If you know your left from your right, you will know that the left are those people who have liberal values whereas the right are those who have conservative ones. Over the years, it has become increasingly convenient for me to lump people into one category or the other because these two sides have broad sets of diametrically opposed beliefs. Formulating character judgments used to require the development of a personal relationship but now it can sometimes be done in minutes by inspecting that person’s comments, likes and shares on Facebook.
The left are the champions of human rights and science. In this group, you will find people who support LGBT+ rights, as well as people who wore masks during the pandemic, as advocated by epidemiologists. On the other hand, the right support traditional and religious values. These people, like the pope, are against abortions, and they might want to reduce the number of refugees entering the country, as they are not so open to foreign cultures.
If I say “trade union,” you know that it will be better supported by the left. After all, they are the bleeding hearts. But if I say “conspiracy theory,” you should look to the right because they struggle with critical thinking and the scientific method. If you see a man with a horned Viking helmet, you’re in the right place.
During the Civil War in the United States, the left and the right armies that clashed were the abolitionists of the North and the slave holders of the South. Nowadays, the left are the Democrats, who focus on world peace and the environment, to no avail. The right are the Republicans, who applaud prayers in schools in order to secure votes from their right wing base, and who promise to lower taxes but only deliver for those in the highest tax bracket. Republicans are in bed with big corporations, billionaires and the National Rifle Association.
Once upon a time, the media broadcasted consistent news on all channels: there was one orchestra and one audience. However, this changed with the advent of the Fox News model of opinion media and various types of social media. Now, the entire audience has its own instruments and chooses to follow the director of its liking. The symphony is now a loud vexatious cacophony. After the bifurcation of one media into two disparate media, one for the left and one for the right factions, networks started to peddle information, or misinformation, to appeal exclusively to their target viewers, reinforcing their biases and loyalty.
The COVID-19 pandemic was more fuel on the fiery discord. The legitimacy of the pandemic, its impact and the death counts were hotly debated between the left and the right. Their differing compliance to self-isolation, social distancing and mask usage further fanned the flames. The vaccination and contamination rates were very different in the left camp and in the right camp. The interactions between the people of the two camps, who shared the same space, were bound to result in an ineffective mitigation of the contagion. By the sixth COVID wave, both camps had protocol fatigue and the masks came off.
In concert with the pandemic, the politics of nations came into play.
In the right camp, Donald Trump falsely claimed that he had won the election. His incendiary rhetoric overwhelmed fact checkers and his social media accounts were finally suspended. On January 6, 2021, he fired up a heavily armed mob and aimed them at Philadelphia Avenue where they stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempted insurrection.
In Canada, right-wing truckers converged in Ottawa to fight for their freedom from vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions, albeit the organizers’ goal was to overthrow the government. This noisy freedom convoy occupied Parliament Hill. Eventually, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, trucks were seized and their crowd-sourced funds were frozen.
All along, Russia unleashed media bots to polarize people, to agitate nations and to undermine elections in order to further destabilize the West. Vladimir Putin pulled the plug on the remaining smidgen of a free press at home, imprisoned dissenters and sent his big derelict army to raze the peaceful democracy of Ukraine under the absurd pretense of denazification. Russian assets were frozen, sanctions were imposed, and military support for Ukraine was sent. Putin’s indefensible invasion, however, is neither left nor right, it is just plain ugly.
Now, most of the planet has unified against Russia, Fox News stopped fibbing about voting machines, but only after it faced a 2.7 billion dollar lawsuit, and the January 6 Select Committee continues to tug away at the threads of Trump’s unraveling web of lies. But where is all this going anyway? Will we succeeded in pulling the curtain to reveal the scary wizard hiding behind it? Will we be able to melt the wicked witch? Or will it be up to future historians to settle today’s debates―if the truth ever comes out? Will good eventually triumph over evil, or will the bully, the liar and the cheater be king in this jungle? In the distant future, will this planet’s end state be a single authoritarian country, or a bunch of democracies, or a cycle of vying Orwellian superstates? Does the outcome require reaching a tipping point after some hard-fought victories? Perhaps mankind is doomed to self-destruct. I am not sure. The only thing that is certain is death and taxes―that is what they say―but even if I know that death is inevitable, I will still fight this battle to the death. As for taxes, my accountant is working on that one. Likewise, however undesirable and inevitable humanity’s end state is destined to be, I will keep fighting tooth and nail for truth, equity and democracy. I guess that makes me left, right?
Raymond Pilon
Written in July 2022, Published in July 2023
Raymond André Pilon was born in Cornwall, Ontario. He studied at the University of Ottawa and McGill University. He has a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Mathematics and a Bachelor of Education. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario. He was a software developer and a public servant. He is now enjoying his retirement. He is the author of Crooked House and Crooked House 101.
