The point of this piece isn’t to be divisive or disrespectful. It’s just an explanation of some interesting political science concepts and how they have been applied to America and could be potentially extrapolated to Canada. Political beliefs are valid, and this blog isn’t meant to target issues in a specific political ideology. Instead, the purpose of the blog is to identify the shortcomings and extremism of certain political parties and their members in North America, and how it is impacting progress. Political ideologies are reasonable, justifiable, and defensible, but not viewing others and their beliefs as equal, especially the refusal of working with others in government by certain political party representatives, isn’t, which is hopefully what this piece articulates through examples in today’s political climate. The only desire of this piece is to open conversation about the values of North Americans regarding politics, policy, and progress, and how actions of certain political parties may disregard those values through being self-serving, resistant, and ultimately, extremist.
What it means to be conservative is changing. It is an objective truth that recent changes in conservative political parties, especially in the United States, has brought government to one of its most divergent places ever. In particular, the recent election of President Donald J.
Americans also overwhelmingly said that they don’t trust Trump to make correct decisions for the country’s future, with 64 percent expressing this view, compared to 35 percent saying they do have confidence in him.
However, at this point, similar remarks, decisions, and actions receive little to no news coverage. The influx of disappointing and extreme behaviour is bringing change to the acceptable level of extremism in America. The unconcerned and unmoved feeling when seeing this extreme behaviour is a theory known as the Overton Window. The Overton Window is a political theory that refers to the range of policy that the public will accept. President Trump is pushing this window. Inside of the window, the public will accept or perceive decisions as normal. Outside of the window, the actions become radical, ridiculous, or unthinkable. The theory explains that to move the window, an individual shouldn’t begin working in the radical range, instead they should act in an unthinkable nature. In forcing the public to imagine an unthinkable decision, radicalism and ridiculous behaviour becomes more acceptable by comparison; it shifts the window closer to public acceptance of unthinkable policy, and at the same time, shifts the window further from neutral policy on the other side. President Trump has moved the window, forcing the public to accept more radical conservatism, while making neutral liberalism seem more like an extreme. To understand something like the Overton Window, we can look at the legalization of gay marriage. Protesters fought for what seemed like the unthinkable right to marry as an LGBTQ person, but in doing so, moved the window into accepting ‘radical ideas’ like removing sodomy laws, not referring to homosexuality as a mental illness, and electing gay or lesbian politicians into office. The window moved until gay marriage became a very thinkable idea. The Overton Window is completely neutral, and it can be identified in developing human progress, but also accepting radical and destructive behaviour.
Recently, the presidency of Donald Trump has shifted that window, with a tactic known as fire-hosing. At the height of the 2016 election, researchers from the RAND Corporation released a report warning about an abnormal propaganda technique named the ‘firehouse of falsehood.’ It is a propaganda technique wherein an individual tells extreme lies at a rate that the public couldn’t possibly keep up with. Researchers found that even obvious lies had potential in being highly effective in shaping public opinion, which works in coalition with the Overton Window. That report,
Of course, we had our servicemen [in the Ukraine]. They were acting very correctly.
This contradiction wasn’t prefaced with
create this… unmanageable volume of falsehood.
She argues that the retelling of obvious and debunked lies has nothing to do with persuasion, rather, it is a grab for power. When Donald Trump denied that he mocked a disabled reporter, Serge Kovaleski of the New York Times, he asserted that he is not constrained by reality.
To Putin and President Trump, things that are completely obvious to the public can be challenged. It is a clear demonstration of power because the public is forced to engage in what he said, even if that is just debunking the lies. The propaganda of fire-hosing recognizes that both parties, as in Putin and Trump against the public, recognize the lies of being objectively disconnected from reality, while at the same time, granting individuals like Trump and Putin the ability and right to say whatever they want whenever they want and still be engaged by the public. Gessen describes,
He keeps urinating on the sidewalk, and we have to keep wiping it up. Not the sidewalk, the living room rug!
