Dinner Table Politics: Chapter 1 Draft

Michael Alex

2009

www.teachlearnchange.org

Dinner Table Politics The Myths That Make Us Stupid First Course: Understanding Our Shared Political Indigestion ∞ Excerpt from the West Wing. Two members of the president’s communications staff argue the relative merits of the president subjecting a foreign dignitary to overt political criticism at a state diplomatic dinner.

Sam Seabourne: Do you really think it’s a good idea to invite people to dinner and then tell them exactly what they’re doing wrong with their lives?

Toby Zigler: Absolutely. Otherwise it’s just a waste of food.

∞ Myth: Politics should not be discussed at the dinner table ∞ The myth cited above contends that political discussions should be avoided at the dinner table – at any cost. However, the reality is that politics, any issue, process or institution imbued with power relations, infuse our dinner tables whether we like it or not. This means, to paraphrase the cliché, that nearly all, if not every thing is political. Most obviously, this occurs when someone at the table raises an explicitly political issue, such as immigration policy or tax cuts. Sometimes, other diners will bite and a heated political debate boils over. More often, those being served dinner table politics will avoid engagement, evading, not confronting. Tempers may simmer but many diners will avoid political talk. In such cases, it is unclear whether silence is the result of an unwillingness to discuss politics at the dinner table, or if it indicates tacit agreement with positions that have been tabled. This confusion is too high a price to pay for social harmony since the person who has transgressed the convention of avoiding politics at the dinner table goes unchallenged – as do their politics.

I challenge the myth forwarded by Bowman and others that the ‘antacid’ for dinner table politics is avoidance. Politics at the dinner table is inescapable, since banning political discussion is itself a political move. Declaring that the dinner table, or any social space for that matter should be politics-free, thereby censoring those present, is not apolitical but rather a highly strategic power play. Whether we explicitly talk politics or are instructed to change the subject, the dinner table is a primary location in which we are taught political lessons and assume more and often less well thought out personal positions. The structure and form of this space is significant. In part, it determines how we will discuss controversial issues, which issues are considered (un)important and

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whose voices will be heard, among others. Avoiding issues doesn’t make them go away, it simply impairs the learning that is essential for diners to achieve political maturity.

In this book, I define dinner table politics as a concept and discuss its significance for politics in families, communities and our increasingly interconnected global society.

In so doing, I challenge key examples of dinner table politics and the myths that they perpetuate. Overall, I argue that since dinner table politics is too some extent inevitable, we need to acknowledge the political power of the dinner table and engage with the politics that are disseminated in and through this space. In keeping with the valuable feminist maxim, I argue that the personal – in this case the family dinner table – is indeed political, and that we avoid talking politics at our collective peril.

Convinced that eating and politics don’t mix? Consider for instance the gender politics of who most likely made, served and cleaned up your dinner. Yes, even the simple act of dinner preparation has political overtones and implications. If you eat at home, the gendered nature of domestic labour rears its head and, yes, domestic labour remains unequal in even the most enlightened homes. Eating out? Consider the likely racial and socio-economic background of most servers, dishwashers, busboys and cooks.

This is but one example, perhaps closest literally and figuratively to the politics of dining.

Some argue that we should simply close our mouths (and our minds) and keep eating what we’re used to being served. However, I agree with West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin.

Without politics, dinner is just a waste of food.

Understanding Dinner Table Politics: The Anatomy of the Dinner Table Before proceeding, let’s be specific about the meaning of dinner table politics. For discussions to qualify as dinner table politics, they must be superficial in nature. They skim a shallow pool of knowledge. Too often they are informed by the superimposition of diners existing beliefs and values onto the day’s headlines, both of which may be more, or often less well examined in any case. I offer the following definition: Dinner Table Politics (d n r t b l p l -t ks), n. 1. discussion of political or social issues around the dinner table (most often amongst family or close social relations) that leads to the development of one’s political (mis)education. 2. a key site for the production and dissemination of incidental and/or intentional untruths based in narrow self-interest; related sites include the academy, church, news, media, public relations, television, & think-tank. 3. conventional wisdom (< John Kenneth Galbraith); a received truth with a level of community acceptance that has a negative inverse relationship to actual proof (e.g. immigrants are stealing ‘our’ jobs). 4. discourse marked by stereotype and prejudice, knowingly, with malice; the production of a lie for wide publicity. 5. a commonly held worldview that grants comfort to the speaker even it reinforces fear, foolishness, selfishness and xenophobia. 6. angry or inflammatory speech characterized by Us vs.

Them thinking; often leads to ‘blaming of the Other’ (< Edward Said). 7. a ‘talking point,’ a simplistic concept used, with repetition, to confuse or convince a popular

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audience. 8. the antithesis of critical thought. 9. an easy answer as opposed to a tough question. 10. a condescending manner of communicating whereby people are talked down to or otherwise disempowered. 11. political claims masquerading as objective, apolitical or factual observations. 12. political discussion that treats politics as sport or theatre rather than devoting meaningful treatment to issues. 13. The myths that make us stupid.

Fundamentally, dinner table politics describes impaired quality and form in our casual, everyday conversations. Dinner table politics are key to defining and understanding the nature of informal political relations. In key ways, the politics inherent in these relationships and the discussion they engender (or silence) is far more salient to democracy than the formal institutional politics of government legislation or voter registration. Dinner table politics solidified as a concept, not from my own family dinners per se, but rather from discussions about teaching politics I shared with my partner Krista, me in a variety of high school social sciences, Krista as a university professor in political science and womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studies. Over time, and almost incidentally, we adopted the handle to describe the content and character of the various balonies offered up, innocently or shamelessly, as contributions in class discussions. We wondered: if the opinions we often encountered in class bore little relation to the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in-class education, where did such instinctual, reactionary and poorly thought out ideas originate?

To be specific, the first that either of us can recall using the term dinner table politics was in the context of one of Kristaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s students from a first year politics class, whose in-class contributions generally took the form of angry, uninformed and frequently aggressive rants. The family dinner table seemed the most likely source for his poorly informed anger. The raving, unsupported nature of his comments, the most notable of which denounced gender equity on the basis that, in his view, women are unfit to fight fires, made it unlikely that he had critically tackled either course lectures or readings.

Therefore, we coined dinner table politics to mark the link between this political bile we frequently encountered in classes and the physical location where it was most clearly ingested: family dinner.

In-class discussions frequently hit roadblocks that had evidently been constructed through years of uninformed, unchallenged dinner table mythology. Some might object to what may appear to be our of dinner tables as lone distilleries for stupidity. Such a depiction would be both unfair and inaccurate, and it is not our intent to provide one. Not all dinner table politics took their inspiration, strictly speaking, from family meals. Others were grounded in partisan or religious dogma. Vapid pop culture, consumer fetishism and lazy journalism each played important roles in entrenching nonsensical views. Over time, we began to abstract the term to other examples of uninformed, unprepared nonsense we encountered in our classes. Dinner table politics became convenient shorthand for describing this frustrating tendency we saw in students over and over. As our careers progressed, these encounters with dinner table politics quickly became a litany. In class, we began to see patterns of resistance to any counter-narrative that challenged common sense understandings of political issues.

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To confront stupidities shared in classes in a way that didn’t shut down discussion or provoke humiliation, we posed simple, direct questions. These were designed to gently but directly expose presumed political truths for what they more often were – unadulterated crap. As our ongoing dialogue about dinner table politics continued, we recognized that though its origins were varied, what united these ignorant contributions were large helpings of bias, presumption and superficial thinking. Happily, they were and are easily upset by a little Socratic questioning. As teachers, we feel – and here, I argue – that such questioning is within the ability of almost all people. The main problem is that too many of us our out of practice, so used we have become to politely maintaining relationships in environments that at all costs maintain an officially – but ultimately fictional – apolitical framework.

So, after more reflection and some subtle investigation, we concluded that most of the nonsense we heard was most directly attributable to what students had learned at home, or at least that these opinions, while drawn from numerous sources, were often given focus, voice and power in the home, and at the family dinner table specifically. It was, and is, an apt metaphor. Dinner table politics describes the micro-political discourse that takes place as families gather to eat their evening meal and, often, discuss the news of the day. Too often, such talk reflects knee-jerk, unreflective clichés that are passed from neighbour to neighbour and from parent to child. These common sense assumptions can and do have powerful, even profound effects on the shape that formal politics conducted and commented on in the public square ultimately takes. The implications that politics conducted casually by non-professionals in the course of everyday lives hold for the more formal structures that we understand as ‘politics’ are rarely acknowledged. This failure does not make them less real.

Once identified as such, dinner table politics can be seen everywhere: in conversations with colleagues, at parties, family gatherings, the pub, on TV, in pop culture and the press. Once established and placed beyond consideration, discussion or even identification, the myths that make us stupid are bandied about and transmitted from source to source to source for all to see, hear and unthinkingly devour and regurgitate.

Needless to say, it has left me with a lingering and unresolved case of political indigestion. I wager that many people share this affliction. We suffer needlessly. What dinner table politics creates is not unlike the plight of middle-aged men who suffer from prostate problems, where a habit of silence and shame steals their power to take necessary action to save themselves. This is the situation in which our world finds itself and, like the prostate, it’s painful and wrist-deep in shit.

Yet political scientists and sociologists tend to focus on institutions and formal political structures, to the detriment of being able to appreciate the immense potential and danger that exists in informal politics. Sociologist Jeffrey Goldberg uncovers and describes this power in his book The Politics of Small Things. He contends that groups of people who gather traditionally, meet informally, or organize thoughtfully all have tremendous political power. In his view, this power is contingent on the existence of free spaces such as cafés, bookshops or dinner tables. All are sites that lay beyond the coercive powers of the state or other institutional actors. He defines the politics of small 4 Not for use or publication without permission

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things as the power that all people have to frame political context and give meaning to its content. Despite the clear advantages that state and corporate elites enjoy over disorganized and unevenly educated people, he claims that, “when people talk to each other, defining a situation on their own terms and developing a capacity to act in concert, they constitute democratic alternative to terror and hegemonic force.”

