Juno News - August 01, 2023


Chrystia Freeland bikes everywhere – except when her chauffeur is driving her

Topics
misinformation polarization vaccine politics cancel culture and deplatforming polarization
Hosted by
Andrew Lawton
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Justin Ling Chrystia Freeland Donald Trump Melissa Lansman Erin O'Toole Pierre Poilievre Billy Bishop Airport Yves-Francois Blanchet Jeffrey Epstein Maxime Bernier Pierre Paglia Jagmeet Singh Rush Limbaugh Eric Merkley Andrew Scheer Anno Domini Mi'kmaq Zoom
Ontario man left to die because he was unvaccinated Trudeau and his wife are separating. Should Canadians care？

Episode Stats


Length

50 minutes

Words per minute

184.8

Word count

9,337

Sentence count

328

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, we take a look at the impact the Pandemic Era has had on political polarization in Canada, and the impact it may have had on Chrystia Freeland, the Prime Minister of Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by β€”
00:00:30.000 Thank you.
00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:22.720 Hello and welcome to you all.
00:01:28.160 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.
00:01:32.900 Tuesday, August 1st, 2023, in case you've been in a slumber for the last couple of years
00:01:38.900 and you weren't exactly sure which year, Anno Domini, it is.
00:01:42.460 It is 2023 and we'll be talking a little bit on this show about the last three years
00:01:48.720 and what it's done to the state of politics.
00:01:51.360 I'm talking specifically about the pandemic era and its effect on political polarization,
00:01:57.180 which has been on an increase in Canada by some metrics for quite some time.
00:02:02.060 And I wanted to delve into this because a new report that is coming out tomorrow does exactly that.
00:02:07.980 And it's a report written by someone you might not expect to be here on The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:02:12.300 That is freelance journalist Justin Ling, who I have had many spirited debates and disagreements with.
00:02:19.120 but I've also had several constructive conversations with him, including about this very topic.
00:02:25.100 So I wanted to have him on the show a little bit later on to talk about political polarization
00:02:30.000 and his report. But I have to kick things off here by talking about this really, really bizarre
00:02:37.440 story in which you have to kind of just decide who you're going to believe, Christia Freeland
00:02:42.840 or everyone other than Christia Freeland. Now, I believe that's made it too easy for you to
00:02:48.820 aside. So let me roll things back here.
00:02:50.900 Krista Freeland was making what
00:02:52.840 was actually, in a roundabout
00:02:54.680 way, a more sympathetic
00:02:56.960 point about how her lifestyle,
00:02:59.240 her low-carbon lifestyle living
00:03:00.960 in downtown Toronto, might not
00:03:03.000 be the kind of thing that someone living in
00:03:04.880 PEI or rural Alberta
00:03:06.960 is able to do. And she 0.76
00:03:08.900 was trying to basically, it's like when she said
00:03:10.880 we can just cancel the Disney Plus subscription
00:03:13.020 to beat inflation. She's 1.00
00:03:14.940 giving a little prescription from her own life.
00:03:17.040 It's what politicians do. They try to be relatable, but it didn't quite land.
00:03:21.660 This is what Chrystia Freeland said.
00:03:26.320 I right now am an MP for downtown Toronto.
00:03:31.200 A fact that still shocks my dad is I don't actually own a car because I live in downtown Toronto.
00:03:38.480 I'm like, I don't know, 300 meters from the nearest subway.
00:03:42.040 um I walk I take the subway I make my kids walk and ride their bikes and take the subway
00:03:49.540 it's actually healthier for our family I can live that way
00:03:53.520 she goes on after that to say what I said in the lead into it to talk about how she can't
00:04:01.840 necessarily do that if she's living in rural Alberta or PEI so again I want to give her credit
00:04:07.080 for trying to be relatable and also trying to understand that in a country as geographically
00:04:12.860 diverse as Canada, what works for someone in downtown Toronto is not what works for someone
00:04:18.040 elsewhere in the country. So that part maybe we don't think is too much of a slam dunk on it being
00:04:23.900 an absurd thing to say. But let's just go back to her lifestyle. Oh yes, she just takes her little 1.00
00:04:29.640 bike around. She walks around. She goes to the subway. She's just like a normal working professional,
00:04:35.800 a normal working mom. She can do everything without a car. Well, she conveniently left out 1.00
00:04:41.120 the fact where as the minister of the crown, she has a car and driver. So maybe she doesn't have 0.55
00:04:49.060 the car. It's the chauffeur's car. It's the government of Canada's car. Let's not get
00:04:52.680 technical on the details. But to make it seem like she does not use an automobile for transport
00:04:57.600 was a little bit odd. Now, Chrystia Freeland is also someone who, if you look at her records,
00:05:02.440 it doesn't seem like even has a home in Ottawa like a lot of ministers does.
