Retreat

I've found it very hard to get politically engaged in recent times. The political stage, on both sides of the Atlantic, seems more suited to pantomime than serious drama. There has certainly been no shortage of pantomime villains. But the three judges who made their Brexit ruling yesterday do not deserve the vilification they've received in the popular press. I can't claim to understand the legal subtleties, yet it is surely clear that they were doing their job and have interpreted the law in the correct way. The way the story was handled in The Sun, The Express, The Mail and The Telegraph should bring shame upon all involved.

Come the end of the week I feel like my brain is fried, but I have to try to put down a few words on this tonight. What is most upsetting to me now is not so much the fact that we're leaving the EU (which is still undoubtedly going to happen) but the division that the issue continues to engender within the country, fuelled by an appalling quality of debate - and journalism. The internet should, in theory, allow fair and well-reasoned argument to rise to the surface but that doesn't seem to happen. Instead, we continually get our own ideas (and prejudices) reinforced within the circles we form.

The Brexit vote was close, but I don't know of any single person in either my real or virtual circle of friends (those open about their views at least) that voted to leave. That's why the result came as such a shock. We tend to live in tribes of link-minded people, being fed information that backs up our own opinions rather than challenging them. We 'like' things that agree with our view of the world, so we get fed more of the same. We become increasingly isolated within our own tribe, protected from having to deal with the real complexity of issues.

The right-wing bias of the popular press is as scandalous as it is frightening. The internet seems to be making it worse. I think this is possibly one of the biggest problems we face as a society today, because it informs all the other problems we have to deal with. When we now expect to get our news on-line for free, mostly from organisations driven by the need to make a profit, who is going to pay for impartial and intelligent analysis? To be blunt, how are people to be persuaded to read beyond the cheap and trashy headline that makes them feel good about their prejudices.

The only bright light at the moment is the quality of the journalism to be found at The Guardian. I only relatively recently became aware of their unique ownership model and became a supporter. As I no longer pick up a paper to read it seemed like the least I could do.

The current political climate makes me feel like retreating into a good book, or a good series on Netflix, just to blot all the idiocy out. Am I just thoroughly jaded right now, or is it a stage of life thing I wonder?