Tag Archives: politics

Schoolyard rules

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There have been hundreds of movies made that include schoolyard bullies. Basically they rule the roost and get away with everything until either one brave kid or a band of misfits decide they aren’t going to take it anymore. Then the bully gets what’s due to him and is put in his place. The movie bully always gets served a good dose of justice and everybody feels good about it.

In the grown up world, away from the playground, away from the movie, big screen happy endings, it doesn’t always end up that way.

No, here a corporation can get away with polluting the land, and causing people to get sick for decades. Here, in the real world, hundreds of people can knowingly cause a housing mortgage crisis that bankrupts millions of people and one, just one scapegoat gets some jail time, while the rest got years of bonuses.

And now we have the Prime Minister of Canada being disrespectfully called the 51st Governor, and the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. We have a man in the most powerful position in the world conducting peace talks with another bully, while simultaneously leaving the victim out of the talks and wrongfully identifying the victim as starting the fight.

I don’t see a movie ending to this. I see a bully getting away with what he wants for about 4 years. Sure there will be pushback, but all bullies do when they are pushed back is double down. No apologies, no remorse, no change in behavior. The world has digressed to schoolyard rules, and is severely lacking in adult supervision.

We aren’t living in a feel good revenge of the nerds style movie, we are living in a Shakespearean tragic comedy. There will be laughs along the way, but when the show comes to an end the outcome for those involved will be very disappointing.

If we want to see the feel good movie ending, it won’t be one hero protagonist saving the day. No it will be the band of brothers all standing up to the schoolyard bully. It will be all the kids in the schoolyard saying, ‘That’s enough!” It will be his own little gang deciding that he’s not worth supporting. It didn’t happen the first time around, maybe it will happen this time… but I’m not betting on it. I’m looking around the school yard and I just don’t see enough kids banding together, and I definitely don’t see enough adult supervision.

Theory, fact, and identity

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One of the ironies of science is that when you hold a theory to be true, you can base your factual understanding around that theory.

The Theory of Relativity is just a theory, but we can prove at least part of it because time moves slower for faster moving objects, and if we didn’t scientifically account for this, GPS wouldn’t work because we need to make adjustments for this on satellites. Not all aspects of all theories are that easy to prove, and scientists spend entire careers trying to produce evidence for theories.

Some are true scientists and if they come up with evidence that does not support their theory and understanding of the world, they seek another theory. They abandon the theory that is no longer supported be evidence.

Other pseudoscientists will have every possible reason and justification why the new evidence is wrong. They will defend a broken/falsified theory. They will ignore the concrete evidence and double down on the theory they support.

I can rewrite this entire message starting with,

“One of the ironies of politics is that when you hold a political party’s stance to be true, you can base your factual understanding around that stance.”

…And no matter which party is supported, the bias will lead to pseudo-beliefs. Supporters will ignore the concrete evidence and double down on the stance they support. Except it’s worse, because the theories/stances they support are based on inherent biases rather than facts.

The problem here is that we are in an era where political stance is more influential than scientific theories and facts. Identity matters more than evidence, more than decades of theoretical research, more than facts. And so we have debates that make comparisons of unequal dichotomies.

We have debates between scientists and morons: scientists and flat earthers; scientists and climate change deniers; scientists and religious zealots. And the fact that we have these debates, the fact that we allow these debates to influence our policies, actions, and ultimately our thinking, all make us a little dumber, and a lot more open to influences that we should not waste our time on.

We’d all be better off letting go of identity politics and thinking about the validity of individual arguments. You can be left wing and agree that a country should have safe borders where thoughtful decisions are made about who comes into the country. You can be right wing and agree that women should have rights over their own bodies. You can be moderate and not be ‘othered’ by people on both political wings because of specific stances you hold that are not necessarily moderate.

Identify politics has no place influencing theories and facts. We need to think of politics the way good scientists think about theories: Seek out factual information and be prepared to change our minds if the evidence warrants us to change.

Trade Neighbours

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As we watch a trade war unfold with the USA imposing tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico, and China, the people that will struggle the most are those that can least afford it. But make no mistake, the cost of living is going up for everyone. This will anger people, and it’s already showing up.