00:05:07.960 For example, I've looked at some of her travel logs that she has filed as far as expense claims go,
00:05:14.260 and she's actually doing the commute between Toronto and Ottawa multiple times a week.
00:05:20.280 You can take a look there.
00:05:21.940 This is, I believe, from September of last year.
00:05:25.380 I just sort of picked a random month, and she's gone several times within a week back and forth.
00:05:31.240 There's another one from, I think it was October or November we'll put up that you can see now,
00:05:36.780 where she's basically done the same thing to and from constituency to Ottawa. 1.00
00:05:42.360 So she's going back and forth.
00:05:44.280 And, you know, again, I'm not one to besmirch air travel.
00:05:48.380 I love traveling by air.
00:05:49.660 I do it all the time.
00:05:50.320 But I'm not the one sitting there telling everyone else they have to live this low, no carbon lifestyle.
00:05:56.380 And in fact, when I saw Chrystia Freeland last, actually, no, when I saw her last, it was at Ottawa Airport.
00:06:02.660 And I realized that she recognized me because the second she saw me, she put her sunglasses on indoors and looked away.
00:06:10.280 So that was the last time.
00:06:11.420 But the time before that, I was on a flight with her back from Davos.
00:06:16.100 I was there as a journalist.
00:06:17.120 She was there as a speaker and invited guest.
00:06:20.240 and she was way up in the first class cab
00:06:22.560 and I was back just a couple of rows away
00:06:25.680 from the bathroom there.
00:06:26.980 And again, didn't run into her on that flight.
00:06:28.880 We were just like two separate sections of the plane.
00:06:31.920 But again, first class air travel
00:06:33.420 has a bit of a carbon footprint.
00:06:35.360 Now, I'm not one of these people
00:06:36.940 that actually takes aim at MPs
00:06:39.500 who make decisions that let them
00:06:41.720 spend more time with their family.
00:06:43.240 So I actually have zero issue
00:06:44.920 with Christopher Freeland going back and forth
00:06:47.400 between Toronto and Ottawa.
00:06:48.620 It's a what an hour long flight. She lives downtown. She can fly to as you see in the logs there Billy Bishop Airport get to Ottawa and get back to see her kids and husband. I think that's absolutely fine. But I do not like when that is accompanied by the lectures about how everyone else needs to do all this stuff for the climate. That's the part that always gets me a little bit riled up here.
00:07:12.060 It's not these people deciding to travel.
00:07:14.440 It's them doing it while telling us that our lifestyles are not so important to justify it.
00:07:20.700 And this whole thing of, oh, I just take the subway and walk and bike around.
00:07:24.680 Well, I have a driver and well, I mean, she actually flies to the office. 0.98
00:07:29.860 That's the thing.
00:07:30.540 Like most of us who drive to the office do not fly to the office, which has a much greater
00:07:35.260 carbon footprint than driving to the office, even if you're stuck in that lovely Toronto
00:07:39.840 traffic for a couple of hours.
00:07:41.520 I mean, I yesterday decided I would try to be the fun uncle, and I brought my nephews, courtesy of this weird, weird dose of not quite thinking through my actions clearly, to Canada's Wonderland.
00:07:56.500 And it's a great park just north of Toronto.
00:07:59.320 And then on the drive to Toronto, I was like, well, my honor, this is like, I never voluntarily drive to Toronto, but I'm doing it.
00:08:05.480 So even that had a lower carbon footprint than had I flown to Ottawa for the day and come back the next day.
