The Imitation Game

I've been researching an article about Eugenics in Ontario based on an interview I did with a curator at the Guelph Civic Museum and as usual, I've begun to obsess about about the issues that it raises. At the same time, I recently rewatched a movie about the computer pioneer Alan Turing and his work for British Intelligence during WWII. It's titled The Imitation Game and it focuses mostly on the personal life of Turing, which raises some pretty important issues that our entire society is currently dealing with. 

This is implied by the title and high-lighted in the pivotal interview with a police detective who arrests him for being gay and ultimately destroys his life simply because it's "the law". The key issue is that very many people in our society have to imitate an ideal that somehow or another has become a key part of their survival. If you can't play the role and dance to the right tune, your parents, your boss, the police, or someone else in the machinery of life will crush you like a bug. Luckily I can add a clip from the movie where the amazing Benedict Cumberbatch---as Alan Turing---talks about his famous "Turing test". This test is a way of trying to figure out if a computer is "conscious", "thinking", or, "aware" like a human being. 

In the movie, this is a metaphor for how one person relates to the other. In the specific case where the police detective is literally putting Turing's life on trial, he is trying to figure out if Cumberbatch's character is a "real human being" (ie: someone he should care about and protect) or if he is "just a poofter" who deserves to be ground under the heel of the criminal justice system. In a reverse sense, Turing is trying to figure out if the detective is a sensitive, intelligent being or else a macho robot who has no problem with destroying someone else's life simply because he is different. Unfortunately, the detective fails the test and can't understand that Turing is really a human being instead of just a two-dimensional, cartoonish "pervert".

Turning failed in his attempt to stay "in the closet" and as a result ended up losing his university position, was "chemically castrated", and---possibly---committed suicide as a result. Hardly what I'd call proper treatment for all the service he'd rendered the country during the war.

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I'm going to be honest in this oped. For most of my life I've thought that things like gay rights are fundamentally a distraction from dealing with more important stuff like climate change. My simple calculus was that discrimination sucks, but people have been surviving it for thousands of years. But climate change will totally screw over the entire human race, minorities and all. So I thought "let's save the entire human race first before we fixate on these lessor issues". Indeed, sometimes I thought the elites were fixating on gay rights because they are something that can easily be accommodated without threatening the existing economic and social structures that are stressing our ecosystem to the breaking point.

This point of view is shifting, though. For one thing, being somewhat engaged with the "New Green Deal" folks has opened my eyes to the idea that we are never going to get enough "buy in" from the general public unless we are willing to bring in the masses of people who have supported right-wing populists like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, etc.

Unfortunately, a lot of those folks have already bought the line that helping people in distress is part of the problem, not the solution. But I think that part of this anger comes from feeling that all the support being supposedly "lavished" on gays, refugees, minorities, etc has meant that nothing is being done for them. As a matter of fact, I do think that there are legitimate complaints being raised---they are just being aimed at the wrong people. Immigrants and gays didn't get rid of all the good jobs and punch rents through the roof. But no one other than the populists seem to be willing to talk about those particular things and posit the sorts of radical solutions that a lot of voters "feel in their guts" as being necessary.

In practical terms, this played out with Hilary Clinton getting the Democratic nomination instead of Bernie Saunders, which meant that Donald Trump was running against a candidate who seemed to believe that everything in the USA is just peachy the way it is. If no one else wants to even admit that you have a problem, then the guy who says he has the answer is the only game in town---no matter how lame that answer really is.  

I think that "progressive" people need to come up with answers to the things that are bugging at least a significant fraction the folks supporting right wing populism.

But the research I'm doing with regard to eugenics has got me thinking that the real problem is that the only way we are going to get real consensus in society is if we finally stop forcing people to play that damn "imitation game".

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I wonder if part of the reason why so many people who read this blog won't subscribe and help pay for it is because in some way they think that I am a "stinking capitalist pig"? How about I turn this idea on it's head? The business model I'm following is that I am offering an important public service to the community for free. Nothing is behind a pay wall, so cost is not an issue for being able to read it if you have access to the web. (Which almost everyone does because of the free access computer pools at the public and university libraries.) If you think that local, in depth coverage of news is an important public good, I'm inviting you to use Patreon or Pay Pal to help support this public good. (Thanks to the anonymous individual who gave me money via some third party company I'd never heard of before.) 

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I've written a bit about this in the past in other venues. For example, here's a post in another blog where I discuss the idea that women have to always smile at everyone they meet. That's just as much a part of the "imitation game" as gays being in the closet. It's also part of what men go through when they are taught to be "tough" and "stoic". These things cause real problems in people's lives. Women don't get listened to, and men end up being emotionally fragile people who's only way to deal with unbearable situations is to explode into violence. (We all know how much these two strategies are helping the human race deal with it's problems!)

There's a deeper level to this than just the suffering we inflict upon individuals who can't dissemble enough to "pass" as fitting the artificial definition of humanity that our current society is built around. The problems we face as a species all seem to come down to one macro problem---we don't understand subtleties very well. Every economic decision we made is all based on money and any consideration of how it affects people or the environment rarely makes it to the board room where all the decisions get made. Our criminal justice system is based on the idea that people freely choose to commit crimes without any understanding of how important our previous history is to the choices we make. We compound this idiocy by then assuming that if we act viciously enough towards incarcerated individuals they will miraculously become saints by the time their sentence expires.

We smash, we destroy, we act out, we "dumb down", we ignore, we force people to "shut up", etc, etc. The problem is that if we continue to act like ignorant boobs we simply cannot have 9 billion people using modern technology and hope to have anything like a functioning ecosystem. We can no longer force the wide variety of human beings to act out an "imitation game" where they try to act as if the tinker-toy culture we have inherited makes any sense at all in the time of climate change, CRISPR, artificial intelligence, atomic weapons, etc. Just as we have to learn to embrace complex ecosystems instead of boring monocultures; we also have to learn to embrace all of humanity in it's diversity. People who think differently have a lot to offer us, if we'd just listen to them, to leave them their own corner of society instead of continuing to smash their round pegs into square holes.

Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of
who do the things that no one can imagine.
Alan Turing, c/o IEEE Spectrum.

Parliamentary Reform: My Conversation With Michael Chong, Part Three

First off, a brief note about publication. I've decided that my work load for this blog has become a little unsustainable. That's because I'm still writing "deep digs" while trying to put out an opinion piece every week plus working on a new book. I'm not happy with what this workload is doing to my head or the way I've tended to cut back time spent on deep digs so I can work on the other two things. 

Last week I decided that I would change my commitment so I no longer guarantee an op ed every weekend. If I publish a deep dig---like the one below---I'm going to avoid the op ed for that week. That's why last week I didn't publish one. 


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In my last installment Michael Chong and I discussed more theoretical Parliamentary issues and compared how our democracy works as compared to both the USA and UK. In this final one we discuss Chong's work in the last two Parliaments to reform the system in Canada's house of commons.

Michael Chong in his Fergus constituency office.
Original photo by Tim Allman.

Chong: By the way, you mentioned something interesting. One of the arguments against getting rid of the party leader's veto over party candidates is that if the leader doesn't have this power we're going to get all these crazy and extreme candidates in our system. But then people in the same breath people often say "like this candidate in this riding---in the last election!" 

[Chong laughs out loud]

I thought that the party leader veto was supposed to prevent that!  Right? So my argument in favour of getting rid of the veto and letting the CA have the final decision is that we already do get crazy and extreme candidates in all parties during every election---so why not get rid of the party leader veto and at least strengthen local democracy? And make the party leader accountable to the local MPs?