To be clear, I distinguish dinner table politics, which I use in a strictly pejorative sense from politics at the dinner table, which I argue is highly productive and politically important. Goldberg notes how informal political spaces and the conversations that take place in them can cut both ways, often having profoundly negative consequences. He writes: “The distance from the party state and its official demands may be understood as a distancing from power, creating space for discussion and reflection. But it is also the case that public compliance with the official order is insured in the interactions that occur around the table.” If politics at the dinner table is a way to fight the political status quo, then dinner table politics is the frequent tendency people have to participate in their own disempowerment. To move from dinner table politics to politics at the dinner table, people must create environments where more topics can be tabled for discussion and people exercise the liberty to form and work consciously within political spaces. We must also make or renew our commitments to engage in constructive political talk. In terms of its value to a functioning democracy, politics at the dinner table is exceptional. But it need not be the exception. More people can do their small but relevant part to upset dinner table politics as the rule.

This requires a spirit of respect that encourages reflection over bombast. It also means a commitment to active engagement over dodged political discussion. As a teacher, I stand by theses criteria. They are, not coincidentally the minimum conditions necessary for creating classroom spaces that are intellectually challenging, interesting and safe. It takes work to create such environments, ones that are hospitable to participants while remaining inhospitable to myth making. This work is valuable, not least for its educational and democratic payoff. All people have a large stake in seeing them grow and succeed. Stupidity is far less likely to take hold in an atmosphere of mutual respect and thoughtful scepticism.

Dinner Table Politics in Action: A Case Study To better understand what I mean by dinner table politics, consider the following example that I encountered as a result of the following question from a human geography exam: Using data from the population pyramid for the 2000 census, and the projected pyramid for the 2020 census, would you advise the government to invest more heavily in health care or education?

Given the rapidly aging population, the correct answer is health care since, by 2020, the Baby Boomers will be far into their retirement years while the number of young people is

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projected to shrink in relative terms. The class had studied this and related demographic trends in some detail. Yet, the question elicited the following response from one student: If I were to advise the government what to do, I would tell them to cut taxes. In twenty years, taxes will be a much bigger problem than either health care or education. If the government cuts taxes, people will have more money to spend and they will be happier. Taxes are too high already, and if we don’t do something about it [sic], people in the future will have a lot of problems.

The question was designed to test students’ ability to analyse census data and apply this skill in new situations. Any in-class reference to taxation was incidental since we had studied demographic trends, not public policy. They would have been beyond the typical frame of reference for most fourteen-year-old students; more often, discussion of tax policy falls within the grade economics curriculum. The particular student who offered this response exhibited exactly zero political consciousness in class discussions. The majority of her contributions consisted of references to her love of clothing, pop culture, Sex and the City and, surprise, shopping. Yet, in a moment of doubt, she dipped into the tried and true well of dinner table politics to save her from a lack of study.

This example is one of many I have encountered (there is a burgeoning cottage industry of teachers and professors publishing the nonsensical answers they have culled from student work over the years; presumably, these are meant to amuse), one to which I will return shortly from a slightly different angle. It illustrates how pervasive talking points that attack the basis of the social-welfare state have become. Issues that are most relevant to the daily lives of ordinary people, from health care, education and the environment, are by default framed and understood only under the omnipresent shadow of tax talk. Taxes are themselves portrayed as an unbearable burden, a social evil. Tax ‘relief’ (as it has been successfully portrayed) is the unassailable, unquestioned public good that supersedes all other government objectives. This framework for discussion has largely elbowed out counter narratives within public debate taking place in the media, government and, not surprisingly, family dinner tables. Changed talk has led to changed thought. It has taken hold despite the fact that tax cuts reduce the state’s ability to meaningfully address the needs of the very people they claim to represent.

Therefore, in terms of taxation, how priorities are set, by whom, and in whose interest are questions that are rarely asked or even acknowledged. This marks a substantial neo-liberal victory in accomplishing mass consensus in terms of the established starting point for discussion of political issues by ordinary people, media commentators and academic and political elites. It guarantees tacit victory in a fundamental political debate, be default winning over even those with most to lose from the privatization tax cuts necessitate and are designed to accomplish. That this misrepresentation has seeped even into the exam room meanderings of a politically unaware adolescent shows the extent to which the population at large has absorbed this particular example of dinner table politics. This student is far from alone. Those who 6 Not for use or publication without permission

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uncritically parrot myths parading as fact are often complicit in their own victimization vis-à-vis their own careless talk.

In many cases people appear to fundamentally lack awareness that a debate might (or should) even exist or what questions they might raise about the presumptions that underlie their political positions. And in the absence of a habit of democratic political talk, their superficial, immature positions can harden into profoundly stupid political convictions. In his book Consumed, Benjamin Barber makes the case that this fundamental democratic deficit has emerged both because of the malevolence of selfinterested elites and laziness of the people to whom they alternately pander and spank: I am not suggesting in the passive voice that there ‘is a process of infantilization under way.’ I am arguing that many of our primary businesses, educational, and governmental institutions are consciously and purposefully engaged in infantilization and as a consequence that we are vulnerable to such associated practices as privatization and branding…The passive, quasi-addicted children who emerge as archetypical consumers are less one-dimensional than no-dimensional, because such identity as they possess is entirely heteronomous, a product of what is bought, eaten, worn and imbibed. This is not really an identity at all, but merely a coat worn to cover nakedness. I am my Mercedes. I am my Apple. I am my Big Mac. I am my Nikes. I am my MTV. Thus, with respect to their political talk, too many people are akin to the pre-school toddlers who, interviewed in a recent newscast that turned me off my own dinner, trumpeted their enthusiastic support for brand name haute couture because they wanted, needed even, to feel ‘pretty.’ From an early age, this self-indulgent zeal to pleasure ourselves displaces adult commitments to the responsibilities of informed citizenship.

Political talk that is, necessarily, concerned with things beyond our own base desires is no longer required, encouraged or valued. Though childlike, this tendency is hardly limited to children. Given our society’s increasingly entrenched aversion to political talk, spreading anti-intellectualism and a growing trend to unrepentantly act stupidly – like the very self-interested ‘idiots’ who were scorned and disqualified for democratic participation in ancient Athens – we shouldn’t be surprised that the quality or even existence of purposeful political talk is endangered. Barber is right. Why should people, even adults be expected to think or act maturely when everywhere they are rewarded for behaving like indulged and ultimately irresponsible children?

Using learned helplessness to escape responsibility for our roles, however small, in the perpetration of dinner table politics should no longer be considered an acceptable option because people know better, or at least they should. Prior to the twentieth century, people could still reasonably claim that they didn’t have access to information about other parts of the world. Often, limitations in travel and communications technologies granted the sometimes defence of unavoidable ignorance. In many instances, people could claim to be unaware of atrocities or human rights abuses in places X, Y or Z. Hell, superstition 7 Not for use or publication without permission

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still ruled in talk about distant continents like Africa or Asia until very recently. No longer. The period of intense globalization that following the two world wars has robbed those who might choose to turn a blind eye of a key excuse.

In this vein, George Orwell, a critic most mindful of the dangers that modern post-industrial society poses to our basic humanity observed that, “in our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” This reality requires people to speak up or else allow others to act on their behalf, without consultation. Orwell also wisely points out that political discussions are typically fraught with deception and irresponsible conduct. To improve our political culture, participants must be mindful and talk responsibly. When people are, dinner table dictators can be forced to account for their ignorance and arrogance.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that I’ve cited my (anonymous) student’s work to illustrate dinner table politics, not to belittle the student personally. People, particularly young people, are victimized by dinner table politics since they suffer most from propagated myth making. We should distinguish between making people responsible for their role in the production of dinner table politics, and silencing those who feel intimidated about become involved in political talk, particularly if they find themselves in company of those with mixed levels of education or experience. In fact, finding ourselves in mixed company is best. Robert Putnam notes that Surveys show that most of our political discussions take place informally, around the dinner table or the office water cooler. We learn about politics through casual conversation. You tell me what you’ve heard and what you think, and what your friends have heard and what they think, and I accommodate that new information into my mental database as I ponder and revise my position on an issue.

Above all, people talking politics should retain sympathy for their companions’ and their positions. In particular, experienced debaters have a particular responsibility to remain patient with those taking baby steps into a habit of political talk. Still, dinner table politics is a chief vehicle for people in our society making, or allowing themselves and others to be made stupid. This reality, and our participation in the process, makes all people living in a democratic community responsible and, often, culpable.

Were these examples limited to the classroom, I might instead have undertaken to write a very different book, one critical of mainstream teaching pedagogy, the education system or the young people and instructors who populate it. However, in my experience, students are more not less critical, open-minded and investigative than the general population, and certainly more so than most of their own parents. With a tip of my hat to Rousseau, I chalk my general sense that young people haven’t had their sense of possibility neutered by experience, their curiosity dulled by the learned-helplessness the avowedly apolitical, or their sense of outrage at the world’s wrongs robbed by a sense of powerlessness. (Doubtful? Consider for instance the sense of power and immortality 8 Not for use or publication without permission

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possessed by most teenagers.) No, the dysfunctionality of casual political talk is hardly limited to, nor most serious or even evident in conversation with young people.

Fortunately, we live at a time when education is increasingly cheap and accessible. Literacy is deemed a right, even a requirement rather than a privilege.

Technological innovations have made global knowledge and communication a growing, if still privileged reality. However, to embrace these capacities as self-evident accomplishment is to ponder utopianism. More often, we have access to pools of knowledge and information that grow exponentially, yet we show evidence of actually know less and less. In the context of this embarrassment of potential educational riches, and increasing social vacuity, a question that no one seems to be asking remains. What I want to ask is this: How did we all get to be so damned stupid?

One answer: dinner table politics.

Dinner Table Politics and Voluntary Stupidity: The Active Refusal to Know People reading or watching the news must think actively or else regular updates amount to little more than meaningless chatter. Too often people lie back, passively going through the motions of intercourse with their media partners. To some extent, we are all guilty in this respect. We do it every time we unthinkingly digest a news story as a one off, failing to question what or how we’re being served, or by not seeking context, clarification or larger meaning. Too often, people who fancy themselves informed and conversant in the important issues of the day have little use for news other than to cycle it around at dinner or at the office water cooler. They rarely do anything with the information they have learned.