00:08:12.500 Now, what's interesting about this thing, though, is that the weaponization of the word misinformation factors into things.
00:08:19.380 So Chrystia Freeland, who I don't normally see scrapping with people on Twitter, decided she would start trying to play whack-a-mole with all of these people that were criticizing her online. 1.00
00:08:30.620 One of them, for example, is Chrystia Freeland accusing Melissa Lansman, the Conservative MP, of, quote, peddling blatant misinformation.
00:08:41.640 This is, of course, when Melissa Lansman points out the chauffeur connection.
00:08:45.160 She says, who among us hasn't forgotten that they have a taxpayer-funded car and driver when lecturing Canadians about walking, riding your bike, and taking the subway?
00:08:53.580 Us liberals punish everyone by tripling their carbon tax. 1.00
00:08:57.180 Hypocrites. 0.99
00:08:57.740 uh christia freeland did the whole i'm disappointed in you i'm not mad i'm disappointed and then she 0.96
00:09:03.440 says i ride my bike to meetings in toronto because i live in the community i represent
00:09:07.960 and i take taxis to the airport public transit isn't an option for many canadians driving is
00:09:14.080 both necessary and often expensive and then if this goes on because melissa lanceman actually
00:09:21.380 shared a piece that was published by black locks reporter uh which was again the whole thing that
00:09:27.560 christopher freeland is saying is misinformation and uh interestingly enough this back and forth
00:09:33.420 i won't read like the whole thing because i feel summarizing a twitter fight is less important than
00:09:37.580 you just reading the whole thing to yourself uh but it was actually quite shocking that the
00:09:43.060 misinformation was completely and utterly factual and you can even look up government spending
00:09:48.920 records where you see christopher freeland with a chauffeur but it is now misinformation to point
00:09:53.900 this out, that it is not a car-free lifestyle. Again, however much she may want to pretend it is.
00:09:59.480 But all of this, I must admit, is kind of fun and interesting to point out, but it is also part of
00:10:06.280 the performative nature of politics. And no side is immune from this. I mean, the $16 glass of
00:10:12.700 orange juice is the orange juice seen around the world. We will forever remember, until the end of
00:10:18.400 our days, the price of a glass of orange juice at the Savoy Hotel in London, because that was
00:10:23.140 not a particularly consequential piece of government spending, but represented something
00:10:28.200 that people could resonate with. Same as climate hypocrisy from various people, including many in
00:10:34.620 the liberal government, and so on. And part of this has fueled, according to a new report,
00:10:40.720 the idea of polarization. Now, I'm going to, before we get into this here, define with the
00:10:46.100 author of this report what polarization is, because it is one of those things that can mean
00:10:50.460 different things to different people. Freelance journalist Justin Ling set out in a new report
00:10:56.200 called Far and Widening, the Rise of Polarization in Canada, which you can see there, and it comes
00:11:02.520 out tomorrow, to identify some of the root causes of this. And he actually does quite a formidable
00:11:08.100 job with this. He talks about partisan sorting, which we'll get into in a moment. He talks about
00:11:12.840 the online ecosystem. He mentions True North, not entirely in a favorable way, so we'll talk about
00:11:18.300 that as well. And he also talks, of course, about the pandemic, which has inflamed many of these
00:11:23.560 polarizations and polar tensions in Canadian politics. Now, I should say, Justin Ling is a
00:11:29.980 guy with whom I've had several disagreements, but I've always, always had, whenever I've interacted
00:11:35.400 with him, very civil and positive exchanges. And he was the only journalist outside of conservative
00:11:42.280 media to actually interview me about my book on his podcast when it came out, which I was and
00:11:48.180 remain very appreciative of. And I wanted to return the favor now that Justin has put out
00:11:52.620 this report. Justin Ling joins me now. Justin, it's good to talk to you. And I will say
00:11:57.360 congratulations on doing this. I know it's quite a lengthy piece and I know it was something you
00:12:01.520 worked on for many months. So thanks very much and well done. Thank you. Thank you for having
00:12:06.720 me. There was a reason why I picked your show as one of the first interviews we were going to do
00:12:12.620 about this thing. So I'm excited to get into it. Before we get into the meat of this, explain what
00:12:18.080 your research question is and also what your definition of polarization is, because I know
