an unchanging colonial-centuries-old presumption that the Other is not really worth knowing on her or his terms really, I focus below on a few episodes in which the story dwells on Hindu characters and normalizes Hinduphobic tropes.

Madam Compassion. Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord (played by Tea Loni) is deeply saddened that the Indian Prime Minister is such a “Nationalist” he is refusing American aid for his people after a deadly industrial accident at an American-owned plant in India unless the Americans apologize.

And God Smote the Ganges!

The Secretary of State is on a trip to India, where her crew is wondering about the inscrutable orientals and their mysterious body language. The Indian equivalent of the American Madam Secretary is also a Madam Minister, and while there is a modern woman bond between them depicted as is appropriate for the “liberal” part of a “neo-liberal” fantasy perhaps, the woman who is not white must naturally be shown as outside the pale of clear communication. Is she smiling? Or is she smirking? Our intrepid Indianas wonder. Maybe it’s a “smirkle,” they conclude.

Meanwhile, just as things are thawing between the well-meaning explorers and the culturally difficult Indians, an earthquake hits! Not only that, a diplomatic crisis now unfolds as an American company-owned factory has exploded and set the Ganges on fire. Madam Secretary and Madam Minister have a video chat about the issue. The Americans have a talented team of firefighters they are ready to send to India. But the Indian government won’t allow them to come because the Indian Prime Minister is a “nationalist” (watch that word, now) and wants to blame America. America, of course won’t apologize because the company followed India’s own rules which called for safety precautions upto a 7.0 earthquake but not a 7.3 earthquake.

In an innocently genocidal moment that sounds like Lady Amherst (assuming there was one) wondering “But why won’t they take our blankets to stay warm and cosy?” Madam Secretary leaves us exasperated too that the Indians lack “compassion” for their own people and won’t accept American life-savers.