Consider media critic Neil Postman’s indictment of hyper-saturated media environments. He describes a relationship between news media and news audiences that amounts to entrenched, co-dependant apathy: Most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action…You may get a sense of what this means by asking yourself [a] series of questions: What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering for you: You plan to do nothing about them.

Postman’s examples could easily be updated to include current examples such as reports of imminent global pandemics, Darfur or the War on Terror. He wrote this passage over 9 Not for use or publication without permission

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twenty years ago. Nonetheless, Postman provides a rough approximation of the process by which dinner table politics is created, disseminated and regurgitated. News reporting and consumption by rote ensures that our shared political impotence continues. We pay for these failings by being forced to watch news that we largely feel bored by and from which we are disconnected, or at best banally entertained. Even when bothering to stay informed, many people do so only because to do otherwise evokes a sense of guilt that one is failing to meet minimum standards of informed, adult citizenship.

How often have you considered this question: Why do you watch or read the news anyway? Do you often learn new things? Does story content change from day-to-day, that is, if you fail to stay on top of the news due to holiday or hectic schedule, have you really missed something? Probably, you haven’t missed anything. The news will still be there, with similar story lines and, barring rare events of catastrophic impact, will be little changed. So why bother? For most of us, there will be disturbing answers to these questions. It seems clear that this means that there are fundamental problems with how media outlets deliver the news and how audiences use information. Keep in mind, I’m not actually suggesting that people should tune out or stop paying attention to current events, even as the relevance and quality of the news media decline. Far from it, people who ignore the mainstream news and alternative media sources that deal with contemporary political issues voluntarily make themselves stupid. Their critical faculties atrophy from disuse and they become prime targets for cynical manipulation. At least a simple majority of people are all too willing to abdicate their responsibility to become or remain informed.

Despite the good things I have already had to say about young people, this tendency is increasingly true of people under 30. My confused geography student was not an isolated case. Even young adults who hold university degrees are, on aggregate, less knowledgeable about civic events than even high school graduates were, two generations removed. This is a disquieting trend, particularly given higher literacy rates, more rigorous standards in school curricula, and an unprecedented proliferation of communication technologies. How can we make sense of this growing tendency to naval gaze in lieu of being informed, active and involved? From my vantage point, it appears that a number of loosely related tears in our social fabric have united to rip our attention away from the state of the world. And, increasingly, this is a problem that affects people old as well as young.

Certainly, people must be abandoning the news – and political talk – for reasons that are more varied and complex than finding either boring. After all, the news has, like other media been increasingly tarted up and made as entertaining as possible, even at the cost of content or a rigorous, thoughtful approach to telling stories. Yet ‘boring’ is just the rationale that many people give for habitually refusing the news. The fact that news is too difficult or discouraging doesn’t cut it. Social critic Laura Penny amusingly relates the following anecdote about the recent trend to lure young people back to news media by adopting Hollywood production values and covering vapid stories as hard news. She notes that in response to a PBS Online NewsHour forum on this topic, “one posting by a teenage girl… said that teens like her want to hear more about depressing stuff like war in 10 Not for use or publication without permission

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Afghanistan and murder trials – not! Instead, she suggested, the news should show more upbeat stories, like a new polar bear being born at the zoo.” Penny’s angry condemnation is understandable: “A baby bear? Save that shit for the Discovery Channel. That is not news. And we shouldn’t make it news to please idiots of all ages who are like, ew, the news is hard and the war is so totally depressing.” Right on. Those who take pride in naval gazing despite the many clear problems that face our world should be admonished for selfishly participating in our collective civic impairment. Ignorance is not an option if we are going to be responsible to and for one another. Being informed is central to combating dinner table politics.

Moreover, others turn away from the news because it has become so much white noise. Given the contamination of news with advertising, media cross-promotion, coverage of celebrity comings and goings as somehow relevant, it is unsurprising that many smart, concerned people would balk at ingesting such thin gruel. Similarly, there are many people who are interested in learning and becoming engaged in their communities but who are turned off by the lack context provided to explain news.

Lacking background makes political issues essentially meaningless to the uninitiated.

Such people deserve sympathy, not condescension. They should be encouraged to take an interest, do the hard work to educate themselves, seek context where it is lacking and consider alternative perspectives. Yet this is a lot of work. Ideally, everyone should do his or her part. However, news media could and should do their part (and their jobs), by more often doing the hard work necessary to provide meaningful context for their stories.

Of course, this work requires substantial amounts of time and money, not to mention a work environment that is hospitable to such efforts. I have more to say on all of these topics in chapter two, dealing with the media’s role in the production of dinner table politics. For now, I would note that many conscientious journalists are themselves victimized by series of profoundly negative changes that have made their workplaces hostile to serious journalism. These changes make it difficult, often impossible, to do their jobs well. Regardless, many members of their audiences have become victims of intellectual neglect, some of who are crying out for help. We can improve their prospects by pressuring the media to stop some of the most obscene habits into which they have fallen. The cost of political ignorance is simply too high not to speak up.

The 9-11 terrorist attacks shook the people and pundits out of a slumber that had stretched from the Cold War’s end, the so called end of history that when we were assured that capitalism and democracy now stood unopposed as triumphant forces for civility. They slept through growing gaps standards of living, globally as well as within countries who economic statistic obscured a growing disparity between haves and havenots. Genocides in the Balkans and Rwanda caused barely a stir in the mass consciousness. Bill Clinton’s attempt to redefine the meaning of ‘Executive Privilege’ caused a brief sensation, but it passed. Times were, for those in the know, Good – capital G. The shock provided by September 11th was a splash of cold water for anyone – almost everyone – who had begun to grow comfortable in the assumption that we were not living in interesting times. Consider, in the weeks prior to the attacks on New York, the major news story was a salacious gossip piece about whether Congressman Gary Condit was 11 Not for use or publication without permission

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directly involved in the disappearance and apparent murder of the intern he had chosen for clandestine sexual romp. The bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon brought this collective reverie, our blithe ignorance with the, yes, still very real and varied problems facing the world, to a screeching halt.

For a few weeks, at least until the bombing of Afghanistan, a golden opportunity for serious informed debate presented itself. The people were tuned in, of that was no doubt. Everyone was talking about politics. Many were asking questions, particularly one that would be repeated again and again: Why do they (‘they’ alternately understood by those asking the question to be terrorists/Arabs/Muslims/) hate us? This uncertainty reflected a staggered insularity on the part of those asking the question, the lingering effects of a self-induced stupor of consumption and blissful ignorance. But it also represented an opportunity. The people were hungry for information, for context, and wanted a seat at the table so that they might understand why their lives had changed, and so that they might contribute to finding solutions to the problems America faced. Indeed, during this brief moment of (attempted) clarity, the conventional wisdom was that the time for lazy foolishness was over. The people would become engaged and fulfill the promise of their generation. This best captured by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s suggestion that “There’s going to be a seismic change. I think it’s the end of the age of irony. Things that were considered fringe and frivolous are going to disappear.” Writing in Salon immediately after this pronouncement, journalist David Beers took issue with the position that irony was synonymous with smartassed disengagement. He argued instead that irony was a necessary quality to be embraced by those hoping to avoid what I call dinner table politics. Given its optimism and prescience, his argument is worth quoting at length: Hopefully, now opens…a golden age of irony. The real stuff. The kind of irony that drove Socrates queries, the irony that lies at the heart of much great literature and religion, the irony that pays attention to contradictions and embraces paradoxes, rather than wishing them away in an orgy of purpose and certainty. Whoever named Bush’s murky plan of retaliation ‘Infinite Justice’ was dangerously devoid of irony, not to mention a sense of Islamic theology...That kind of irony would wonder if in this new battle on behalf of freedom, we may rush to strip away civil liberties. That kind of irony would wonder whether this new kind of war, waged to make us safe from terrorist attacks, might plunge the world into a far more dangerous conflagration. To note these ironies is to engage yourself in the grave purpose at hand and [to] take some responsibility for helping to think it through.

Though only a few years past, this missed opportunity seems almost unreal.

Looking back, few would have guessed how wrong Carter was and how misplaced Beers’ hopes were. We know now that we live in a golden age of, if anything, empty celebrity and emptier rhetoric. It is a world where the (inter)national consciousness is rapt 12 Not for use or publication without permission

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with attention to the foolish behaviour of Hollywood party girls, star couplings and third world adoptions, but has largely dismissed political engagement, horribly failed by our political representatives and failing ourselves. The opportunity presented by 9-11 might have been embraced by an energetic media, one able to stir itself to doing its job well rather than huddling around the President and parroting his simplistic, jingoistic propaganda. Well, as we now know, that opportunity was squandered and the people went back to sleep, soothed by a patriotic drum beating for a new, generation-long War on Terror, though in all honesty, it was people in the West who were now terrified. Their fear became the rationale for an unprecedented attack on constitutionally protected civil liberties. They were comforted seemingly only when following their orders of their Commander-In-Chief: Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been attacked by evildoers, so do your duty and remember the victims of 9-11 by shopping!

More disturbing is the prescience demonstrated by Alexis de Tocqueville over 150 years earlier. In a chapter entitled, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;What Kind of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Tocqueville imagines an America of the future that eerily predicts that state of the union as it enters the 21st century, one that has been amply described by polemists and empirical studies in recent years: I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone, and if a family still remains for him, one can at least say that he no longer has a native country.

Above these an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principle affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?

Consider this: A few weeks before the US invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, over two-thirds of Americans believed, incorrectly, that Saddam Hussein had been directly implicated in the attacks of September 11th. Given the daily flood of topical news reports made by the mainstream media in the lead up to the war, such a critical and 13 Not for use or publication without permission

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ultimately deadly mistake seems, in retrospect, hard to fathom. The news included discussion of the impending war, the war on terror, weapons of mass destruction. There was nothing boring about any of these topics. They provided a rich menu of issues to discuss at the dinner table.

Notwithstanding abundant and accessible evidence to the contrary, as late as July 2006, half of Americans surveyed still accepted the White House fiction that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction prior to the American invasion. More disturbing: this number was up from a positive response rate of only 36% the previous year! This reversal has staggering implications. It occurred as Iraqi and American casualties mounted and after the official case for war had been widely and factually discredited, albeit less often in mainstream news sources or amongst political representatives who feared the damning brand ‘unpatriotic.’ Nonetheless, fifteen per cent of Americans moved from supporting the official war story in 2003, then rejecting it two years later, only to reverse themselves again, now claiming to inexplicably accept it a year further on.

