The Problem with Politics of Personality

It’s difficult to get news today without hearing about Russiagate, SNC Lavalin-gate, or Brexit…gate. More specifically, it’s nearly-impossible to avoid hearing about the powerful people at the centre of these controversies. But with a storm of scandal dominating political discourse, what are we missing?

After a lengthy investigation, several indictments, and rampant speculation, the Mueller report was released this week. Much to the shock of mainstream liberals, no further indictments were recommended, clearing the way for the president to serve out the rest of his term. Meanwhile, on this side of the border, headlines continue to be dominated by a scandal involving SNC Lavalin. Partisans from both the NDP and Conservative camps have been calling for the PM’s head, citing his character and handling of the situation as their core criticism. On the other side of the pond, coverage of the colossal clusterfuck of Brexit negotiations is dominated by the ability of the British PM to concoct and “sell” a deal to parliament. In every milieu, a similar and familiar political theatre is underway.

Now, if one were to ask an average, nominally politically engaged citizen of any of these places, they would likely report a strong opinion — either stridently supporting or vehemently opposing the target person of their controversy of choice. But if pressed for details, would they be able to supply them? From my observations, it would seem not. Although the players involved are well-known, and certain broad-strokes elements of the story can be recited, the details and context of the matter are mostly a mystery. It’d be easy to lay blame for this on a mass of ignorant individuals, but the problem with contemporary political discourse is actually systemic.

Most people receive their information about political matters from a mainstream news outlet — whether directly, or shared through a social network. With the exception of state media (CBC, NPR, BBC, etc.), these organizations are for-profit private corporations whose main source of revenue is paid advertising. As such, they have a financial incentive to maximize viewership to provide the best possible product to their customers — advertisers (NB: not the viewer). In other words, the financial model of the media industry is an attention economy, with the eyeballs of the readers as a harvestable commodity. This introduces certain biases to the reporting of issues; the most effective content is designed to be attention-grabbing, emotionally charged, polarizing, and easily comprehensible. After all, few will seek out and consume boring, hard-to-understand, uncontentious news. Noam Chomsky identifies five media “filters” that augment this bias, but the spectacle is the main interest of this discussion.

So how does this impact the way we understand the news? Returning to the examples above, we see stories centring around the figurehead of powerful persons. Since the very day of the 2016 presidential election, the liberal press has been consumed with speculation about Russian election interference, performative outrage about the antics du jour, and the cheering-on of the apparent good guys of this tale. Reporting on the actual functioning of government has been far smaller by comparison. One would be hard-pressed to find a detailed, sober discussion of legislative proceedings, foreign policy, etc. without an effortful search. Even when these matters are discussed, the analysis usually loops back to political horse-betting: “can this bill gain enough support in legislature?”, “how will this affect their chances in the next election?”, and the like. In other words: policy reduces to politics, politics reduces to personality. Again this is not because of mass stupidity, or (necessarily) because of some concerted effort to spread ignorance, but because the system provides us with what we want: simple, emotionally-engaging narratives that create a clear picture of the world and our place in it.

In this flattened landscape, the discourse of resistance collapses, and the range of political criticism becomes myopic and reductive. The discourse in the Canadian context is whether or not the SNC scandal will cost the current government the next election — casting the person of the prime minister as The Problem, with the status-quo opposition cast as The Solution. This strategy is inherently reactionary, positioning a return to more-of-the-same as the main alternative to the current state — back and forth ad infinitum. With each iteration, the Overton window — an indicator of what’s acceptable and what’s “extreme” — narrows and slides rightward. The most progressive acceptable stance is a return to “normal”, while each regressive extreme makes moderate regression seem not-so-bad. What’s not on the table is any real alternative — not because none exists, but because we cannot even conceive of it. The differences between the Canadian federal parties are miniscule in light of their similarities, but this fact escapes notice in the deafening noise of personality politics.

Similarly, the focus of American liberals is the person of the president, meaning the perceived solution to The Problem consists of removing him from office, and a return to politics as usual. Even with the Mueller report revealing no evidence of overt collusion, American liberals have now turned to demanding the release of the full report — as if this will change anything at all. In truth, there was no need for foreign interference, vote-rigging, or any other shenanigans — the spectacle itself was enough to guarantee the outcome of the election. With a candidate strongly positioned as the anti-status quo, and a steady supply of free media coverage (akin to a trainwreck you can’t look away from), this presidency is the pure product of personality politics. The Russiagate circus provides a scapegoat to avoid reflecting on the failure of vision in American liberalism, allowing the plutocrats to act essentially without opposition. While the transnational elite work to transition society to a global corporatocratic neo-feudalism, our attention remains transfixed on the soap opera drama rendered for our consumption. The more strident the opposition to this phantom menace, the more difficult it becomes to see the true nature of the problem.

To be clear, this is not justification to disengage from politics altogether, but rather a plea for a politics of policy. We’re limited by the structure of representative democracy — a single choice of candidate every few years — but this choice still matters. There are substantive (if not substantial) differences between the mainstream parties, and it’s these differences that matter in the immediate term. Certainly there are contemptible characters in government, and they do deserve our scorn for their poor judgment and awful behaviour. But governance does not consist of character alone; the fashion sense and faux pas of our representatives matter little in comparison to the results of their policies. Scandals, while entertaining and enticing, are merely spectacles for our consumption — and have almost zero impact to the big picture. On an individual level, our main recourse is to shut out the spectacle as much as possible. Skip the top headline, ignore the hot takes, disconnect from partisan media, and think in terms of *what* you want from government, rather than *whom*. Consider consulting this media bias chart, indicating the various skews and editorial integrity of some popular news outlets. Maintaining critical distance is much less fun than glomming onto bandwagons, but mobs rarely have the clearest judgment.

Is it ultimately possible to have a healthy democracy under these conditions? Unfortunately not. Although we usually see them as intrinsically linked, “democratic capitalism” is actually a contradiction in terms. The principle of democracy is to govern by the will of the people — each citizen having a say, with power distributed as evenly as possible. Capitalism, on the other hand, rests on a survival-of-the-strongest model, with money tending to concentrate as competitors are edged out of the market. Even with the best of intentions, the wisest of representatives, and the strongest of regulations, the logic of capital inevitably subsumes the principles of democracy; since money is synonymous with power in this model, the needs of the elites will always be prioritized above the rest. The attention economy is a byproduct of this effect, serving to cement the dominance of capital as the locus of power. Without a fundamental reorganization of the political and economic structures of our society, we’re doomed to repeat this dance until this democracy-in-name-only gives way to overt plutocratic totalitarianism. How do we dislodge something this big and thoroughly-integrated into the fabric of our lives? I’m certainly open to suggestions.

In summary, the problem is not the people in power, but the system of governance. By focusing on dethroning bad apples and cheering on political saviours, attention is drawn away from the commonality of our plight: a struggle for democracy itself. The political media circus is little more than empty spectacle, supplying divisive entertainment disguised as informed debate. In other words: I do not, would not, could not care, any bit less about the Lavalin affair.