I don’t see the media as neutral in how we arrived here, either. The American phenomenon of voices in the media spouting vitriolic rhetoric, left at right and vice versa, has gone a long way to polarizing our countries’ societies. Compare news shows covering politics in the 50s and 60s to current ones and the differences are notable. The whole area of political debate is deteriorating to a schoolyard brawl. If I confess to voting right the response I can anticipate is “oh, yuck, you must be a religious fundamentalist who wants to kill babies and gays.” and if I’m voting left then, “you’re an amoral, manipulative, selfish socialist who wants to fatten the public purse to get votes from lazy bums on welfare at the expense of my hard earned home equity.”. All of which appears totally unrelated to what our leaders are actually *doing*. Almost the only role left to the media, as a result of their own staking of these positions, is rooting out the crooks and liars, which (surprise) are to be found on both sides.

How did it get this bad and why? I do believe that the current Warmonger vs Coward screaming match has been a turning point in this. Theoretically, anyone will be for stopping terrorism and also against unnecessary war and senseless torture. I can’t help imagining gleefully gloating terrorists watching all this. The whole concept of terrorism as a tactic is to strike unexpectedly in order to create confusion and, ideally, the paralysis of fear. There is no effective response to that which can be fully ‘reported’ by CNN, BBC, and CBC, although the Brits seem to be doing a better job of all this on their side of the pond than we are here. Our complete loss of faith in our leaders especially, which I blame to some extent on the media, has paralyzed us more than even terrorism has. That’s our Achilles heel IMO. What I can do personally is privately seek out rational sounding voices in the wilderness and look for ways to support them.

Geez, I didn’t mean to turn this into an essay …can you tell I’m frustrated by the general absence of real conversation about this?

Vera

It’s worth more to people to not stand out for their ‘independent thinking’ than it is to exercise their conscience or attempt to influence change (in part, no doubt, because they rightly believe that there is little chance of their voice having any effect).

So too in Canada, though even more gradually, I suspect. The press performs an important social function in mediating changing public attitudes - roughly, letting people know when it’s OK to criticize. And if it’s AWOL, hiding under the furniture, or on pogey because of cutbacks by the mediaco’s, this will take longer.

But I do believe it will eventually happen, because I believe that the situation in Afghanistan will inevitably worsen dramatically, unless (i) the war is prosecuted skilfully as a true counter-insurgency, (ii) Pakistan stops aiding the enemy and (iii) there are many, many more boots on the ground. Which, of course, means it will worsen dramatically.

Similarly, every conversation I’ve initiated with Canadian friends on either the war or terrorism has been met with discomfort sometimes extreme enough to display as actual physical squirming. Pursuing the point sometimes elicited unthought out, emotional, and senseless remarks …this from highly educated, intelligent and sophisticated individuals.

I do find this all thoroughly bizarre. It doesn’t seem to be an issue of whether you are on the left or right, but more to be somehow hitting the Canadian indentity insecurity button? which I just can’t make any sense of. Why don’t we want to know what is going on?

Vera