Someone on Twitter suggested, indirectly, that we in Sri Lanka should host a Presidential Debate in the like of which is ostentatiously done by the Americans.
I could convince myself to be amused by the novelty of this in a local context, but these debates are merely media stunts. Not much else is achieved through them.
You may have noticed this with the Americans. These debates quickly tumble down an abyss of acrimony. Policy always ends up being a thin veil for crass ad hominem attacks. Yet, as garrulous as they are, they make for good TV.
To draw a grim parallel, think of the gladiators of yore, and the masses who were drawn to those fights. People cheered on as bodies were hewn to pieces and punctured with holes. These were public spectacles of unimaginable scale. A brillliant audio essay on this was done by Dan Carlin for his podcast Harcore History.
But they’re unimaginable now only because in the course of history, we have somehow worked out our fetish for gore and up-close violence.
But we still cheer on our gladiators. The only difference is that they now wear suits and wield microphones. The political stage is the new Colosseum. The fighting is still done, as it was in Ancient Rome, for viewing pleasure.
The numerous political debate shows that have already found a home on local TV have shown us that we’re no better than the Americans. When pressed for time, the media-trained debaters spin nothing of substance but soundbites and quips. They’re always designed to charm the audience. The policy drowns in a flood of reductio ad absurdum. You’d be naive to expect a real meeting of the minds in such a setting.
Unless we can find genuinely impartial moderators, and figure out a format in which the participants are allowed to put their best ideas forward without being (a) hounded by vitriol and (b) pressed for time, a presidential debate wouldn’t do any better.
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