When is the last time you heard a good debate?
A real debate — not just two old white men screaming at each other on television. Not a bunch of party representatives arguing in a panel with a reporter desperately trying to keep the discussion factually accurate, only to be accused of bias by the political party using gaslighting as its strategy. Not some unhinged wingnut spitting at his phone in his truck. Not some bigot saying nasty things on the radio for all the other bigots to cheer about for ratings.
I’m talking about a real, bona fide debate about ideas built on an established understanding of reality, following logic non-participants can comprehend and become more enlightened on issues by reading or viewing.
These don’t exist in North American democracy anymore. Today, politicians barely even speak to the news. Now, they have an open, uninterrupted channel into your mind through social media and other types of programming. Danielle Smith spent the better part of a decade spewing complete nonsense over the radio without any opposing voice to challenge her statements. Now, her fan base has elevated her to premier of Alberta, where she’s putting those ideas into practice.
Indeed, you don’t have to look far to see politicians doing their best to push news out entirely. Take the Conservative Party’s calls to defund the CBC, claiming it’s somehow biased against them. CBC’s coverage of national or international issues doesn’t seem to deviate from CTV or Global News’ coverage tremendously, and certainly is several grains closer to neutral than any commercial news programming coming out of the United States. Interestingly enough, CBC is among the few consistent funders of investigative journalism in Canada, which is the primary means of holding power to account in democracy. I wonder if there’s a connection?
Removing the means of debate has allowed political parties to silo Canadians off from one another. You can’t begin to discuss what we should be doing about climate change when the person you’re talking to insists climate change isn’t real. When a portion of the population is convinced anything to the left of the current Republican party is pure socialism — when, in reality, there has never been a socialist government elected anywhere in North America — how do you discuss economic ideas? Health care? Education? Anything?
Case in point: much of Canada’s economic foundation is hinged on energy exports. Currently, the biggest chunk of that is oil exported to the United States. But now China is rapidly electrifying its fleet, with an obvious plan to push electric vehicles onto the global market.
Meanwhile, Smith is parroting the Saudi Arabian line oil will continue to grow until 2050, which does not appear to be happening in spite of two major wars.
Only one reality can be correct — either the widespread electrification of transport is happening or it isn’t. People who have devoted their lives to analyzing global markets say it is. People who desperately need the oil industry to stay dominant because they have not planned for a future without it say it isn’t. Of course, there’s plenty of opportunistic politicians ready to tell the latter they’re right so they can get their hefty salary and government pension.
If you went back in time 10 years, you’d hear Smith’s supporters saying climate change was a hoax perpetuated by the Saudis to hurt oil competitors. When critical thinking and logical analysis have been abandoned, the brain fills the void with whatever comfortable muskox excrement it can find. And therein lies the problem — no one is willing to have their worldviews challenged anymore. People accept “alternative facts” as reality, then expect others to take them seriously.
Wishful thinking versus knowledge
Adults have created a society where my wishful thinking is as good as your knowledge. Ironically, this social dynamic doesn’t appear to exist in schools where students are force-fed facts and critical thinking, only in the so-called “real world.” Not surprisingly, it’s the schools which are under attack and accused of bias, not the politicians doing the accusing.
Now the balance of our collective future is teetering on two extremely corrupt political parties in the United States accusing each other of fascism — one having attempted a coup d’état on live television. The Republican apparatus has since set about gaslighting its followers into believing the Jan. 6 attacks didn’t happen, with depressingly successful results.
Regardless of who wins the White House this year, we can guarantee the results are going to be awful to experience. Either Donald Trump gets back in an enacts his promised “one day” of tyranny or he doesn’t and his supporters escalate their anger even further. We cannot expect the parties to reconcile because their entire basis of reality is now completely different. Politicians are able to live playboy lifestyles, engage in blatant hypocrisy and even flout the law because their followers are convinced the other side is just as bad or worse, and anyone who presents factual evidence to the contrary is just part of the conspiracy.
By putting their supporters into different realities, politicians have removed debate from democracy. As a result, voters cannot discuss issues among themselves or make qualified decisions on the direction of the country and elections are reduced to sporting events.
When our elections are reduced to “us versus them,” we all lose.