JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED COMMENTS TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Margaret Wente is back with her favorite cheap-trick “analysis” of a serious matter.

She gets one person who has written a book or is known for his/her views on a topic and treats the person’s unproved notions as authoritative research, here that person is Jonathan Haidt.

She did the same thing in Iraq some years ago, quoting the infamously one-sided scholar on the Mideast, Bernard Lewis.

She did it in Vancouver where she was supposed to be studying free-injection sites and sourced a single prejudiced “authority.”

Her method represents hack journalism at its most developed. It just happens to be one of the basic techniques of propaganda too.

It’s all very much like the notorious legal practice of expert witnesses: a single expert witness is brought into the courtroom and paid for his/her one-sided opinion in hopes of influencing the jury when indeed the reality is that hundreds of experts disagree and only their full range of views offers the state of the truth.

Her “authority” in this case just doesn’t begin to get it right, offering a specious notion dressed up as an idea.

The political Right’s success anywhere is not owing to a better understanding of human nature. That’s actually rather a sophism and an indirect way of saying what would read as foolishness were it phrased more clearly: the Right is right.

The Right’s success is owing to a couple of extremely basic factors.

The first is money and lots of it.

We always and everywhere observe the Right pandering to special interests for campaign funds.

Money doesn’t buy a seat in a legislature, at least not yet, but it gives politicians the wherewithal to market and advertise and travel and put on an impressive show (everything from stages and backdrops and music and big flags and the ease to ship them around quickly like a travelling rock band) and just saturate the airwaves with their pancaked faces, fluffed hair, and bleached teeth.

And then there are constant polls to test the effect of statements day by day, sophisticated polls that are very costly to run.

We know marketing and advertising work: tens of billions are spent every year just to sell this versus that soda pop or burger or deodorant, and the companies spending those vast fortunes know they are not squandering their money.

It is no different in politics.

Human beings are highly susceptible to suggestions, only the suggestions must be cleverly phrased and they must be tailored to the needs of the individuals or groups – the job of marketing. It is very costly to create and tailor these suggestions across millions of people.

Genuine issues have long receded into obscurity in elections. Rather we get costly advertising pitches designed to just suggest a position on a matter of public importance, and we get swirling dust about non-issues like patriotism, religious views, families, or flags.

And just whom do you think it is that has the best access to money?

Second, there is what we might call the stupidity factor. It is an established fact that conservative views tend to be correlated with lower intelligence. Like all correlations in statistics this one does not hold in every individual case, but it very much does hold on average.

It doesn’t take a great effort to sell stupid people: just look at the millions who bought books and tickets supporting that total air-head, Sarah Palin.

When you direct your appeal to this group, it doesn’t take much imagination or hard work to come up with the right words.

Witness Rob Ford’s (relative) success: he’s actually convinced that if he asks people in general, people who have no idea of costs or finances or urban planning, about wanting subways, that he has earned a mandate to build them. But it is an illusion, one built on asking a simplistic question of lots of people with no background in the subject being asked. It much resembles asking a very young child whether she wants to be a princess or he a magician or armored knight.

Were the same question put, as it should be: here are the choices and briefly here are the costs and taxes and difficulties associated with each, the results would be quite different.

It is actually part of the approach of genuinely stupid politicians – the Sarah Palins, the Rob Fords, the George Bushes – to elicit public responses with the least possible thought or detail or accountability. That makes their jobs so much easier. And as any good advertising person knows, selling a complex idea is very difficult.
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“Liberal$ have lost the trust of Canadians. The need to learn some lessons about telling the truth from the Conservatives.”

A 39.6% majority represents lost trust in the other side? After all, this is not just about the Liberal Party, it is about liberal views.

This reader brings up, inadvertently, a major factor in our politics: our democratic system is broken.

There can be no mandate to do anything involving great change, change which affects everyone, when more than 60% of voters don’t want you in office.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY TOM FLANAGAN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“Pariah products will always find their way.”

Well, that is a rather awkward way to say something – “products” don’t “find ways” and “pariah product” is an inaccurate expression – but Tom Flanagan has never been a master of good writing. It does tend to be that way for propagandists.

But, for once, I agree with Flanagan, at least with what it is I think he means.

After all, Flanagan’s own “pariah product” – right-wing views expressed in awkward English – keep “finding their way” into the Globe and Mail.
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A man of low ethics, second-rate intellectual achievement, partisan right-wing politics, and poor writing – that’s Tom Flanagan.

I think Sarah Palin in drag just about sums him up.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PRESTON MANNING IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“Let’s give Albertans the future they desire and deserve”

Why do Albertans “deserve” a different future than the one they now have, one which by world standards is pretty exceptional?

More flatulence from Canada’s Sunday School teacher of Right Wing politicos.

Though I have to say: Gee, Preston, I do like the new, cool-guy look in your official photo.

Does it indicate, perhaps, you are undergoing the Middle-Age Crazies?

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JUSTIN WEBB IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

America is a very conservative country. That is why the great journalist William Shirer, covering events in NAZI Germany, asked whether America would not itself become a fascist country by election.

‘Right-wing’ has characterized its entire history, except for a brief period of the Franklin Roosevelt era.

The nation’s history is characterized by conquest – although its victims were weak compared to those taken on by, say, Germany, including native people, Spanish settlers, and Mexicans – and extreme acquisitiveness. Those are facts largely glossed over in general histories, and few abroad truly appreciate them. They are facts also glossed over in all Fourth of July speeches by local Congressmen and Senators looking for campaign funds.

The higher-sounding words of America’s main founding documents have always been treated the same way most Christians treat the Gospels – that is, they are recited, praised, engraved on monuments, and immediately ignored in day-to-day matters.

And, after all, it is the most superstitiously religious advanced nation on earth, and nothing good comes out of superstition, except fear and killing of every description, killing of devils, killing of communists, killing of Muslims, killing of native people, and killing of any threat perceived by religious paranoia.

And further, the U.S. establishment – really a government within a government, including the CIA, the FBI, the NIA, the Pentagon, and at least a dozen other intelligence agencies not generally known – is not going to permit drastic change. It has things the way it wants them and works daily to keep them so.

The Pentagon alone spends the entire GDP of some countries each year, and it has on many past occasions obstructed presidential policies. The CIA spends a fortune and makes a significant part of its occupation the overthrowing of governments, the interfering in elections abroad (as its doing in places like Iran today), and the getting rid of unwanted foreign leaders. And these powerful institutions are supported by America’s immensely rich Borgia-like families. Does anyone seriously believe such forces will tolerate any real shift in American goals and budgets?

Obama cannot possibly change those circumstances, and without changing those circumstances there is no way he can take significant measures towards creating a more humane and decent America. Kennedy was probably the last president hoping to achieve such huge changes.

Obama has put a pleasant and intelligent face on a government that for eight years was guided by thugs and ignoramuses, and he established a precedent for people of color that gives the U.S. further bragging rights about principles.

Going beyond those modest achievements brings an American leader into highly dangerous territory.