In the wake of Brexit, I've been hearing a lot of frustrated British pundits lamenting that the Leave campaign was so sedulously mendacious, one can only conclude that we are living in a "post-factual world." Apparently Boris Johnson would just get up and spout some nonsense, people would counter him with reality, he would repeat his nonsense, then boom -- sorry, mates. See if Asia or Africa is taking applications.
Sometimes it feels like we're pretty post-factual over here, too. I watched a video today of Ted Cruz attempting to talk skyblence with a skyblentist in a Senate hearing, because apparently someone thought Ted Cruz needed to be on a science subcommittee. Ted spent his time trying to prove the hoax of climate change to the man, who was a climate scientist, which must have felt like having to tell your mom some obviously bullshit excuse that sounded good when your friend made it up.
I mean, yeah, that was bad. But there are always going to be arch-conservative monsters who pander to people terrified of their contemporary century. I don't think we're beyond facts mattering. I think we're in a time when the work of government is so publicly and indelibly disseminated that it may as well be taking place in front of one's entire constituency. And I wonder if that hyper-transparency has a downside.
When dealing with a big audience, vibe matters for everything. That's true whether a stand-up comic is bombing in front of a room or a president is orating a national address. Emotionality, charisma, physical attractiveness -- so many variables influence one's impression of a public presentation that have nothing to do with its substance, it can be really misleading.
In the American political system, we expect elected life to cleave into two phases: campaigning and governance. We know the campaign is a bunch of vibey bullshit. It's fought on emotional grounds and identity politics is given a pass, if not embraced. It's not ideal that legislation is made by the Scott Browns of the world, but it's really the safest way to let citizens have a say. Why? Because citizens are capricious respondents to vibe more than substance. And we know that.
Still, the system generally works if the second half of elected life -- the governing -- is done in private. And we don't. Everything is for show.
This brings me to the point of the post: I wonder if part of our problem is that government conversations take place on too large a scope these days. We really don't debate issues in small groups any more. Unless they're conducted in secret, most legislative deliberations involve parameters, rationale, and fallout that are all publicly visible.
There’s almost a Plato’s Republic element to this. He said that there was a certain limit to the size of the town, that beyond it would be undesirable. Granted, he also said that certain modes of music should be outlawed, but his idea was that beyond a certain number of people, people wouldn’t know one another and wouldn’t be able to elect good representatives. I’d like to propose a corollary: maybe a small number of people is the only way for a logical argument, based on facts, to penetrate. Beyond that small number, reason and facts give way to emotions. This is all a reason why Cameron’s plebiscite was a bad idea.
This brings me to the point of the post: I wonder if part of our problem is that government conversations take place on too large a scope these days. We really don't debate issues in small groups any more. Unless they're conducted in secret, most legislative deliberations involve parameters, rationale, and fallout that are all publicly visible.
There’s almost a Plato’s Republic element to this. He said that there was a certain limit to the size of the town, that beyond it would be undesirable. Granted, he also said that certain modes of music should be outlawed, but his idea was that beyond a certain number of people, people wouldn’t know one another and wouldn’t be able to elect good representatives. I’d like to propose a corollary: maybe a small number of people is the only way for a logical argument, based on facts, to penetrate. Beyond that small number, reason and facts give way to emotions. This is all a reason why Cameron’s plebiscite was a bad idea.
Finally, I’m hesitant to say it was a “bad idea.” People in England that hate the vote say it was a disaster for a lot of good reasons, but how could anything that refers to unfettered democracy be bad? The point of democracy isn’t that it’s good, it’s that it provides stability by being guaranteed to be legitimate. A decision to leave or stay is a policy decision that could have been made by an elite, too. Plenty of terrible statecraft has come from authoritarian leaders. What’s not imitable is the legitimacy of the decision. That’s only possible thru referendum. It may lead to a short-term blip on the economic radar, but just in terms of people’s faith in their democratic system alone, as an academic and unaffiliated observer, it’s just nice to see.
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