I don’t watch the news.
I’d rather read it. I find the frenetic pace, constantly moving graphics, and outsized personalities on the news today exhausting and overstimulating. The decidedly less emotional, word-centric, print news feels easier to wade through, to comprehend… At least for me.
So I typically don’t see the speeches or sound bites our politicians make. And that suits me just fine because regardless of the nature of the speech or who is making it, I find myself distracted by the applause of the audience.
I begin to question the validity of what is being said as well as the judgment of the audience. It feels most political audiences are more interested in being spoken to and for by somebody who echoes their exact sentiments. It is not a chance to learn or be informed, but rather a chance to raise the flag of who you are in a group of similar flag raisers.
Hence the enthusiasm, the emotion, and all the applause. But what if we collectively agreed political speeches and debates were not eligible for applause? Would that affect how we watch them?
I think it would.
Applause is a reward system for a speaker; a strange and potent one at that. It satiates the speaker and affirms their words have resonated. At the same time, it magnifies their energy and projects it back to them. They become elevated, more important.
It creates a kind of reality distortion field for the speaker.
Without applause perhaps we could more clearly and objectively evaluate what our politicians say. The silence surrounding their words would allow us to judge them on the caliber of their argument instead of the volume of the response. Controversial declarations would need to survive on their own steam. No statement would float up on the cheers of a crowd. The value of eloquence and clarity would once again be made clear.
Without audiences to stir to hysteria, without applause to bookend every significant statement, would our politicians still make the same points, as emphatically, over and over again?
I am reminded of what it has felt like to watch a comedian perform on television where the audience isn’t properly mic’d. Regardless of whether or not the audience is laughing, not hearing their laughter gives the sense that the comedian is not as funny as they should be. Even your own opinion that the comedian is funny must now do battle with the proof before you that nobody else is laughing.
We don’t go through life actively pursuing surprises. We go to concerts to hear our favorite songs, we eat at the restaurants we like, we visit the places we feel confident we will enjoy.
And we only want the politicians who will speak to our needs. And on some level, I get that.
But in that constant pursuit of comfort we have created a kind of politician who seeks not to move us collectively forward, or to challenge us, but to entertain us. Our current world demands everyone be a content creator and thus, an entertainer of sorts.
I can’t help but wonder what would happen if politicians were treated less like celebrities and more like lawmakers.
You can never remove the passion people feel for social issues, nor should you. But it is possible to temper that passion with rational argument, to have both be part of the conversation. It is especially important when logic and reason have been supplanted by the persuasive ability of extreme figures wielding a never-ending series of lies and misdirection.
With so many ways to capture our behavior and so many digital stages, much of our life, of our behavior has become a performance, whether we choose to admit it or not. So it follows there would be an abundance of applause everywhere we turn.
But yet I am still left with the question, what if there was no applause in politics? Would speeches be as impassioned? Would we be more discerning as citizens? Would fact-less claims still proliferate?
Perhaps not.
And that would be something worth clapping for.
—
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join like-minded individuals in The Good Men Project Premium Community.
◊♦◊
◊♦◊
Get the best stories from The Good Men Project delivered straight to your inbox, here.
◊♦◊
◊♦◊
Sign up for our Writing Prompts email to receive writing inspiration in your inbox twice per week.
The Good Men Project is an Amazon.com affiliate. If you shop via THIS LINK, we will get a small commission and you will be supporting our Mission while still getting the quality products you would have purchased, anyway! Thank you for your continued support!
Photo: Getty Images