Saturday, December 03, 2005
Centrist Politics, Mass Media and Mass Ignorance
Democracy is fundamentally about catering to the masses. Hence, what is lost in a democratic society is the same as what is lost in popular music. That is, the need to appeal to a large audience influences your product more than the need to contain substance.
The coming Canadian election (as well as every election a member of Generation Y would have lived through) is all about appealing to the masses, and not "about values" as Stephen Harper insists it is. If it actually was, we'd probably have less of a problem. But a democratic society does not really permit that, because most of us aren't even sure what values are important to us.
People who receive the nomination for a political party for a certain riding often get it not because of any suitability for the role but rather because they managed to play the PR game particularly well in the weeks and months leading up to the election. Monia Mazigh ran as the NDP candidate in 2004 after the Maher Arar affair in my home riding of Ottawa South. This time, Allan Cutler is taking the Conservative nomination after having suddenly become a model of righteousness for whistleblowing the sponsorship scandal. This doesn't help the Liberals in Ottawa South, whose candidate David McGuinty is now unpopular because his brother Dalton didn't keep half his election promises after becoming Premier of Ontario. Remember when high school elections for student council were blatantly a popularity contest? This election is really the same, just not blatantly so.
Watching four political parties battle it out for a top spot is like watching for corporations market competing products. Each party flaunts its strengths while trying to make the public forget about its weaknesses. In the end, the Conservative Party attempting to convince the public that they are accountable and won't pull off another sponsorship scandal has the same credibility as Madonna directing attention to her breasts during a concert; it's about trying to force the public to remember the one thing you have (that the public has almost forgotten) when you've become otherwise irrelevant.
The fundamental problem is that any sort of product that appeals to the masses inevitably ends up this way. This goes for music, fiction, movies, art, and now politics. When the masses are unable or unwilling to increase their level of intelligence to have you appeal to them, the only solution to win sales or votes is to lower your intelligence to cater towards them. As much as we think these parties are trying to win our votes, the converse is actually true: we're getting played like harps! Oh well, look on the bright side. Since it'll probably be another minority government, whatever happens won't have a lasting effect. We'll probably just have another circus in a year's time as soon as another no confidence motion gets passed.
The coming Canadian election (as well as every election a member of Generation Y would have lived through) is all about appealing to the masses, and not "about values" as Stephen Harper insists it is. If it actually was, we'd probably have less of a problem. But a democratic society does not really permit that, because most of us aren't even sure what values are important to us.
People who receive the nomination for a political party for a certain riding often get it not because of any suitability for the role but rather because they managed to play the PR game particularly well in the weeks and months leading up to the election. Monia Mazigh ran as the NDP candidate in 2004 after the Maher Arar affair in my home riding of Ottawa South. This time, Allan Cutler is taking the Conservative nomination after having suddenly become a model of righteousness for whistleblowing the sponsorship scandal. This doesn't help the Liberals in Ottawa South, whose candidate David McGuinty is now unpopular because his brother Dalton didn't keep half his election promises after becoming Premier of Ontario. Remember when high school elections for student council were blatantly a popularity contest? This election is really the same, just not blatantly so.
Watching four political parties battle it out for a top spot is like watching for corporations market competing products. Each party flaunts its strengths while trying to make the public forget about its weaknesses. In the end, the Conservative Party attempting to convince the public that they are accountable and won't pull off another sponsorship scandal has the same credibility as Madonna directing attention to her breasts during a concert; it's about trying to force the public to remember the one thing you have (that the public has almost forgotten) when you've become otherwise irrelevant.
The fundamental problem is that any sort of product that appeals to the masses inevitably ends up this way. This goes for music, fiction, movies, art, and now politics. When the masses are unable or unwilling to increase their level of intelligence to have you appeal to them, the only solution to win sales or votes is to lower your intelligence to cater towards them. As much as we think these parties are trying to win our votes, the converse is actually true: we're getting played like harps! Oh well, look on the bright side. Since it'll probably be another minority government, whatever happens won't have a lasting effect. We'll probably just have another circus in a year's time as soon as another no confidence motion gets passed.
// posted by Jason Ding @ 9:59 AM 
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