This reversal occurred despite a growing popular disquiet with the war itself, renewed calls for Donald Rumsfeld’s job (among others) and popular acknowledgement that the stunningly inadequate job performance of the president was perhaps without historical precedent. Yet additional people supported a myth that had been used to justify a great deal of senseless and poorly staged violence. Media analyst Michael Massing commented: “I’m flabbergasted. This finding just has to cause despair among those of us who hope for an informed public able to draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence.” Agreed. This level of ignorance doesn’t just happen. People really must work hard to achieve it.

To be fair, the unrelenting din of talking points emanating from governments in Washington and Westminster, to say nothing of the Pentagon and larger militaryindustrial complex, contributed to the critical impairment of many people. The poll numbers seemingly show that people who sample politics and current affairs casually were flummoxed, unable to distinguish between facts established by critics and sceptics and the official propaganda of shifting war stories. This shouldn’t surprise us perhaps, since Blair and Bush failed to get their own stories straight, never committing entirely to one solid reason for having flouted the UN with their invasion. It follows that many of their constituents were mixed up, though to be clear, most American constituents than British. Millions of Americans made this glaring factual error about Hussein in their rush to accept the accepted rationale for war and, like a largely jingoistic US press, overwhelmingly lined up behind their president. However, the British people widely condemned the move to war and their prime minister had to contend with popular unrest that briefly threatened his hold on government.

This disparity between American and British peoples bears comment and investigation since, unless Americans are innately stupid – and I’m inclined to believe that this is not the case – outright lies were preferred to informed knowledge of the events transpiring in Iraq, to say nothing of the larger historical context of the development of the Middle East. This stands in contrast to countries such as Canada, Britain and most of 14 Not for use or publication without permission

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the EU where greater media vigilance and healthy scepticism of the Bush-BlairBerlusconi Axis contributed to resistance to a war that is today, even in America, overwhelmingly condemned. The blind acceptance of myths used to justify war illustrates the danger of both dinner table politics and a blithely complicit populace. Americans were all too willing to grant their democratic seal of approval to a war that is by most informed accounts understood to have been waged illegally with respect to established norms of international law.

For now, I pose another question: even allowing for the onslaught of patriotic propaganda that heralded the war, how and why did a majority of people in the world’s military and economic superpower (and self-avowed vanguard of democratic flagbearers) get the story so wrong? It would be tangential to exhaustively investigate the problem here, but then, that isn’t my primary purpose. I’m more interested in offering a suggestion for the growth and spread of dinner table politics – of which the purported Hussein-Bin Laden criminal nexus is a chief example.

Despite granting their consent for war, many Americans questioned by pollsters were confused about whether it was necessary. Others were almost hopelessly uninformed. Others still, led most shamelessly by much of the Democratic Party caucus, argued that they had, in retrospect, been misled. Beyond the political expediency of a good number of politicians scrambling for safer ground, philosopher Slavoj Zizek offers an intriguing hypothesis to explain stupidity on a mass level. In an April 2003 interview, Zizek responded to a question about the staggering ignorance of the American people as they (and their Congressional representatives) gave George W. Bush a blank cheque to wage war in the Middle East. He summed up the problem this way: With all my admiration of Noam Chomsky, I partially disagree with him. It’s an underlying premise of his work…just tell all the facts to the people. [I argue that] people just do not want to know too much. There’s an active refusal to know. If you ask average citizens with enough of their own worries, they’d say, “Don’t even tell me this. We pay taxes so the government can do all the dirty things that I don’t want to know about”…we are not talking about empirical links. Saddam and al-Qaeda hate the US. That’s enough of a link.

You cannot really help by making factual refutations. They key factor is not that people are duped – there’s an active will not to know.

What amounts to an active refusal to know provides a plausible explanation for a broader acceptance of the myths that make us stupid. Taken alone, this observation may be hard to accept. However, this inclination to shut down critical thought makes sense, particularly when considered in tandem with a number of parallel social trends that beset contemporary western society.

To some extent, the active refusal to know can be understood as a defence mechanism for coping with the stresses of modern life. Consider the media and advertising onslaught that define much of the public domain and monopolize down time at home. Modern life moves quickly, chaotically. We work and play in a state of near 15 Not for use or publication without permission

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constant communication and overwhelming media saturation since most people are rarely off-line or unreachable by phone. Lines between home and work have become very blurry indeed. Multi-tasking is increasingly a necessity, not a luxury – though it is invariably marketed as such. Culturally, we live in the midst of an orgy of market driven consumption. No longer is buying ‘product’ driven by need, or arguably even by greed.

Spending more time working to buy more stuff that we have less time to enjoy is a given.

Going retail is a lifestyle, something that people increasingly do on autopilot – consider recent reports of what has been dubbed ‘drinking and clicking,’ people running up personal debt by shopping via the Internet after a long day and one too many glasses of wine.

Yet those who question the value of this system, the cumulative effects of greed and speed on the quality and (un)happiness of people’s lives are generally dismissed as Luddites, nostalgics dreaming of simpler times or, worst – socialists. Despite efforts to mock and silence critics consider: Most people work longer, often unpaid hours, take work home more often, shop more, are more often depressed, watch more TV, more frequently plug themselves into iPods to tune others out. They are socializing less, relaxing less, leaving their homes less, accumulating stuff they need less, joining community groups less, spending less time with family and friends, sleeping less and taking fewer and shorter vacations. These malignant social tendencies are particularly manifest in the hyper-regimented lives of most kids, few of whom have either the time or freedom to mature without constant supervision and a fully booked day timer.

These changes of more and less have crept up on us in tiny increments so that few people realize how much things have changed until they already have. In total, these changes to the character and quality of contemporary life amount to a full-scale war on free time. This war has inflicted demonstrably negative effects on individuals and the social groups they inhabit – no matter how big the mountain of cheap goods or cheap pharma we are ‘free’ to consume. Free time is not only essential to individuals’ physical and mental health. It grounds stable families and a rich social life. Becoming involved in one’s community requires free time and, without it, casual political talk is taken off of our daily menus. Pressed for time, the ‘mores’ crowd out the ‘lesses’ and people fall victim to ritualized enforcement of their own ‘freedom.’ Thus, political interest and talk have become just two more casualties of an ethic that subordinates all things to market discipline. Barber is perceptive on this point: “The modern tyrant hopes to impede our aims, divert our purposes, and reformulate our goals. [He is unconcerned with either] the democratic majority or the public good.” Pointing out the excesses of capitalism as currently constituted could only be considered radical in a society that has seriously lost perspective on what constitutes healthy moderation, when to say ‘enough.’ Yet this is just where we find ourselves today.

Despite this grim picture, political discussions at dinner and in casual talk are happening, at least to some extent. Yet in too many homes and at too many tables, people lack the time, energy and confidence to engage in discussion of important social issues.

Such tables are more likely to focus on the disappointing performance of the local sports team, the latest episode of Survivor, or plot developments on sitcoms like Lost. Lost is 16 Not for use or publication without permission

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what such tables and such families are. To be fair, many families are running so hard just to keep up, working hard, putting food on the table and trying to make positive contributions to their communities. But many more are working hard to buy the latest consumer good in a never-ending and ultimately bankrupting (both literally and figuratively) quest to keep up with the Joneses. Putnam and others have provided detailed documentation of the decline of meaningful community networks in North America over the past quarter century. This is reflected in the fact that fewer and fewer families come together daily to eat and talk. Putnam reports that this long-standing social custom has eroded from 50% to only 34% in only twenty years. He also he notes that though, paradoxically, people who are busiest actually volunteer more than those with ample free time, what is cut from their daily schedules is time devoted to sharing dinner or conversation. The Nutrition Education Network explains that nearly 40% of families “never or seldom eat together, and that segment is growing.”

Beyond time pressures, we must recognize that taking an active interest in politics, the news or our communities is itself challenging. Seeing the state of the world and not looking away takes courage. It can be painful. It is central blockage to social justice acknowledged by Socrates centuries ago. Overwhelmed, many turn to faith as a solution to problems they do not understand and refuse to think or act constructively in their own lives, leaving problems for others to sort out and power for those who would abuse it. Increasingly, people’s minds have grown dull and sluggish on a diet of cheap pop cultural titillation or a fundamentalist’s moral certainty. The easy comforts and answers that each respectively provide are the best that many people currently have time for. No wonder there is a growing consensus that dumb is cool, that knowing should be actively refused. It feels good, so people increasingly agree: Just do it! And ask questions later, if at all. In this context, an active willingness not to know can be subconsciously rationalized. The case for dinner table politics becomes that much more appealing.

Politics at the dinner table is too much work, even when people get to the dinner table or talk in meaningful ways to one another at all.

In his discussion of our growing refusals to actively know, Zizek also identifies a timeline for stupidity’s cultural coming out: the Reagan administration. During the 1980s, journalists’ attempts to point out the many factual errors and misrepresentations made by the president actually raised his rates of public approval. With this in mind, Zizek suggests that W. Bush’s two election wins may be directly attributable to the muchdiscussed public perception of his stupidity. It is a saleable quality in today’s substantively superficial but contentiously branded political environment.

Consider then the elections of 2000 and 2004 as the culmination of a quartercentury political evolution that transpired in an atmosphere of unprecedented political myth making and citizen apathy. Not coincidentally, these years witnessed an explosion of political polling and entrenchment of public relations management as the only vehicle for formal political discussion. It is a natural progression from voting in 1980 and again in ’84 for a professionally manufactured, silver-tongued Hollywood actor who convinced his people to ignore his mean-spirited gutting of the welfare state that had served them so well for a generation with his warm words that a new day was dawning in America. Bush 17 Not for use or publication without permission

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and his cadre of neo-liberal handlers happily took note of Reagan’s steely determination to stare down the Evil Empire of Soviet Communism, or at least noted that a suitable bogeyman to frighten the people must be found or, if necessary, constructed.