The reaction to these obvious lies is fact-checking. However, fact-checking misses the point because the goal of asserting power is still achieved through fire-hosing. According to Gessen,
There is nothing quite so humiliating disempowering as trying to prove the truth… It’s sullying. You feel like you’ve engaged with something that actually shouldn’t be a part of the public sphere… Whoever objectively has more power, owns reality, and it’s remarkable how effective that is.
The American public is being asked the infamous question ‘why are you hitting yourself’ by the objectively untruthful information spread by Donald Trump. By forcing to argue the obvious, the public is degraded and suspended in a political state that doesn’t align with normalcy and reality; the obvious facts of life are twisted into mind-numbing fights through fire-hosing. When fact-checkers do their job, Donald Trump says it isn’t true, blames the media, and something that objectively isn’t up for debate becomes a screaming match. Fire-hosing takes away the assumption that we can know what is truthful, and the hope is that exhaustion and apathy will become increasingly more present. This type of propaganda isn’t convincing, but it takes power away from concepts like facts and reality, reducing truth to a position, not objective honesty. As a baseline, individuals like Putin and Trump spread the idea that no one can be trusted and
Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening. Just stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.
That’s chilling. The scariest part of this false reality is that these lies and manipulation tactics can be accepted. Donald Trump speaking and acting like he has complete power of even reality, pushes the Overton Window conservatively, not to his extreme, but closer to an actuality where he has more power and influence than a president should.
The real danger of Trump’s presidency is not how abnormal he is, rather, how normal things are made in comparison. For example, the public has become used to President Trump’s lies; at the beginning of his term, lies about the inauguration crowd were shocking, but today, he says twenty-two untrue things a day according to CNN and many overlook that fact. News coverage of these alien actions and the echoes from far-right supporters has shifted the public’s view of what conservatism is. Often, debates exist within the same party, that being Trump-supporters and anti-Trump republicans who think he has gone too far; this division is attractive to modern news outlets. Republicans who used to be more extreme now represent the middle ground of debate, completely skewing what the middle ground actually should be. Bill Kristol, an Iraq War architect,
However, the majority of Republican senators agreed to pass it without even reading it. It passed on a party-line vote, with a $250 billion error still contained in the pages. That bill should have been a disaster, deeply a
Researchers at UCLA looked at every politicians voting record and assigned them a score based on their ideologies, effectively developing a median overview of the ideologies for the Republicans and Democrats in America. A divide in society has been recognized by much of the public, which has hindered effective debate and advancement. That divide however, is inherently one sided and caused by a shift in the Overton’s Window.
Both parties have moved away from complete moderation, but Republicans more than Democrats. This division is particularly clear when looking at recent presidents.
Republican presidents have become increasingly closer to extremism, while Democratic presidents remained more consistent. This is Overton’s Window in action. From a partisan position, many of these presidents have been called extreme because the middle ground isn’t at 0.0 to the public, it’s closer to moderate or radical conservatism. The name of this trend is asymmetrical polarization. This polarization has only been increasing with Donald Trump’s presidency, as acceptable Republicanism to the public has become more extreme. It poses an issue for the public, especially journalists, as they attempt to remain neutral while describing a party that is going off the deep end and deepening a political divide. Norm Ornstein is a political scientist who has been think-tanking this polarization, with most of his work pertaining how to keep congress functional.
As a scientist, Ornstein has been careful to remain nonpartisan. However, his book titles seem to show the opposite to some. An earlier book was titled ‘Congress in Change: Evolution and Reform,’ but more recently, he wrote a book entitled ‘It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.’ The book reads,
The Republican Party… is an insurgent outlier. It had become ideologically extreme… scornful of compromise… and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more… open to incremental changes… fashioned through bargaining with Republicans… This asymmetry… constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance.
Ornstein and his partner came to the conclusion that they couldn’t ‘sugarcoat’ it anymore. He believes that Congress has changed, and his criticism pertains to the goals and methods of the GOP. It is candid to say that Republican goals have become more extreme. In 2006, George Bush talked about immigration like this:
There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship and a program of mass deportation.
