Forget 1968, Let's Talk 1984

I feel I need to begin this post with a disclaimer: every discussion of modern society's descent into Orwellian dystopia is, almost by definition, a cliché attempt at dramatic hyperbole that does little besides demonstrate that the author has read 1984 and keeps half an ear to the ground either politically or culturally. I hope that the bit of text I am presenting here does not fall under that rubric. This is, of course, a hyperbolic exploration of a theme. It is my hope, however, that it will prove to be a fruitful & useful one, rather than merely an exercise in intellectual masturbation.

The reason I have chosen to discuss 1984 now is, to be frank, my revulsion at the way police, the media and the government have behaved vis-à-vis the Occupy movement in the US primarily, but also here, in Canada. My thoughts began from there and went on to ponder a much larger political and cultural reality, but I want to be straightforward & state very clearly that a support for the Occupy movement served as my starting point.

Ultimately, during the course of my musings, I was forced to conclude that we in North America have a serious problem with the language we use to discuss all facets of our political reality. Language has always been a weapon in politics, and no one saw more clearly what it could accomplish in that capacity than George Orwell did in the shadow of World War II. It is therefore difficult to truly grasp how twisted our language has become without contrasting what is happening in our very real, everyday, actual world with the events in Winston Smith's fictitious world of 1984.

WAR IS PEACE

In 1984, this refers to a perception fostered by the political régime of Oceania that peace is impossible without perpetual war against either Eastasia or Eurasia (the enemy du jour being retroactively edited into records as having always been the enemy, with the ally du jour receiving the same treatment). The war is not perceived as perpetual, mind, merely as necessary to ensure peace.

In 2011, ten years after the declaration of the War on Terror, we are repeatedly reassured that "Thanks to the [war in Afghanistan] our citizens are safer and our nation is more secure;" that internationally illegal incursions over the borders of sovereign, ostensibly allied countries in order to commit state-sanctioned murder are "justice;" moreover, the same state-sanctioned murder is celebrated with elation in the streets of the capital of the most powerful country on the planet, a scene disturbingly reminiscent of the cheering depicted during the public hanging of Eurasian prisoners of war in Orwell's book. In a very real sense, then, we in 2011 understand - or at least our governments would have us understand - that WAR is, indeed, PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

This is where the coverage of the Occupy movement got my thought process moving. Now, admittedly, the example I will use for the real world cannot genuinely be called slavery. That is a hyperbolic exaggeration that trivializes the reality of slavery as it was experienced by millions over nearly four centuries & as it is experienced by millions more today in the world's poorest & most despotic régimes. That said, the contrast between what can & cannot honestly be called freedom is one which I feel must be drawn.

In the world of 1984, every party member is free to think exactly within the boundaries drawn by Big Brother & no further. Language itself is being curtailed, remade into newspeak, in order to eliminate the very possibility of heterodox thought. People's minds are being made slaves to ingsoc orthodoxy in order to allow them complete freedom within a terribly limited scope of behaviour. Proles - that is the bottom level of Oceanic society - have far more freedom than Party members, but theirs is a different slavery: no education at all; given the most menial & unintellectual tasks in society; kept drunk & hooked on mechanically generated radio shows meant to keep them distracted & uniterested, proles are slaves to vice, forever unable to manifest into a genuine political or social force.

The modern example, while nowhere near as insidious, is nevertheless worrying in the extreme.

In 2009, the Tea Party movement made headlines by carrying guns & behaving in an intimidating fashion at political rallies under the dual protections of the first & second amendments to the United States Constitution. Their extreme, but ultimately conservative (& therefore Orthodox) message was protected. I can find no instance of police intervening to break up a single Tea Party rally or protest in any periodical online.

By contrast, the more heterodox liberal/socialist message of the Occupy movement has provoked multiple & violent interventions by police to silence, displace & disperse the movement's encampments in municipalities all over North America. The protesters deserve it because they have no clear demands. They are hippies. They need a bath and a job. Never mind their rights as US or Canadian citizens.