Understood in this context, voting for an inarticulate silver-spooned simpleton posing as a good old boy makes more sense. By the turn of the century, the people were used to the American-anointed ‘leader of the free world’ waging war to distract people from a program of unapologetic greed and chicanery that finished the dying social safety net off. This blindness also explains most Americans’ inability to draw the connection between their consent to Bush’s program and the government’s inability and unwillingness to respond to a massive hurricane that, in New Orleans, turned one of the (now lone) Superpower’s most storied cities into a de facto third world city-state.

That people are aiming for or at least accepting the lowest common denominator is so fundamentally understood that it rarely garners much comment today. It is easier to sit back, cynically laughing at the inevitable punch lines. In this larger context, Zizek’s analysis has much to offer. Votes for stupidity aren’t ironic, they constitute a mass defence mechanism against culpability for social wrongs the people choose to ignore and the political paralysis they agree to endure. As an added bonus, ostensibly dumb leaders are non-threatening on a personal level. This is undeniably attractive in a culture that feigns commitment to meritocracy yet is unwilling to accept even the most cursory challenges to self-esteem. Zizek argues: “People like to identify themselves [with such leaders]. ‘I can be stupid but I’m still at the top’…There is something appealing in this.”

Without naming it as such, he thus describes the allure and prevalence of dinner table politics that shape common misconceptions about the problems that affect contemporary society.

Formal elites have been quick to catch on. The nostrum has become ‘keep it simple; don’t confuse them.’ This is why Princeton accredited MBA George W. Bush is presented as a good guy who likes to clear brush on his ranch. Examples of this abound everywhere. Close to my home, in Canada, hacks like Liberal Party strategist Warren Kinsella counselled Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty to adopt “Timbits for all” as a campaign slogan. For the sake of non-Canadians, I should explain that a ‘Timbit’ is a small, round donut, formed from the waste when the hole is punched in the production of a regular donut. It is named after Tim Horton, a former professional hockey player who started a coffee and donut franchise. Said chain is currently identified as symbol of national identity by twice the percentage of Canadians who can correctly identify the first line of their own national anthem (‘O Canada,’ that is the entire line, as well as being the anthem’s title)! The people will disagree about politics, but everyone loves a good donut!

The Geography of Ignorance: Origins of Dinner Table Politics Such cynicism fuels conspiracy theorists and adherents to Chomsky’s ‘manufactured consent’ school (which largely excuses the masses for their shared culpability) alike. This model of good people living innocently, consenting in ignorance because of The Man’s malfeasance is today a popularly established truth. However, contrary to this now popular 18 Not for use or publication without permission

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wisdom among theorists across the political spectrum, sociologists have long argued that the mass media actually have a substantially limited power to change the minds of the mass public. Given the relevance of one study in particular that refutes the manufactured consent paradigm, it is worthwhile to quote extensively from Paul Starr’s political history of the popular political press, The Creation of the Media. In it, he notes that in a landmark study of media impact on voting patterns, Relatively few voters seemed to change their minds because of anything they read in the press or heard on the radio; social relationships and personal influence were more important. Much of the impact of the media, insofar as there was any, came in what the study called a ‘two-step flow’ via ‘opinion leaders’ who paid close attention to public affairs and then talked with others in the community…[The study concluded that] ‘more than anything else people can move other people.’

This ‘two-step flow’ provides an excellent model of the process by which dinner table politics is created, transmitted and reinforced. It explains precisely how the less informed are duped, not so much, or directly, by media specialists or public relations consultants as by people sitting around their own dinner tables.

Political values are shaped and entrenched through the conversations that take place in our daily lives. Understood this way, opinion leaders who shape discussion during social outings, lead discussion at the office water cooler, or convene Sunday dinner are immensely powerful. They decide where silence will be observed, when politics is permissible, what issues are important and how they will be framed and understood. Certainly, these influential people take their cues from elsewhere. Still, their power is primary. Recall the Christmas example from the introduction. Political parties and the media may have set the 2006 election agenda, but the people decided what to pick from the menu presented. Elections can be won and lost due the cumulative effect of thousands of dinner table discussions.

This analysis provides hope. It gives people greater possibility, and responsibility, to take action to make their politics thoughtful and charitable in the places and with the people whom we know best. It creates an imperative to replace simplistic dinner table politics with a more reflective politics at the dinner table. After all, if the best way to change people’s minds is through their close social contacts, then immense, even overwhelming power exists in casual relationships. These relationships may often be informal, but they are always political. If book sales are any measure of the persuasiveness of argument, then this one has been made persuasively. In his widely read book The Tipping Point, journalist Malcolm Gladwell explains the power of small, informal groups to affect massive shifts in public opinion, habits and behaviour: What must underlie successful [social] epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behaviour or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus. This, too, 19 Not for use or publication without permission

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contradicts some of the most ingrained assumptions we hold about ourselves and each other… We are actually powerfully influenced by our surroundings, by our immediate context, and the personalities of those around us.

To be specific, insofar as his arguments are directly germane to mine in Dinner Table Politics, Gladwell contends that the most important opportunities to learn come not at home, but in the company of less familiar acquaintances: “Your friends, after all, occupy the same world that you do…acquaintances, on the other hand, by definition occupy a very different world than you. They are much more likely to know something that you don’t.” Thus dinner at a friend’s house – recall my own experience with dinners down the street in adolescence – or the like, are so important to the formation of political ideas and identities. This renders P. M. Forni’s observation that people are increasingly withdrawing from situations that might challenge their politics even more alarming.

Incidentally, Gladwell also discounts, in passing, the Internet’s potential for transformative democratic engagement, what has become an unthinking mantra from techno-Utopians of all political stripes. He cites studies demonstrating that although people communicate unpopular positions more freely online than in-person, no doubt because they are freed from the pressures to conform that accompany most direct social contact, those taking on the consensus opinion enjoyed greater success in swaying the majority only when communicating face to face. Again, this supports the case for people engaging in political talk in the course of their everyday affairs, particularly when they can do so in informal situations that exist beyond the dinner table.

Power to shape political discourse flows both ways from elites to the people – and this is less frequently acknowledged – back again. People who use their real or metaphorical dinner tables irresponsibly actually retard political engagement and ensure that political problems remain unaddressed, or even unacknowledged. This is not a matter of political perspective, wings left or right. Both camps – and perhaps it is time to question the usefulness of these divisive and ultimately ambiguous labels, but more on that later – happily engage in this kind of talk. Frequently, it is sufficient to demonize those who hold contrary positions, the Ann Coulter school of ad hominem attack. This is convenient, since negative political talk generally introduces issues devoid of context or history, as they largely are in the media. This is understandable, particularly when political talk occurs at a meal. Dinner isn’t a library research session. However, too often, contributions merely reheat opinions, resentments and judgements. Thoughtful, original contributions become more rare. Thus, dinner table politics eat at the foundation of democracy: informed and meaningfully engaged citizenship. Political pollution doesn’t simply happen, appearing out of nowhere. There is a chain of being that links individuals’ political ignorance to more profound and well established stupidities.

Think back to the examples of ill prepared and reactionary students cited earlier.

Unprepared students don’t reference course readings. They shoot from the hip and speak from the dinner table. At home, untutored teens are often likely to hear and internalize myths. A parent bangs a fist on the table and complains about their taxes being too high.

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Their child burps up an exam response based solely in this observed nonsense. But why was the parent complaining in the first place? Because such myths masquerading as reasoned debate are daily tossed off by politicians looking to buy votes from selfish voters, devoid of larger vision or social responsibility. The media picks up on the conversation and op-eds follow. The nightly news runs stories where the discourse about taxes is cuts and only cuts – any new or raised taxes are anathema.

Though people have the power to affect the politics at their own dinner tables, they must for the most part also partake of a politically suspect menu that has been framed in the public discourse. The point is, people should expect, demand even, more from one another in terms of political talk, but it is probably unrealistic to expect many people to independently decide what will be discussed beyond speaking from already set agendas. Media and political elites do have real power to set decide what will be discussed and the general contours of the existing debate in which political issues are situated. Political opinions may be more influenced by personal relationships, but the spectrum for discussion is overwhelmingly established by think tanks, PR firms and media-concentrated monoliths.

This daisy chain of dinner table politics can be tracked back to original sources.

For example, the student I cited earlier was clearly weaned on a diet of tax-cut stew at home. Parents likely bought the ingredients for their conversational concoction from sources originating outside the home. Where? Consider this position excerpted from a poorly reasoned and shakily supported article published by the Fraser Institute the same month as the poorly reasoned exam response cited above was written. Arguing for a radical regimen of business tax cuts, neo-liberal sycophants link a reduced tax base to improved productivity and standards of living. Specifically, they contend that Canadians are, …unwilling to accept that Canada is falling behind most other industrialized countries. The reality is Canada does not compare favourably with other countries . . . the data is unambiguous and economists generally agree that Canada faces a serious productivity challenge that must be tackled immediately.

Their two main contentions: we’re lagging behind economically and this has resulted from poor productivity. How does this compare to the Statistics Canada data on the topic?

Consider that among G8 nations Canada has:     

The third highest per capita GDP. The third highest employment rate.

The highest employment rate among women.

The highest rate of post-secondary accreditation among the working age population.

Enjoyed the highest rate of economic growth between 2000 and 2004.

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The Fraser Institute is right – this is really lousy. We should obviously be far more concerned – a draconian tax cut is clearly in order. In fact, one other interesting fact provided by StatsCan: “the average number of work hours was on a downward trend in all countries except Canada.” To review then, the Fraser Institute says the Canadian economy is weak. Reality: the Canadian economy is a leader, particularly in terms of the quality of our human capital. Fraser Institute: Canadians lag in productivity. Reality: Canadians work longer hours at a time when the other G8 nations are, in the aggregate, reducing the length of the work week with, one would assume, a commensurate drop in productivity. This is what Mark Twain called “a petrified truth.” Given a little patience, exposing dinner table politics is almost too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. Or perhaps the esteemed policy wonks at neo-con headquarters would take issue with my use of a clearly unreliable and biased source. Oh StatsCan, you are so devious…

Instances of dinner table politics such the Fraser Institute example are ubiquitous.