Hulet:  One of the things I've tried fruitlessly to remind people to think about is the opportunity cost of a certain rule.

Chong: Exactly! Exactly! 

The opportunity cost here is the loss of democracy. People say to me "we had a candidate that smuggled booze across the BC boarder and was charged and convicted for that". The NDP had a candidate that was smoking weed while he was videotaping himself driving in Vancouver and then posted it to You Tube during the election. The Liberals had a white supremacist  running for them in the 2011 election---a full-blown white supremacist. His name was Andre Forbes, his name was on the ballot.  He was a declared white supremacist. So you know every party gets this.  People say if we don't have the party leader's veto maybe we'll get a white supremacist. But we already do! 

[Chong laughs out loud.]

Look at what you're giving up when you give party leaders that kind of power.

Hulet: I've read C-559 (the original bill), which was very different from what eventually passed, C-586. I can just imagine all the sweating that went into trying to squeeze that through the bottle-neck.

Chong: Yeah!

Hulet:  So it basically changed from "you will" to "you can if you want to".

Chong: On one half of the bill, and the other half of the bill is completely gutted.  The original bill had two parts. One concerns the accountability and structure of party caucuses in the house of commons. And the other part of the bill concerns local Constituency Associations and the nomination of local party candidates. That second part of the bill was completely removed. And the first part of the bill was essentially amended from "you will" to "you can". So that's what happened. The reasons for those changes was that it became clear to me after the introduction of the original bill that while all the party leaders were saying that they were supportive of the bill, there was no way that this bill was ever going to pass the house of commons and the Senate and that they would find a way to kill it clandestinely. 

So I decided that I was going to play hardball with them and say "OK if you are truly serious about supporting this bill and you say you thought that there are some minor issues, then I am willing to play ball and address those minor issues". So I decided that it was better to get something passed than nothing. Because we did have an opportunity to get something passed. I decided that "the perfect is the enemy of the good" and it was better to get something done. So that was why I agreed to these changes. And they certainly weakened the bill. But we got something passed and it moved the pendulum a little back in the right direction. So my view is that it wasn't a huge improvement, but a step in the right direction that hopefully lays the foundation for future reform. 

Hulet: What actually happened at the beginning of this Parliament? [Remember, readers, I am referring to the beginning of the Parliament that preceded the last election---not the current one.]

Chong: Quite simply, there were three recognized parties in the house of commons: the Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats. The law said that at their first meetings all of three of these party caucuses had to go through a series of votes---four votes each, to determine the powers of the party leaders and the power of the  elected members of parliament. Two of the three caucuses broke the law. They violated the law that had been created by the reform act. Only the Conservatives followed the law. 

Jane Philpott, photo by
Dave Kalmbach, c/o
Wiki Commons.

Jody Wilson-Raybould, photo
by Erich Saide, c/o
Wiki Commons.

This actually blew up with the removal of Jody Wilson-Rabould and Jane Philpott from the Liberal caucus. I argued that the Prime Minister did this on questionable authority because he, the cabinet, and, the Liberal caucus leadership broke the law when they met the first time. They didn't follow the law clarifying and determining the powers of expulsion. And because they never undertook those votes at the first caucus meeting after the election, his authority was questionable until those votes were held and that authority clarified. In effect, no one had any authority to expel anyone from caucus.

Hulet: What did the Speaker say about this?

Chong:  I appealed it to the speaker but he washed his hands of it and refused to get involved. Which I thought was a sad reflection on the state of our Parliament. But because this law concerns the internal affairs of the house of commons and its caucuses, there is no recourse to the court system. The only appeal is to the house of commons, its committees, or, the Speaker. 

The house of commons and its committees are under the control of the Prime Minister, so that wasn't a practical avenue to seek justice and see the law was followed. So an appeal to the speaker was made and he washed his hands of it. And we have no recourse in the law. So we have a situation where a law was broken and there were no consequences. I actually wrote a piece about this in Policy Options if you want to read it. 

The fact that two caucuses---2/3s of the House of Commons---broke the law as one of their first official acts after the general election tells you everything you need to know about the state of our parliamentary democracy. The fact that this happened---and that's pretty upsetting in itself---was that the rule of law was not upheld. They deliberately did this, they knew exactly what the law said. The Reform Act, as you know, was well publicized before the last election. It received tons of ink. And before those caucuses met for the first time---when they were supposed to fulfill their responsibilities under the act---backgrounders went out to all elected members of Parliament. They described in great detail their legal obligations under the Act. But despite the reminders being sent to them, 2/3's of the officially-recognized parties in Parliament chose to ignore the law. But what's even more concerning is the fact that there were no consequences for that violation. There were no committee hearings, no vote, or debate on the floor of the house of commons. The law was broken and in the Canadian system that's OK. I think that's a sad reflection on the state of our institutions. 

Hulet:  I had no idea of all this, and I tend to be pretty up-to-date about this sort of thing. So I imagine the general public has no idea that any of this happened.

Chong: No. And neither should they, right? These are the detailed, day-to-day functions of the House of Commons and it's up to elected member to keep addressed. We don't have direct democracy in this country. People elect us to act on their behalf and they expect us to hold the highest standards of integrity and accountability. It's up to us to do that. Not up to the average voter to wade through the standing orders and other statutes that cover the house of commons to decide who's right and who's wrong. That's up to us in the Parliament and the fact is that that didn't happen.   

Hulet: It's also a sad reflection on journalists.  So we're sitting here and you're doing your job and hopefully I'll do my job, and, perhaps voters will pay attention.

Chong:  You know it's interesting. Without betraying confidences, a number of members of the national press gallery came up to me during the controversy about the removals of MPs  Wilson-Raybould and Philpott this last Spring and said that they did not do their job when the Reform Act wasn't followed. One of the members said to me "the national press gallery" really fell down. I'm paraphrasing, but he said something to the effect of "the national press gallery really didn't do it's job and cover this properly, because now I realize how important an issue this is". So it was disheartening to hear that. 

In their defense, they're stretched for resources too. There have been a lot of lay offs in the mainstream big media outlets.

Hulet:  It's almost impossible to make enough to support yourself in journalism. The large companies are all losing money, and the indies like me are mostly subsidizing their work. I couldn't do this interview if I didn't have a pension.

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This, of course, is a natural segue into my suggestion that people purchase a subscription. It's easy with Pay Pal and Patreon. Even a little bit a month helps. 

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Okay, the Conservative caucus did vote. How many votes did they have?

Chong: Good question. We had four votes. As the law requires. The first vote was on the expulsion and readmittance of caucus members. So we voted to adopt that rule---taking away the ability of the party leader to expel an MP from caucus. In this last parliament Andrew Scheer and before him Rona Ambrose did not have the power to expel a member from caucus. That's a decision of caucus done through a secret ballot vote. We've had several members who have left the caucus but they did so voluntarily by resigning. The second rule concerned the election and potential removal of the caucus chair. Up to 2015 caucus chairs had been appointed by the party leader. So we voted in that rule, taking away the power of the leader to appoint the caucus chair and instead giving elected conservative MPs the power to elect the caucus chair.

Hulet: So who was elected caucus chair?