No appeals to either the First Amendment in the US or the Canadian Fundamental Freedom of Expression (which is a little less narrow a right than the American Freedom of Speech in that is a. covers more than speech & b. does not only refer to the citizen's interaction with government) have allowed these protests to resist being shut down or violently attacked by police. In situations like these it becomes abundantly clear that freedom of speech is a freedom only so long as the message being articulated is consistent, at least in part, with the prevailing political orthodoxy. If the message is counter to that, it would seem, then it is not subject to any freedom at all.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The 1984 version of this is subtle. It is considered a strength to be able to believe two completely opposite statements; to be able to forget words & vocabulary that express things beyond the doctrine of the party & to be able to forget the true course of events & history in favour of history as prescribed by the party. In this world, it is willful ignorance which is considered strength, true; but it is willful ignorance achieved through willful & selective amnesia.

The contrast with modern politics is striking. There is no willful amnesia among the modern electorate - merely a glorification of ignorance. How else do we explain candidate Herman Cain's statement that "we need a leader, not a reader?" Or the attacks against Obama as an intellectual, a lecturer-in-chief, a professor or an elitist?

This is a polity in which it is a disadvantage to be educated. The evidence is everywhere: among the websites above, "Harvard-educated" shows up as a slur; there are dozens of news stories google-able with headlines like "don't believe what they say;" for god's sake, Michelle Bachmann repeatedly demonstrates unbelievable ignorance & gullibility & remains a semi-viable candidate in the GOP presidential primary.

***

Do we live in a 1984, Winston Smith, Big Brother kind of world? I like to think, & hope, not. But the language we use to talk about our politics & the culture surrounding the big questions of leadership, freedom, the economy & our government are geared to produce a very limited & limiting outcome that favours one specific segment of our society. It is difficult to pin down exactly when it happened, but at one point since the 1970s, war did, indeed, become peace. Freedom, while not quite slavery, became a far more limited notion than we might imagine. Education became a liability, not a strength.

There is something worrying in that. The potential consequences of this perversion of political language and culture are terrifying to behold & we should be wary of allowing it to exacerbate the already tenuous situations of our economy & civil rights.

Occupons Montréal: Don’t Listen to the Media

He was working at the base of the statue of Queen Victoria when I photographed him. The tools of his trade were a simple black marker & a small sheet of plywood. What he was drawing was a beautiful, if a little terrifying, piece of artwork. This was the moment that my scepticism about Occupons Montréal faded & was replaced with hope – cautious hope, cautious optimism – but hope nonetheless.

The reason I had felt sceptical, the reason I had felt that Occupons Montréal might fade into irrelevance until I saw it for myself, is rooted in my understanding of other occupations worldwide – most notably, Occupy Wall Street, where the message is much clearer than the media is portraying it to be & the protestors’ organizing prowess & sense of community repeatedly seems to win out against the established powers & authorities. Globally, we are seeing a sort of 1968 all over again – a mass protest movement, simultaneously local & international in scope, with issues ranging from ending war, economic justice, student debt, unemployment, animal rights, etc. The momentum of this movement seems implacable & the energy of the people participating in it is contagious when you are around it.

So when I saw, over the weekend, a headline on the Le Devoir website saying that Occupons Montréal was associating itself with a march for Québec independence (the headline has since been removed), I felt my heart sink. The rest of the world was challenging an unfair, unscrupulous & predatory economic system that is pushing governments to austerity & here I was seeing my city’s Occupation rehashing old battles & using old, still-divisive politics to undermine its own message & popular support with nearly half of Québec’s population.

Except it wasn’t, and it isn’t. The Occupation General Assembly’s Minutes don’t mention a word about sovereignty or independence. The Occupation seems to be about changing the system to make it fairer for the people in our society who aren’t at the top of the wealth & power pyramid; the old battles are being brought up in the media, but not in the discussions I heard people having down in Square-Victoria-cum-La-Place-du-Peuple. Some of the ideas being discussed are frivolous, unachievable, blue-sky pushes for revolutionary, total world-system reform, but mostly what’s talked about seems to be about making the movement work, making the occupation durable &, beyond those goals, it seems to be about making the world better for people who need it. Allowing people not just to exist, but to live.