00:12:23.060 it's one of those things that even in academic literature on political polarization can have a
00:12:27.800 number of meanings. Yeah, and that's exactly it. I mean, going into this report, the idea was not
00:12:33.580 to come up with any big solutions. It was not to sort of assign blame necessarily. It really was
00:12:39.260 supposed to be a diagnostic, right? Like an audit of the state of polarization in Canada to understand
00:12:44.780 the drivers the variables and the factors that was contributing to our sense of polarization or
00:12:49.820 i mean maybe we went into it kind of wondering are we going to find out that polarization is
00:12:53.580 really not as bad as we all kind of think it is so um from the outset definitions were really hard
00:12:59.340 so much of the academic literature is about the us and in the us it's really easy to measure right
00:13:05.420 because you ask people how do you feel about donald trump how do you feel about january 6
00:13:10.060 how do you feel about the coveted vaccines how do you feel about abortion access whatever right
00:13:14.220 all of those policy issues you can actually watch not just the divide between the two
00:13:19.820 polls but the movement that occurs when say donald trump comes out pro or against something
00:13:26.140 or joe biden comes out pro against something you know you actually see republican shift
00:13:29.820 significantly when donald trump pronounces against a certain issue so on all of those
00:13:34.060 fronts it's really easy to measure south of the border here we don't really have that right we
00:13:38.540 have that liberal consensus broadly speaking on abortion access on lgbtq rights so on and so forth
00:13:44.860 even if there's a divide the divide stays pretty static right um so we kind of work to look at a
00:13:50.860 whole bunch of other metrics there's a little bit of academic research i won't go too far into it
00:13:54.380 suffice it to say we are seeing the demonization of political opponents the appeals to identity
00:14:00.540 over policy or issues we're seeing um starker divides um when it comes to the actual political
00:14:08.620 sphere we're seeing an inability to talk to each other on major issues and we're seeing instances
00:14:13.980 of mass uh civil demonstration that gets sort of unruly and that goes everywhere from the freedom
00:14:19.660 convoy uh right down the line to uh the the basically the violence that's occurred in nova
00:14:25.740 Scotia around the livelihood fishery for Mi'kmaq fishers. So we're seeing all of the symptoms of 0.98
00:14:32.100 polarization. And I'm feeling really comfortable saying that it's here and it's quite bad. And by
00:14:37.480 all the polling data we have, Canadians tend to agree. One of the interesting bits of research
00:14:43.420 that you shared that I find is a useful reflection of this problem was how people define their
00:14:49.760 political opponents and how people think the political outgroup is comprised. And the one
00:14:55.180 that I think you the examples you gave from the research you cited was that you know conservatives
00:15:00.000 tend to think there are a lot more gays in the liberal party and liberals think there are a lot
00:15:04.420 more unvaccinated people in the conservative party and both are over inflations but it actually shows
00:15:09.700 that people do have whether intentionally or not kind of a caricaturish version of what the other
00:15:16.960 political group is. Yeah absolutely and so this this research comes from Eric Merkley at the
00:15:22.080 University of Toronto, he's actually used, there's these surveys that get done, they're kind of like
00:15:26.140 exit polls. After every major federal election, it's probably the best trove of data we have
00:15:31.480 about how Canadians feel about the political scene. And he's used that data to actually chart
00:15:37.060 the ways in which Canadians are growing increasingly disaffected and alienated
00:15:41.800 towards our political parties. And he's basically said, the data shows that we are trending towards
00:15:47.740 the current state of politics in the U.S., the animosity Democrats feel for Republicans and
00:15:53.500 vice versa. So you're totally right. Partisans in this country increasingly see partisans of
00:15:59.060 the other stripe as alien or foreign, in some cases as working against the best interests of
00:16:04.440 the country and seeing them as sort of laboring under a moral defect in many ways. And it's not
00:16:11.880 to figure out why this is you go back 20 30 years and you had real um competition and diversity
00:16:19.640 inside political parties right inside the progressive conservative party there was a pro