Compared to merely vacuous dinner table or classroom musings, such examples consist of lies that are knowingly perpetrated against the general public. These are whoppers that most people are too tired, confused or lazy to fully comprehend (though to be honest, I think that most people are aware, albeit often only on a barely conscious, REM-sleep level). These are the calling cards of political spin doctors giving credence to partisan tomfoolery, press secretaries dispelling abuse of the public trust, public relations firms smoothing over crimes against community and columnists making sure that everyone is singing the same tune, and feeling good about themselves while doing it. Or, when it suits their purposes, the same columnists use their positions to berate people who stand up to those who would abuse their power. They neatly do so by pandering to the fear, insecurity and sense of entitlement or dissatisfaction that many people understandably feel as a result of living in our consumption-driven, stressed out, time-deprived contemporary society.

Received or revealed ‘truths’ become common sense through this process of diffusion from public to private spheres and back again. Thus, anyone making appeals to common sense should be treated with suspicion if not outright hostility. Repetition acts to reinforce common sense foolishness. The mere action of this back and forth lends dinner table politics critical mass political power. After all, how can – or even why should – people question instances of everyday nonsense they encounter when it is echoed in so many chambers? The transmission and regurgitation of unsubstantiated ideas from the six o’clock news to the dinner table to the classroom (and beyond) is what makes dinner table politics so pervasive. ‘Round and round, dinner table politics moves from vested interests, to dinner tables, and back again in a perverse loop. Thus, dinner table politics becomes rooted in and emanates from the loci of kitchen tables, out and throughout our society.

It’s Not What You Eat, It’s How You Eat It: The Power of a Critical Mindset At this point, hopefully at least some readers are ready to take issue with the argument I’ve laid out. Good. If there is an antidote to dinner table politics it lies in the refusal to 22 Not for use or publication without permission

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uncritically accept what we are served. Karl Marx summed this commitment up neatly: de omnibus disputandum, “everything must be doubted.” Yet perhaps what follows will persuade those who have misgivings about what my propositions in Dinner Table Politics.

The deep-seeded social defect that feeds dinner table politics is the result of too few people adopting critical mindsets in their approach to the assumptions that they are fed daily and for the most part happily consume. Thus, I argue that to upset the many flawed, common sense understandings of our world, more people must agree to be actively and overtly political. Having defined dinner table politics, I want to situate it among others’ ideas. The intellectual parents of a critical perspective are, thankfully, legion.

As an aside, I wish bring special attention to the essential role played by public intellectuals in addressing the myths that make us stupid. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of public intellectuals, those writing accessibly for and speaking with a wide and democratically engaged audience. They are juxtaposed to cloistered academics whose knowledge production for (barely read) journals amounts to disciplinary masturbation; this done largely in the pursuit of career advancement with requisite accolades, most often in the form of tenure and corporate or government grants. Certainly, some nuanced professorial treatment of political issues will be beyond most citizens’ abilities or frames of reference. Such research can be valuable to the academy, and indirectly to our society.

However, when those working in institutions of higher learning lose sight of the fact that their primary purpose should be educating the populace and contributing to the community, we are in a sorry place indeed. That is exactly where we find ourselves today, in a society where professors’ penchant for academic disciplining is combined with an undergraduate tendency to approach higher education as a mere credentialing process. In this atmosphere any actual learning is purely coincidental. Addressing dinner table politics is impossible without engaging the public. Failing a radical (and substantially overdue) rethinking of the academy and our public education system, public intellectuals stand as our best hope for collective political renewal and community activism.

Principally, my definition of dinner table politics sprang from the work of the late John Kenneth Galbraith; an academic and unapologetic public intellectual de rigueur.

Galbraith was the ex-pat Canadian Harvard economist, critic, oft-presidential advisor and author of The Affluent Society. His notion of conventional wisdom as the fundamental barrier to knowledge and meaningful social discourse has immense applicability to dinner table politics. He defines conventional wisdom this way: Just as truth ultimately serves to create a consensus, so in the short run does acceptability. Ideas come to be organized around what the community as a whole or particular audiences find acceptable . . . [W]e associate truth with convenience – with what most closely accords with self interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem . . . [When accepted ideas are 23 Not for use or publication without permission

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attacked, people] react, not infrequently with something akin to religious passion, to the defense of what they have so laboriously learned.

Familiarity may breed contempt in some areas of human behaviour, but in the field of social ideas it is the touchstone of acceptability. Because familiarity is such an important test of acceptability, the acceptable ideas have great stability . . . I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom.

Thus Galbraith’s coinage entered the lexicon of popular culture. It is a powerful idea.

Galbraith’s wake up call is stirring. Yet I differ with his prescription for addressing conventional wisdom. In his view, “the enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.” In essence, he argues that conventional wisdom adheres to the views of, and hence describes, the audience (citizens) rather than the subjects they depict, that is, the political and social realities of the world they inhabit.

Because of this, he remarks that conventional wisdom cannot be actively undermined by individuals or the critiques they communicate – the conformist view is simply too entrenched to be moved. Instead, he contends that it is the mere passage of time, with corresponding, incremental social changes, that undermines persistent falsehoods.

According to this view, those who are feted for ushering in new ideas are merely giving public voice to naming a conventional wisdom as “obsolete.” Individuals however are unable to seriously challenge the status quo before the mass of society are ready to acknowledge that things, or times, have changed.

I simply cannot accept that this is the case, or at least that it need be. History is replete with examples of individuals who took matters into their own hands and changed their society fundamentally, for good or evil. And if them, why not you? Dinner Table Politics has been conceived as an effort to give people the tools to attack conventional wisdoms whenever and wherever they are encountered, so that they might change their own world by however small or large a measure they are able. In my view, it is important to reject the conventional view about conventional wisdom; one that says such work must necessarily be that of journalists, writers and academics. I fundamentally believe that this is within the grasp of most people. To doubt it is to doubt the very foundation of our democracy.

Some might charge that this expects too much from seemingly ‘ordinary’ people who are by definition neither powerful nor elite. I don’t think so. Such views merely mark the conceit and condescension of self-interested corporate and political elites, entrenched class bias or snobbery amongst the formally educated. As I have already argued, because nearly everything is political, political actors encompass many, many more people than merely the political representatives engaged in formal politics. Change will not come easily, this is fair and should be acknowledged. Galbraith is right to point out that cherished ‘truths’ are not easily abandoned, particularly when so many people have personal stakes in their perpetuation. Political ideologies and belief systems help people to make sense of the world and their place in it. They are central to one’s sense of self. Just as Socrates noted in his allegory of ignorant cave dwellers confronted by the 24 Not for use or publication without permission

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discomforting pain of enlightenment, I acknowledge that many, even most people initially resist changed habits of mind. Change takes work. Change stings. Yet that is what Dinner Table Politics is about: incremental change by talking politics at the dinner table, without resorting to dinner table politics.

We must, as many of us as possible – especially those who do not sit in positions of power, and are therefore less afflicted by the disease of powerful, vested interests – commit to a few simple (but not simplistic) habits of mind and discourse. Teachers know that, with practice and patience, it is within the grasp of almost all people to think. People can be critical yet open-minded and become accustomed to asking provocative questions of those whose goal is to avoid giving specific, meaningful answers. Dinner table politics is most effectively disrupted when individuals sitting at their own tables refuse politics as usually served. These are potential actors who possess the power to make conventional wisdoms obsolete.

Social and political change does occurs, must necessarily do so one person at a time. Name your social evil of years past: slavery, mass illiteracy, divine-right monarchy, religious inquisition: none of these ended with a snap of the fingers and, poof, a generalized social consensus. For instance, maybe, just maybe, by reading this book, one mind will be changed. No one ever changed the world by adopting fatalistic positions. I refuse to accept Galbraith’s implicit suggestion that social change must move slowly and seemingly of its own accord, as if by a different sort of invisible hand than that imagined by most economists. Accepting the conventional wisdom about conventional wisdom means that we condemn people – and ourselves – to the hell of dim-witted assumptions that exist everywhere. We can and must do better. Dinner Table Politics is an effort to affect this change in perspective, and hence to foster active resistance to the myths that make us stupid.

Two Dangerous Lies: The Myths of Objective and Apolitical Approaches However, there is a fundamental problem with people merely adopting an enthusiasm to ask unconventional questions, beyond the fact that most people do not retain the luxury of time to conduct in-depth analyses of assertions made in the daily news. We must be purposefully political, not merely contrarian for its own sake. People also take refuge in the false solace offered by the myth of objectivity. Here, purveyors of dinner table politics vow that they are speaking from unassailable positions of Fact and Truth. Some will sentimentalize that they have achieved the paradoxical goal of an apolitical politics.

That is, commentators will often claim that their views should be respected because they were purportedly assembled sans agenda. This is the slippery and widely subscribed to myth that might be best described as that of the unvested vested interest.

Take one example of the problems inherent in this failing: In their much feted bestseller, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and his writing partner Stephen Dubner comment respectfully on the value of Galbraith’s requirement that no ‘truth’ be taken for granted. Helpfully, they sum up conventional wisdom as any view that inherently “must 25 Not for use or publication without permission

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be simple, convenient, comfortable, and comforting – though not necessarily true.” In their intriguing case studies, the Ste(v/ph)ens explicitly link conventional wisdom to what they term “vested interests.” This is useful. At its heart, Freakonomics is bent on exposing what might be summed up as instances where people, individually and in groups: (a) Represent false information as factual, abusing power to forward selfish agendas. (b) Make poor decisions; chiefly because they adopt false premises, misunderstand information, or accept that which has been knowingly misrepresented, as in (a).

Levitt and Dubner undertake to ask questions about some common assumptions we encounter in everyday life: why and when students (and teachers) cheat; why people who have privileged information routinely serve self-interest by abusing the power their knowledge confers; why some people turn to crime and whether crime really pays; whether being a good parent is the most significant causal factor in raising good kids, and so on. Their work does much to dispel a series of typical explanations as so much uninformed nonsense, and it does so using empirical facts and the power of statistical analysis. Levitt and Dubner come close to dispelling instances of dinner table politics, though they are obviously not named as such.

Despite the currency Freakonomics enjoys, it does not go far enough in its attack on everyday assumptions. Their project is encouraging, but the hope it provides is deceptive. Their approach is undermined by a fundamental problem: Freakonomics aims for full non-partisanship. According to Dubner, their methodology “is devoutly apolitical.