 

So yes, my scepticism faded. It faded because of the message of the Occupation, which is simply “Here are the problems foisted on our society by the wealthy & the powerful at our expense & in our name. Fix them. Now.”; it faded because of the people at the protest, who are living together with a sense of community I have simply never seen in Montreal; it faded because artists are sitting next to enthusiastic political activists, drawing pictures & sculpting stones while someone lectures about inequality and social justice, just because this place has given them the opportunity to express themselves in a way they could not before; it faded because in a city where people will riot because a band can’t play a gig for being held up at the border, there is a village of tents cooperating in an astonishing display of direct, deliberative democracy to change things for the better & not only has it not descended into chaos, but it has grown larger, more organized & more beautiful.

The artist with his plywood canvas sat on the plinth of a statue in a true, 21st Century Agora. If nothing else is accomplished by this movement, the community & the sense of being at the bustling, creative heart of a true democracy will nevertheless stay with me always.

China isn't Egypt

Or Yemen, or Tunisia, or Syria, or Libya, or any of those North African & Middle Eastern nations seeing nascent democratic - or at least rebellious - movements within their polity.

The People's Republic of China [PRC] will not see its government overthrown in the next few months by hordes of repressed, outraged, angry Chinese protestors clamouring for régime change & democracy. Sorry for deflating the bubble, but that is just the truth of the matter. There are a number of reasons for this. The Chinese government has tighter control (though this is by no means hermetic) of foreign press than Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia or Yemen; issues in China are largely local & issue based (see Charter '08), rather than national & personal/general; additionally, the economic situation in China is positive, growing &, importantly, provides full employment. That last factor is, by far, the most important to consider.

Media wise, it is true that young people in China can and do use proxy servers to easily circumvent the national firewall. This means that foreign media & information contrary to political doctrine is hardly difficult to access. It's propagation is not particularly restricted, either. Free speech is not total in China, obviously, but it exists in a great enough degree that the state cannot be accused of grossly violating it. Nevertheless, the average citizen is subjected only to media that exists in partnership with the State; there are enough people in China that even if millions upon millions of people circumvent state media & propagate that information, the vast majority does not. As such, the population is less likely to be swayed by external support, pressure or information than the middle-eastern countries abovementionned.

As for the issue-based Chinese outrage: China is very much a country in development with much work that remains to be done. The Chinese people know this and they are willing to work at it & make the country better. A great example of this is the young Rock & Roll musician in the Tank Man documentary who tells the interviewer that an full-fledged, complete transformation of China that would solve every problem the country faces and give them democracy & free choice is unrealistic. That improvement will take work and slow, methodical change.

And so the Chinese people work at it, pressuring their government one issue at a time. Weathering leaders like Jiang Zemin & embracing leaders like Hu Jintao, they work toward a better country.

Importantly, in many ways, they live in a much better country than they did in 1989, when a lone man stared down a tank in order to stand up to his government. The Special Economic Zones [SEZ] have been massively expanded. Every major eastern urban center is as capitalist as New York ever was. The Chinese people realize this success is true, aswell.

The old adage says, "It's the economy, stupid!" It isn't a lie. For every problem China faces, the fact remains that the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] has delivered on its economic promises. Chinese economic growth is just plain staggering and as long as it remains that way - as long as the CCP continues to deliver on Deng Xiaoping's promise to make China prosperous - the real risk of rebellion in China is infinitesimally small.

The argument can be made, aswell, that China has been revolutionary since the Taiping Rebellion; that what we're seeing in China is the slowest, most utterly complete, most methodical revolution in world history. That we won't see new revolutions in China because they aren't done with the one at hand. I think there is some truth to the argument. & I believe that the outcome of this revolution is far from certain: we may witness something novel in China in the coming years. Not Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, Corporatism or any other permutation of socio-political organization we're familiar with, but rather a sort of new social order... With Chinese characteristics!

Hang on & enjoy the ride. This one'll be interesting.

Cliché Time: Walk Like an Egyptian!

