How To Vote Without Facts
I’m An Anarchist, Whatever One of Those Is
When I was a younger man, I had decided I was an anarchist. Following the George Carlin school of voting, I never wanted to participate in our corrupt systems, as I did not wish to become a part of the problem; I never wanted to be to blame for The Iraq War, for example, and the general deceit of evil men. So I never voted, knowing I could sit in my ivory tower, throwing shit on the silly voters below, completely clean-handed, whilst you were all to blame for the dystopia rising from the pits of iniquity in government. I remember thinking even as a baby-teenager that I knew the system was rigged, that they lied to us, that nothing mattered. And in these last nine years, I was entirely proved correct.
The problem was I had no idea what an anarchist really was, and I had no idea how government really worked. I was right in as much as I could tell the system was rigged, but it was the same level of knowledge that I know a computer game uses code. Doesn’t mean I can code myself. We all knew, way before the era of post-truth, that politicians lie to us (every generation has said such) and although we got a glimpse behind the curtain, I still didn’t possess enough knowledge to continue being a non-voter. And after the all-father of anarchy released the above statement they would be voting in this election, it made concrete a change in my lifestyle that has nearly drowned me since the Tories have been in power for nine years. I vote now. And I vote Labour in my constituency. To do nothing is to allow others to speak for you. To use ignorance as a palliative to voting is to ignore a gaping wound in your side.
I vote Labour because my Conservative MP does not line up with my belief systems at all, being homophobic, and against the needs of the disabled in my area. All of this can be uncategorically fact checked through their voting record, and this is where things get muddy very quickly. Most individuals in my area — and I would hasten to say across the country — are utterly incapable of checking the facts, both left & right. And this, combined with a distinct lack of empathy, leads me to my latest rant — which I will add, with aplomb apology, maybe quite sweary as I’ve been watching The Thick of It all day, and the closer we get to December 12th, the more I feel like Malcolm Tucker giving the general public an enema, as if congealing my thoughts into a monologue of expletives and vulgar wit will somehow translate my requirements to you more succinctly. As if speaking rudely will be heard by people who don’t check facts, voting records, and listen to the minds of those more intelligent than ourselves.
People vote on what they feel, and what they believe. The conversation gets muddy because we rely on facts to bolster our feelings, to navigate them, but when the facts are as clear as mud how do we know what we feel? And when our own minds negate new information as a survival strategy, how do we navigate feelings that cause harm to others? How do we open the conversation under such circumstances?
When we are left with facts vs feeling, and the discourse dries up, we end up with only one thing left to say:
OK Boomer
As much as I find the phrase a little petulant, it is an unavoidable reaction to the constant sweltering pits of conversation that millennials such as myself have to muster the courage for each day. Too often I am presented with a poor understanding of the state of affairs, and even when I see that many individuals — of all generations — have provided links to facts, reputable articles & sources, and evidence-based videos, the ‘boomer’ in question returns to their deep-programmed comprehension of the world. If you were in the pub, and you explained that the bar doesn’t sell pink lemonade, but the guy next you keeps saying that he has bought pink lemonade from here for the last twenty years, and you know a) the bar has never sold pink lemonade and b) the bar hasn’t existed for twenty years, you’d just shrug your shoulders and say “sure, mate” and move on. OK Boomer, for all its pettiness and lack of intellectual discourse, is the social media equivalent of such an exchange. If someone is unwilling to engage in a debate, when presented with information that directly cancels out the opponent's opinion, then what can one do other than announce “ok boomer” and move on.
So it’s muddy because its facts vs feeling. And now it gets messy…People often cite freedom of speech as an argument to their political leanings, and in-turn this leads to the common phrase that “just because I have a political belief/opinion doesn’t mean you can shut me down”; but a political opinion isn’t an opinion at all. A political opinion is a decisive, actionable element in a society, and although there is more than one way to skin a cat, the cat still needs to be skinned in a way that exists, and things that exist we call facts. To denounce real information in a debate online because it doesn’t align with your political opinion is to misapprehend that what you have is an opinion at all. What you have is a responsibility you can physically achieve in the world through action, backed up by a belief system, and some of those are harmful to those around you. This is why we have to present information on a constant basis, because so many boomers — to generalise — choose to vote based on gut feeling and their ‘opinion’ on the world, rather than the actual evidence presented to them. Which resolves as telling people who have dogs as their profile picture to shut the fuck up. Again, to open discourse to bring political understanding to the general conversation ceases. If the conversation is incapable of holding critical thinking, then we can only resort to name-calling; if the one we wish to educate will ignore every piece of information presented, because to present such information is to suppress an opinion — which as illustrated, can’t exist as an opinion — we cannot continue. And they will go on to vote for a party that will cause a mass genocide of the working classes. Note, this is not to say that only boomers do this; all generations have their individuals that fail to listen, but from my own experience I only seem to receive such vitriol and lack of understanding of how a conversation functions from those we would liberally paste the word boomer on.
