Most of us know someone who occasionally slips in a talking point from Rupert Murdoch’s editorial pages. It’s not fair to cast them immediately into Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables.” We’re all to blame for those opinions being pushed and so often believed; every one of us who has ever tolerated alternative facts shares in the guilt and responsibility for their current gross manipulations.
Today we have big oil shouting their concerns for the environment and the world's sustainable future. We have banks desperate for us to know how much they want to help us make the most of our money. We are ruled by the promise of trickle-down economics, now thirty years old and yet to start trickling. We have overtly sexualised underage models promoting everything except the age of consent. We have public utilities privatised and ruled by investors, and we have allowed science to take a back seat and be overlooked unless its outcome makes a profit.
Capitalism is the most efficient model for harnessing human greed and ingenuity. The downside is that it rewards the carnival barker and their exaggerations and half-truths. P.T Barnum is immortalised for his ability to double talk his way into profit, and his success reveals complicity in allowing all those variations of the truth to go unchallenged.
At first, it was treated as a joke. How cheeky we said when the Superbowl seat we paid for arrived in the mail – a small two-inch seat with the words Superbowl printed on the backrest.
Then we never asked for the Ponds Institute’s address or questioned why tobacco being toasted seemed more significant than smoking causing cancer. When the fossil fuel industry set our planet on fire for profit, and the Ponzi scheme of economic growth required a global economy to keep the wealth growing, we just nodded and accepted the situation, pacified by larger televisions and technological wizardry. We no longer pause to think about containers with false bottoms or packaging of mostly air. We overlook discounts that drop the price while reducing quality or size. We’re so used to looking the other way that there was no mechanism in place to stop America’s election being declared invalid for two whole months. Everyone who could have done something was looking the other way out of habit.
Russia, China, Poland, Brazil, the Philippines and others have created pseudo-democratic states that have long lost the battle to alternative facts. Their governments declare everything being done is for their people. They care so much they are willing to kill those people to ensure their beneficial system remains in place.
We have allowed our truth to be skewed incrementally over many generations. A considerable percentage of our populations believe nothing can be done to redress the inequality of wealth and power; that the system is both too big and too broken to change.
Simultaneously, the patriarchal, white, wealthy, Christian, cis-gendered, abled, skinny privileged members of society are screaming they are being attacked. They’re not. They’re just being asked to share – to enjoy the same benefits as others. Suggest women should have equal rights, and those who currently hold power will shout about being attacked and victimised. Suggest systemic racism, and they defend, deflect and undermine. To someone standing at the top of the pile, being asked to be equal feels like an attack.
Suddenly the truth is being massaged to sell a product or hide an inconvenient truth to maintain the current system’s foundations. We didn’t arrive here overnight. It took decades and began with the smallest and seemingly most trivial incursions on the truth; “It’s advertising. We expect them to stretch the truth.” “They’re politicians; they’re not expected to keep their promises.” We allowed ourselves to end up here by allowing the truth to be continually tested and pushed further away from fact.
We have all fallen victim to the seemingly inconsequential effect of micro-aggressions against facts.
Microaggressions are trivial misdemeanours against anything. They can exist in all forms: speech, action, attitudes, stories, emotions, bureaucracy, etc. Complaining about any single issue comes across as trivial and paints those complaining as being overly sensitive or out of touch with the real world – a snowflake. When there are tens of thousands of these subtle, nuanced, inbuilt negative comments, actions or attitudes, adopted and accepted by a community as acceptable, whatever target of these negative micro-aggressions loses standing. This can certainly happen to a minority: women, people of colour, LGBTQI+, those with disabilities, the overweight, elderly and on and on. It has also happened to the truth and a lack of factual information being reported when that information paints the rich and powerful negatively.
Micro-aggressions against the truth come in many forms.
‘What-about-ism’ is used by those being called out to highlight any hypocrisy by those arguing against them. “He says he wants tighter gun controls, but he has a gun licence.” The two issues have no direct correlation, but pointing out the person wanting to limit access to firearms also owns a gun sets up a false narrative that their argument is disingenuous.
Appealing to the extremes is also popular in replacing facts. “If we allow gay marriage, we’ll end up with people marrying animals.” This plays to the fear of an issue being a gateway for far worse things.
A straw-man argument is where an entirely new proposition is raised, and an alternative proposition is refuted rather than the original. “We should promote riding bicycles in cities to reduce emissions and slow global warming.” “When you give cyclists priority on city streets they run red lights and endanger pedestrians.” The straw-man argument often has merit and needs to be addressed, and a good straw-man argument will seem to be related, but both issues existing don’t cancel each other out.