Mubarak is gone. The protestors have won this one: score one for non-violent revolt (and this was a successful revolt, not a revolution - revolution requires an upheaval of the social, legal, economic and political order, as far as we have seen, only the leadership in Egypt has been removed); score one for humanity.

It is important, in the wake of this victory, to take a look at the International Relations side of the events of the last two and a half weeks. People are questionning the fact that the White House showed support for Mubarak right off the bat. The idea is that the unideological pragmatism of the American Executive's foreign policy is opportunism, that it is somehow mistaken and wrong.

The fact is, such analysis is blind to the very complex realities of long-term diplomatic relations within which all countries - the United States far more than others - must work. Such analysis forgets how much work it takes to convince foreign governments to undertake courses of action which help the American agenda forward.

The White House, has, in effect, been balancing the politics of placating the moral, ethical and ideological mood of its own electorate and the requirement that it maintain its international commitments. The maintenance of international commitments is important, not based only on principle, and certainly not based on whether or not there is a likelihood of a cause's success, but rather for a reason that is almost ridiculous in its simplicity: it is about keeping up appearances.

The projects of the American diplomacy are manifold. They include peace on the Korean peninsula, the halting of Iran's nuclear programme, the tightening of relations with Russia, the tightening of relations with China, etc. Many of these are interrelated. Peace in the Koreas, for example, can only happen with the consent of China and this can only happen if relations between the US and China are improved. Likewise the halting of Iran's nuclear programme can only happen if pressure on Iran is significantly increased, and that can only happen if China and Russia agree to impose economic and political sanctions on the country, which itself can only happen if... Well, you see the point.

These relationships - these interwoven networks of commitments and expectations - rely very heavily on countries doing and saying what they agree to do and say. The White House's initial support for Mubarak had very little to do with Israel. Far less than it had to do with the international perception of the USA's willingness to support its allies in times of crisis above and beyond the point where it blatantly serves its interests.

There was never any doubt that the administration would eventually come down on the side of protestors (as it did, yesterday); the last two and a half weeks have been about gradually changing position, so that it would not outpace events and so that foreign allies - especially dictatorships - could feel that they could continue to count on the political support of the United States. Could it have done so earlier? I would argue that, if not for an unfortunate statement by President Obama during the State of the Union about American support for the democratic aspirations of all peoples, the White House could very well have taken a concrete position well before last night. Additionally, there may have been slightly less urgent pressure from the domestic front to take position on the matter (ie, it may have been possible, without that statement, for the administration to handle this crisis through Secretary of State Clinton alone, rather than requiring the attention of the President himself).

That said, the administration has done a skillful job of navigating the International Relations entanglements of this crisis. It has done a skillful job of managing the domestic politics involved. It should be commended for its work in this matter, as the west can only gain from its handling of the situation.

How to Bring Back the Canadian Voter

A recent election in Canada saw Voter Turnout somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40%. This was rightly decried by Ed Holder on twitter as being detrimental to the democratic process. Unfortunately, as I’ve said before on this site over and over again, the Canadian electoral system is broken – voting has become a complicated calculus over whether your vote will tip the scales towards a majority government (which, as we have seen with Jean Charest and the Bill 103-cum-115 fiasco, leads to an unchecked legislature capable of ignoring the voters entirely), whether it will maintain a functional minority (or lead to a severely dysfunctional one which will need prorogation to set right) or whether it’ll even count (let’s face it, a vote for anyone but the Bloc in Bloc country will almost never mean the Bloc candidate will lose). The Canadian Electoral system is barely democratic.

Why is that?

There are two major reasons I’ve harped on in the past. The first is the plurality, first-past-the-post system. This is the most fundamental and easy-to-grasp, and probably the most generally displeasing of the problems with the electoral system. The knowledge that most of the people representing Canadians in the House of Common are doing so with fewer than half the votes from their riding is a tough pill to swallow while simultaneously believing the system is democratic.

The second is the problem of Party Discipline: when our representatives are called on to vote, they do so as liberals, or as conservatives, or NDP members, or Bloc members. They do not do so as representatives of their ridings. This leads to an even greater dissociation of the political process from the voters who enable it.