[Levitt] isn’t trying to make any ideological points.” This goal is foolhardy. Everything is political and the analyses that they provide cannot help but be affected by their own unique backgrounds and experiences. Human existence is pro forma political, and no matter that many economists want to avoid acknowledging their own humanity, there is no helping it. They are finally, despite their aspirations to provide analysis of human situations that is 100% human-free, human.

At best, claims of objectivity are lies people tell themselves to convince themselves that they, at least, are unbiased. Take Levitt and Dubner. Doubtlessly, it is convenient for the co-author of Freakonomics to present him partner as beyond the fray of polemical debates. I imagine they must find their assumed objectivity comfortable and comforting. It is also too simple and too good to be true. As they point out in the introduction to the book, “‘experts’ – from criminologists to real-estate agents – use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.” Surely, Levitt would recognize himself as an expert, and his entire project is based on the use of his substantial ‘informational advantage.’

I’m not claiming to be any different. My own politics are embedded in my experiences, education (formal and otherwise), interests, and particular axes that life has presented for grinding. As such, the prescriptions I share here are at times unavoidably 26 Not for use or publication without permission

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partisan. But this isn’t a book in which I am attempting to gather the storm of a compelling argument on particular political or social issues per se. I have made some effort to empirically support arguments, but only as a means to the end of deflating some persistent and insidious examples of dinner table politics parading as received truth. As with my students, I encourage you to question me too. Perhaps what differentiates this project from work produced many other writers, teachers and scholars is a stab at intellectual honesty, noting the lenses through which I view the world. I encourage others to be aware and honest about the political assumptions they hold as well. That is another goal of Dinner Table Politics. It is possible to do this without falling into the rhetorical quicksand that is moral relativism. Opinions, unlike people, are obviously not created equal.

Take note: being critical does not necessarily mean being negative. Many students and casual participants in political talk often assume this, which in part explains why so many of them reject both thinking critically and talking politically. This is hardly surprising in a climate where the president of the United States discourages debate in the name of patriotism. Or because Canada’s prime minister announced early in his administration that he would no longer answer questions from the Ottawa press corps because they resisted his position that critical thinking is unacceptable, specifically their refusal to ask questions solely from a list prepared by his own communications staff.

Taking these cues, many people assume that merely asking questions is wrong, disloyal, even at odds with good citizenship. How far we have come from the roots of democracy, and not in a good way! Minimally, being critical means asking questions no one else seems to be asking. If something is considered normal, natural, or inevitable, we must ask: why? We must also ask: whose interests does it serve for us to unquestioningly accept this as fact?

Although I am critical of assumptions in their work, I build on Goldberg, Galbraith and Levitt among others to show how most people in our society have been made, and make themselves, consumers of a fantastic amount of rubbish. Like Laura Penny notes in Your Call is Important to Us, The Truth About Bullshit, we are being sold a line daily, from numerous sources, with bare comment or even recognition. This has the effect of deadening our impulse to be engaged, thinking people. We must move beyond analyses of shared helplessness or dodged political debate. Change can and must start in the social situations that we inhabit daily, and the first place to start is at your very own dinner table. Adopting a critical mindset, rejecting objectivity as an impossible myth and acknowledging the inherently political nature of nearly all human relationships is one way to challenge dinner table politics and take an active role in one’s own re-education.

‘Other’ Problems and Politics as Sport Still, I acknowledge that making this commitment takes courage, commitment and lots of hard work. It definitely invites repeated social rejection, sometimes even ridicule. Few people relish stepping out from the crowd, even when whichever crowd they happen to find themselves in is wrong. What results is political stagnation via bystander syndrome.

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People who know better will frequently remain silent rather than challenge socially enforced orthodoxy. This has been demonstrated scientifically by Henry Milgram’s controversial ‘shock treatment’ experiments where he sought to determine the point to which people would follow orders from an authority figure, even if their actions (were believed to) inflict pain on innocent others. The disappointing answer was, with overwhelming consistency, that people would with minimal reinforcement follow orders past the point where they believed they had killed another person. Authority figures needn’t be psychologists posing in lab coats or military commanders. They exist informally in most social settings we move through daily.

Despite the fact that the ‘just following orders’ defence was discredited once and for all by perpetration of the Nazi Holocaust, people will all too readily adopt the classic Eichmann defence for their (in)actions. Most people, unsurprisingly, react angrily to the irony that presents itself when they view their own political disengagement through the lens of the Eichmann defence, albeit one with which they do not share moral equivalency.

If challenged, they will confidently affirm that their conduct is much better than a Nazi’s.

So there! Yet in effect, by pleading ignorance or powerlessness in terms of everyday politics, that is just what they are doing, and that is not just ironic, it is positively dangerous. Like the late June Callwood said, once we know about the existence of a problem, we become responsible for doing something about it. And in the interconnected, globalized media world we inhabit today, few people can honestly claim that they don’t know – or that they should not reasonably know. According to Callwood’s ethical standard, people who know better but chose to avoid confronting dinner table politics are as guilty as those who see injustice in front of their noses and do nothing. Zizek is surely right; most people would prefer to leave politics to the experts and focus on their own lives. But wilful blindness is in this sense an ultimate selfishness and it fails to exonerate the everyday Eichmanns who partake in it.

To be fair, actively opposing dinner table politics is important and libratory but it isn’t easy, particularly for those who dislike conflict. Social etiquette discourages it. And our schools have done simply an abysmal job of preparing young people to live their lives in ways that are marked by intellectual curiosity, critical thinking skills or the confidence to take chances, to assume unpopular positions in particular. I have met many people, university educated professionals as often as blue-collar workers, who avow their disinterest in the news and politics because the first is too depressing to watch and the latter is too depressing to stomach. Daily headlines are rarely the stuff of the feel-good, ‘hey, isn’t the world a great place’ variety. The daily repetition of this reality impacts on many dinner tables where people, understandably, feel disempowered, abused or duped.

As a result, political discussions at the dinner table often become selfish bitch sessions, where participants review a list of social problems they have chosen to take personally.

Thus, at its heart, dinner table politics is grievance based and is gives expression to our seemingly inherent tendency to scapegoat.

The manner and views expressed that characterize much dinner table discussion are inherently problematic. So are the habits of mind that (in)form them. Dinner table politics holds a primary responsibility for breeding a me-first, NIMBYistic mentality. In 28 Not for use or publication without permission

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many cases, discussions are framed totally within the bounds of self-reference: my job, my taxes, my interests. How do these problems affect me? My life? My family? So it goes: here’s how, and thus, here’s how we should feel, not think, about them. Dilemmas ranging from, but not restricted to, local crime, economic performance, and global war are framed as being the fault of the Other(s).

For Edward Said, the ‘Other’ represents that which ‘we’ are not. In Orientalism, the Orient is not only ‘adjacent’ to Europe/the Occident, but is also different and inferior – the ‘Other’ to the West. Said argues that identity of Europe depends on a contrasting image of the Orient. This idea of the Other has been used extensively to describe an ingroup/out-group process through which ‘we’ define ourselves – and our politics – in relation to ‘them’. A good if fairly benign example this tendency in dinner table politics is the way that many Canadians define themselves not positively in terms of what they are, but negatively, as in we are not Americans.

This oppositional thinking constructs categories of Us vs. Them that are exclusive and oppositional. It allows people to take a self-righteous moral high ground, one that is often completely unjustified. The environmentalism that has recently arrested much of formal and popular political discussion provides a case in point. Debates about green politics have, naturally, resulted in a healthy amount of finger pointing. For instance, consider how Canadians’ penchant for reflexively, and uncritically judging Americans – itself a national pastime of sorts – helped obscure a key aspect of the emerging debate on global warming and environmental responsibility. When the Bush administration pulled America out of the Kyoto Accord, Canadians – elites as well as people talking casually – took the earliest opportunity to pillory not only Republicans, but to smugly file this as one more example of insularity and self-styled exceptionality on the part of the American Other. Nonetheless, Canada’s performance in addressing greenhouse gas emissions lags not only behind America’s – Canada ranks last among G8 nations with emissions currently 30% above the 1990 level that was targeted for a 6% cut by 2012. Let’s be clear: the American record on this issue is brutal. Canada’s record is even worse, and that our reflexive and unreflective tendency to engage in Yankee-bashing substantially delayed meaningful discussion let alone action on this critical political issue. And that cuts to the heart of how dinner table politics in general and ‘Othering’ in particular retard our ability to address the most important issues of the day.

Nor is this failure confined to national or even international issues. Much avoidable and poorly thought out political conflict within communities, between our next door neighbours originates in a tendency to marginalize and exclude someone as a means of scapegoating. Indeed, once persons or people have been made part of an out-group, popular willingness to Other is often that much stronger because of close proximity. In my own rapidly gentrifying community in Toronto, this has led many of my newly arrived neighbours who, not coincidently also enjoy affluent lifestyles and the attendant half-million dollar mortgages that mark a community in flux to organize against the resident homeless and prostitutes under the guise of ‘community safety.’ Only the rare voice questions whether these are the people who constitute a threat to public safety, or the effect that driving them out will have, on those already disadvantaged and on those 29 Not for use or publication without permission

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who aren’t. Few ask how any of can be made safer by further marginalizing the most marginalized, those whose presence in a previously blue collar ‘hood pre-dates the arrival of these newer, better-heeled neighbours. As Barber notes, people too often fail to recognize that “asking what ‘I want’ and asking what ‘we as a community to which I belong need’ are two different questions.” Pushing Other people/problems into someone else’s backyard to deal with (and think about) is preferable to more honest, less selfinterested political action. It’s less work; it’s so much easier. But easy solutions to complex problems rarely work, even when they from tables set by those suffering from liberal guilt, or political representatives pandering to the basest expressions of xenophobia in the name of representing their constituents. That cities like Toronto are coping inadequately with changing demographics or provide insufficient social service support networks for the weakest residents gets lost in the din of dinner table politics.

The upshot is that, at home and abroad, Others are frequently blamed in casual political talk: first for causing or not solving problems, second for ruining my day/life/tax return. Blacks are killing each other with guns – what’s wrong with their communities?