One of my favourite sports stories comes from a Toronto Maple Leaf versus the Nashville Predators hockey game back in November 2014. During the American National Anthem the sound system faltered and the Canadian fans finished singing the US anthem. Slightly over a decade later, I just saw a video clip from tonight’s game, where the Vancouver Canucks fans boo’d during the US anthem (they did cheer for the singer when the anthem was done).

I’m not an economist, and while I know we are going to see a hike in prices, I really don’t know what these US tariffs are going to mean long term? I don’t know how countries will retaliate? I don’t know what can get us back to trade normalcy?

But I want to live in a country where we have mutual respect for our (cooperative) neighbours. I want to be in a country where we finish an anthem of our neighbours rather than boo it. And I want to believe that we can find a way back there. I’m just not convinced the politicians in power will get us there any time soon.

For now the metaphorical gloves have come off, and petty fights have begun. Sure it’s just the booing of a national anthem right now, but that’s likely just the start of the anger, hate, and even vitriol to come. I just hope that the leaders taking us down this route will remember what it means to be good neighbours, and some time soon we’ll get back to being fans of each other… Neighbours in geography, geopolitics, friendly sports competition, and yes, even trade.

Divided we fall

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I’ve restarted writing this three times now. I’m not going to try again. I’ll let the ideas flow and just see where I end up.

I wish that I was surprised. I’m not. I’m disappointed. I’m saddened. But I’m really not surprised.

There are some amazing countries where freedom and equality are almost synonymous. There are countries where political differences do not polarize people into opposing factions. The United States of America is not one of them.

Why does it matter to me, a Canadian? Because ideas are memes that travel beyond borders. Because our biggest and only neighbour seems to be on the precipice of four years of strife, unease, and constant political banter. Because representation matters and I’m not a fan of what’s being represented.

We are entering an era of division. A polarized world where I have more questions than answers. Questions about global battles in Europe, the Middle East, and potentially Asia. About the battle for rights based on gender. A constant battle of words between ‘the left’ and ‘the right’.

I don’t foresee unity, I see a great divide. I foresee a constant and painful to watch news cycle that is filled with vitriol and malice. I hope not to see a loss of freedom, a ‘loss of Inalienable Rights’, which should be an oxymoron, but might not be. I hope for the best… I’m just not expecting it.

Divided we stand

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The BC, Canada election is over… almost. There are two recounts and enough close battles that we need to wait another week to have the late arriving mail-in votes get counted.

If things don’t change, the New Democratic Party, at 46 electoral seats, will be the minority leaders with 47 seats needed for a majority. The Green Party with their 2 seats will actually have some significant influence to ensure the minority government can actually get things done.

Over 2 million people voted and that represented over 57% of those eligible to vote. There was only a 1% gap between the two leading parties.

As I look to the south, I see another election coming, and another close race with a divided vote in November. Having at least 2 strong parties is a good thing in a democracy, but having both be as strong as they are can create havoc when actually trying to get things done.

This divisiveness we are seeing is baffling to me. It’s like our provinces, states, and countries have split personalities. Dichotomies to an extreme.

But if the mail in votes change things up here in BC, I don’t think we’ll see civil unrest. There might be more recounts, but there will also be a peaceful transfer of power. I don’t see the same thing happening down south. I hope I’m wrong.

Divided we stand, I hope we don’t fall.

Civic Duty

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Another Provincial election is upon us, October 19th, 2024. I voted early, last weekend.

I’ll never get tired of pushing the idea that it is not just a privilege but a civic duty to vote. I wish there were tax fines for not voting. It costs an Australian about $80 to not vote. They get 90% or more people voting. Meanwhile, we’ve been on a decline in BC, which is representative of most of Canada.

I wish people understood how fortunate we are to be able to vote in an open and free election. When I hear things like, “My vote doesn’t matter.” Or, “All the candidates/parties are the same.” Or any other excuse, I feel the speaker is missing the point. We live in a democracy. We have a choice of representation, and we have a duty to cast our vote for the person who represents us.