Chong: We had several candidates who ran and David Sweet the MP for the rural part of Hamilton was elected caucus chair for the first time in decades. Then we had the third vote which concerned the review and removal of the party leader by MPs. And that rule got defeated. Then we had a vote on the fourth rule, which was the election of an interim leader by Conservative MPs. Up to that point, the interim leader was always appointed by the out-going leader. The way it used to work was that the leader said that "I'm resigning, and I'm appointing so-and-so to be the interim leader".  So what happened with that fourth rule was that it was defeated but because some MPs wanted Senators to also vote for the interim leader. So immediately after that fourth vote we had another vote to enact a similar but modified version of the rule that allowed not just MPs but MPs and Senators to vote for the election of an interim leader. That rule was adopted.

Hulet: Adopted by the caucus or the parliament?

Chong: It was adopted by Conservative MPs.  All these votes I'm referring to happen within caucus.

Hulet: So there's no reason why you couldn't extend the votes to the Conservative Senators too.

Chong: That's right. The first rule was adopted. We decided that the leader doesn't have the power to expel members---that comes from caucus using a secret ballot vote. The second rule we adopted was to elect the caucus chair---instead of being appointed by the leader. The third rule was defeated, but a modified form was adopted. That is that MPs and Senators in the Conservative Party get to elect the interim leader and the out-going leader doesn't get appoint the interim leader. We then went to two more votes. The first one was an election for the caucus chair, which was David Sweet, as I mentioned. Then we went to the election of an interim leader. We had 7 or 8 candidates run for that position and Rona Ambrose was elected as the interim leader. And that's how she came to be the leader.  So that's how she ended up the leader.  

Hulet: Oh! You see that is news to me. This is the sort of thing I want to tease out.

Chong: To clarify, there were seven votes at the first caucus meeting. The first five were about process---whether or not we will be voting for specific positions, and, how that voting will take place (ie: including Senators for the leadership vote.) The last two were actual elections to fill two positions: caucus chair and the interim leader. And that set up the structure for this current parliament. That structure expires at the general election because the law requires of us that when we meet for the first time after the election to go through that process again. As does every other party in the house of commons.

Hulet:  So the Conservative party---by doing this---is serving the useful function of holding the other parties' feet to the fire.  The rule is not becoming moribund because nobody follows it.

Chong: Right. But it's also self-serving for us because it created a better structure for us in the past Parliament. It made clear what the rules were for expulsion. It made clear the rules were for the election of the caucus chair. And it made clear the rules of the election of the interim leader. What it did in all three cases was establish democratic credibility. 

The caucus chair---being elected---had a great deal of credibility because the members thought that this guy had democratic legitimacy. When caucus chairs are appointed by the leader there's always this grumbling that they are just doing what the leader wants and not what the caucus wants. And there's always grumbling that they don't really listen to caucus members and that they are just there as an extension of the leader's office. 

This didn't happen  in this Parliament because the caucus chair was elected and knew that theoretically he could be removed by caucus at any moment in time. When we had members who got into trouble there was always a clear process to consider their expulsion. It was a different rules-based environment and there was no ambiguity about who had the right to expel and any questions about a member being removed from caucus was clearly laid out in writing. 

So that created a very stable environment. And then the third rule about the election of the interim leader gave Rona a great deal of legitimacy as the leader during that period. In fact, she was so good that a lot of members thought that she should be allowed to run for the permanent leader of the party. And I think that  came in part because she was elected by caucus. Previously, when you were appointed by the out-going leader there was always the idea that you are just a "care-taker" and you don't have the legitimacy. She didn't face that challenge because she was elected by caucus, and they had confidence in her leadership until a new leader was elected by the party-at-large. So self-interest also was a big part of the result. The Reform Act actually showed our caucus how beneficial these structures can be. So it wasn't just about holding the other parties accountable. It also created a structure that created order and created democratic legitimacy.  

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Chong was speaking about the past Parliament. I tried to contact all the Caucus Chairs in this session and found that there seems to have been a greater degree of compliance with the law this time around. None of the Chairs responded to my email, however. When I called their offices I was able to talk to actual people in both the NDP and Bloc Quebecois (I had to leave recorded messages at the others' offices).

The woman working for Brian Masse, the NDP Caucus Chair, knew what I was talking about, said the vote had been taken but that she didn't know if she should tell me the specifics and would look into it. If Masse decides the outcome of the vote isn't a state secret, she said she'll send me the info by email.

The secretary for Louis Plamondon---the Bloc Chair---didn't seem to know what I was asking about, but she put me onto the party Press Officer, Joanie Riopel. Her response was cryptic and not terribly informative: "In regard to your present request, the Bloc Québécois caucus had voted unanimously that this does not apply to us." (To be fair, I asked the same question of Lloyd Longfield about the last Parliament, and he said something very similar.) I don't know if that means that they didn't have the vote at all---thereby breaking the law---or that they did and decided to leave all the power with their party leader.

I asked our local Guelph MP at an event shortly after the first meeting of the Caucus and Mr. Longfield told me that they had had the meeting and the votes required by law. According to a Canada Press article in the Vancouver Courier, the Liberals MPs decided to leave all their power to get rid of the leader, put in a replacement, and, kick members out of the Caucus in the hands of the party leader. They did elect their Caucus chair---which the Liberals said they'd already done for years---but the article didn't say whether or not the election was done with a secret ballot and multiple candidates, or not.

I haven't heard back from the Conservative Caucus Chair, but Micheal Chong did reply and gave me some of the info above. He didn't mention whether they had had their vote and what the decision was, but I think it's safe to say that they did follow the rules that they put in place. (If I get more info from the parties after publication, I'll add that into the text.)

The takeaway I get from this is that Chong's reforms have had some impact on the culture of Parliament and as long as the party Caucuses are forced to "go through the motions" of empowering the back bench MPs there is always the chance that some of them might start actually giving themselves real power again. And if one party does that, maybe pressure will build to the point where all of them start doing it.

As to why the MPs aren't voting to give themselves a greater role in Parliament, I suspect that the reasons are several and sadly understandable. I spent several years in the Green Parties of Ontario and Canada trying to reform their decision-making structures in an attempt to increase democratic accountability and often found myself stymied in my attempts by people of good will who simply couldn't understand what I was talking about.

The first thing to remember about politicians is that getting elected to an office is a totally different skill set from that of governing an institution. If you want to win that election you have to put in a huge number of hours glad-handing voters, going to events so you can be seen there, meeting with important party members to build a web of connections, helping individuals with their problems to build personal loyalty to you, working with the media, etc. All of this gets in the way of gaining a detailed understanding of how various issues---like democratic accountability---actually works. As a result, the vast majority of politicians don't seem to have anything more than a very vague understanding of how important the mechanisms of democracy are to its substance. Moreover, they usually believe that when someone tries to talk about these sorts of things, they perceive it as a waste of their extremely precious time.

The second thing to remember is that people get involved in parties because they are concerned about policy more than process. In my experience with the Greens the overwhelming majority of members wanted to talk about environmental issues rather than democratic structures. They had joined because they'd read Silent Spring, not Robert's Rules of Order. Mainstream parties are different from "up and comers", but they have the same sort of dynamic. If you join the Liberals or Conservatives in order to have a "career" in "the public service", you tend to be the sort of person who "gets ahead by getting along". People like this look at a system in order to find out the best way to adapt to and succeed in it---not how to change it.

