That Inevitable Evil: Superficial Politics

Allright, let’s face it, elections are that aggravating time of year where we all look down our noses at each other’s grossly incorrect opinions and lament the shallowness of the sloganeering and vacuous mud-slinging that goes on between our country’s elite. Is this what the best and brightest do? Elections time to me always has a fog of hopelessness in the air: strategic voting, angry arguments, pushy politico-evangelists, shallow mail-outs and demonizations of “the other guy”.

I’ve never liked the idea of not voting, especially the so-called conscientious objector who fancies himself too profound of a thinker to get involved in this barbaric box-ticking and shouting matches. Not that I’m without empathy: it is shallow, it is depressing.

However, it has to be. There are two sides to political opinions: the present and the future. The future is what we hope for, the country we’d like to see, the personal values we vote from believing they would make the world a better place to live in. However, we can’t stop the machine of government until that happens. We are here now, and we must govern now. So until the ideal comes, part of working for an ideal will involve a realistic assessment of the present, and working with the tools of the present.

I would like to assume that the people behind the shouting and shallow mail-outs and commercials are deeper than the mail-outs make them look. As with almost everything, political mail-outs is an industry: there are people who specialize in slogan-writing and pejorative mail-outs and commercials. It’s a business, these political businesses run on certain principles.

Very little of a campaign is directed towards rational arguing, and politicians know this. A few quotes from workers in the field taken from the book “Culture Wars” by JD Hunter: “The purpose of the (political) letter is ‘not to convince the reader of anything [but to] motivate the person to send some money.” And “The rule of thumb in the industry is to keep writing to about the sixth- to eigth grade level.” “Direct mail is a medium of passion, and the more extreme the appeal, the more successful the mail campaign will probably be. One mailing consultant simply put it: ‘You’ve got to have a devil. If you don’t have a devil, you’re in trouble.’” Another remarked: “Find...a nasty enemy. Tell people they’re threatened in some way...it’s a cheap trick, but it’s the simplest.” Another Gem from Hunter’s book; “Political scientist Larry Sabato reports that direct mailers apply the ‘magic word test’ to their letters. ‘You add up the number of words under five letters in your copy, and if you’re anywhere under 65 to 70 percent, you have problems.’” In a nutshell, politics are institutionalized superficiality, and those are the tools politicians must work with, or forfeit the chance at power.

The same laws of superficiality apply to Parliament: all that “debate” is largely for the camera. Most of the real task of governing is done behind the scenes as they make deals and manoeuvres and compromises to get what they want and hopefully keep the job of governing under way.

For similar reasons, local MP’s are largely parrots for the party line: this is why every party has a member designated as “the whip”; responsible for in-party discipline. In other words, making sure all the soldiers are following orders and towing the line. As I understand it, Canadian politics aren’t so much about personality as they are about party, and local MP’s have to get used to being a cog in the party’s machine.

In a nutshell, there’s much to complain about the system itself. That’s no secret. But complaints about the structure is no reason not to vote, because the structure of Canadian government isn’t strictly the result of shallow minds and poor design. I don’t know everything that put it together, but one of the main reasons for the current state of affairs is the development of information technology. Televised parliament, mass-mail-outs, and newspapers. Information technology has popularized the process of governing to a whole new level. Polarized politics and articles are nothing new, but the extent of the superficiality is. Politics are superficial because the primary mediums of communication in our society, Television and Newspapers aren’t capable of carrying deep argument and detailed information. Only books, essays, lengthy conversations, lectures, and well-moderated debates can do that.

I would love to see a Canada that has a better educated electorate. (Then maybe the NDP would go away.) That requires work though, and before we complain about the process of elections, we ought to take stock of how informed our own political views are. If you had to publicly defend them, would your opinions survive any informed scrutiny? I know many of mine wouldn’t.

Conclusion: Read. Read your history, your economics, your political philosophy, and know where you stand with ethics on the various issues. Form your opinions on good arguments and evidence (and learn how to evaluate good arguments and interpret evidence!) before an election comes along. Know where the parties stand philosophically and practically. Even if “being a dutiful informed citizen” doesn’t turn your crank, do it because it helps make sense of the mud-slinging, and makes election time a little more bearable for the soul.