If we don’t vote, we are literally shrugging off a responsibility we have. We are dismissing a duty placed on us. We don’t do that at work, why do we think it’s ok to do that in our community?

Unsure who to vote for? This non-partisan website, (originally created by a student at our school years ago, and still maintained for elections across Canada), is a great place to start: https://votemate.org

Manufacturing Lies and Dissent

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In “Manufacturing Consent,” Noam Chomsky argues that the mass media in the US serves as a propaganda tool for powerful elites, shaping public perception to maintain the status quo. I think that era has ended and one of the key points of our time is that social media now ‘manufactures dissent’. It permits lies to spread faster than truth, and is driven by the power of outlandish claims to draw attention and clicks, views and advertising dollars.

The irony of what I’m about to share would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Yesterday when I shared my Daily-Ink on Twitter/X, I saw a headline, “Musk’s hurricane of misinformation has finally gone too far”, shared by ‘Independent Voices’, a Twitter account I don’t follow.

I clicked and read the article on the UK’s Independent (independent.co.uk), a media site that I’m unaware of so I was careful to watch for accuracy versus misinformation.

For example, even when the article quoted a tweet by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a person elected to Congress whom I think acts like telling the truth could cause an anaphylactic response, I still followed the link to fact check it…Even though her ridiculous claim was easily within the scope of believability.

The article states,

“Yet despite the clear and evident risk of real harm, people like Greene are making hackneyed comic book villain claims about secret weather machines – and the internet has been rife with misinformation about the upcoming disaster. Accounts on Twitter/X have claimed that state and federal officials are preventing people from accessing hard-hit areas, that the government is basing its provision of aid on political affiliation, and that the entire thing is an elaborate land-grab scheme.

Many such posts have received millions of views, and few if any are being taken down. Why would they, when the site’s owner is in the mix – yes, even Elon Musk has been getting in on the fun, tweeting that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has diverted critical funds from hurricane relief to illegal immigrants.”

Later it continues,

“Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “spreading misinformation about a natural disaster that has the potential to kill hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people is reprehensible, and in a sane world would be a criminal offence”, but you would in fact be mistaken. You see, we don’t live in a sane world. We live in a world where being that reckless with other people’s lives isn’t just acceptable – it’s actually a core part of the Republican political strategy.”

But shortly after reading that quote I passed an ad in the article that proves that ‘We live in a world where being reckless with other people’s lives IS acceptable’ and not just by people on the right. The ad, which I refused to click on stated, “Jagmeet Singh Suffers Fatal Accident On Live Television”.

An article that is simultaneously debunking misinformation of a right wing political party, with the author asking, “The thing that really baffles me about all of this, though, is what exactly there is to be gained here.” …Which also shares an ad that blatantly lies about the death of a left wing Canadian political party leader, is painfully ironic.

I then checked The Independent on the Media Bias / Fact Check website which stated that “Overall we rate The Independent Left-Center Biased due to story selection that moderately favors the left. We also rate them Mixed in factual reporting due to several failed fact checks.”

This demonstrates a clear case of the kettle calling the pot black. Bash the right for spreading misinformation on a left leaning site, while advertising using blatant misinformation. I want to call this unacceptable, but it’s the norm.

Propagating lies, evoking anger, selling out for attention, baiting clicks with misinformation, and manufacturing dissent. We can no longer trust social media, and we must question mainstream media too. The truth is unnecessarily elusive, it’s lost in a sea of lies and inaccuracies. The above news article isn’t inaccurate in its conclusions, rather it’s simply encapsulated in the same misinformation propagating media machine it professes to be struggling to understand.

AI and the collapse of a shared reality

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TikTok has introduced me to some very interesting content creators. One such person is Morten Rand-Hendriksen, who goes by the username @mor10web.

He shared this insight recently:

@mor10web

#AI image generation, the destruction of our shared perception of reality, and the inevitable collapse of democracy. Inspired by posts on the same topic from @Paige | AI Ethicist

♬ original sound – The Mor10 of the Web

After discussing the fact that people stuck in an echo chamber of like-minded people start to call a real photograph an AI generated fake… he says,

“Here’s what keeps me up at night: We’re converging on a point where it is easier to claim that real images are fake than it is to prove that images are generated using AI, or manipulated using AI. And that means we have no reasonable expectation of any image or any video or any audio being real. And we don’t have the tools or the media literacy to really do this analysis.