Finally, a lot of the old structures---the ones that made backbench MPs "loose fish" instead of "trained seals"---were done away using language that sounded like the new ways are better. For example, if you ask most people I suspect they would say that directly electing the party leader by the rank-and-file members is much better than letting experienced party delegates do it at a leadership convention. That's because they simply don't understand that once the leader gets directly elected, it strips away all the power that other party officers---like the Constituency Association and Party President---used to hold. It also ignores the point that experienced delegates usually have a much better understanding of the personalities and issues than ordinary members---many of whom just recently joined in order to support one particular candidate. I recently heard these same old arguments from at least one candidate for the Ontario provincial Liberal leadership race. (Luckily, IMHO, the party was wise enough to stick to the old convention/delegate model.)

I mentioned the substance of this story to my significant other and she said that once she understood it she realized how important it is. But she also said that you simply cannot expect ordinary people---who mostly have busy lives---to put the necessary effort into learning the important details. (Chong made much the same point.) I don't know how many people will bother wading through this article, but at least it's on the web now, and maybe some voters (or students doing term papers) will read it. Perhaps one of them will eventually become someone who actually is in a position to make a difference, and it will help them understand the problems that Chong has outlined.

One last point that I learned from my experience in politics is that leaders will almost never voluntarily give up power once they have it. The sorts of people who end up in positions of authority are almost never idealists. And pragmatists who put enormous amounts of effort into amassing the power to run a party will never give it up without a fight. Even idealists have a tremendous temptation to hold onto power so it will allow them to "do some good", which makes them forget that their successors will also have the same power to do what they conceive of as being "ill". Moreover, the well-understood problem of confirmation bias affects many leaders, which means that they probably won't understand why what their opposition to reform is self-serving. A huge number of people simply lack the self-awareness necessary to look at the unfairness of the present system from the point-of-view of someone who isn't a member of the "inner circle".

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Hulet: One last question as we are running out of time. There's this idea known as "the wisdom of crowds". That's the notion that if you get more people involved in making a decision you often get different viewpoints and you get better solutions to a given problem. Something I tend to believe in. Is the extreme centralization of power in the leader's office "dumbing down" Parliament's ability to deal  with complex questions? I mean just because you have fewer people with different points of view working on issues?

Chong: I think the concentration of power in a leader's office---especially the Prime Minister's---has significantly reduced the accountability of the Prime Minister to Parliament. And as a consequence has significantly decreased our democracy's ability to deliver results. 

When I look at three big international commitments that this country has made in recent decades, we've failed to uphold any of the them. Despite the fact that most of our allies have upheld two, if not all three. These are: 

• our NATO commitment to deliver 2% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defense spending
• the  commitment to spend 0.7% of our GDP on overseas development assistance
• our commitment to reduce emissions and meet our greenhouse gas reduction goals.

I think that those three terrible outcomes for our defense, for helping some of the world's most vulnerable, and, for our environment, are the result of a Parliament that is unable to hold the Prime Minister and the government to account. 

I think one of the consequences of this system we have is something of a paradox. On one the one hand it's an incredibly efficient decision-making system from the point of view of the Leader. What the Prime Minister wants, the Prime Minister gets. As I said earlier, no Prime Minister with a majority government in has lost a vote in the Canadian house of commons in decades.  Governments and Prime Ministers can make decisions and put them into effect very easily without a lot of resistance. 

But the paradox of highly efficient decision-making systems is that in the long run they lead to terrible outcomes from the point of view of the country. The corollary to that paradox is that, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, "Democracy where power is not concentrated in any one office but dispersed in Parliament is a terrible form of government---but it's better than all the rest".

Reforming out system so that we de-concentrate power away from the Prime Minister's and other party leader's offices and diffuse it back into Parliament-as-a-whole is going to lead to a more inefficient decision-making system from the point of view of the Prime Minister's Office. It would be more difficult for governments to get their way, it means that they won't win all the votes on the floor of the house of commons like they currently do. But history shows that those sorts of diffuse, collective decision-making systems produce the best outcomes. The best environmental outcomes, the best military and defense outcomes, the best foreign aid outcomes, the best economic outcomes, and, so on and so forth. And we know that from the broad sweep of history. The societies that have prospered and delivered the most fair, the most just outcomes for their citizens have all been democracies with significant checks and balances on power and where power isn't concentrated in one place. We may have struggled in a recent decade or so with the rise of totalitarian states like China and Russia, but I'm confident in the long run we will prevail. But we will only prevail if we continue to renew these democratic institutions by ensuring that we don't concentrate power in just one place.

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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Michael Chong: Part Two---More on Parliamentary Reform

In the first part of my conversation with Wellington County Conservative MP Michael Chong, we talked about historical issues---constitutional repatriation, the internal battle in the Liberal party between supporters of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, and, how these issues were influenced by an erosion of the power of MPs versus the office of the party leader. In this second part we discussed more of the theory and practice of Parliament: why---for all their current flaws---political parties are still essential, and compared the Canadian situation to that of both Great Britain and the United States.

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Michael Chong, photo by Tim Allman.

Hulet: On another tangent, I heard an interview with Jody Wilson-Raybould on Canadaland and she said that she found it extremely hard to accomplish much because of the needs of Parliament. She talked about having to interrupt her work at various times to rush off and vote. I don't remember the specific examples she used, but it sounded like tedious and silly procedural issues.

Chong: Yes, there are a lot of silly procedural votes in the house of Commons. This wasn't always the case. It's a result of the fact that the three house leaders---who are responsible for it---are not agreeing upon a house schedule. Normally what should happen is the three of them should be able to work together and compromise for the week, and for the month. Then the house just operates on that schedule and there are no votes about whether you should do that or not. In the last two parliaments since 2011 you have had many procedural votes---which is an inordinate waste of time.  

The second reason why is because the party leaders are so strong that every vote is preordained. There are no votes where the outcome is in question. No Canadian government has lost a vote in decades. And, as you know, we have hundreds of votes every year. By way of a contrast, in a typical calendar year the British government loses about 35% of the votes in the UK House of Commons. 

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I went to the trouble of doing some research and found that someone in Wikipedia had listed the number of votes that the government of the day had lost in the British Parliament since WWII. While I didn't find a number of total votes so I could develop a percentage of the sort that Chong mentioned, there are a substantial number but they varied wildly as per who was the Prime Minister. It also looks like this is more of a recent trend, however, as the numbers have only become quite large since the mid 1970s:

• Clement Attlee 1945-1951, 4 defeats
• Winston Churchill 1951-1955, 1 defeat
• Anthony Eden 1955-1957, none
• Harold MacMillen, 1957-1963, none
• Alec Douglas-Home, 1963-1964, none
• Harold Wilson, 1964-1970, 6 defeats
• Edward Heath, 1970-1974, 6 defeats
• Harold Wilson, 1974-1976, 25 defeats
• James Callaghan, 1976-1979, 34 defeats
• Margaret Thatcher, 1979-1990, 4 defeats
• John Major, 1990-1997, 6 defeats
• Tony Blair, 1997-2007, 4 defeats
• Gordon Brown, 2007-2010, 3 defeats
• David Cameron, 2010-2016, 7 defeats
• Theresa May, 2016-2019, 33 defeats
• Boris Johnson, 2019-present, 12 defeats before he was re-elected last December

And the champion is James Callaghan, Labour
Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1976 to 1979.
He led a minority Parliament and lost an astounding 34 votes!
Photo c/o the Parliamentary Archives of the United Kingdom.

