The Financial Times posted a video with Margaret Atwood discussing democracy. It's just 6 minutes, and the illustrations (from Jamie Macdonald) really add to it.
She asks if democracy is fragile or resilient, and points out that we might find out as more climate change effects hit closer to home. I like the video - it's short and sweet and might wake people up to the idea that democracy can be lost if we don't work to protect it. But I don't love it. I have some caveats.
She suggests the US is nearing a totalitarianism but Canada's fine -- except how different are we actually?? Pre-Harper/Obama I would never have considered moving south, relishing in our relative supports like amazing health care that's completely free and our protected waterways and forests! Once Harper got a majority government in 2011 and started decimating environmental protections while Obama was adding protections and stopped a pipeline of our dirty oil, I started to look at our two countries very differently. And now, it feels like we're very, very close to the privatized, insurance-determining type of health care that's common stateside. I've also recently learned that the US has a better mechanism for getting people in to see a psychiatrist. In some parts of Canada the waiting list is off the charts. And if you need expensive meds regularly, it doesn't matter much which country you live in.
Yet Atwood seems confident that Canada is significantly better off politically. It feels like wishful thinking at this point.
She also paints the left and right as equally problematic without pointing out that all the major political parties in Canada and the US (and lots of places elsewhere) have moved further and further to the right. There aren't many truly left leaning parties out there anymore, the Tommy Douglas and Ed Broadbent type that fight tooth and nail for workers rights, caps on rent and food prices, and basic care for all. The video seems to glorify centrism, which can be the best of both, but can also be the worst of both.
Her solution also fall flat for me: educate people.
First, it misses the vital importance of social movements to maintaining a democracy at a time when Germany is in the streets to protest far-right extremism. The big problem with Canada is we can be too polite and too trusting that the government surely won't do anything too bad, right? They're not going to actually privatize health care and education in a way that affect my family, right? Surely not! Meanwhile, that shift is happening right under our noses, and people still support Ford and Poilievre. I worry about Canada becoming a totalitarianist state first because we won't want to make a fuss. And if the states goes in that direction, you know we'll follow our big brother into anything.
Secondly, education by whom, and where and under who's control?? There are far-right groups of parents who are hoping to control curriculum in the schools. There are far-right governments who are willing to help them ban books and limit information around sex education, religion, and Covid. We've always had yellow journalism, but now we have predatory publishing of bogus research sites and AI and bots that fill the internet with highly questionable information, some of which might filter into the classroom of well-meaning teachers, duped by the slickness of the packaging.
We absolutely need better education, but we also need to light a fire under people to form and join social movements to reinstate the regulations that keep people healthy and safe and fed before the conservative neoliberal policies took hold. Maybe we need Salons and where people discuss books and papers and come to some conclusions about them.
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