I could not bite my tongue – poor analysis, in my view.
CBC Radio, The Current, from today’s program.
Majority of Canadians distrust government: poll suggests
A new survey suggests most Canadians don’t trust government, the media and business. The Current looks into what’s behind the remarkable change in attitude in the year or so since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office. More
COMMENT SUBMITTED: (probably makes more sense if you listen to the 15 minute discussion. This is not my best work!)
Your interviewees are at base from government and media.
Many citizens outside their circles are looking for answers to what ails us. Many are exquisitely credentialed, well read and traveled. They are not dummies.
The answers to your questions about loss of faith in Government and media should have at least elicited:
– corruption by big money (facilitated by unchallenged conflicts-of-interest, no rules against Big Business contributions to Political Parties in most provinces, by the acceptance of lobbying, by public-private-partnerships also known as pick-the-public-purse) [the turning of blind eyes to off-shoring of financial assets]
– when it takes 20 to 40 years to settle legitimate land claims [Ipperwash, one example] someone is benefitting and you know it’s the lawyers whose rates are as high as [$- – -] per hour. Many officials also benefit by employment. Elites running the show serving self-interest.
– Leadership that doesn’t inspire and demand better.
– for decades there have been lamentations about the failures of the justice system. The big remedy has been the installation of security screening and guards more visible and present than at airports. [Citizens foot the bills for a system they can’t use and that is poorly designed.]
– when corporate interests take over the direction of university programs
– when “more propaganda” is the Government solution if citizens reject decisions that do not protect the common good and the planet
then, predictably and legitimately there is a loss of faith.
At some point any intelligent person with some agency would say we have to change the playing field.
Brexit and the election of Trump did not come out of nowhere, just as the fall of the Berlin Wall did not come out of nowhere.
I was surprised that the role of the arts and literature was not mentioned in your discussion. Nor the pivotal impact of events like “Standing Rock”, which Canadians joined in.
Have the people interviewed any idea of what is in the literature about the times in which we live, and how widely-read it is? Or do they only dismiss it as “anti-science”? when in fact it is based on very sound analysis of the historical record of revolution. They will at least have heard that the sales of George Orwell’s books are off the chart, if they don’t know the other authors whose work is voraciously consumed today.
Many people in the elites have a huge financial and “comfort” interest in the status quo that blinds them to what is happening. And they mingle in their own circles, an echo chamber.
The critical point for Prime Minister Trudeau is his decision not to proceed with electoral reform. The decision benefits the entrenched financial elites. You can see it vividly in the U.S.: First-Past-The-Post election systems effectively deliver a two-party system with both parties run by the same interests. In the end governance is badly corrupted by money, power and greed. Citizens are left with no leverage; democracy is disembowelled. We badly need what the Prime Minister promised and then abandoned: proportional representation.
If “the experts” your guests laud were doing their job, the interviewees would know: (From the literature) revolution is not done by the poor and wretched. It is done by the informed. And it typically follows a large swelling of hope followed by a complete dashing of that hope.