Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks on stage during the second day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 20 in Chicago, Ill.Alex Wong/Getty Images
It’s been a few weeks since Barack Obama reminded us what a brilliant orator he is.
For that matter, so did his wife Michelle, who spoke before him at the Democratic National Convention. But it was some of the wisdom in Mr. Obama’s speech that has stayed with me. As he often does, he truly nailed the times in which we live.
The first passage that hit me was about the lack of mutual respect that has sprung up in many corners of society. He was talking about the U.S., but he could have just as easily been referring to Canada or Britain or many other places.
“Our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us across the political spectrum seem so quick to assume the worst in others, unless they agree with us on every single issue,” he said. “We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and out-yell the other side.”
And then he really got my head nodding.
“We live in a time of such confusion and rancour, with a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last: money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones. We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves and then we wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other.”
We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other.
That sentence has never felt truer than today. And yet the likelihood of that changing seems more remote than ever. We have never been more connected, technologically, as a society, and yet more disconnected as a people. That’s what occurs when our conversations mostly happen over text. It’s hard to establish deep, meaningful connections that way.
When we see people actually talking to one another and not scrolling their phones, it’s notable. My wife and I were in a restaurant in Paris a year ago and were shocked when we looked around and didn’t see a single person looking at their phone; they were all talking to one another. We couldn’t remember the last time we witnessed that.
How did we end up on the verge of losing something – face-to-face, or at least voice-to-voice, conversations – that was once so elemental to our existence?
I’m not the only one who has been thinking about this. Carol Off, the brilliant former co-host of CBC Radio’s As it Happens, has written a book that talks about it too: At a Loss for Words: Conversation in the Age of Rage.
Like me, Ms. Off worries about the future of civil society – the one we like to think we live in now, which is imperilled by our politics. A political discourse, she observes, that has been co-opted by extremists on both sides of the spectrum. Those two sides used to be able to talk to one another without fighting; now they can’t even speak to one another.
As she points out, Big Tech and its many platforms – Facebook, X, YouTube – make their money from “us against them” interactions. “Anger, fear of others, uncertainty – these emotions are powerful and Big Tech plays on those emotions,” Ms. Off told me. “There is no profit to be made from rational conversations or fact-driven reporting. Someone has dubbed it ‘the outrage industrial complex.’ ”
I couldn’t help thinking about all this as I watched the U.S. presidential debate on Tuesday night. There couldn’t have been two more starkly different futures on offer by the two candidates – former president Donald Trump and current Vice-President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump is the ultimate rage farmer. He sows disunity because it works for him. He sells hopelessness as opposed to hope because it works for him. His vision divides Americans, instead of uniting them, because it works for him.
That’s what bolsters his campaign, and keeps it afloat.
Our friends south of the border will remain on the precipice of grave danger as long as Mr. Trump is in the picture. Only when he is gone from the political stage will the country have the opportunity to realize that they don’t have to live in an America that is so angry, bitter and divided. That the U.S. is better, more prosperous, when it’s seen as a beacon of hope around the world and not a nation on the brink of failure and collapse.
There’s a long way to go to get to that point. Rejecting Mr. Trump, once and for all, would be a good start.