Above is a link to an independent fact-checking body looking through the Conservative Manifesto, and although it clearly indicates that the NHS figures — although not entirely untruthful — are confusing, and that Brexit is being explained in a manner that is counter to how it will actually manifest in reality, many individuals still believe that 50,000 nurses (remember 1+1 is 4, because you include the original ones in the answer as well as the answer itself) and Brexit is a clear cut event that will benefit the country. Regardless of the 163 economists that back Corbyn’s manifesto and plans, Conservative voters elect to ignore such information. The conversation ceases. The cursing begins. And we all throw our pint glasses at each other. Because we end with a stalemate of a group of individuals who try to read all the facts they can, and a group that follows their patriotic belief in a party that “gets things done”.
Naturally, however, it is easy to surmise — much as leftists say that the media is a propaganda machine for the right — that the media is a propaganda machine for the left. Regardless of the copy-paste nurses spiel on facebook accounts that only existed since last Tuesday, right-wingers will perpetually believe that the kid was a Labour stunt. It is irrelevant what real nurses have said, because the information our social bubbles receive indicates otherwise. In a world where everything is based entirely on propaganda — although I would hasten to say, as with the fact-checking above, that Labour’s advertised posts have all been correct, clarified by the BBC which is a right-wing organisation — it seems impossible to make a decision based on information received. If we can’t sway the Tories from their vote for a party that will dismantle the very nature of Britain, how we can we begin to fix our systemic issues of homophobia, racism, transphobia, hatred of those in poverty, and of travellers (see aside) — how can we create a Britain everyone feels safe within, if information is not enough? If we only listen to our own echochambers, and if — by strange happenstance — the media is indeed a leftist propaganda machine as much as a right-wing one, how can we make a judgement in tomorrows vote at all?
So Let’s Remove The Facts
Let’s do the whole thing without facts then. One last set of facts before we get going.
So we’ll strip down the entire idea of voting to some super basic principles, and remove all the ‘facts’, which in this instance I will call a source outside of your experienced life that informs your opinions of the reality around you, such as newspapers, memes, voting records, even The ONS. We’ll only deal with some very simple ideas that relate to the current state of affairs, and experiential information, which in this sense is what you can perceive in your general environment; in this instance, things I have experienced, but which I know are commonplace around Britain due to friends, family, and acquaintances having the same experiences. If this seems like the weak element of my breakdown, ignore even these elements to an extent, and think about how you have experienced the world around you to date. Again, we’re stripping out ‘facts’, and dealing only with a few key pieces of information we can’t avoid, followed up by how we’ve seen the world change around us directly.
There are two parties. Red Team, led by ‘Bill’, and Blue Team, led by ‘Ben’. Blue Team have been in power for nine years, with an assortment of ‘Bens’. We know nothing at all about ‘Bill’ and ‘Ben’, not even what they look like, anything they’ve voted on before, or any actions they have taken whilst in or out of power. We have no idea of their ideological roots, anything they’ve done that’s circumspect — we only know that we have two dots to fill in, red or blue, and that blue have been in power for considerably longer. Note, anyone asking about Jill in yellow and Oddie in green, I’m keeping things to two-party for the purposes of this exercise, to keep things simple.