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I was listening to a podcast recently that articulated something that's been in the back of my mind for quite a while. A Pulitzer Prize winning ex-journalist with the "Toronto Star" said that after he gave up the job and starting writing books full time he stopped paying attention to most of the news. He suggested that readers make the effort to think about what pieces of news they consume in any given period of time and compare how many of those are really important. He said he did and found out that a huge proportion of what he was reading, listening to, or, watching had no relevance whatsoever to his life---so he just stopped paying attention to it.

What I'm trying to do with this blog is to only write about the stories that are important. Consider this article. Here's a local politician who's spent years and years trying to get people to notice the fact that their democratic traditions are being slowly eroded into nothingness. And yet, think about the major stories that are being covered by the media right now. The people killed in the Iran plane crash are a huge issue for family and friends---but it is just one more disaster in a world filled with them. (I won't get on a soapbox about coverage wasted on the Queen's grandkids.)

That's why I think what I do is important. And if you think it is too, I'd suggest that you make some effort to show that you agree. Support me financially on Patreon or Pay Pal---even a buck a month helps. If you can't afford that, at least tell others about the blog and encourage them to read it. 

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The reason why that's relevant to the procedural shenanigans is that in the UK the whole process of debate in parliament has one purpose: to have a finite amount of time for debate and get the proposed legislation to a vote. But that's because the vote outcomes aren't preordained and the government loses one third of all votes.  And that's because the MPs aren't under a heavy whip, and are more free to vote as they see fit on various issues. This includes members of the governing party. In fact this means that when there is strong opposition to a particular piece of legislation it expresses itself on the actual vote in the floor of the house---in the actual vote of those MPs. 

Here in Canada, the vote outcomes are preordained and when the government wants to get a piece of legislation passed, it will without any question. The only way for strong opposition to build and express itself is not in the vote---because the bills going to be passed no matter what. The opposition parties can only oppose proposed legislation through filibustering. That's the difference. 

So in the UK parliament, if you're strongly opposed to a bill, your whole goal is to get that bill defeated. You try to convince enough members to get it defeated. But in the Canadian system if there's strong opposition to a bill you don't want the vote to happen quickly because you know it's going to pass. So the only way you can voice that opposition is by dragging out that debate through procedural delay. Remember, it's going to pass anyway. But the only way you have to signal that you think that this is a really bad bill is through the filibuster. In contrast, in the UK if you do not want to see legislation pass, you lobby other MPs to vote against the bill. And, one out of three times they do. Whereas in Canada that just can't happen.  You cannot defeat a bill that the government wants passed in a majority government. So what do you do?  

Hulet: So that slows down the work of parliament.

Chong: Yes. It absolutely does.

Hulet: And it creates tribalism too because you don't develop the cross party relationships you do when you are trying to horse trade votes.

Chong: Yes. I tell people that our Parliaments are far more partisan than the US Congress. 

You just have to look at their voting records. In Canada it is rare for a party member to break ranks with their leader on a vote---99% of the time party members vote with their party. In the US Democrats regularly break rank with their party, Republicans break rank with their party---that's how their system works---and the same is true in the UK.  So that's the partisan divide here, it's in our legislature. Not in the population. Frankly, I think that that is indicative of the disconnect between Parliament and the people. The people aren't as divided along partisan lines as Parliament is and I think that it shows how disconnected it is from the people.  

Hulet:  I have to ask this question, it's kind of idiotic, but I'll ask it anyway. I sometimes meet people who say that the way to reform politics is just to get rid of political parties altogether. From what what I can see, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott have decided that that makes sense to them and they are going to run as independents. So I'm going to ask the question "why not get rid of parties altogether and get everyone to run as an independent?"

Chong: I understand that sentiment comes from. But I don't think that it's practical. The better answer is not to get rid of political parties but rather to go back to the system we once had where the party was secondary to the people's elected representative. That's the problem. 

If we get rid of political parties we will create more problems than we've solved. There will be unintended consequences. The perfect case in point has been some of the reforms introduced in the senate this Parliament where a whole number of independent senators were appointed and they have struggled to organize themselves. Now we have something called the "independent senators group" which is in effect a party. Maybe it's a party that is made up of more independently-minded senators and it isn't affiliated with one of the traditional parties in the senate. But it's a party. You can call it a group---but it's still a party.  

Now the point I'm trying to make is that you can't just have a legislature with a hundred independent senators that have no organizing groupings, and you can't have a house of commons with 338 members of parliament with no organizing groupings. That's because it just wouldn't be an efficient place to get things done. So I think you do need parties, but parties need to be reformed and they need to be reformed in a way that returns them to their rightful place in our system. Which is as a secondary to the primacy of the elected member of Parliament. 

At the end of the day people elect members of parliament, they don't elect parties, and they don't elect leaders of parties. That is the whole constitutional order of our system, established in 1867. And what we have done, though, is we've made these elected representatives secondary to the primacy of the political party and that is a subversion of our constitutional order. The constitution never says the word "parties" or "party caucuses" once. It mentions members of Parliament, the election of members of Parliament, dozens of times. So it's clear in our constitutional structure that the primary entity of our whole Parliament is organized around is the elected member of Parliament but what we've done in recent decades is supplant our elected member with the primacy of the political party and party caucus. 

We've done that through a series changes to written rules and the standing orders of the house of commons. We've done it through a series of written changes to Canadian law, the Elections Act and we've done it through unwritten conventions that have governed the house of commons. The solution isn't to get rid of parties, it's to reform political parties so that the elected member plays the primary role and not the party or the party leader. 

Hulet: There's a phrase that is sometimes used in philosophy about things that people try to discard, but are so necessary that they are instantly reinvented in some other guise: "you can chase it out the front door with a pitchfork, but it will just crawl in again through a back window". Banning political parties would be an example of that.  You can't get rid of them, they will manifest themselves one way or another.

Chong: And they've been around for hundreds of years. The difference being is that they were always secondary to the elected member. It's only been in recent decades that we've inverted that system. So that the primary organizing principle is now the political party and also known as the party leader, because party leaders control parties. That's another thing to know, is that two things have happened. Parties have become primary over the elected member of parliament. And secondly, party leaders have taken control of that party. Parties are essentially extensions of the party leader.

Hulet: It used to be that parties would have a president and their leader. They were separate positions. But the position of president just seems to have dissipated into nothingness.

Chong: That's right. The president is quite secondary to the party leader and that's through a series of written rule changes. I'll give you one example. For most of our history candidates for elections didn't get approved or vetoed by the party leader. Well, since the 1970s the party leader is the exclusive decider of who gets to be a party candidate. So from 1758 when the first elected legislatures were established in what we now call Canada until 1972 or 1974---1972 I believe---for that essentially 200 and 15 year period party leaders did not have a veto over a party candidate in an election. Since the early 1970s party leaders do have a veto. So there's an example of how parties existed before 1970 but were not controlled by the party leader---like they are today.

Hulet: Prior to that change was there some other central mechanism for approving or vetoing a candidate, or was it just up to the Electoral District Association (EDA)?

Chong: It was just based on the local EDA. 

Hulet: So you had to have very good EDAs in place.