The current president however, called a national emergency to get funds for a border wall. Fundamentally, Republicans have changed. It was president Richard Nixon, a Republican, who introduced the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor pollution. Of the 535 members of congress, 150 people of the 116th congress, all Republican, are climate change deniers. Not only does this not match public opinion, as a Monmouth University poll found that 78% of correspondents believed in climate change and its relationship to severe weather, but it is also a disgusting overreach of power, denying consensus science with shallow rebuttals and largely, because of the $68,359,582 in dirty money collected by these members of congress. Republican campaigns, backed by President Trump, now want to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. Shockingly, even conservative fixation on tax cuts is a new phenomenon. President Ronald Reagan raised taxes eleven times during his presidency. He even asked the public rhetorically,
Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more taxes than the bus driver or less?
This shift in ideology doesn’t have to be negative, if the parties were still able to work together. Political parties are supposed to look across the aisle and recognize others as adversaries who provide diverse insight. That is clearly not happening in the Republican party, as identified by Ornstein. Ornstein criticizes the way in which conservatives pursue their policy goals in America. Over the years, Republicans have become less and less willing to work with Democrats on anything.
A filibuster is essentially a way of delaying and blocking progress in assembly. When Republicans are the minority in power, they are extremely willing to block progress of any kind. When President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, with Democrats also winning majority of seats in the house, the response of Republicans should have been reworking policies and campaigns to gain a larger stake in the next election. The nearly 140 filibusters caused by Republicans from 2007-2008 echoes the strategy explained by Mitch McConnell at the time,
Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.
This unwillingness to cooperate can be seen in Donald Trump’s presidency as well, as he has counteracted policy and defunded programs introduced by President Obama. Republicans during Obama’s presidency challenged bills constantly. In 2011, Republicans held the debt ceiling hostage, threatening to let the country default if the Democratic majority didn’t agree to major cuts in Medicare and Social Security. In 2013, they shut down the government in an attempt to force President Obama to defund Obamacare. Ted Cruz said,
That was a remarkable victory to see the House engage in a profile in courage.
However, much of the obstruction wasn’t even ideological. In 2016 for example, Republicans refused to hear President Obama’s budget, rejecting it before they even looked at it. When Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, an objectively centrist judge, to the Supreme Court, Republicans refused to meet with the nominee because they wanted to see a conservative fill the spot. If Hillary Clinton would have won the recent presidential election, Republicans admitted to desiring that the open seat remain permanent, having an incomplete Supreme Court for years, then have a Democrat appoint the justice. This is not acceptable or normal behaviour of party leaders and is reflective of a divisive strategy to give unfair leverage to Republicans. When Donald Trump was elected, Republicans were happy to appoint Brett Kavanaugh in one of the most partisan justice appointments in recent years. An open letter signed by hundreds of students, teachers, and alumni of Kavanaugh’s previous school, Yale Law School, asked after the university supported Kavanaugh’s nomination,
Is there nothing more important to Yale Law School than its proximity to power and prestige?
The ‘my way or the highway’ approach presented by Republicans is giving them unrepresented power in minority governments, threatening the processes of democracy. Ornstein’s book is an attempt to get neutral leaders and journalists to admit that fact. Ornstein explained,
…It really is a party that has gone rogue, and I don’t say that as a partisan. It is a fact of life.
The largest problem with the asymmetrical polarization and the shift of the Overton Window is the observable fact that admitting its existence automatically groups an individual as a liberal extremist, regardless of the neutral behaviour of the evidence. The fact that this neutral, political science is seen as partisan is aided by the new, conservative middle ground in society, but the lack of admittance and transparency also pushes the window to a farther, Republican extreme. By definition, talking about the existence of asymmetrical polarization in America means the two parties are treated differently, which leads to accusations of liberal bias, dismissing the evidence. This poses a major problem for the media, which is reliant on the public for revenue. A change in the middle ground means that airing news about asymmetrical polarization is seen as extreme. Instead, political disputes are framed by the news outlets as bitter disputes on both sides, when that is candidly, not the case. In the 2013 government shutdown for example, where Republicans literally held the government hostage to undermine Obamacare, coverage of the shutdown blamed both sides for lack of cooperation. President Obama went out of his way to avoid that framing of the situation, explaining,
I want every American to understand why it did happen. [Republicans] demanded ransom just for doing their job.