…and we are in the situation we’re in now where people can choose their own reality and live in a reality dysfunction. And AI provides the tools and capabilities to make that reality disfunction into our lived reality.”

Indeed, our shared reality has collapsed. AI generated fakes spread like wildfire through echo chambers of like-minded groups, and even when discovered to be fake, there is no effort to make corrections if the fake fits the group’s narrative… and any real media that doesn’t fit that same reality is easily dismissed as a fake.

Maya Angelou said, “We are more alike, my friends, than we unalike.” I would agree with that when we had a common shared reality, but I question it now in a world filled with AI generated fakes, and a lack of media savviness to determine what really is real. The collapse of a shared reality is a threat to our world, whether the split is socioeconomic, political, or religious. We are increasingly growing unalike.

Manufacturing Beliefs

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“The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.”

~ Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 1988

Embrace yourself. We are in for a whirlwind of propaganda directed to both sway and embolden our beliefs. We will need to question the sources of our information. We will need to understand where the bias of the message is coming from. We will need to fact check for reliability, accuracy, and exaggeration.

We will be entertained. We will be angered. We will be emboldened. We will be ridiculed by those who disagree with us. And we will be the ones ridiculing others who hold different beliefs than us. Systematic propaganda will slowly lead us to more polarized views.

This is not a test of your emergency broadcasting system. This is also not an emergency. No, it is the emergence of political propaganda in a post Truth era. Find your own truth, fabricate your own truth. Because the media outlets you believed you believed in are not the ones in existence today… and they do not transmit Truth.

Marshall McLuhan was correct, ‘the medium is the message’, and the medium is designed not to inform but to entertain; to excite; to anger; to draw attention, clicks, and eyes on advertising. No, not to inform, to trick you. Sway your opinion, and lie to you.

Are your beliefs your own or have they been manufactured, manipulated, and swayed by the media you watch? Will you be able to answer that question as convincingly a year from now? Will your beliefs be yours or will they be governed by the propaganda you choose to watch and believe in? Be warned, the answer to that question might not be the answer you currently believe.

The hypocrisy of democracy

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Democracy is supposed to empower people by a representative government that acts on behalf of and for the people. The hypocrisy of current democracy is that you are told that every vote matters and that you are the one who decides who is in power. The problem with that is that the platforms candidates run on are seldom what they enact. So you aren’t getting true representation of your wishes… and yet that’s what you voted for.

I’ve voted in every election since I became old enough to. I will continue to vote, to perform my civic duty, for the rest of my life. A democracy doesn’t work without a participatory public, and I would rather live in a democracy than any other system of government, and so I engage in the democratic process as expected.

But I’m tired of the hypocrisy. I want to see a party that can actually get things they platform on done. I want to see a system that is rigged for success rather than built on conflict, grandstanding, and hidden agendas. I want to see a party, once elected, get the support of other parties to accomplish their promised goals. Yes, other parties need to hold the current government accountable, but that is the ‘check and balance’ of an elected democracy. Fighting every move, every bill, and every promise the winning party made, simply to make the current government look bad during the next election cycle, actually undermines the strength of a democracy. The system is rigged to fail.

Give a party too much power and it is likely to reduce democratic freedoms, but don’t give it enough power and it becomes completely ineffective. This is a power dance we are seeing across the globe. What I fear is that democracy is not working like it should, and less free alternatives are rising in both power and appeal. With this we are also seeing less freedom.

Ultimately, democracies are now about voting for the extremes, and the extremes do not represent the vast majority of the people. But the majority don’t have a choice but to vote in a polarized way. So we aren’t voting for representation nearly as much as we are voting against values on the extreme side that is least like us. We aren’t voting for who we want to represent us, we are voting to avoid the election of someone we feel would represent us least.

And no matter who wins, we really aren’t represented by these representative governments. How do we change this? I don’t know. I’ll keep voting and doing my part, I just wish elected officials figured out a way to do the same and protect the very democracy that elected them.