There is little question that Western democracies are under assault. Autocracies across the globe have long recognized the inherent chinks to be found in the armour of democratic systems and in the age of ubiquitous social media and the information superhighway, autocrats and oligarchs have spared little expense in exploiting those chinks in attempts to undermine Western nations.
There are those who rail against a perceived lack of action by our democratically elected leadership in countering those attacks—but the truth of the matter is that many of those “chinks” are foundational to a free and functioning democracy.
Those exploits are not only being manipulated by outside actors; a significant amount of treasure is also expended by oligarchs within our democracy in attempts to “game” the system. Those who still maintain ability to exercise critical thought will note the right-leaning timbre of the “news” items posted to their Bing homepage—including a weird juxtaposition of an image of opposition leader Pierre Poilievre attached to a cryptocurrency advertorial. It takes money to play, and it is the right which tends to have the cash to splash.
The steady and near ceaseless stream of negativity aimed toward our politicians and institutions with which we are being bombarded these days online goes far beyond the realm of fair comment—that concept was left in the dust some time ago.
Not that honesty and fair dealing has been a hallmark of political actors down through the ages. Old-style politics was a very down and dirty game when played on the hustings by the ‘backroom’ cadres. Some would say that it has always been this way.
But what has not always been this way is the cumulative effect that a constant barrage of negativity from all sides has had upon the public consciousness. Trust in government and institutions has been plummeting and that is a very dangerous trend—reference the final days of the Weimer Republic.
Without trust, democracy will eventually wither on the vine.
There is a cost to honesty, transparency and accountability when practiced by a politician—but the cost of not exercising those virtues will eventually be much higher for those of us who cherish our democratic freedoms.
Politicians of all stripes, therefore, must be held to a higher ideal. This holds true for a John Tory, a Doug Ford, a Justin Trudeau and yes, so too a Jagmeet Singh. Trust is the armour that protects and insulates our Western democratic societies from the darkness. It is easily lost and so very hard to regain—to play with it for partisan gain is to betray us all.
We need to be able to trust our elected leaders. But there are two sides to this equation. As electors we must hold those seeking public office to account for prevarication when informing us, and most especially when they betray our trust.