There are other, more minor issues that tend to disincentivize voters to schlep their way to a ballot-box. These are things like proportional representation (which, admittedly, is related to the plurality issue), the Triple-E Senate (because nominees are ever-so-democratic) and the question of the role of the Governor-General in providing a check against the power of the Prime Minister.

So how do we solve this problem? How do we get people to get passed these problems and get back to voting?

The answer is actually simpler than one might think: change the system. Don’t try to make it seem appealing, instead fix the problems. Now I say this is a simpler answer only in that it does not make a convoluted attempt to coax voters into pretending the system isn’t broken. It is simpler, but it is not easier. It will require work and a clear set of solutions – and so here’s my attempt at laying out a few of them.

Plurality: The problem here is manifold, and so there are several changes which will have to happen to rectify it. My suggestions are the establishment of a Triple-E Senate, a Proportionally Representative Commons and the institution of a system of Run-Off, True-Majority elections.

• The Triple-E Senate: Elected, Equal and Effective, a reformed Senate with, say, five senators per province, would allow for equal representation across the country and a check on what would be a reformed House of Commons. It would also allow the Senate to become a body which provides a greater check on the House of Commons and, whether Party Discipline is overcome or not, might allow to mitigate its effects, somewhat. That alone would make the political process appear more democratic and representative.
• Proportionally Representative Commons: This is the idea of a House of Commons which’s ridings represent all Canadians equally, according to their population rather than according to the hodgepodge of criteria that give PEI  & Saskatchewan a relatively greater share of legislative power than the Central Provinces (although this is a relative, rather than absolute measure). This would, of course, diminish the importance of less populous areas in the House of Commons, but this change would be completely mitigated by the equal standing of the Upper House, which would be Triple-E. Proportional Representation should not be enacted without first instituting Senate Reform.
• Run-Off, True-Majority elections: This measure would prevent any representative from being elected to his post with less than 50% of the vote. The reason for this is fairly straightforward – any elected official would be a genuine representative of the majority opinion of his riding. Party Discipline might still manage to mitigate this move, but it would be a start and would at the very least give a greater appearance of legitimacy to elected representatives.

As for that problem, Party Discipline must be relaxed, significantly. The only way for Canadian Voters to once again trust in their elected officials to represent them is for those representatives to begin, once again, to listen to their constituents. They need to vote the way their constituents want them to.

If these issues are addressed, the results will become apparent very quickly. Those results will, over the course of several elections, eventually lure Canadians back to the ballot-box. Our government would cease to be a cruel elitist joke and Canadians might once-anew become interested in our political process.

My last proposal is one to address my own pet-peeve. The ability of the Prime Minister to negate the power of the House of Commons by proroguing parliament or dissolving it on a whim with a simple phone call to the Governor-General is far powerful for it to be considered even mildly democratic. I have thought long and hard about how to address this problem feasibly, and I believe I have figured it out.

Every 5 years, the Reformed Senate would nominate three or four people for the position of Governor-General and a Council of Premiers would be called. The 10 Provincial Premiers would then vote and the two nominees garnering the most votes would be kept in considerations. The premiers would then take the Question back to their home legislatures, where a vote would be taken. The nominee who garnered the support of 7 legislatures representing at least 50% of the Canadian population would become the new Governor-General and would act in consultation with the Provinces. ^{(N.B. This could also be accomplished through a national consultation after the vetting process of Senate-nomination & a vote of the Council of Premiers, with a direct election from 50% of the population)}

The Governor-General would of course have discretion in the exercise of his or her functions, but the position would become one of provincial oversight. If the Prime Minister were to ask, once again, to prorogue Parliament, the Governor-General would have to consider whether or not prorogation would be in the interest of the provinces, or if it would garner the approval of the provinces. This new discretion would apply to all the functions of the Governor-General, including the ability to veto Acts of Parliament which go against the will of the Provinces. The net effect of this would be to allow the Federal and Provincial Governments to act in a more concerted and effective way.

Or I might just be some internet crank who has no idea what I’m doing.