Common sense is a complex topic
By John Twigg
I've been working on a column about common sense in politics, governance and some Island issues for about five months and now it has finally come together, at least part one of what hopefully will soon be two parts.What took so long? Well it turns out that "common sense" is a complex topic and it is perhaps widely misunderstood too.
But I can explain that with a litany of examples involving common sense in democracy, politics, media, society and social order (i.e. courts).
First, common sense would say something like this: "If it can't be explained in 100 words or less then it's probably not worth saying," or not worth being written and read, and that pseudo aphorism probably is correct about 90 per cent of the time - but our complex society often requires certainty and accuracy 100 per cent of the time such as in judicial decisions, audited finances, medical diagnoses and even claims in legislatures, so we see that while most generalities about common sense may be true, some are still false.
So how should we handle those 10 per cent of cases in which common sense is wrong, based on wrong assumptions or at least inadequate or inappropriate in the circumstances? Pretend they don't exist?? Or should we revise our thinking about them a bit.
The answer depends on the situation and there are many variations but any rush to judgement is dangerous and especially so in complex cases with big risks at stake and especially when there are conflicting versions of what the truth is, which is quite often the actual situation.
While more than a few politicians worship common sense as if it is a sort of Holy Grail ideal, the reality is that sometimes common sense - also known as public opinion - can become badly wrong, especially when it is based on false assumptions and is colored by emotions.
Ghomeshi decision provoked protesters
In Canada we just witnessed a prime example of that in the Jian Ghomeshi trial in which the former high-profile CBC broadcaster was acquitted on allegations of sexual abuse brought by three women after the judge found the testimony of the three accusers to have been flawed in numerous ways. So even though it's quite clear that Ghomeshi was guilty of some weird sexual behaviours with them the presumption of innocence and the benefit of reasonable doubt (i.e. that there may have been some consent, and that the allegations may have been exaggerated or flawed) meant that Ghomeshi had to be acquitted.(Note Ghomeshi also was not required to testify against himself, the appeal period is still pending at time of writing, and a separate trial looms with a fourth accuser.)
Nonetheless that acquittal didn't stop throngs of feminist demonstrators and many others such as federal NDP leader Tom Mulcair from making comments suggesting that Ghomeshi was guilty and should have been convicted - allegations that suggest common sense should have taken precedence over the rule of law!
That debate raged on for several days, with various voices calling for changes in favour of women making sexual assault allegations, until Ghomeshi's lawyer, Marie Henein, did a great interview (preliminary excerpt here ) with the CBC-TV's Peter Mansbridge to explain how the rule of law should take precedence over such common public opinions.
"We have one of the greatest legal systems in the world," said Henein, a 25-year veteran, noting the accusers bear the burden of proof and the accused get the presumption of innocence so that wrongful convictions are minimized, but that defence lawyers face the over-resourced weight of the state and the finger of blame.
Henein defended the right of people to hold opposing views and advocate a re-assessment of the presumption of innocence in sexual assault cases but she also said that conversation should be measured, informed and genuinely helpful to the community, not mere pandering for votes without having read the case documents or court transcripts.
"We don't want to go straight to convictions (with) slam-dunk results," she said, noting decisions should be based on the balance of probabilities, the credibility of witnesses and the benefit of the doubt going to defendants - which runs counter to the views of many "common-sense" observers (my wording).
After that Mulcair slightly backtracked in this Tweet, which is followed by two other related posts:
Tom Mulcair
I believe strongly in the presumption of innocence and the right to a strong defence but I also believe survivors. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jian-ghomeshi-lawyer-marie-henein-tom-mulcair-1.3512070 …
Sue Stroud
Ghomeshi Judge's Son Works for Marie Henein's Brother http://ln.is/canadalandshow.com/a/Y3XJ7 … #IBelieveSurvivors #cdnpoli judge shld have recused himself
Jian #Ghomeshi case continues to attract public interest http://www.straight.com/news/668716/jian-ghomeshi-case-continues-attract-public-interest … via @georgiastraight #vancouver
Trump rides tides of "common sense"
A similar example is evident now in the highly-charged campaigns to become the next President of the United States, with several candidates in both parties exploiting various tides of public opinion, especially Republican hopeful Donald Trump riding the widespread antipathies towards America's financial and political elites; he says he "loves the poorly-educated" and blatantly panders to public opinion such as by promising to build a fence all along the Mexican border to try to keep out criminals and illegal immigrants which many ethnic immigrants welcome as a means of eliminating unfair competition for jobs.The mainstream media and establishment pols have tried to derail Trump's train but they have barely dented his momentum in delegate-selection contests and public-opinion polls even when he has committed various verbal and tactical errors, the latest being some comments against abortion which he quickly amended.