Chong: Well, they were. And I would argue that before the 1972 election we didn't elect Parliaments who were filled with crazy people who were unable to get things done. In fact I've argued that some of the greatest Parliaments that we've ever seen predate the 1970s. Those were the ones that took us through the First and Second World Wars. The parliaments that before 1867 got together to establish our 1867 constitution, which bye-the-way has endured for over 150 years. A constitutional document that allowed us to go from a gaggle of three colonies--Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick---to a Canada that goes from sea to sea, that encompasses a territory far vaster than the fathers of confederation knew at that time. So that constitutional document was a visionary document that endures to this day. It sets up our judicial system, our government through democracy, our provincial governments, that created a division of powers and all these structures that define our society. Those were some of the greatest Parliaments we've ever seen in this country. And they were not made up by parties that were primary over the elected members. And they were not Parliaments where leaders controlled the parties. In fact, 

often you will hear members of parties as being "trained seals"---in other words being under the control of the party leader. In John A. MacDonald's day MPs were called "loose fish"---uncontrollable. But those loose fish who were not under the control of the party leader produced some of the most enduring, foundational structures of this country.  

Hulet: When I meet politicians I throw this at them once in a while---. It's from military science:  "Amateurs talk tactics and generals talk logistics".  I find that people like to talk about policy but what I want to hear from someone in a party is organization. How are they going to build the party? I wonder how much of what you are discussing flows from the decline in importance of the EDAs. Nowadays the head office with national media---it used to be television ads---is far more important than the local "connections" and the local media. I know in Guelph we don't have the Mercury anymore, no daily newspaper. It's got to be harder for a politician to get the word out to the general public. We have social media, but that's a whole rat's nest to deal with too. Again that's probably better organized on the national level than through local EDAs. Is that part of the reason why we have trained seals instead of loose fish?

Chong: You're asking if the erosion of local power is the change in the media landscape?

Hulet:  Yeah. The national media fixate about something they call a "Bozo Eruption". That's what happens when you have some lunatic candidate in Hog's Guts Saskatchewan say something idiotic. And before you know it, that's all the media will talk about.

Chong: I think the media coverage reflects where the power is, so they don't focus on local campaigns and EDAs. That's not where the power lies for these things. It rests with the national party office. I think if power was restored to the local grassroots EDAs you'd see a much greater media focus on them. 

Why do I know that? Because in the US where local associations have the power to nominate party candidates that's where the news is focused. 

I tell people Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would never be elected in Canada---she would never get the nomination to run. In the primary, she took on a long-time, senior member of the Democratic Caucus---a Congressman from New York city---and that would never be allowed here. That would be like somebody taking out Chrystia Freeland in Toronto in a party nomination, or, taking out another cabinet minister in Vancouver at a party nomination. The central party would never allow that to happen. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could never get the nomination in
Canada because the party leader would veto her!
Photo by nrkbeta, c/o Wiki Commons. 

That's because the power to nomination a candidate rests with the central party and the party leader, and not the local EDA. In fact "Samara" just came out with an empirical study of this about a week ago. I think that you'd have to look it up, it's actually a good study. From the numbers I recall they reviewed some 6000 party nominations over the past several years and only 17% were decided by local RA members. The other 83% were decided by the head office.  

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The "Samara" that Chong is referring to is the Samara Centre for Democracy. It's a Canadian non-profit that is devoted to analyzing the health of Canadian democracy and making suggestions about where it can be improved. I think the report he is referring to is something called Party Favours. I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that the report suggests that 83% were "decided by the head office". That's because the report says that 70% percent of candidates ran unopposed for their party nomination.

How that number breaks down is where the real issue lies. As the Samara document points out, nomination races are very much internal party business. And how you structure a nomination race makes all the difference in how open they are to potential candidates. Some seats are "safe" for a political party, and whomever gets the nomination in that riding has an excellent---if not overwhelming---chance of getting a seat in Parliament. That means that, in effect, the real race for Ottawa takes place when the candidate is nominated. Others ridings have "forlorn hope" races in the general election where short of a total miracle, no candidate of a particular party will have a chance of winning. In the former case, getting the nomination is a prized plum that gets awarded to someone. In the latter, running is an onerous duty that someone has to take on "for the good of the team".

Even in a riding where someone has a good chance of getting elected, there are often incumbents who are so popular that it is ridiculous for someone to try to replace them. In Wellington county, for example, someone would have to have rocks in their head to run against Michael Chong for the nomination---simply because he is immensely popular with voters. Similarly, in Guelph no one with any sense is going to challenge Mike Schreiner for the Green nomination. 

But having said that, there are still a lot of situations where the party head office has had a heavy-handed influence on the nomination process. Unfortunately, when I tried to find some evidence, I couldn't find any as most parties go to great lengths to "hush up" this sort of thing because it causes ill will among the membership.  

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Hulet: Wow!

Chong: So that would never be allowed to happen in the United States. In the US the law is clear, the constitution is clear. 100% of local party candidates are to be decided by the local party members. And that's the system we once had. In fact there have been changes in the last 20 years---in law---that have essentially made local riding associations  extensions of the leader's office. 

Riding associations today exist at the pleasure of the party leader. The party leader at any moment of time with his or her signature, and one or two signatures of their designates, can de-register a local EDA and re-register immediately another one made up of new members---new executive members of the leader's own choosing. And the leader has the power to do that ad infinitum. There's no restriction to that power. And leaders do that all the time. In fact, before the last election Mr. Trudeau deregistered and reregistered some 150 liberal EDAs---about half of them in the country---overnight with the stroke of a pen. Mr. Harper did the same thing---not 150 of them---when EDAs were not compliant with what the Conservative party of Canada head office, or he, wanted. He would on occasion deregister and register the RA with members that he wanted to support what he wanted to do.  So that's a change that was made to the law about 20 years ago, less than 20 years ago that allows party leader that power. That's another example of the written part of our system that has changed and given party leaders even more power and diminished the role of the elected member of parliament and the grassroots member of party associations. 

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These are pretty serious allegations, but unfortunately they are also the sort of thing that most mainstream editors would consider "too boring" for a reporters to spend time digging up info about. In addition, it's not the sort of thing that any party is going to broadcast far and wide on press releases. I briefly looked at the Elections Canada website and couldn't find anything to support Chong's assertions.

However, I did find a copy of the National Rules for the Selection of Candidates for the Liberal Party of Canada, as amended in December 17th, 2013. I think the most relevant part for Chong's points is the second clause:

1.2
Designation of Candidate by Leader. The Leader has the authority to designate a person to be the Candidate in any election, without the need for the conduct of a Meeting as otherwise contemplated by these Rules. Notwithstanding anything in these Rules, after consultation as set out in this Rule, the Leader may decide that a Meeting shall not be held in an Electoral District and may designate a person who will be the Candidate for an Electoral District in any Election upon the Candidate executing and filing with the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair such forms, undertakings and agreements otherwise provided for under these Rules as may be required by the National Campaign Chair. Except when there has been a declaration of electoral urgency pursuant to Rule 13 in respect of the relevant EDA, before designating a Candidate under this Rule, the Leader shall consult with the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair, who shall consult with, but need not obtain the consent of, the relevant EDA President.

In other words, the leader of the Liberal Party---Justin Trudeau---has the right to completely over-ride the will of the local EDA in choosing a candidate.

I also found another document, the Liberal Party of Canada Party By-law 2: ELECTORAL DISTRICT ASSOCIATIONS dated January 1, 2017. It has the following clause:

2.2 The National Board may revoke the recognition of any EDA that ceases to serve the purposes of an EDA or meet the criteria to be recognized or that engages in actions that are harmful to the Party. The revocation will be performed after notice is given to the EDA Board of Directors, who will be entitled to a hearing.

