Public opinion = Public stupidity
Nowadays it seems that our politicians are managing public opinion more delicately than anything else. So bad that for a given new policy that the government is trying to promote, expert groups’ opinion matters less than public opinion sometime. Especially when it comes to election campaign, all the parties are mainly managing or reacting to public opinions and surveys, all the sudden the communication advisor (read: PR guy) plays a central role in the campaign planning, more than any other domain experts in the team.
So why are our leaders listening so closely to the ordinary people? Is that a secret weapon of the journalists? Don’t take me wrong, by all mean, listening to the ordinary people is the duty of every politician and I admire that, but listening to the surveys or news reports presented by a handful of partisan journalists who selectively pick the content to suit their opinion is not so wise in my opinion.
For instance, pick any controversial headline news: war of Iraq, nuclear plan of Iran, war of Afghanistan, national debt, gun control program, globalization, Kyoto protocol, China humans right, Montreal metro bid to Bombardier, etc, etc, etc. Almost every single time, the journalists would present us some survey saying that “70% of Canadians are favorable to this or that”, or “55% of Americans are against this or that”, or show us a scene of group of people protesting against something, or young people throwing rocks on something, or some weaks people crying in front of the camera, etc.
The pattern that I’m trying to highlight here is that they always present the very ordinary people, mostly ill-informed and, dumb sometime… They react impulsively rather than rationally, and whenever a group of ordinary people get together to protest, the average IQ level drops to the half! They would do or say stupid things (like throw rocks and burn stuff) that they wouldn’t if left alone. In additional, this class of people are easily manipulated by a spiritual leader, be it religious or workers union or local community leader.
Why don’t our journalists do us a real favor by presenting the more rational people, such as analysts, professionals, domain experts, government officials? If the general public is splitted on a controversial subject, I would believe that the specialists (mentioned above) are equally representative as well. At least they will react rationally based on facts and experiences. They won’t go to protest on the street and vandalise the stores and buildings and burn cars. If journalists stop to take that as absolutely representative of the general public opinion on that subject, then it will discourage many people from joining.
I understand as a democracy society, we want to give every person an equal voice to express their opinion, we want to listen to the dumb people as much as the smart people, but are we overdoing that? So bad that we take the dumb people’s opinion for granted as representative, and we no longer present the specialists’ opinion to the public channel? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to listen more to what the smart people have to say, rather than showing what the dumb people are doing or saying on the street? This is similar to the workers union problem where the measure that we put in place to avoid a group of people being exploited is turning back against ourselves, like the computers have turned back and are controlling humans!