Indeed Trump's momentum has been so strong and his policy pronouncements so extreme that left-wing demonstrators have begun trying to invade and disrupt his rallies, with the demonstrators seemingly unaware that their actions are highly undemocratic and hypocritical, as if free speech is available only to those whose policy recipes are politically correct.
So again we see some common sensibilities rushing to judgements even before the party members get a chance to vote, which is similar to the backlash against the Ghomeshi decision.
Can any of the lefties consider how they would feel if gangs of right-wing bullies were to invade their meetings, try to take over microphones and generally suppress their movements? They'd be outraged, but of course common sense fits differently when it's on the other foot!
Apparently Mulcair, who is facing a leadership review in a week or so, is one of those because he has been outspoken against Trump's campaign, even here calling him a fascist who should be banned from Canada!
What a contrast that is from Justin Trudeau, who wisely worked hard to leave open a door in case Trump does win a mandate from American voters.
But which stance is "common sense"? Maybe both of them!
Tyee columnist accuses Trump of "sewage"
"Enter Donald Trump. Whatever else he might be -- blowhard, buffoon, Berlusconi West -- Trump has become a measuring stick. More than any previous Republican fear monger, Trump has revealed that trafficking in the very worst traditions of political debate can be a winning strategy, at least in the primary stage of the election. In the process Trump has raised the question of whether the Internet is truly a different world than the one we live in. Could that constant flow of online sewage in fact be an accurate gauge of American public opinion?"
Online sewage??
But Burgess continued:
"Consider the Washington Post/ABC News poll from earlier this month. While Hillary Clinton led by nine points overall, Trump held a 49 to 40 lead among white voters, a lead built largely from the support of white men. Among those without college degrees Donald "I love the poorly educated" Trump led by 24 points.
Think about that a moment. Everything Trump has done, everything he has said -- it all runs together into a bubbling cesspool of hatred, idiocy and implied violence -- has left him with a near majority of support among white American voters. Is it really possible now to claim that the average online comment thread is an aberration? Hasn't Trump demonstrated that the hateful, the misogynistic, the racist, the willfully ignorant are in fact a winning coalition in Republican politics? "
Willfully ignorant?? By whose test?
In other words, right-wing common sense is terrible, but centre-left common sense apparently is okay. Oh?
Really what it teaches is that the common sense of Trump's supporters needs to be checked just as much as the common sense of his lefty opponents does, maybe moreso.
And if you believe Hillary Clinton is a paragon of truth-telling and practical progressive wisdom you just haven't done enough research, you haven't read the transcripts, you've simply believed her when she claimed her campaign for the Democratic nomination "depends on small donations". Riiiight....
In other words, the rising incidence of intolerance is on both left and right and in all genders and orientations and those politicians who try to ride the waves of what appears to them to be "common sense" should be cautious about doing so because it's quite possible that some of the underlying assumptions are flawed and some facts inside them may be simply wrong.
Another "sunny days" error
A small but local example of how important fact-checking can be in politics and public affairs is seen in the Harry Sterling op-ed column that appeared March 30 in the Victoria Times-Colonist under the erroneous headline "Trudeau begins to face contentious issues".That headline must have been written by someone at the end of a shift or someone who hasn't been watching Canadian politics for the last six months or few years because it's obvious from the recent federal budget that the new Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has been addressing the whole range of tough issues for about five months now and even is already acting on many of them (see the many tweaks to tax policies, many of which are detailed in the previous issue of The Daily Twigg blog viewable here .)
Many other issues (such as what to do with the National Energy Board) are being subjected to studies before they're tinkered with, and that's wise too, even common-sensical.
But more puzzling was why the T-C editors decided to publish a column containing three somewhat derogatory references to Trudeau's espousal of "sunny days" when anyone with a modicum of knowledge about Canadian political history will know that the correct phrase is "sunny ways" with a "w" and that that is a quote from former Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier which young Trudeau pointedly cited on the night of his election win.
For a more fulsome explanation of that "sunny ways" history see the first edition this year of The Daily Twigg viewable at http://thedailytwigg.blogspot.ca/2016/01/paradigm-shifts-needed-in-canadian.html .