When are they going to take responsibility for their problems? Will they endanger my kids? I would give aid to the victims of the Tsunami/famine/genocide/poverty in my community, but how do I know that their leaders won’t embezzle my money? Such thinking provides useful shorthand for not thinking critically. For those talking politics, it is easier and more attractive to perpetuate comforting ‘truths’ about others than question one’s own behaviour. But there’s the rub. As tough as it is to maintain our gaze, it is equally hard for all but the most childish or disturbed to continue to avert their eyes for extended periods. It cuts against the essential nature of basic human curiosity. Most people are smart enough to tune in when they choose. And frequently, they will and do.

Doing so means participating, even if only with the family at suppertime. Still, by doing so, by forming opinions – however poorly educated or rudimentary – we become responsible.

Like the tut-tutting etiquette police who silence political talk, blowhards who do talk politics but do so in highly counterproductive ways should be challenged for their transgressions. They are principle examples of people who engage in Othering to make political mischief. You will know these people well. They are the politicians who choose an easy target to Other: the foreigner, the weak or the disposed (that is, anyone who can’t vote for them.) They are the Bill O’Reillys and Don Imuses, the prophets of the news-talk industry. And they are the ranting members of family and acquaintance. Besides being dispiriting, their bluster turns many people off of politics, often for good; because political discussions have been made synonymous with yelling, name calling and aggression.

As an aside, I’ve noticed with dismay the appetite amongst some students for class debate because, taking their cues from cable ‘talk’ shows that pit ideological enemies against one another, they are spoiling for a good fight. They are initially disappointed when I set out the primary ground rules for political debate: mutual respect and calm, civil discussion. Jerry Springer makes for bizarre, even musical theatre evidently, but his brand of ‘talk’ (if it can be called that) and politics don’t mix. Such 30 Not for use or publication without permission

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behaviour makes those unsure of what they know – or don’t know – even more afraid to take a chance by speaking up. Even the most able discussants may simply shut their mouths, chewing their food in silence, when not biting their tongues. But shutting down, tuning out or merely agreeing to disagree stunts our society’s fundamental democratic energy. It simply leaves these problems for others to deal with – or ignore. Silence also does nothing to improve the tone of existing political talk. By not standing up to bullies and knocking them off their pulpits, we merely help to empower them.

Reflecting on your own brushes with dinner table politics, you might notice the subtle or not so subtle gender dimension of this disturbing phenomenon. Excepting the almost comically offensive Anne Coulter, those who engage in dinner table politics are participating in a highly male-gendered activity, emanating from what has traditionally symbolized the source of patriarchical power: the head of the table. Nakedly unabashed pontification has the effect of cutting many young women (and men) out of political engagement in their formative years. It closes minds before they ever approach the classroom. In particular, the active aversion to politics among so many teenaged girls is something that I’ve consistently noted in my classes. Dinner table politics sends the implicit message that critical analysis is an unnecessary frill; quick judgement will suffice. Your questions are stupid. Don’t ask, just listen and absorb. You’ve not to blame – some Other (person) is. Dinner table politics stunt political introspection because of a potent combo of fear and disgust that well up in response to such know-everything-ism.

More disappointingly, those who make a habit of following formal politics and who most often possess the preparation and education to speak purposefully and confidently about political issues fail to do so. Oh, they sound knowledgeable, but their hearts aren’t in it. Too often, they choose to become mere observers in ‘politics as sport,’ a popular spectator sport for cable news audiences and West Wing junkies alike. When I refer to politics as sport, I mean the tendency in the media, academy, legislature and, yes, at the dinner table, to treat politics as merely amusing theatre or competition that gets adrenaline rushing. It is evident when people engage in political talk merely to flex rhetorical muscles, to win arguments through confrontational debate for the sake of the game itself. This devolves into competition between egos, rather than a process through which we build better communities. It is a pastime of the privileged and empowered. It is also a chief preoccupation of media commentators who are all too happy to follow evasive politicians into tangential discussions about political process rather than substantive political issues. At the end of the day, what are more important – particular public policy issues or how particular parties benefit from their debate, spinning and playing partisan games? Invariably, treating politics as sport contributes far more to dinner table politics than to achieving discussions of politics at the dinner table. When teams take sides to play a game, one will invariably win, the other loses. When people organize their politics around beating opponents, everybody loses.

Benjamin Barber links this tendency to a growing voyeurism that has subsumed not only spectator sports and entertainment but also the public square (consider for instance the thousands of closed circuit cameras that blanket London). He comments that, “democracy is something we watch on TV rather than an activity we engage in.” Studies 31 Not for use or publication without permission

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investigating the effect of what has been called “remote-control politics,” conclude that spectators to the sport or theatre of politics conveniently feel involved in politics without the work of actual commitment. Passive dislocation often causes viewers to blame less fortunate individuals for their troubles rather considering the broader social responsibility we have to the community as a whole. It follows that political sports fans are less likely to recognize any level of personal responsibility for solving political problems, or even maintain lasting interest. The substantive problems that beset our society, those that demand politically engaged people to address effectively, become trivialized games that allow us to keep score at home. Putnam’s dismissal of politics as sport is direct: “TVbased politics is to political action as watching ER is to saving someone in distress. Just as one cannot restart a heart with one’s remote control, one cannot jump-start republican citizenship without direct, face-to-face participation. Citizenship is not a spectator sport.”

Think about that. Passive consumption of politics as an object external to our own lives is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Yet this describes the only ‘political life’ most people have. When politics is merely another product to be consumed, and most often only in the form of bizarrely distorted, highly polarized ‘debate’ between talking heads on CNN, we can safely diagnose a cancer on the body politic. Democracy without the demos – not sure what that is exactly, but democracy it is not. And not only are citizens alienated from this pathetic impostor unconvincingly portraying itself as democratic governance – consider sagging voter turnout in this context if you will – but since public policy issues take a back seat to the theatre of politics, democracy becomes a mere performance.

Thus, dinner table politics weaken the bonds that hold our society together, atomising us into a collection of selfish individuals with no duty to one another, where we become dumb followers of irresponsible leaders. For this wrong alone, dinner table politicians should be made accountable for their crimes against community and democracy. Perpetuating the myths that make us stupid are unethical, repugnant acts. The originators of these myths and the willing toadies sitting at tables everywhere, echoing their bile hurt our society every time they open their mouths. Moreover, dinner table politics reinforces apathy. It strengthens the feeling that social problems are too big to address, or that political debates are the arena of politicians, academics and the journalists. Thus, this most common form of political discourse does more than inhibit the education of young people. Dinner table politics is stupid because it kills any substantial commitment to ‘life-long learning’ among people of all ages.

This reality makes the clichéd commitment to ongoing personal development just another snappy line to be employed in educational mission statements and corporate seminars. Ironically, many who claim to care about improving our politics engage in dinner table politics, thus killing the most essential quality of democratic citizenship: active, thoughtful and unselfish involvement in local communities and our larger, interconnected world. Dinner table politics leave people feeling that they aren’t smart enough to learn about the issues, that they’re too busy to get involved. You don’t need to learn more, you’ll just agree with what some other person says. You can let someone else who knows better decide on your behalf, provided your own life is – as predicted by de 32 Not for use or publication without permission

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Tocqueville – comfortable, amusing and pain free. What is left for these people at best amounts to the empty, Soma-assisted totalitarian trip that Aldous Huxley so completely discredited in Brave New World. And that is completely unsatisfactory, don’t you think?

Politics at the Dinner Table: A Recipe for Change Hopefully, you do. All of us – sitting, eating, sharing and talking – need to improve the quality of our talk, and our expectations of each other and ourselves. We must commit to asking simple, hard questions. Work, nerve and open minds are sufficient to expose conventional wisdoms for what they are: shameless efforts to lie, exaggerate and employ knowledge to dubious ends. Not sure where to start? Change can start at your own tables, in your own homes, with your own social contacts. Revealing dinner table politics that is constructed and transmitted by those in government, media and the academy is within the grasp of almost all people; at least those who are able to admit they don’t know, that they have doubt. Taking aim at common sense understandings of our communities and our world is an undertaking that can powerfully make change. Politics at the dinner table, rather than dinner table politics, can be an antidote to the problematic self-interest that marks so much of our political discourse, and hence the politics this talk shapes and reflects. It can be a tool for deconstructing and dismantling the myths that make us stupid.

Dinner Table Politics is a call for people to take a more active and meaningful role in their own lives and our shared world. No serious question is stupid, but not asking questions is. The adoption of a critical mindset, coupled with purposeful community engagement, can contribute to the creation of a world that is more sustainable, more responsible, more just; one that maintains a sense of local involvement without losing sight of global developments. In short, I hope this book provides a booster shot of hope so that we might begin to revitalize the foundational discourse upon which viable democracy rests. We must embrace the ethics of Gandhi, Kant and Rawls in our politics.

This is easier than it sounds. To adopt a standard for political talk that confronts the myths that make us stupid, people should proceed by asking these questions: 1. If a particular argument or idea were made into a universally applied rule, who would benefit from it and who would be injured?

2. How do specific public policies (or how would proposed reforms) affect the most disadvantaged and marginalized members of our communities, both locally and globally?

Perhaps this sounds naïve, but those who are committed to change should wear charges levelled by the cynical as badges of honour. Those who shrug mutely or claim that nothing can be done cannot and have never changed the world. Such fatalism merely clears the way for those who would grab hold of agendas, twist discourse, and obscure

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politics from those who are most directly affected by what they refuse to take part in – politics. Skepticism is a virtue. Cynicism is the cry of the alienated.

The sheer prevalence of couch-bound and dinner table cynics, as opposed to totally disengaged dullards, provide hope for reforming politics as usual. Notwithstanding active refusals not to know, if people are willing to be dumb and complicit, why is there so much complaining about politics as currently constituted? Why has Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, satire committed to coping with political indigestion via witty commentary, gained such traction? Because, in so many homes and communities live the dissatisfied people who possess what activist Eugene Debs identified in his call to action a century ago: “Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.” These people, us, you, our families, friends and neighbours, are humanity’s only hope for a more just world. I hope that with a nudge, many people can be persuaded to raise issues in the course of everyday conversations. With luck, few of these people will really want to waste their dinners to preserve the peace either.

34 Not for use or publication without permission

DRAFT

For publishing consideration

Michael Alex

Not for use or publication without permission

2009

www.teachlearnchange.org

DRAFT

For publishing consideration