00:16:23.720 free trade side there was an anti-free trade side um did over the liberal party you know going back
00:16:28.280 to uh the early 2000s the liberals had a social conservative caucus right the ndp had a pro-gun
00:16:35.480 caucus inside of their party and what that meant was that you could see within your own party
00:16:40.760 elements of your opponents. It was a lot easier for new Democrats to identify with conservatives
00:16:45.300 because they also had a rural base, right? They also had rural voters, hunters and fishers and
00:16:50.640 so on. So you can look across the aisle and say, okay, I might not agree with them on things. I
00:16:54.860 might think their vision for the country is bad. But at the very least, I understand where they're
00:16:59.980 coming from because the guy sitting next to me or the guy who has the conservative sign down the
00:17:04.540 street thinks a lot like they do or thinks a lot like I do. So the decline of that, the kind of
00:17:11.600 collapsing in of our political parties has made this much worse. We no longer really have diversity
00:17:17.500 in our parties. In fact, identifying with the party across the way is seen as a problem that
00:17:23.500 needs to be kind of rooted out of your party. There's no longer really, I mean, maybe the
00:17:28.920 Conservative Party might be the last kind of biggish tent, but even still, it's gotten a lot 1.00
00:17:32.860 smaller there's no ideological diversity in the liberal party there's no real ideological diversity
00:17:37.500 in the ndp and even the conservatives you know identifying or agreeing with the liberals or ndp
00:17:43.420 on anything is seen as a huge problem uh and and sort of a surrendering of of the conservative
00:17:50.780 ideals and all of this makes any form of cooperation collaboration conversation really
00:17:56.460 difficult i i agree with what you've just identified there but but there's a contradictory
00:18:02.060 problem I find that also exists, which is that you have people on the left and the right that
00:18:06.580 increasingly don't even see distinctions between political parties anymore. And I think the
00:18:11.080 pandemic was an example of that. I mean, you often hear in the U.S. the term brought up the
00:18:16.000 uniparty, which is the idea that, you know, the Democrats and the Republicans are all part of one
00:18:20.280 uniparty. And I know that we'll get into, you know, some of the conspiratorial stuff that I
00:18:24.900 know you write a lot about. But I'm wondering how that factors in, because in the COVID era,
00:18:29.700 as you've talked about in your report and as i've discussed on my show there was actually very little
00:18:34.540 tolerance for tolerance for distinctions between political parties in the early stage i mean we
00:18:39.420 even heard erin o'toole talk all about the the so-called team canada approach and andrew sheer
00:18:43.880 at the time when he was the leader and at that point it was like opposition political opposition
00:18:48.380 was stigmatized and you had mps that even said that they were worried of criticizing the government
00:18:54.180 because they didn't want it to feed into you know something that was adverse to public health
00:18:59.080 measures. Yeah, I even include a little bit from a study that was done in Quebec in the early
00:19:05.000 version or nearly part of the pandemic, where they observed exactly this phenomenon where
00:19:09.740 a total lack of criticism and lack of competition really in the political sphere and the media,
00:19:16.820 they extend this so far as to talk about the media as well, the lack of criticism of government
00:19:20.340 policies actually fomented distrust amongst many people who were a little skeptical to begin with.
00:19:25.460 And then when sort of partisanship returned, it made everything all that much more worse.
00:19:32.660 So you're right that sometimes a lack of competition or kind of a view that all the parties are the same also foments this problem.
00:19:40.700 The reality is polarization is happening in different directions at the same time.
00:19:44.520 Partisans are one part of the problem. 1.00
00:19:47.540 People who are kind of outside, maybe alienated from the political game are another part of the problem.
00:19:54.220 And when I say problem, I don't mean they are the problem themselves, but all these things are contributing to the problem of polarization, as are the kind of broad middle of the country who are who are frankly, I think, a little fed up with with the entire process and who, to be honest with you, often kind of buy into the idea of the wedges being used in the political sphere.
00:20:17.100 And, you know, in the report, I certainly chide Justin Trudeau for weaponizing some of those wedges as I chide Pierre Poglia for weaponizing wedges in the opposite direction.