False equivalency is an argument that draws two things together because of shared characteristics. “Why are you suddenly so alarmed by Donald Trump telling thirty thousand lies when Hillary Clinton has at least that many missing emails?” Once again, two issues don’t need to be mutually exclusive and can each be addressed. The advice given to four-year-olds of two wrongs not making a right never grows old.
Arguing from false ignorance is also used incredibly effectively by those with large platforms who intend to manipulate, incite, and fear-monger to gain and maintain an audience rather than have a genuine debate on an issue. This is how most shock jocks work. “How do our energy prices keep going up? Every year we pay more. Is this a result of the ‘do-gooders’ radicalising and demonising fossil fuels? It may well be.”
There is no argument here. It’s a series of statements designed to guide thought without ever citing factual information. Fox News uses this question led journalism all the time as their question mark chyron guides viewers from behind the network’s cloak of false ignorance – “Hillary Clinton – Guilty?” “Climate Change – A hoax to harm fossil fuel production?” Could be, we don’t know, we’re only raising the question.
Fox News has quietly transitioned out of their slogan, “Fair and Balanced,” to “The Most Watched, The Most Trusted,” and now, “Standing up for what’s right.” They’ve also transitioned their news to run early with prime-time now ‘Opinion’ although the personalities presenting opinion seem, in every way to be traditional news presenters.
This is how so many people have been courted and seduced into a world of the grand conspiracy theory.
It’s easy to dismiss the believers of alien lasers, JFK Jnr coming to save us, of a paedophile Kabul of lefties operating out of a pizza shop or any derivation of the more traditional conspiracies that involve minorities, religions, immigrants and foreigners organising coordinated attacks against a lifestyle that is felt to be disappearing. That lifestyle never actually existed, except in the romanticised memories of youth that seem simpler, more comfortable and happier.
It’s much harder to dismiss those we respect and love who only occasionally throw out a ‘Fox-bomb’ of misinformation into a family gathering, bringing a conversation to a dead-halt. It is hard to be the dissenting voice and draw the ire of ruining the family gathering. It is hard to raise an opposing opinion to those who are often more experienced and sometimes better educated. It is arrogant to assume your opinion is more valid than theirs and a cardinal sin to lump all opinions that differ to yours into a ‘basket of deplorables’ or any other condescending phrase.
We have travelled a long road to get to where we are today, and it is not all Donald Trump's doing, or Fox News, or big oil, or big pharma, or any of the other major ‘players’ that have taken advantage of political and social winds to build a market. We are all complicit. Every slide in ethics and quality, every excuse to forgo service and value, every unchallenged assumption or opinion in the face of facts that we’ve allowed to go unchecked has brought us to this place.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with someone wholeheartedly buying into the politics of the left, even though I have seen with my own eyes a generation of people raised under socialism and accustomed to a living wage, bereft of motivation and drive to better their lives.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone wholeheartedly buying into the politics of the right, even though many free-market policies tend to help those already making ends meet while reducing the standard of living for those who are not.
Perhaps you fall somewhere in the middle, taking a few of the better policies from both sides to satisfy the capitalist and socialist at war within. Both sides have advantages and bring benefit to many – but not all.
I’m not sure it’s possible to satisfy everyone. This is why governing a large, modern population is so complicated and often is reduced to the politics of compromise. The human race survives off personal greed and diversity. These strengths make universal policy if not impossible, then highly improbable.
I think it’s wrong to argue against any idea or cause because of partisan politics. I think it’s wrong to disallow an opinion on any grounds without clear thought and a thorough investigation into merit and weakness. It’s inexcusable to go forward with any idea, big or small, without exploring, studying and considering the facts. Truth matters. Things that can be proven should be accepted in the face of that proof. Arguments based on expert analysis deserve to be considered. People’s measures and tactics to argue a cause need to be understood, identified, exposed, and disclosed. Opinions and news need to be labelled and separated. We need to be reminded and educated to think for ourselves. Everyone needs to be encouraged to form their own opinion and reminded of how to find and use facts to inform those opinions.
Don’t tell Pop he’s racist. That’s rude and shows a lack of diplomacy and respect. Give Granddad the facts without spin or argumentative trickery; just the facts. If he still thinks we should only allow immigration until the point where we have all ‘their’ recipes, then let him know you disagree and diplomatically let him know his ideas aren't welcome because he's ignoring quantifiable facts.
People are allowed to have different opinions, but make sure they also have the facts; unbiased, unspun, un-manipulated facts – because facts matter, science matters, experts matter. Opinions without the facts included belong on the other side of the shop with the rest of the fiction.
