If you don’t study history, everything that happens will seem like an astonishing anomaly to you. Yesterday, a movie star with a political party that was less than two years old won the elections in Tamil Nadu, one of the most industrialized and literate states of India. This isn’t the first time an actor has become the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, or even a southern state of India, in a massive upset. This isn’t the first time a demagogue has captured the imagination of the American people to seize power. This isn’t the first time that the future has looked so bleak. And yet we are here, and it’s happening again.

So how did India get this way? Why did the Congress come to power, and how did it lose power? How did the BJP displace the Congress and solidify its position? Why are there some states in India where the BJP has never won? How has the BJP defeated anti-incumbency to stay in power for 15 years straight? And where did this happen before, and how did this happen?

Everything that seems impossible, seems impossible until it happens. Everyone I know — including me — thought Vijay was a joke who would win 15 seats at most. And yet he won 108 seats and will most probably form the government. The same happened with Trump in 2016. Nobody saw it coming, but half the country voted for him, which means there is a popular opinion and osmosis of information that the “elites” like me are not privy to. How are we missing this? Where should we be keeping our ear to the ground to understand what’s going on, and not be blindsided by the news?

Also, when something seems irrational to us, and stupid, it just reveals a dissonance in what we think is important for an outcome as compared to what actually turns out to be important to the people. You could argue that the ruling party has had splendid economic growth, enabled employment, and built infrastructure. But if all the public cares about is a story — that the current government is corrupt and inept at maintaining law and order, or that the government is destroying temples, stealing idols, and displacing priests — how does it matter if there is economic growth or not?

This is also a question for me to think about as a content creator: Do you create information that you think is useful and that will lead to a better world (be it educational, insightful, nuanced, etc.) or do you create content that taps into the primal psychology of a population that has no aspirations to “better” itself according to your understanding of what “better” means? The grifters and hustlers tread ever onward by just hijacking this primality in their audience, and we live in a world that is defined by the will of the many. So what does it matter if your contrarian opinion is true according to some self-consistent logical system if it has no resonance with reality? Do you want to be crucified for your beliefs, or do you want to build a church based on the beliefs that already exist?

Two questions to guide your thought process whenever you claim something contrarian:

1. Has this happened before?
2. This time is different, you say. Why?