Critizine.com

The most powerful politicians are not successful because of their competence in discussing profoundly, but because they polarise people and this is what we need to avoid in politics. Instead of using all their knowledge to argue and debate reasonably, quite a few politicians convince people by creating a one-sided scenario, where either something good or bad can happen, which leads to an unsophisticated way of approaching problems. Such a making-problems-plain-and-simple process causes trouble because it does not fit in our awareness of the world's complexity.

This process comes into being because we usually rely on only a few sources for the formation of our opinion. As a result, we start creating narrow-minded arguments, which then cause serious difficulty if we try to interact with someone from the other end of the political spectrum, simply because we are no longer discussing a set of objective arguments, but rather ones based on partiality.

The reason for this is clearly identifiable by the use of emotional and prejudiced arguments instead of those based on empirical facts. We have now started to create our new conception of the world by using biased statements. These one-sided reports from the media, which we classify as true and reliable, are now used as our foundation for further considerations.

Accordingly, this creation of a new basis for thinking brings us to today's situation where the image of a politician is more important than how capable the person is of debating at a high level of differentiation. We can recognize this in the shift from the middle of the political spectrum to the extremes. This shift is, for instance, easily detectable in the acceptance of the Swiss initiative to ban minarets, which was a shock for everyone who believed in human rights and religious freedom. In the eyes of extremists it is either black or white, serious or frivolous, whereas, in reality, the world is far more complex.

In conclusion, the use of cause-effect, one-sided arguments and a populist way of thinking convinces people easily because it seems plausible and comprehensible – even reliable and trustworthy – though this does not make a political position automatically more tenable. Therefore, only honest politics, with fact-based arguments, has the power to break the cycle of right- and left-wing populism, which then would lead to a more intelligent and complex way of debating and understanding.



And what's your opinion?

Well, it was meant to be a persuasive text and therefore it can't be objective.

That's a pretty good point, indeed. I totally agree with you that it's not the politican's fault only, though they're still an important part of the system and therefore probably more valued.

Quoted from "arianne_nl"

But after one term in office their voters will move to a more moderate point of view. Which has been scientifically proven.

You're talking about cycles, aren't you? Sure, it is like that but right now the drift to the right wing just seems so radical in my eyes - and problematic, because especially of this one-sided view and this playing with emotions and fear.

Quoted from "arianne_nl"

And as one of my professors stated in a lecture: "too bad, but remember that 70% of our voters is too0 stupid to understand what they are voting for. And besides that, they don't care what is going on."

Yay, too bad!