From experience, we know that we are seeing more homeless people. Whether there actually are or not we are uncertain, but we keep having conversations with friends about how many more there are. We also have a friend that works in the NHS who says they don’t have the money to run the hospital effectively; again, we don’t know if this is true, but we do know that it takes longer to see a doctor, and we also remember last time we went there we had to wait for a bed. We also have a friend who is a teacher, who tells us that they have to pay for their own resources in the classroom, and although we again don’t know if this is true, we do think this is an odd statement, and trust our friend, seeing as when we were at school this wasn’t the case (this is me actually). We also know that when we were younger, we didn’t really have to think about suicide rates, but as of late we have had at least four people who are either friends or friends of friends kill themselves, and we also have friends who speak of having lost people as well. We assume they aren’t lying as there doesn’t seem to be a reason why they would lie about their friends killing themselves. We also know that things are more expensive, and our money isn’t going as far as it once did; and we also know that it is harder to get a job compared to when we were younger. Again, we don’t know the causal relationships of these things, we only know that they have happened to us. Even if we don’t know why it has happened, we know it did, or at least happened to us if not anyone else, and at most happened to a wide circle of friends, family and acquaintances.
All of these changes, we can estimate, happened in the past nine years. We can compare, to the best of our knowledge — again, we know it may be muddy, but we can be certain of our experiences at least — that the time leading up to Blue Team being in power was moderately better to some extent than the period of nine years where Blue Team have been in power. We also note that Red Team were not the best before the nine years when they were in power, but we know that someone else ran the team then, and we know nothing about ‘Bill’. We do know the various ‘Bens’ of the Blue Team for the last nine years, even if we know nothing about them, but we know they exist.
We know that whatever team is in charge has to make sure that hospitals run, poverty is at an all time low, education doesn’t require the wallets of their teachers, suicide rates are low, mental health is supported & cared for, jobs are available, benefits are available, and people are generally happy. Even if we ignore all other jobs, and say the only job is to make sure people are generally happy, we know people are generally not happy.
We also can add as an addendum, that because we are unaware of the situation of both teams, and have no idea who ‘Bill’ and ‘Ben’ are other than that ‘Bill’ wants to be in power and ‘Ben’ already is, that whoever is in power may have done many things to try and solve these situations. We don’t know if they stole money, ran things ineffectually to ruin the lives of the poor, or acted like evil geniuses. We also don’t know if they worked incredibly hard against all odds to make sure everyone is happy, safe, and secure in the systems they exist within. We don’t know what they’ve been doing — whether they’ve done it well, for the people, not for the people, terribly, or were just up against an insurmountable force that prevented them from making people happy — but we do know that the above-experienced things are occurring around us.
Analogy time. I work for a big company, let’s say we sell paper. I’m told we are the top for paper sales in the country, and we’re going to negotiate a new deal with Europe so we can sell more paper. I find out, as I work there, that there will be layoffs, no bonuses, because we are not selling enough paper, and there's a leak in the bathroom. I’m told a host of reasons for this. The leak has been going for nine years. The CEO of the company is tasked with fixing the leak nine years ago, and creating more opportunities for me to sell paper. The CEO tries their best, and although I have no idea what the CEO has actually done to try and sell more paper and fix the leak — again, I don’t know if they were incompetent, or tried incredibly hard against all odds — these problems persist. In this scenario the paper company either shuts down, or we bring in a new CEO. Even if the CEO tried against all odds, evidently there is still a leak, and we really need someone to fix it. If the last guy can’t, even if he tried really really hard, it’s time to move on.
Even if we are to remove every fact, figure, and news article from the conversation — every comment on antisemitism & racism, every accidental high-fived boob and speech on how IQ tests should split the working and upper classes — we can tell from a few key experiential facts that whoever the current CEO in charge is, we need to fix the leak. Even if from your perspective that everything is fine — let's say you’ve never witnessed homelessness, trips to the hospital have been amazing, and your experience of the teaching sector has been profoundly incredible — you know that people are unhappy, at each others throats, and causing distress in your life. And this is all whilst Team Blue is in charge. The only logical act is to vote for Team Red. And before you tell me how bad Team Red are, we have stripped out all of that information. We only know there is a ‘Bill’, and he isn’t ‘Ben’, and ‘Ben’ has been in charge for nine years and nothing is fine. ‘Bill’ could also fuck it up, but we’d need to see what ‘Bill’ is like to be able to make any further commitments and decisions.
But what all the above requires are two key human elements; the ability to retrieve information through critically thinking about our current environment, and:
A Return To Empathy
I am currently training to be a counsellor. Alongside lessons, I am in groups online made-up of counsellors, tutors, and students to share knowledge and to discuss the profession I hope to join: how to better help our clients; how to learn new techniques; how to practice self-care. One topic, however, is off-limits, and that is the mentioning of politics within the counselling sphere.
