We might as well face it: the whole shooting match is now bat-shit crazy.
Consider the bookends of our political insanity.
William Manchester, an historian, wrote the political history of John F. Kennedy. Stephen King, a nightmare novelist, may be the only writer fit to capture the history of the Trump Presidency. That’s because in the 56 years since Kennedy nipped Nixon in the 1960 presidential race, civil discourse, moderation, and the middle ground have turned into a horror show of pie-eyed ignorance, toxic partisanship, and downright hatefulness.
There is no public discourse, just an ongoing screed between those fighting for the controls. It’s not just sex, lies and videotape that is used to bring the opponent low — but a hearty boot to the meat pies if you can manage to get the other guy down. The mayhem etiquette of cage-fighting has vanquished any vestige of the Marquis of Queensbury rules. Welcome to Trumpland and the skewed reality of the alt-right.
Making matters worse, we have entered the Age of Dishonesty and Deception as author Ralph Keyes calls it, where casual dishonesty has become a pandemic in public life. What does that mean? All the whoppers no longer come from Burger King.
Compounding it all is that social media is not a wonderful democratizing meeting ground, as it was once envisaged by its creators. It is a jousting ground where adversaries collide in full armour. The tricks, designed by professional politicos, is to demonize your “enemies”, while self-sanctifying until your own halo glows like a nuclear sunset.
This is accomplished by the newest form of socially acceptable deception – spin. It comes down to authorized lying in a good cause – or so its devotees think.
Consider the public reaction to the death of Fidel Castro. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lamented the passing of a world leader and family friend, and offered condolences to the Castros in the name of a deep friendship between the Canadian and Cuban people that runs back to the days of his father, Pierre Trudeau.
At the time, the elder Trudeau’s Cuba policy was a point of national pride. Trudeau refused to march lock-step against the Castro regime with the US government, preferring instead to keep diplomatic relations and a Canadian business connection. While the US forbade its citizens to travel to Cuba, and imposed brutal sanctions on the Cuban people, Canadian businessmen were building hotels on Varadero Beach. All these years later, that Canadian policy won the day. President Barack Obama began the process of winding down sanctions and “normalizing” relations with Castro’s Cuba — just like the Americans did following the brutal Vietnam war.
Despite that, Justin Trudeau’s bouquet for Castro got the boo-birds into a full-throated frenzy. Stephen Harper’s son, Ben, called Trudeau’s statement about Castro “an embarrassment for Canada.”
Since Ben’s father set the record in that department, perhaps he could offer further enlightenment to the Great Unwashed. Perhaps Ben might share his wisdom on the subject of his father’s words of praise for the despot who ran Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, when he died. The record shows that Harper spent $175,000 to send Governor-General David Johnston to Saudi Arabia to personally convey his condolences. Nice treatment for a misogynistic dictator with a human rights record far worse than Castro’s.
US Senator Marco Rubio saw Trudeau’s remarks as flowers for a brutal dictator, misplaced compassion for a political thug who brought opposition to his revolution to an abrupt end against a wall or deep inside a prison.
When James Baxter, the publisher of iPolitics, went on comment boards to defend our news coverage and said Trudeau might have overstepped by offering his condolences on behalf of “all Canadians,” the shrill world of non-debatable condemnation quickly reared its head on social media.
“Done with iPolitics. So biased against Justin Trudeau,” said one Facebook “friend.”
When another social media warrior said “spare us the right-wing talking points. It’s called journalism 101 where you present both sides of the story”, Baxter responded:
“I have no right-wing or left-wing tendencies. I am a third-generation journalist, raised only on the ideals of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Castro’s goals might once have been to afflict the comfortable too, but he chose the sword over the pen, and he continued to choose the sword to crush dissent once he had become ‘the comfortable’ in Cuba.”
Grounds for a rousing debate? Of course. Justification for raising one’s voice or even turning a little red-faced? Probably. Baxter can debate with the best of them. Indeed, he loves it. It’s why he created a news and opinion service six years ago that employs yours truly and Susan Delacourt, Jonathan Manthorpe and Alan Freeman, as well as conservative pundits Tasha Kheiriddin, Brent Rathgeber and L.Ian MacDonald. Which makes freaking out over a difference of opinion with one writer absurd.
Ian Shelton, iPolitics head of tech, said Sunday in the wake of the blow-back against the iPolitics coverage: “Remember back when we were Liberal shills who hated Conservative values?”
Indeed I do Ian.
So what should nuance look like applied to Castro’s passing, instead of the incoherent screaming match it has sparked?
