If you ask people, “What is the number one threat to democracy today?” some might answer “the Taliban” or “Al Quaeda” or “Osama bin Laden” while others might suggest it's the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran or the Kim Jong-Il regime in North Korea. But while all of these are profoundly evil and threats to democracy in their own right, I have a slightly different opinion.
Personally, I think that the biggest threat faced by all democratically elected governments the world over is the pervasive culture of dumbing down and simplifying political discourse to a level that is readily understood by the simplest of minds. Namely, reducing complex political ideas into slogans, buzzwords and labels just so that they can appeal to the average electorate, the majority of which may well be untutored in the niceties of social and political issues.
By dumbing down complex ideas, one creates the illusion of being comfortable and secure in one's political choices without having to perform the difficult tasks of questioning the political rhetoric or digging deeper into the political agendas and ideas of our elected officials—which are vital and critical elements of any functioning democracy. Instead, we are encouraged not to think for ourselves and to let politicians do the thinking for us while they feed us a steady stream of meaningless Orwellian doublespeak that numbs the brain into a catatonic stupor, while they do pretty much whatever they like, unburdened by such trifles as public accountability.
The media is probably the biggest purveyor of this culture of simplified political rhetoric. While force-feeding their invariably skewed and simplified version of current events down our throats on a daily basis, they have no qualms about marginalizing any genuine political discourse when they fail to comprehend the issues and ideas that they are confronted with. And because the media holds the biggest megaphone in our culture, their dumbed-down version of reality usually ends up being the most influential.
If this principle applies to the media, then it applies even more so to political advertising, which thrives on this very process of dumbing down and simplifying ideas to make them palatable and comprehensible to the public. Take the case of the 2004 Presidential elections, the results of which were the direct result of the culture of simplified and dumbed-down political discourse. The most obvious example of this principle is the “swiftboating” of John Kerry by the Bush Presidential campaign—in which a decorated Vietnam War veteran was systematically publicly defamed by a dishonest ad campaign, while the public, apparently, lacked the necessary sophistication to see through this shameful display of political chicanery.
Anyone who takes a look at the history of democratic institutions worldwide has to come to the conclusion that democracy has everything to do with highly sophisticated, complex ideas and modes of thinking. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are themselves the products of the “Western Enlightenment” and are inspired by the works of such Enlightenment thinkers as John Locke and Thomas Paine. And going even further back in history to the origins of Western democratic thought—it is no coincidence that democratic ideas were conceived in Athens, Greece, which was, at the time, the foremost center of Classical learning, producing such minds as Socrates, Plato (though he expressed profound disillusionment with Athenian democracy in his works) and Aristotle.
The foundation of any functional democracy is the exchange of complex ideas. Communication at a sophisticated level is directly at odds with tyranny or dictatorship, which is rooted in state-enforced dogma or dictates that go unquestioned and unreasoned. Without a functional political discourse in society, involving the sophisticated exchange of ideas, what inevitably follows is a scenario where you have political power concentrated in the hands of a few, namely, oligarchy or totalitarianism, while the media tells you how and what to think because you are discouraged from thinking for yourself. This leads directly to a scenario where advertising wins elections—the campaign with the most advertising dollars inevitably wins through sheer brute force, as opposed to intelligent political debate or discourse. What that means is that political offices are for sale to the highest bidder.
If one cannot think for oneself, then one cannot ask the difficult questions—which is the core of the democratic process. One unquestioningly accepts the status quo and the undisclosed agendas of political appointees and elected officials. Tough questions can only truly be considered in a genuinely democratic society, in which one has the freedom to express oneself without the threat of political reprisals.
Horizon Cybermedia is about trying to raise the level of public awareness through art and cinema. We are unapologetic in our attempts to try to encourage people to think for themselves and to ask tough questions. Check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com for continually updating content with fresh, new and interesting ideas.
Wishing you the very best,
Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.
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