The reasoning behind this is that, as counsellors, we are not meant to bring our beliefs and prejudices into the counselling room with a client, and therefore the group around such a topic also inhibits talking about politics so we can focus entirely on the emotional state of the client, and ourselves. For the most part, I agree; it would be foolish — if not harmful to a client — to bring our personal baggage into that space, including our political leanings. Where things are different however, for me, is that the political sphere surrounds all other spheres; if counselling is about empathy (walking alongside others), and politics is the navigation of society (other people), then counselling is inherently political. To be empathetic is to be political, for both are sides of the same coin; humanity, society, community.
But the counselling room with a client is very (very!) different to a facebook group for knowledge sharing; I can understand why politics may be kept to the sidelines of all conversations, as things can quickly move from education to trolling to outright hatespeech in a matter of seconds, and people using their time voluntarily to moderate these forums don’t have the time to navigate every political post posited, so an outright ban is somewhat easier. The issue comes in that, if we are to discuss empathy & what affects our clients, we cannot avoid the leering political questions that surround those who need help with their mental health.
Often when someone does post a political topic, someone will say something along the lines of “this doesn’t belong here” or “why does everything have to be so political nowadays.” This, combined with “you can’t tell me my political opinion is wrong”, creates a self-contained bubble; as well as silencing the conversation literally, it also silences the discourse around political belief. If I cannot talk about how the wider social environment affects my work — and our clients lives — then I cannot be as empathetic as I can be.
If I want to counsel a Nazi, or a Nigerian Immigrant, or a single mum of two, or a nurse, politician, taxi driver, Marxist Activist, a bloody vuvuzela designer, I have to understand the external environment which affects their internal mental state; to do this I need a political understanding. Politics = empathy. Politics is not an opinion over cheese & wine, its the wider social conversation and active behaviour to make peoples lives better, or to understand the struggles of those within a society. To sum up your entire political system as an “opinion” is to both undermine the system, and to undermine yourself. You are not an opinion in a vacuum, you are a person who can enact change through a vote, a conversation over coffee, holding a door for someone else. We can debate exactly what we think government is for — personal vs social responsibility, libertarianism vs communism, etc etc blah blah — but we should all be able to agree (through the lens of empathy) that government is there to make sure the trains run on time and people aren’t killing themselves.
This vote tomorrow requires not the facts, but empathy. I worry, sincerely, that we lack this deeply; even in these counselling forums, many individuals do not possess the critical thinking to apply policy to a clients mental state, and are incapable of being empathetic enough to have the hard conversation of politics in a counselling context. Some counsellors still think that being homeless is a choice, and they should just try harder for example; I fear for their clients. Exploding this out, people are failing — on both sides, team red, team blue — to talk of the empathetic elements of the vote.
I am not going to be one of these people that says, “I don’t care how you vote.” Because I do care. I need ‘Ben’ to be removed from power, because nine years of generational divide, poverty, racism, and rage cannot continue. The leak in the bathroom is flooding the office floor. And even if it wasn’t their fault — although, if we do even a very basic google search, you can see the evidence that it is — we need someone who is at least promising something better. Corbyn may not achieve 1% of what he offers, but we cannot continue as we are.
If you’ve been eating a chocolate cake, and it turns out it was actually poo. And someone offers you an identical-looking cake, you don’t keep eating the poo cake because you believe the other one is poo as well. Better to at least try the other cake first. It might still be poo, but it could be chocolate.
I implore you to learn how to fact-check, and if this is too trialling in this era of post-truth and propaganda, I implore you to use your empathy. I implore you to vote as you would for a new manager of a bakery, or an office block. I implore you to vote, because once upon a time ago I was an anarchist wanking into a sock at how smart I am, and even I feel I have to get involved to make the world a better place. We have a responsibility to our friends, family, and clients if we are counsellors, and to avoid the political question is to run into a fridge.
I know times are hard, and to walk alongside our fellow countrymen is a difficult thing to ask, but this is the last vestige of a society before revolution. If you wish to keep a hold of Britain, and to uphold it’s values, vote with empathy tomorrow. Do not vote Conservative.
P.s. Thank you everyone that sent me stats, I know I didn’t use everything, but thank you all for helping.
