The Bruce Report

That all are entitled to their opinions is the great girder of modern democracy. But when fancies subvert facts (or worse, replace them) in the marketplace of ideas, the framework of free expression begins to resemble something akin to participatory “idiocracy”.

A new book, recently reviewed by the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, examines how power in society has shifted away from governments and public institutions and into “private-sector companies, unelected judges, lobbyists, think-tanks, political consultants, pollsters, and the media.” According to the report, author Donald Savoie of the University of Moncton argues “power has become more fluid and considerably more difficult to locate. Its location. . .is anything but clear.”

Indeed, if information is the recognized currency of the global economy, and opinion is a sub-set of information, then Dr. Savoie’s observation may explain why those who nurture strong beliefs – regardless of how patently flawed or obviously wrong these are – have gained enormous traction, influence and, yes, power over the past several years.

The Fox News Network is the number one current affairs T-V channel in the United States. Its nightly ratings far exceed those of its competitors CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC. And yet, almost nothing about Fox News is. . .well, news. It retails a special brand of “truthiness” (a term some attribute to American satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as “something that seems like truth, the truth we want to exist”).

For many, the truth they want to exist about U.S. President Barack Obama is that he is, at once, a communist, a fascist, a terrorist sympathizer, a Muslim, and an illegal alien who was born in Africa. Cold, hard facts that prove he is none of these things (though these are abundant and available) do nothing to dissuade a small, but growing, minority of Americans, who insist they know the real deal about their Commander-in-Chief.

For many, the truth they want to exist about Abdul Raul, the New York City Imam who is spearheading a project to erect a community centre two blocks from Ground Zero, is that he’s an Al Qaeda spy and organizer bent on finishing the job his compatriots began nearly a decade ago. Never mind that only six months ago, every news organization in the country hailed him as a peacemaker and a voice of moderation. Never mind that Manhattan is already home to hundreds of Mosques and hundreds of thousands of citizens who practice Islam without threat, incident or calamity.

Such primacy of conviction over reason, instinct over insight, also underscores why increasing numbers of North Americans think evolution was a mere theory, dinosaurs were God’s handiwork some 6,000 years ago, global warming was a fraud perpetrated two decades ago by a cabal of grant-hungry eggheads, and Liberals were created by Satan to serve as handmaidens to the coming Apocalypse.

Am I exaggerating? Check out any one of millions of blogs, Facebook pages, and twitter feeds that now trade in the conspiracies-are-us version of 21^st Century reality. In fact, the ubiquitous nature of the web and its social media platforms encourage the dissemination of utterly baseless claims to truth, elaborate fictions posing as credible facts, as much as it democratizes communications and enables useful political action.

Ours is a filterless society, emboldened by the genius of our technologies and enamored of the power these have granted us. We no longer vote for individuals to inspire or lead us, to represent our best interests in our legislatures and parliaments. We “friend” them; we select them to parrot our ludicrous and uniformed notions, prejudices, fears and obsessions.

This is how a boatload of Sri Lankan refugees off Canada’s West Coast becomes a politically opportune occasion for pontificating on our national security grievances, the dangers of immigration, and our fatally broken borders. None of it is real. But who cares?

As long as we can say whatever we want, whenever we want, for as long as we want, who’s to stop us from becoming a nation of free-speaking, democratic idiots?

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