Andrew MacDougall: All I want for Christmas is ... an end to the dystopian hellscape

You can do your part by paying up and calling out your own.

By: Andrew MacDougall

The way things are going, Santa Claus is going to have to watch his ass as he and his reindeer troop deliver their haul on Christmas Day.

Over Ukraine, Russian belligerents have developed a habit of blowing innocent things out of the sky. There’s the risk the Chinese will consign Santa to Xinjiang for some slave labour (for which, to be fair, he shows aptitude). And then there is the turmoil in Venezuela, where anything betraying a hint of snow is currently getting shredded by American military power.

But enough about lumps of coal. The world could use a little positivity these days. What should we be asking Father Christmas for this year?

Well, I put my big Christmas ask out there in the summer: I would love Santa’s elves to reverse gear and destroy something, namely the giant vampire squid called the “Attention Economy” that is currently wrapped around our societal face. In my perfect Christmas movie, we would have to put our hands into our pockets to pay for these platforms, to shift incentives away from monetizing eyeballs with anything and everything.

Second on my list, however, is a much more reasonable ask: That we hold ourselves to the same standard as we hold our opponents. Especially in politics. Because sweet baby Jesus, do we need more of that.

The most glaring example on this front is the United States of America. First, there are the matters of taste: If the current president were to, say, blame a film director and his wife’s tragic death on Trump hatred, with zero evidence and the bodies still warm, the president’s top advisers and cabinet colleagues would have the quiet word, not the internet. Then there are the matters of wallet: if the president’s son and his ‘little-known’ drone company is suddenly bagging $620m Pentagon contracts, and the President himself is the beneficiary of his own memecoin buttressed by the pro-crypto actions of the White House, there might be some questions that need answering.

And that’s before we consider the 400m gift to Trump of a widebody jet from Qatar, along with a luxury golf development in Doha for the Trump Organization. Remember when the Republicans were (legitimately) on their hind legs about Hunter Biden and some of his business dealings and use of his (then-retired) father? That’s a whole lot of cats and a whole lot of tongues.

If the President’s son is using his father’s office to enrich himself, Republicans should call it out, whether that son’s name is Eric, Donald Jr., or Hunter. If it’s bad for one, it’s surely bad for the other.

Which isn’t to downplay the difficulty of calling out your own tribe. It might be essential, but it sure ain’t comfortable. As someone who worked for years in Conservative governments, I respect former Conservative cabinet minister Peter MacKay — but took a swing when he appeared to put his interests ahead of the country’s by calling for the Conservative leadership race to plow forward in the face of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

More recently, I’ve worried about Pierre Poilievre and whether he is hurting or helping his prospects when he muses about Justin Trudeau being locked up on some over-excited YouTube channels.

Anyone can shrug off criticism from an enemy; it hits differently if it comes from someone in your family.

And this is where my two asks actually intersect. In a world where the information economy is actually a derivatives market in which we trade on our reactions to information — not the information itself — we are incentivized to turn blind eyes to our own side’s misconduct.

I’m not as likely to like, comment, or share the bad things my tribe is doing. What I am likely to do, however, is like, comment, or share what the bad thing my political opponent has done. Add to that the fact these platforms have kneecapped the traditional news media (albeit with a healthy assist from the media itself), and it’s no wonder we are losing our collective ability to smell our own farts. It would all be darkly comic if our democratic systems didn’t actually require the accountability we are stripping out of every corner of public life.

Sadly, the answer to depolarising our feeds isn’t as simple as showing us more of the opposing view’s content. No, that would be too easy. In fact, research shows that doing that is more likely to reconfirm our original opinions. The sad fact is that changing minds on digital platforms is a nigh-on impossible task; it’s a face-to-face kind of interaction; one fueled by listening and empathy. And the Attention Economy is kryptonite for listening and empathy.

What’s more, having an instant feedback loop for thoughts and opinion is a crusher of independent thought and opinion. In a world where a writer has a dashboard view of what their audience thinks about what they write the second they write it, are they more likely to write things that will displease or challenge that audience? Or are they more likely to tell them what they want to hear? When compensation is tied to clicks, the answer is most always going to be the latter over the former. ‘All the news that’s fit to print’ is a radically different brief than ‘what is somebody willing to click on?’.

Given this environment and these incentives, why are we then surprised the world is sliding into a kind of tribal gangsterism? Sure, Donald Trump is a particularly malignant example. But what if he’s the evolutionary vanguard, i.e. the one creature that is already adapted to the swamp we find ourselves now living in? If lying and being shameless about lying is rewarded instead of being called out, are we likely to get more or fewer Trumps?

So godspeed Santa Claus. And be sure to bring a thick skin along with a big bag of cash for tribute. You’re going to need it for this year’s journey.

Andrew MacDougall is a director at Trafalgar Strategy and former head of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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