Given this grand occasion, the 25th anniversary of Alberta Views, I thought I’d do something retrospective, a little sentimental. When I wrote my first column for AV, I was, after all, just a lad. Actually, I was 45—but childish. With the world coming to an end, however, I decided to forgo sentiment and grapple with the problem. Okay, it isn’t the world that’s ending, yet; it’s democracy that seems about to pack it in. Since that’s one of the better human inventions, I thought I should consider why.
Democracy isn’t dying of old age. If humans would support it, it could last forever. The problem is more brutal. Democracy is being killed, and the murderer is compulsive lying.
The beginning of the end was when Donald Trump lied 30,573 times in four years as president of the US. One might say his lying constitutes failure, since Trump subsequently lost the presidency. But it was a success in that by continuing to lie, including the fiction that he hadn’t lost but was the victim of election theft, Trump managed to prolong his career as a politician. If you measure success in armed insurrections, and I believe Mr. Trump does, he was able to cause one, and, on the heels of that, his nation is still full of red hats wanting him to be president a second time.
Alberta’s new premier thinks our approach to COVID-19 failed for lack of horse de-wormer.
Because the US has long been the police officer defending world democracy, this matters to Canadians. Misinforming the public has become a winning strategy and best practice for our major ally, and so now Alberta’s premier thinks our approach to COVID-19 failed for lack of horse de-wormer.
Because of social media, lying and misinforming is hardly secretive. Being caught 30,573 times suggests a lack of furtiveness. What keeps the behaviour from being shameful is that the public has decided to “believe” the lies. It may seem loony to choose and approve of the strange stuff on social media, but believers will argue you into the ground. They get instantly hot under the collar. They tell you to go “F” yourself four times per half-minute. It would be one thing if it were just underpaid bot-farm labourers or unhinged types serving lies with a side of insults, but it’s gone far beyond that. “What I’m saying is true because I say it’s true. Wanna make something of it?” has become a standard greeting.
Human-caused climate change remains an excellent petri dish for studying the phenomenon, because those determined to deny can’t be budged. Today’s temperature or the depth of snow at Grandma’s house is definitive proof that the climate is fine and the opinion of scientists is propaganda. For a long time it was accepted that 97 per cent of relevant scientific papers published worldwide agree that human-caused climate change is real. Then a single Forbes article challenged the consensus. Later, Cornell University did a second study, all kinds of rigour, this time concluding that 99.3 per cent of relevant scientific studies across the world agree that humans are causing climate change. But the lie-believing crowd stuck with Forbes.
David Suzuki, who recently retired from CBC’s The Nature of Things, is perhaps the best-known Canadian scientist whom our ferocious climate deniers love to hate. He’s charismatic, defiant, not nerdy—and they can’t stand it. He epitomizes those who would sneer at the snow in Grandma’s yard.
What saddens me is that there are ever more haters and fact-deniers—and that lying as best practice has successfully invaded Canadian provincial governments. More horse de-wormer! Urging citizens to mask and vaccinate is on par with Hitler!
If you look for an explanation of lying in psychology, you’ll find acres of information. By far the most common reason for adults and children to lie is to avoid punishment. Could it be that Trump lies and Danielle Smith misinforms because they believe they can avoid the consequences of lying by misinforming more? Sounds right. With climate change denial, do people think their childhood standby of lying can make the scary climate-change man go away?
On the believing-of-lies side, there is far less info. One benign theory is that we hear a lie and remember it. When we hear a truth that negates the lie, we remember that too. Either we continue remembering both, or one fades. If truth is the one that gets dimmer, the lie becomes dominant.
Another idea has to do with past experience with authority. If we feel our good ideas were dismissed at school because they were original or divergent, we can continue into adulthood feeling sour toward authority. When someone presents a theory that defies mainstream thought, it engenders sympathy or loyalty in fellow outsiders. On social media or at the ballot box, these outsiders side with folks whose theories are rejected by “the establishment.”
Sorry, Pericles. Sorry, Athenians. It was a nice idea, democracy, but we’re finished with it now. Lying is more to our current taste.
Fred Stenson’s novels include Who By Fire, The Trade, Lightning and The Great Karoo.