This is a very broad statement that gives the leaders of the party enormous power over the local EDA. So it would seem that Chong is right in saying that at least the Liberal Party of Canada has given itself the power to do the things that he says it does---even if I couldn't find any quotable evidence that it has actually done so. (As for the other parties, I'll just accept his assertion that the Conservatives do the same thing. And in the past I've spent a fair amount of time "in deep, dark jungle" that are both the NDP and Green Party constitutions. I won't bother going on that sort of safari unless their is a darn good reason for doing so---and I don't think that this article counts.) 

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This article is getting a bit long, so I'll stop here and finish the rest in a third one. That's where I'll dig down into some of the legislation that Chong has spear-headed to try to reform Parliament.

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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Why Watch a Turkish Soap Opera?

I've been spending time watching a Turkish soap opera over the last few months. (You got to love Netflix---it gives you an opportunity to waste time watching pop culture from all over the world!) The title is Ertugrul Resurrection and it's about the life of the father---Ertugrul Gazi---of the man usually credited with founding the Ottoman Empire---Osman Gazi.

A modern coin from Turkmenistan with an artistic
rendering of Ertugrul. From their central bank c/o
the Wiki Commons.  

It's a "ripping yarn" with good production values (one British website calls it "the Turkish Game of Thrones"), but the reason why I am interested in watching is because it gives me an eye into how other peoples see their own history and the cornerstones of a different culture. This isn't to say that it is historically accurate, but if it isn't exactly true, it does allow me to see the myths that inform another currently existing society.

What does Ertugrul Resurrection tell me about Turkish and Islamic society?

First off, that their history informs them with the idea that they have been surrounded by enemies, horribly abused, and, only managed to survive by the "skin of their teeth". In the first season we are introduced to the Gazi tribe, which has been forced to migrate from central Asia to the Middle East because of attacks by the Mongols. They have suffered from starvation and eventually migrate to land near Aleppo in modern day Syria. While there they suffer at the hands of Templar Knights (Christian Crusaders) who have a fortress nearby and who are conspiring against the Muslims and seeking to convince the Pope to order another crusade.

Secondly, we see that the organizational structure of the Gazi tribe is far, far more complex and cosmopolitan than the stories that Europeans tell about themselves. They aren't just a tribe of Turks trying to find their way in the world, they are very self-consciously part of a larger Seljuk Empire that has been badly damaged by the Mongol invasion, but still is a "live" part of people's understanding of themselves. In addition, they also see themselves as being part of the larger pan-Islamic civilization. Indeed, the hero of the series---Ertugrul---repeatedly states that the only reason why the Crusaders and Mongols were able to shatter their world was because the Muslim leaders refused to unite against their common enemy. And at least half of the plot revolves around internal intrigues by members of the society who either plot to seize power for themselves directly or in league with its external enemies.

The double-headed eagle emblem of the Seljuk Empire.
Artwork from the Selcuk University, Turkey, c/o Wiki Commons.

I find this a real contrast with the way Canadian, American, and, British history is portrayed. First off, none of our nations have really suffered significant defeat from our enemies.  Pearl Harbour, Dunkirk, etc, were merely momentary set-backs and our armies have always been ever victorious. Moreover, our historical dramas never have any sort of significant internal power struggles or really divided opinion about where we should go as a society. Problems came about, but always a dynamic leader arose that was able to unify the nation almost instantly:  Lincoln, Roosevelt, Churchill, etc, were always ready and waiting when they were needed.

Moreover, our societies are organized completely around the nation state. There was never a real commitment to a genuine multi-polar world where equal nations joined together because of a common understanding of the world. Christendom was, I suppose, like this during the Crusades, but that ideal was so badly damaged by the wars of religion that no popular culture I know of would try to suggest that they were anything more than doomed to failure from the outset.

Even more interesting is the complexity of what we would call "civil society". One of the key characters who moves the plot is a Sufi Master by the name of Ibn Arabi (another real historical figure) who comes from Al-Andalus which was a Islamic society in what is now Spain. He encourages Ertugrul, saves his life several times with his groovy mystical powers, and, prophesies that the Turks will eventually "bring justice and peace back to the Islamic world" (ie: found the Ottoman Empire.) 

In addition to the weird, secret world of the Sufis, this show suggests that a secret society known as the "White Beards" were really "pulling the strings" of the Turkish society and working to create a long-term, battle against the Mongols. Every tribe has a highly placed secret agent who reports back to the White Beards, and they have enormous power over the tribes. The group's leaders first meet with Ertugrul after he defeats the Crusaders and tells him that he needs to get his tribe to move from Syria to Anatolia (in modern Turkey) in order to fight against the Mongols. At a later meeting where representatives of all the tribes gather, the White Beards split the tribes into two groups and tells one half that their tribe will be martyred fighting against the Mongols so the other group can gather it's strength and become powerful enough to eventually overcome. The representatives all cheerfully take on their respective duties and head out to fight a war that will take decades to resolve. (I haven't seen anything similar to this in any Western popular portrayal of our history!)

Another aspect I find fascinating is the economy that is portrayed in the series. The Turks are a pastoral people, but while the men raise the livestock, the women have workshops where they process the wool into fine textiles---cloth and rugs---which are then sold to travelling traders who take their production out to the wider world. The hard currency raised this way is absolutely essential to the well-being of the tribe. This means that the women are an absolutely essential part of the economy of the tribe, and their needs are taken very seriously.

Even more to the point, as a warrior society that is at the brink of extinction because of Mongol persecution, women are considered an essential part of the military and expected to learn how to fight. They carry daggers thrust in their sashes just like the men. They also have swords and know how to use them. In one episode the leader of the tribe---a woman---is lying wounded in bed during a Mongol attack. The men are out fighting, and several women are in the yurt guarding her. A bunch of Mongol warriors burst in and the women kill all of them with scimitars and daggers. (The moral of the story is "don't mess with Turkish women!")

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If you like my blog, why not subscribe? Patreon and Pay Pal make it easy. 

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I suspect some readers are by now asking themselves "Why is Bill blathering on in such detail about a Turkish soap opera?" The reason why is because I think that watching this show gives me at least a glimpse of an understanding of what is currently going on in the Middle East.

There are a couple things in the show that "set off" flags for me.

One of the warrior characters goes off on a little diatribe about how he loves to kill "non-Muslims". Given the fact that the only people that he has hadto deal with as an enemy are Christian Crusaders and Pagan Mongols, this sorta makes sense. Having said that, the hero of the show "liberates" a huge Templar treasure when he conquers their castle and makes a point of sending some of the loot to the Christian villages in the neighbourhood, who paid into this horde because of the oppressive rule of the Knights. There is also a Jewish character in one episode who helps hide Ertugrul when Crusader spies are seeking to kill him. But having pointed out these counter-examples, one does understand that the show does portray non-Muslims as being the fundamental enemies of justice and freedom for the people of the Islamic world. I suspect that given recent history it wouldn't be hard to find similar sentiment in the modern age.

One point that really struck home was the way no one is ever just a "casualty of war" in this show. Instead, they are "martyrs". To my ears that sounds weird. When I think about the term, I think of Christian missionaries being fed to lions or burnt in the arena at the behest of a Roman Emperor. It's strange to think of a soldier being a "martyr". But having said that, watching this show has helped me understand statements coming out of Iran saying that General Qasem Soleimani is a "martyr".