There is a big difference between "sunny days" (which is most widely known now as a song title and lyric by the Canadian rock group Lighthouse) and "sunny ways", which is about a political strategy in which people with divergent interests and opinions can still find common ground on which to move forward - a quintessentially Canadian trait that more people should try to emulate.
But it appears Mr. Sterling is following the examples of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and business commentator Michael Campbell in unknowingly but still wrongly using the wrong phrase to try to score some cheap political points at Mr. Trudeau's expense, who fortunately and deservedly has so much positive momentum going for him now that such smears probably won't slow him down one whit.
Mr. Sterling's gist is that Trudeau's naive philosophy of optimism will be unable to deal with "complex and sensitive" foreign policy issues such as disputes in the Middle East or with environmental disputes about greenhouse gas emissions from proposed energy projects in B.C., but that sounds more like verbiage to fill space than a serious contribution to the serious policy challenges facing Canada.
In a democracy like Canada's everyone is free to expound such opinions but my question is why would the reputable Times-Colonist waste space on it?
Did they think they were catering to "common sense" readers?
Online bullies attack columnists
A similar example appeared March 30 in Vancouver's 24hours publication in which a column by its managing editor Chris Campbell about efforts to help house homeless people in Maple Ridge was quickly attacked by online bullies described here which Campbell labelled "insanity".The common thread is that some people who disagreed with some opinions felt they had a right to make nasty personal aspersions about him on his facebook page - another example of public opinion run amok.
Should politicians feel entitled to pander to such base morals? Apparently some do.
Indeed my online friend Laila Yuile recently had her whole website hacked and and all content destroyed, apparently because she dared to publish information about how some big-ticket public-sector construction projects and some other public projects have had a habit of running over budget and struggling with design flaws, and when she dared to complain about it to the RCMP she received a death threat, which you can read more about in another issue of The Daily Twigg here . Her content is now being recovered by WordPress tech and should be reposted soon.
Apparently tolerance of dissent amongst both left and right activists is diminishing in this age of online media.
B.C. gov't steers public opinion
Unfortunately the challenge of truth-telling by the media seems to be becoming more difficult as the decline of budgets in the mainstream media outlets reduces voices there, which in turn puts more pressure on the new media to fill the voids, and goodness knows there seems to be ever more of that needed.An example of that is the B.C. government's claim that public consultations have found "strong support for the George Massey Tunnel Replacement Project" as Transportation Minister Todd Stone claimed in a Tweet coinciding with a public meeting in Richmond accompanied by this news release .
Well the consultations have been rushed, the multi-billion-dollar project is still contentious and its claimed purpose, to improve traffic flow by replacing the old Deas Island tunnel, is misleading because the real objective is to open the south arm of the Fraser River to new shipping docks for Port Metro Vancouver. Analysis by Vaughn Palmer viewable here .
That little information capsule is only a small part of a much larger propaganda strategy in which the B.C. government essentially is using taxpayer-funded information to steer public opinion into a position wherein the B.C. Liberal Party will have a much-improved prospect for re-election in May 2017 thanks to steering public opinion into a place that sounds like the common-sense solution.
A prime example of that campaign is taxpayer-paid advertising now running in high rotation during major televised sporting events and newscasts claiming that B.C. has "the strongest economy in Canada" - which is true but only because the economies of all other provinces are quite weak right now and not because B.C. is booming due to provincial stimulus and great leadership.
Indeed the B.C. Liberals under Premier Christy Clark seem well on their way to winning another mandate mainly because they're raising buckets of campaigns funds by selling special access to the Premier and they've structured the budget so they'll have oodles of cash to spend on buying votes in the pre-election period, which you can read more about in previous issues of The Daily Twigg here and here .
I'll have more to say soon about common sense involving climate and environment issues in general and on Vancouver Island in particular, including Greater Victoria's sewage challenge (which features common sense versus science and facts), Greater Victoria's problems with wildlife (too many feral creatures), and others.
Meanwhile here are some Tweets and links to more information on this general theme:
Richard Windsor
The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. - Michael Crichton
Richard Windsor @SpaceWeather101
15 minutes ago
Richard Windsor
U of T students tyranny versus fossil fuel investments
National Observer
Richard Windsor
“We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.” ― Richard P. Feynman
Richard Branson @richardbranson
19 minutes ago
-30-
Richard Branson
Instead of regarding each other as rivals, we should embrace each other as allies: http://virg.in/t1gg6
-30-
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