Due to the media’s affinity for ‘both sides’ politics, President Obama’s speech was accused of playing the ‘blame game.’ Neutrality has become a reflex for news coverage, but this quick to blame both sides mentality removes the real, justified blame from the people who are scrutinizing democracy. Being fixated on both sides means ignoring the reality that is one-sided, asymmetrical responsibility. Further, when one side is divisive, the other party is forced to play hardball as well. When Republicans refused President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees, Democrats voted to lower the threshold to break a filibuster from 60 votes to a simple majority of 51. It was both an unfortunate and necessary response to an undemocratic and unusual situation. The consequence of that decision was seen when Brent Kavanaugh was being nominated to the Supreme Court, and again, media blamed both sides, when it was frankly started by one.
The more extreme Republicans get, the more Democrats are forced to act as obstructionists, which is shown in the graphical analysis of Senate filibusters. As Republicans caused more filibusters, Democrats followed suit when they were the minority, greatly increasing the average filibusters of the Senate overall. A problem honestly caused by Republican obstruction has led to greater blocking of progress overall in the government. This makes a tempting case for the ‘both sides’ to be
Canada and the United States have a unique relationship, consisting of two sovereign states, which occupy most of North America and share, historically, the longest undefended border. Our countries are reliant on one another for trade, security, and prosperity, and inherently, Canada and the United States share similarities in culture. These similarities however, extend past popular culture and into politics. James Simeon, a professor of political science at York University, explained that,
…political outcomes in the United States have, inevitably, an impact on Canada… whenever a Conservative government has been elected in Canada a Republican president has held office. Liberal governments in Canada have coincided with Democrats in the White House. Although Liberals have won majorities with Republicans in office the opposite has never happened. The observation exemplifies the close yet complex political interrelationship that exists between Canada and the United States… American political and constitutional changes and parliamentary reforms in Canada have reflected this fundamental aspect of our policy.
In the 1984 election campaign, constitutional and parliamentary reform were not topics of discussion in Canada, but it was at the time, in America. However, particularly through the Progressive Conservative Party, the topic was brought into discussion; the first item in the Throne Speech following the election was a proposal to create a Special Committee on Reform of the House. Further, the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, which was signed in January of 1988, indirectly related political ideologies and frameworks through an increased economic closeness. The Agreement commits both governments to ‘harmonize’ trade laws, facilitating effective operation and exchange of goods and services. An increasing familiarity of political systems between Canada and the United States is a topic of concern for some Canadians, like Simeon who points out that,
Americans, as frequently noted, revere their Constitution and institutions of government and usually do not seriously contemplate fundamental reforms. However, there are reasons for thinking Americans may be in the mood to take a close look at their constitution and perhaps introduce some major reforms to their system of government… Critics of the American political system also point to the decline of the political party as having widened the gap between initiation and implementation in government. Administrations find it increasingly difficult to get their legislative program through Congress because the President often leads one political party while Congress is controlled by another.
The American political system holds many issues that must be avoided in Canada’s own system. However, both are growing in similarity as culture continues to unify. Another potential aspect of the similarity between Canada and America is the media. Alf Pratte, an expert in communications, believes that American media has a lot to learn from Canada. Pratte explains Canadian influence by saying,
Despite exceptions to the rule, most Canadian journalists seem to have brought a strong, socially responsible mind-set to their adopted country. Such a philosophy diverges slightly from the stronger libertarian emphasis in the U.S. that treats media developments mainly as economic or technological events, rather than as combinations of resources, primarily in the framework of public development wherein private benefit properly follows.