00:20:25.840 So you're totally right that a perceived or real lack of debate on some of these issues also contributes to this problem. And there is a significant class of people who have unplugged from politics in this country or who have opted for, frankly, conspiracy theories and misinformation to sort of explain this apparent consensus that's happening in our political realm.
00:20:49.780 Yeah, and you have a line that I'll quote here where you're talking about the two groups on COVID, the COVID narrative, if I can use that in a neutral way here, the trusting and the skeptical. You say each considered the other side to be selfish, misinformed and misguided. But one side had the support of political leaders, the health establishment and the media. The other, lacking a viable democratic outlet for their grievances, decided to head to the Capitol to make their voices heard.
00:21:16.580 Of course, you're talking about the Freedom Convoy. You and I, I think we're seeing very different things when we were looking at the convoy. And I think we should have a discussion about that at some point.
00:21:26.540 But I would be interested in hearing if you think that what happened from that point on only further that, because I saw people that were consumers of convoy coverage in the media that for the first time in their lives were saying, you know what, I'm swearing off the CBC, I'm swearing off the Globe and Mail because I don't trust them anymore.
00:21:47.960 So if there had been up until, you know, January of 2022, a growing, you know, frustration or a growing level of disenfranchisement when the convoy came, it was really as though a flip switch for a lot of people.
00:22:01.520 And they said, I no longer trust anything that's happening in that establishment realm, be it from politics or media.
00:22:09.540 Yeah, I mean, I think that's 100% the case.
00:22:12.000 I think it's really too bad for a variety of reasons.
00:22:16.260 and it's not and the mainstream media is not entirely without blame either right um so there
00:22:21.620 was some bad coverage of the freedom convoy and i won't pretend like all my coverage was 100 spot on
00:22:26.340 either i think i'll just interrupt there and say that that a lot of the issues that my audience
00:22:30.340 will have we dealt with on justin's podcast at his sub stack so if you're like why are you talking
00:22:35.860 because we've already dealt we've already done that part so we can move on now but carry on i
00:22:39.700 just wanted to put that on there for people to look up no i appreciate it um because the thing
00:22:44.100 is you know some people were right to be frustrated but i will also say the sort of in-group out-group
00:22:50.580 thing you know the the the constant need to be with your people right the people who uh let's
00:22:55.300 say agreed uh with the convoy or the people who were just angry and furious and and and you know
00:23:00.100 wanted to crack down on even harder um the the sort of divide that occurred between those sides
00:23:05.700 made it really hard to see on the multiple fronts on which both sides actually probably
00:23:09.860 agreed on a ton of things right like i always tried to have this conversation with people
00:23:13.700 um whether it was around the freedom convoy or whatever i was against lockdowns right like i was
00:23:17.940 against i live in quebec we had a curfew nothing made me angrier through the pandemic than being
00:23:23.060 told by my government that i have to go inside at 8 pm every night that made me crazy made all
00:23:27.140 my friends crazy made a whole bunch of liberals and progressives and lefties and conservatives
00:23:31.540 and libertarians it made everyone in this province crazy and there was not enough debate about it in
00:23:35.700 the media and sometimes it felt like there was a conspiracy of silence in the media to criticize
00:23:40.020 the total lack of scientific evidence behind that policy and i know when i went to ottawa to cover
00:23:45.860 the freedom convoy a ton of quebecers were there protesting the same thing unfortunately the thing 0.99
00:23:51.620 that ultimately you know set the dividing line between us was a feeling with feelings around the
00:23:56.020 vaccine you know i'm aggressively pro-vaccine i think the science supports them other people
00:23:59.700 disagree how do we figure out a way in which we can put aside some of those uh big things we
00:24:04.820 disagree on and focus more on the things that we can actually have a conversation on the fact is
00:24:09.060 we can't have a real conversation about vaccines there is just too much pollution in the space
00:24:13.300 there's too much misinformation out there i know people might disagree with me and that's fine
00:24:17.140 but it's also over now we're past that let's focus on the things where at least we can have
00:24:21.860 a reasonable rational conversation about these policies and i think that's fundamentally the
00:24:25.700 path forward here it's going to require um you know it's going to require us to have a conversation