Qasem Soleimani, "martyred" in a drone strike on the orders
of President Donald Trump. Image c/o Wiki Commons.
Cropped by Bill Hulet

Another thing that I find weird is the way people are very upfront about being interested in getting revenge on other people for their actions. Lord knows, our society pays very little attention to the core teachings of the Gospels, but the "turn the other cheek" ethos is deep enough that I rarely hear much out-and-out calling for simple revenge. Instead, there's something of an attempt to suggest that, as Gandhi famously said, "The doctrine of an eye for an eye just leaves everyone blind". (I recall having the same feeling when I read Simon Weisenthal's book The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. That book also questions the absolute commandment to forgive that seems to be a basic tenant of both Christianity and Buddhism. Weisenthal doesn't discard this idea with regard to the Holocaust, but he does wrestle with it and ultimately---if memory serves---never does come to a decision about whether forgiveness is possible in such extreme situations.) 

Simon Weisenthal, Holocaust survivor.
Public Domain image c/o Wiki Commons.

This too explains some of the things that I've seen on the newscasts about what is coming from Iran. We need to remember that in the West "revenge" is an idea that large swathes of the population dismiss as being something that our leadership should never follow. Instead, our leaders often at least pay lip service to the idea that instead we should be building our foreign policy around the idea of avoiding future conflict instead of trying to play "tit for tat". The impression I get from Ertugrul Resurrection is that in Islam revenge is considered a perfectly acceptable motive for future actions. If this is true, it's important that we citizens understand this point when we are thinking about foreign policy.

Ultimately, the thing to remember is that while there are tremendous similarities among all people, there are also significant differences between cultures. It's important to remember that when we watch the news. And I would suggest that people should put at least some effort into understanding the differences between cultures if they really want to understand what is going on around them.

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Furthermore I say onto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Just Exactly What Are People So Angry About?

One of the more tedious and draining things I do to research for this blog is try to follow at least a little bit of the local "alt-right". On the eve of Yule I found a link to the following YouTube video, which really caught my eye.

What surprised me was that this fire captain was at---of all things---an Extinction Rebellion protest. This surprised me, because the fellow who posted the link is someone who is very adamant about man-made climate change being a total crock.

This surprised me so much I decided to ask him a question about it.

Hulet:  So you believe in the climate change problem? 

(Name withheld by me to avoid identifying the guy): Not the hype. Not this cat. The climate has been changing for billions of years. Nothing new there. 

Hulet:  Oh. I was just wondering why you posted that video then, he was talking at an Extinction Rebellion event---. 

Unidentified guy: I focused on the broader general government corruption points. 

When I first watched the video the thing that really jumped out at me was that the fireman wasn't making any obviously factual claims. Instead, he was just complaining over an over again about how "corrupt" the government is. (My significant other pointed out that he's probably physically and emotionally exhausted from working constantly trying to fight the enormous Australian bush fires.)  Whatever the reason, the video is pretty much entirely an emotive statement---just a long-winded way of saying over and over again: "I'm really upset and angry about the people running our society".

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Well, here we are, it's a new year. I know a lot of people read my blog. I know a number of you are fairly well off. So why not make a New Year's resolution to support local Indie media by buying a subscription to "The Guelph Back-Grounder"? PayPal and Patreon make it easy.

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I've also been trying to find the time to work through a couple books for future stories. One of them is Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation.

Marantz's argument is that the people running social media platforms on the Web have created artificial intelligence programs that can almost instantly tell what form of titles and content will attract random viewers to a specific story. (This is what is known as "click bait".) With this data analysis in hand, a whole new publishing industry has been created that simply selects for and designs exclusively on the basis of what sells instead of what is "true", "good", "important", or any other criteria that editors used to use to decide what stories to put in their newspapers or magazines.

Just to give you an idea of how successful this new editorial strategy has become, Marantz contrasts an aggregator website named "Upworthy" that just takes existing goofy stories from other on-line sites, repackages them in their own format, and, adds titles that tend to attract attention. Supposedly, "Upworthy" reported 87 million unique visits a month one year after it launched---more than The New York Times. (I was overjoyed when The Guelph-Back-Grounder broke 2,000 a month last November!)

Research has shown that what gets selected for "click bait" tends to based on a small number of emotions.

"Content that evokes high-arousal emotion is more likely to be shared," two Wharton professors wrote in 2012. "Positive and negative emotions characterized by high arousal (i.e., awe, anxiety, and anger) are positively linked to virality, while emotions characterized by low arousal (i.e., sadness) were negatively linked to virality."

High-arousal emotions are also called activating emotions. They are emotions that lead to measurable behaviors---in this case, clicking or liking or sharing a link---as opposed to deactivating emotions, which are more likely to induce torpor or paralysis.  

(from Antisocial, Chapter 5---the Ebook lacks page numbers.)

And the thing to understand is that

From the standpoint of sheer entrepreneurial competition, what matters is not whether a piece of online content is true or false, responsible or reckless, prosocial or antisocial. All that matters is how many activating emotions it can provoke.*

Footnote * Three MIT computer scientists, writing in Science in 2018, found that false rumors on Facebook evoked more high-arousal emotions than the actual news, which was more likely to inspire such deactivating emotions as malaise and confusion. This was one of the explanations for the paper's main finding: that fake news is consistently more likely to go viral than the truth.  

(Antisocial, Chapter 5 plus footnote.)  

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I can't help but think that the real issue is that some people get addicted to the feeling of being angry. It triggers something like an adrenaline rush---like jumping out an airplane while sky diving or blasting down a road fast on a hot motorcycle. 

The problem from a social point of view is that this addicting behaviour is being promoted by businesses in order to promote advertising and push a political agenda. For example, as I pointed out in one of my more popular posts---Fundraising is Making Us Angry---the Conservative party bases most of it's fundraising on making supporters angry so they do "rage giving". 

It's as if our society has allowed big businesses total freedom to distribute highly addictive drugs and "let the chips fall where they may" when it comes to the larger impact on society. (Wait---we did that with opioids didn't we?  That's why we have two methadone clinics and a safe injection site in downtown Guelph, plus teenagers carrying around naloxone kits in their backpacks "just in case" they come across someone having an overdose.) 

It didn't use to be this way. Newspapers, magazines, and, radio and tv stations used to have editors who took responsibility for what they published or aired. There were councils that forced them to show some restraint in what they printed. Could someone please explain to me why the government hasn't forced InterWeb companies like FaceBook and YouTube to take similar responsibility for printing out-and-out bullshit that cranks up adrenaline addicts?

We used to have things like

• "truth in advertising" regulations through the Competition Bureau of Canada 
• law 181 of the Federal Criminal code that said "Every one who wilfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years"
• the American Federal Communications Commission had a "fairness doctrine" that governed the public airwaves from 1949 to 1987, which said that private broadcasters used the airwaves at the pleasure of the public. This meant that government regulators could force companies that were awarded a license for exclusive use of a specific frequencies to broadcast information for the public good (ie: "news") and that they had to allow different points of view equal ability to express themselves on air (ie: the radio and tv couldn't be political shills for one point of view or party---in effect, no Fox News or Rush Limbaugh allowed.)  
• the National NewsMedia Council that you could complain to if you thought a newspaper, magazine, etc, was violating journalist or ethical standards 

but for some weird reason the government of Canada (as well as almost everywhere else) has decided that "the Internet is new, it's groovy, it's disruptive---so absolutely none of the old rules apply!!!!" 

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate emergency must be dealt with!