(Editorial by The Christian Messenger)
The public discourse space of our country is progressively being taken over, and dominated, by earsplitting rabble-rousers and ignoramuses, who seek to foist their complete ignorance or half-baked knowledge on issues of national importance on the people.
Such people think what matters most for them to gain some imaginary recognition in the scheme of affairs of the country, especially as far as our public discourse is concerned, is to shout on top of their voices, and subject others to unwarranted verbal attacks, in making their points.
Many of such people, who seem to have no distinguished stations in life, often show no regard for our time-tested virtues of decency and respect for others in their public engagements and interactions. Again, they have no regard for anyone, irrespective of age and accomplishments.
The culmination of this sad reality on our hand is that almost all our media spaces, both mainstream and social media, now appear to be filled with naked insults and unwarranted assaults from all manner of uncultured people who have no credible ideas to share to promote the socio-economic development of the country.
To them, public discourse is no more about ‘force of arguments’ to generate and articulate ideas to tackle the multi-faceted challenges confronting the nation, but it is all about how loud one can shout, and verbally abuse those who do not share the same positions with them on national issues.
The increasingly unbridled verbal attacks on personalities, other than intellectual scrutiny of divergent views, is rapidly crowding out many intellectual giants and experts with authoritative voices from the arena of our national discourse.
What appears to have provided the greatest oxygen for this unhealthy development is the extremely partisan nature of our politics, which has led to the characterisation of the citizenry with the tags of the two leading political parties in the country, the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the leading opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
We now live in a country where the views and positions espoused by people on issues in the public domain are not put into scrutiny in terms of their soundness. They are rather examined in terms of the background of the personality involved, for instance, whether the person was a member of the Tertiary Education Institutions Network (TEIN) of the NDC or the Tertiary Students Confederacy (TESCON) of the NPP while pursuing his university education.
In effect, when one’s position on issues of national interest aligns with one side of the political divide, he becomes a hero to members of that political party and an object of unlimited encomiums, while members of the other divide consider him a villain, who becomes an abject of all forms of abuses.
It is therefore becoming increasingly problematic for many people to join our public discourse, especially if they do not have the “shock absorbers” to contain the unwarranted attacks they may be subjected to by people who have no stations in life, just because their positions on issues may not align with the position of their political parties.
The snowballing effect of this unfortunate development is that many experts, who possess critical knowledge, and therefore carry authoritative voices, are being gradually crowded out of the space of our public discourse.
This is a very unhealthy development for the future of our country, and the earlier we collectively did something about it, the better it would be for our democracy and socio-economic development.
When Authoritative Voices Are Crowded Out Of National Discourse
