Author: Phillip Matogo. PHOTO/FILE
Twenty years ago today, on August 11, 1984, the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan, made a near-historic revelation. As he warmed up for a scheduled radio address, Reagan said: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
Luckily for the world, Reagan was just joking.
Still, his remark came at a time of heightened tensions between the US and Russia. The Soviet-Afghan War was raging in the then Soviet-controlled Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. Besides that, the Cold War was also ‘on’.
In the end, the Soviet Union, made up of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics, including Russia, ignored Reagan’s joke.
However, imagine if that joke was made today. Social Media would have blown it out of proportion.
Even if war probably would not have occurred, Reagan would have been deemed a warmonger. Vladimir Putin, whose rise to power in hindsight seemed inexorable, would have wrung the moment for the political points it could score.
For much of Reagan’s administration, though, Putin was serving as a junior spy in the East German city of Dresden, Komsomolskaya.
As for Donald Trump, well, he would probably still be a real estate magnate with a flair for making a comeback each time he went bankrupt.
At any rate, Reagan’s gallows humour would have placed him squarely in the sights of the politically correct (PC) police. I imagine that would have been a blow to his ego. Since Reagan was known as ‘The Great Communicator’.
However, his being called The Great Communicator was not down to his saying of the correct words, thanks to a keen sense of occasion.
Former Reagan speechwriter Ken Khachigian wrote, “What made him the great communicator was Ronald Reagan’s determination and ability to educate his audience, to bring his ideas to life by using illustrations and word pictures to make his arguments vivid to the mind’s eye. In short: he was America’s Teacher.”
Being a teacher required Reagan to have more facts than opinions. But in today’s age, opinions are wrongly equated to facts. So leaders are no longer equated with teachers.
This is the tragedy of our times.
In this internet age, teachers who are political leaders are necessary more than ever before.
Üsküdar University, Faculty of Medicine, head of the department of Internal Medical Sciences and head of the department of Medical Pharmacology, Prof Dr Tayfun Uzbay says this is due to today’s ignorance. Something he calls neo-ignorance or the ignorance of the modern age.
At a basic level, this neo-ignorance can readily be seen by the communication language we use. It doesn’t follow the rules of grammar or spelling. At a deeper level, thanks to the internet, information sources have multiplied over the years.
This has led to an information overload, with individuals ignoring much of the glut in information and, therefore, becoming politically ignorant, as they rely more on opinion than fact.
This stands in the way of meaningful political participation. That’s because meaningful political participation arises out of the citizenry making or taking informed decisions based on concrete knowledge.
Indeed, democracy in the dark has never led any nation to the light. A dearth of knowledge also increases political misinformation and hate speech in social media content. Of course, this has led to a host of other issues, not least due to the withdrawal from social media by users keen to preserve their sanity.
Thus, with fewer teachers who are leaders, how can we learn to peacefully coexist?
Mr Matogo is a professional copywriter