First of all, it would start with the fact that Castro’s revolution was triggered by the military dictatorship of Gen. Fulgencio Batista. So from the very beginning, a prickly question: for those who condemned Castro because of his communist dictatorship, what about the military dictatorship and obscene corruption of Batista’s Cuba? A better place? Really? But there’s a legitimate debate to be had whether two wrongs ever equals a right.
That raises issue of Castro’s achievements. For the people of Cuba, that meant a world-class literacy program that lifted citizens out of ignorance, and a universal health care program with an infant mortality rate below that of the US. To countries in South America and Africa struggling with repressive right-wing or post-colonial governments, Castro’s revolution offered hope of a better day in a world where the Americans didn’t always win. There is a reason that his right hand man, Che Guevara, ended up on coffee mugs. He, like Castro, became a salesman of hope for the oppressed: “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine,” Che famously said.
And then there is the big fat worm inside the polished apple of international diplomacy. For all those who portray Castro as a kind of cigar-smoking, Latin reincarnation of Joe Stalin, what about all the other dictators we not only trade with, talk to, and at times fluff up, but who are treated as valued members of the world political order? Is Chinese president Xi Jinping somehow a good dictator? Is that dictator within NATO, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the politician who closes newspapers and jails dissidents in Turkey, okay because he is aligned? Do we wait until they all die to find our principles?
The truth is that everything Castro has done, Augusto Pinochet did, the House of Saud has done, even Britain and the United States have done.
The US President can authorize extra-judicial killings of “enemies of the United States.” The US has locked up suspected terrorists without charges and without public trials. (Ironically, their prison, Guantanamo, is in Cuba.) And according to the President of the United States and the Senate intelligence committee, the Americans have “tortured folks.”
In the past, the US has helped topple democratically elected governments in Iran, Egypt, and Chile. Toss in universal spying on its own citizens by outfits like the National Security Agency, and you have what on a bad day could pass for a repressive regime not much interested in the basic principles of democracy.
So what we’re really debating here is whether the ends ever justify the means.
There is a choice for Canada’s young PM, at least there would be in a nuanced universe. It is between the arm-twisting of the alt-right to denounce Fidel Castro while ignoring the monstrous hypocrisy of playing footsie with other big dictators; and the example of Pierre Trudeau to engage rather than denounce and isolate.
But then again we don’t live in a nuanced world anymore, do we?
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
Consider the bookends of our political insanity.
William Manchester, an historian, wrote the political history of John F. Kennedy. Stephen King, a nightmare novelist, may be the only writer fit to capture the history of the Trump Presidency. That’s because in the 56 years since Kennedy nipped Nixon in the 1960 presidential race, civil discourse, moderation, and the middle ground have turned into a horror show of pie-eyed ignorance, toxic partisanship, and downright hatefulness.
There is no public discourse, just an ongoing screed between those fighting for the controls. It’s not just sex, lies and videotape that is used to bring the opponent low — but a hearty boot to the meat pies if you can manage to get the other guy down. The mayhem etiquette of cage-fighting has vanquished any vestige of the Marquis of Queensbury rules. Welcome to Trumpland and the skewed reality of the alt-right.
Making matters worse, we have entered the Age of Dishonesty and Deception as author Ralph Keyes calls it, where casual dishonesty has become a pandemic in public life. What does that mean? All the whoppers no longer come from Burger King.
Compounding it all is that social media is not a wonderful democratizing meeting ground, as it was once envisaged by its creators. It is a jousting ground where adversaries collide in full armour. The tricks, designed by professional politicos, is to demonize your “enemies”, while self-sanctifying until your own halo glows like a nuclear sunset.
This is accomplished by the newest form of socially acceptable deception – spin. It comes down to authorized lying in a good cause – or so its devotees think.
Consider the public reaction to the death of Fidel Castro. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lamented the passing of a world leader and family friend, and offered condolences to the Castros in the name of a deep friendship between the Canadian and Cuban people that runs back to the days of his father, Pierre Trudeau.
At the time, the elder Trudeau’s Cuba policy was a point of national pride. Trudeau refused to march lock-step against the Castro regime with the US government, preferring instead to keep diplomatic relations and a Canadian business connection. While the US forbade its citizens to travel to Cuba, and imposed brutal sanctions on the Cuban people, Canadian businessmen were building hotels on Varadero Beach. All these years later, that Canadian policy won the day. President Barack Obama began the process of winding down sanctions and “normalizing” relations with Castro’s Cuba — just like the Americans did following the brutal Vietnam war.