00:24:30.740 about all of this ideally in the form of a real public inquiry where we all get to come out and
00:24:34.740 kind of air these grievances, have that moment, that difficult conversation, then move on and
00:24:41.700 figure out the bridges that we can find that allow us to have those conversations again,
00:24:45.820 that also allow us to hopefully reopen those channels between people who don't trust the
00:24:51.780 CBC anymore, but also between the CBC and the mainstream press and maybe things like True
00:24:56.320 North or other alternative conservative minded outlets. Because I think this pulling away over
00:25:02.360 these frankly now relatively insignificant matters of disagreement is a real problem the convoy has
00:25:08.760 been a year in the rearview mirror let's stop letting that dictate what news media we listen
00:25:15.160 to or which politicians we trust or don't trust it's going to require a bit of a wiping of the
00:25:20.360 slate clean and trying to kind of rebuild this all over again because if we keep letting those
00:25:25.800 divides grow i know this sounds a little bit you know rose glass is optimistic but if we keep letting
00:25:30.840 those divides grow things are going to get worse and we're going to continue having conversations
00:25:34.680 that have nothing to do with each other and we're going to continue seeing the other side as foreign 0.99
00:25:39.000 and alien and different and hostile and it's only through having those conversations that we're
00:25:44.580 going to learn they're not that different they're they're a lot like us and they agree on many of
00:25:48.740 the important things but but i think what you've said there contributes in not an intentional way
00:25:54.800 but contributes here to the problem because the people that felt most aggrieved by lockdowns and
00:26:00.740 vaccine mandates and all of these things are not really willing to move on from it because for them
00:26:07.160 and you can understand it i mean you had people that lost their decades-long careers out of this
00:26:11.800 people that could not spend time with with dying family members and i know you know this and i know
00:26:16.380 you're critical of of a lot of the measures uh that as you just indicated there but the thing
00:26:22.260 is that there's a lot of resistance to this idea of just moving on from one particular group so so
00:26:28.620 here's an example of a divide where uh you know justin ling says listen we can all just agree this
00:26:34.160 was an aberration let's move on you've got someone else that for whatever reason says no i can't move
00:26:39.080 on i want accountability i want justice i want some form of of recompense for this how do you
00:26:45.220 square that divide when people may be not able to agree on on the severity of what happened
00:26:50.980 i mean i i think that's what a public inquiry gets you like i know there's a there's a citizen's
00:26:55.660 inquiry going on, I think still going on right now that I frankly don't think is the best avenue
00:27:00.560 for this. It's time the government, the provinces, whoever, get together and have a real conversation
00:27:05.440 about the pandemic and whether or not the measures we put in place were effective or were not
00:27:09.300 effective. I tend to think- So you don't think we need to just sort of close the book and not look
00:27:12.800 at it? No, no. Like I said, I think I put it right there in the report. One of the solutions about
00:27:16.960 going forward has to be a public inquiry, right? Like it has to be a chance for everybody to get
00:27:21.620 in the same room or on the same Zoom or whatever it is, and kind of air those grievances so that
00:27:26.020 we can move forward. That has to be the step we do before we move forward. That being said,
00:27:30.360 you know, part of living in a democratic society is saying, yeah, I was really unhappy the way
00:27:35.160 this policy affected me. I was really unhappy the way in which this government regulation impacted
00:27:40.580 my life, my livelihood or whatever. But then going, you know, I have to compromise. I have
00:27:44.860 to let stuff go at some time, at some points, right? And I appreciate there's still some raw
00:27:49.940 emotions there. And I appreciate there's still some people who, you know, do want that recompense,
00:27:56.260 but also we got to move on and we got to figure a way to kind of get back to working together
00:28:01.800 because the other part of all of this, you know, sometimes we talk about polarization
00:28:04.720 as though it's just some sort of ephemeral problem that we just have to kind of clean
00:28:09.280 out of the air. We'll all be fine. Part of the thing driving polarization is that we have a real
00:28:13.980 problem of state capacity. There are things in this country that are falling apart. There are
00:28:17.560 huge problems facing us. And some of those problems became very clear during the pandemic.