Consumerism and capitalism
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Sources-
Centre for American Progress Action Fund
Images-
Asymmetrical Polarization of Presidents
A Note From the Author:
I was debating whether or not I should add to the disclaimer that this post was an opinion piece. However, I’m not going to blame both sides for the sake of neutrality; the vast majority of the content is backed with quantitative and factual data, pointing to an acute change in conservatism. I believe that this piece is neutral, candid, and factual, regardless of the intensity. Nevertheless, I did decide not to answer the question I proposed at the end. The same data and research that is present in American politics
Sandra Jansen is a Canadian politician who was an Alberta MLA for the Calgary-North West riding; she was sworn in as the Minister of Infrastructure on October 17, 2017. Sandra Jansen is the first female Minister of Infrastructure in Alberta and the first MLA for Calgary-North West to hold two terms. Previously, she was a journalist for 23 years, including 10 years as a national anchor for CTV News. Jansen is also a member of the Economic Development Ministerial Committee, recently legislatively accomplishing Alberta’s first disability advocate. In 2016, she was named by Alberta Venture Magazine as on of Alberta’s 50 most influential people. Jansen was included in the Famous Five Foundations ‘Women Belong’ campaign and is an honorary member of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters. Sandra Jansen has a Master’s Degree in Professional Communication. She is an acrylic artist in her spare time, donating most of her artwork to charities, including the United Way. Over two years ago, Jansen was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party when she crossed to the Alberta New Democrat Party (NDP). Sandra Jansen was once a candidate in the leadership race for the Progressive Conservative Party, but she left the race in November of 2016, citing harassment and intimidation by the supporters of another candidate.
I would firstly like to say that what I heard when I met Sandra Jansen are not direct quotes. Regardless, I fairly clearly recall her saying something along the lines of that through her experience, she believed that the Progressive Conservative Party was no longer progressive to the extent she would have liked, and the party didn’t primarily hold ideologies of small government and economic sensibility anymore. When Sandra Jansen crossed party lines, there was a lot of controversy. I remember her telling me that when she was elected as a NDP MLA, members of the Progressive Conservative Party would make disrespectful comments when she spoke. The scrutinizing by conservatives on a surface level doesn’t halt progress, but it shows that conservatives in the Federal and Provincial Government potentially don’t see other parties as equal, which would almost indefinitely leaks into policy and debate. According to Global News, when Sandra Jansen crossed party lines two years ago she said,
The dog-whistle politics I heard at the PC policy conference were chilling to me: eroding public education, taking away women’s reproductive rights and trying to out gay kids in schools. That is not my Alberta. I reject each and every one of those views and the idea that Alberta should be going backward.
The fact that Sandra Jansen isn’t opting for re-election and that the United Conservative Party is predicted to form a majority government with 67 seats in Alberta is possibly worrisome to me. Not because conservative ideologies are being represented, which I can often find agreeable or at least understandable and defensible, but because potentially, an increased degree of extremism and stubbornness is entering our democracy. What individuals like Jason Kenney, the leader of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, and Andrew Scheer, the leader of the Official Opposition of the Federal Government (the Progressive Conservative Party), represent is no longer limited government and conservative economics as seen by certain Canadians, it is a reflection of what some believe is the true nature of Canada’s conservatism:
a rump of anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, older, socially conservative Canadians who hate the modern, urban, diverse place the country has become.
The scariest part is not that the potential shift towards extreme and difficult conservatism in Canada, which brings an unrepresentative conservative ‘voice of reason’ to all debate and attempts to deny Canada’s diversity, isn’t the party’s unwillingness to function in the government, the disrespectful behaviour, or the inability to represent a modern Canada. Instead, it is society and the media’s unwillingness and hesitancy to call out the problem, blaming ‘both-sides,’ and forcing Canadians to deal with an increasingly ineffective government at the primary hands of conservatives for the sake of absolute, uninspired neutrality. As youth, we must push back and take up space because neutrality can and should be calling out problems and looking for improvements!