Despite that, Justin Trudeau’s bouquet for Castro got the boo-birds into a full-throated frenzy. Stephen Harper’s son, Ben, called Trudeau’s statement about Castro “an embarrassment for Canada.”
Since Ben’s father set the record in that department, perhaps he could offer further enlightenment to the Great Unwashed. Perhaps Ben might share his wisdom on the subject of his father’s words of praise for the despot who ran Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, when he died. The record shows that Harper spent $175,000 to send Governor-General David Johnston to Saudi Arabia to personally convey his condolences. Nice treatment for a misogynistic dictator with a human rights record far worse than Castro’s.
US Senator Marco Rubio saw Trudeau’s remarks as flowers for a brutal dictator, misplaced compassion for a political thug who brought opposition to his revolution to an abrupt end against a wall or deep inside a prison.
When James Baxter, the publisher of iPolitics, went on comment boards to defend our news coverage and said Trudeau might have overstepped by offering his condolences on behalf of “all Canadians,” the shrill world of non-debatable condemnation quickly reared its head on social media.
“Done with iPolitics. So biased against Justin Trudeau,” said one Facebook “friend.”
When another social media warrior said “spare us the right-wing talking points. It’s called journalism 101 where you present both sides of the story”, Baxter responded:
“I have no right-wing or left-wing tendencies. I am a third-generation journalist, raised only on the ideals of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Castro’s goals might once have been to afflict the comfortable too, but he chose the sword over the pen, and he continued to choose the sword to crush dissent once he had become ‘the comfortable’ in Cuba.”
Grounds for a rousing debate? Of course. Justification for raising one’s voice or even turning a little red-faced? Probably. Baxter can debate with the best of them. Indeed, he loves it. It’s why he created a news and opinion service six years ago that employs yours truly and Susan Delacourt, Jonathan Manthorpe and Alan Freeman, as well as conservative pundits Tasha Kheiriddin, Brent Rathgeber and L.Ian MacDonald. Which makes freaking out over a difference of opinion with one writer absurd.
Ian Shelton, iPolitics head of tech, said Sunday in the wake of the blow-back against the iPolitics coverage: “Remember back when we were Liberal shills who hated Conservative values?”
Indeed I do Ian.
So what should nuance look like applied to Castro’s passing, instead of the incoherent screaming match it has sparked?
First of all, it would start with the fact that Castro’s revolution was triggered by the military dictatorship of Gen. Fulgencio Batista. So from the very beginning, a prickly question: for those who condemned Castro because of his communist dictatorship, what about the military dictatorship and obscene corruption of Batista’s Cuba? A better place? Really? But there’s a legitimate debate to be had whether two wrongs ever equals a right.
That raises issue of Castro’s achievements. For the people of Cuba, that meant a world-class literacy program that lifted citizens out of ignorance, and a universal health care program with an infant mortality rate below that of the US. To countries in South America and Africa struggling with repressive right-wing or post-colonial governments, Castro’s revolution offered hope of a better day in a world where the Americans didn’t always win. There is a reason that his right hand man, Che Guevara, ended up on coffee mugs. He, like Castro, became a salesman of hope for the oppressed: “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine,” Che famously said.
And then there is the big fat worm inside the polished apple of international diplomacy. For all those who portray Castro as a kind of cigar-smoking, Latin reincarnation of Joe Stalin, what about all the other dictators we not only trade with, talk to, and at times fluff up, but who are treated as valued members of the world political order? Is Chinese president Xi Jinping somehow a good dictator? Is that dictator within NATO, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the politician who closes newspapers and jails dissidents in Turkey, okay because he is aligned? Do we wait until they all die to find our principles?
The truth is that everything Castro has done, Augusto Pinochet did, the House of Saud has done, even Britain and the United States have done.
The US President can authorize extra-judicial killings of “enemies of the United States.” The US has locked up suspected terrorists without charges and without public trials. (Ironically, their prison, Guantanamo, is in Cuba.) And according to the President of the United States and the Senate intelligence committee, the Americans have “tortured folks.”
In the past, the US has helped topple democratically elected governments in Iran, Egypt, and Chile. Toss in universal spying on its own citizens by outfits like the National Security Agency, and you have what on a bad day could pass for a repressive regime not much interested in the basic principles of democracy.
So what we’re really debating here is whether the ends ever justify the means.
There is a choice for Canada’s young PM, at least there would be in a nuanced universe. It is between the arm-twisting of the alt-right to denounce Fidel Castro while ignoring the monstrous hypocrisy of playing footsie with other big dictators; and the example of Pierre Trudeau to engage rather than denounce and isolate.
But then again we don’t live in a nuanced world anymore, do we?
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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