00:28:24.400 Some of those problems, I think, fed into a lot of the mental health challenges that people
00:28:28.660 experienced during the pandemic. It fed into a lot of the economic problems we faced during
00:28:32.000 the pandemic. And I think if we're still bickering about things that happened two years ago,
00:28:36.920 we're going to have a really hard time figuring out any sort of consensus or cooperation that
00:28:41.500 lets us fix those very real problems that are still hurting our cities and our country and
00:28:45.340 our livelihood and our families and so on. One of the most interesting quotes that you
00:28:50.360 included in your report here came from a Trudeau government official who said they saw a moral
00:28:56.680 imperative. And that's the direct quote there, a moral imperative to push back against some of
00:29:01.920 the anti-vaccine rhetoric. And you actually take from that a quote that I'll read here, where you
00:29:08.400 say that in practice, this meant turning vaccine status into a moral electoral wedge issue during
00:29:15.620 a snap election in the midst of a pandemic. Now, I would say, and I'm curious if you agree or
00:29:20.780 disagree, that the liberals weaponized the vaccine issue far more than the conservatives did, far
00:29:27.360 more than the media did, because I really feel that, look, Trudeau looked and saw that 80% of
00:29:32.180 the country was vaccinated. People who were unvaccinated were a statistical minority,
00:29:36.620 and it seemed like a relatively low stakes game to start winning votes from the 80% at the expense
00:29:42.980 of the 20%. And I think the trucker mandate was a great example of that. It served no public
00:29:48.860 health benefit. It really seemed to be adding insult to injury. But I'm curious. So first off,
00:29:54.780 I'm curious for your thoughts on that, but also that moral imperative, because I don't know if
00:29:58.940 this was, I don't know the tone in which this was said to you. Was this a liberal staffer kind of
00:30:04.120 talking about, you know, we really wanted to stick the knife in or was it just a crusade that really
00:30:09.400 existed outside of science in their view? So, okay, so let me say I generally agree for at
00:30:17.600 least for the, you know, first year and a half or so, you know, coming up to the end of the 2021
00:30:22.300 election. Yes, the liberals were the ones who were weaponizing the pandemic for political ends. I
00:30:27.640 don't know how you can come to any other conclusion. You know, Aaron O'Toole and Jagmeet
00:30:32.160 Singh and Yves-Francois Blanchet did their part of all standing together and trying to be those
00:30:37.800 cooperative political figures to say, yes, please go get vaccinated. They're safe. Put political
00:30:41.720 differences aside and go get this vaccine that all available evidence says is safe. And it was
00:30:47.520 Justin Trudeau who decided to go on TV and say anti-vaxxers, not all of them, he does a little
00:30:52.320 not all of them caveat, but tend to be misogynists and white supremacists and so on and so forth.
00:30:57.420 And he even goes so far as to say,
00:30:59.440 Aaron O'Toole is not as strong on vaccines.
00:31:01.540 Yves-Francois Blanchet is not as strong on vaccines.
00:31:03.640 And I think that was really deplorable.
00:31:05.120 And I don't think we've ever,
00:31:06.580 we haven't had enough,
00:31:07.520 at least in I'll say the mainstream press,
00:31:09.040 the liberal press,
00:31:09.480 whatever you want to call it,
00:31:10.460 enough of a conversation about how dangerous
00:31:12.500 those comments were and how bad they were.
00:31:14.160 And I don't think,
00:31:15.040 it was only the benefit of hindsight
00:31:16.160 that I think I've really appreciated
00:31:17.860 just how terrible they were.
00:31:20.120 I think when you get into 2020,
00:31:22.880 when the Freedom Convoy shows up
00:31:24.140 and Pierre Polyev launched his leadership bid,
00:31:26.100 I think you can absolutely say that Pierre Paulyov and the Conservative Party weaponized, in many cases, misinformation or distrust around the vaccines for their own political ends.
00:31:35.140 Maybe you can even say in response to what Trudeau did.
00:31:37.780 I don't think there's anyone with totally clean hands here in this whole thing.
00:31:41.360 But Justin Trudeau, as the prime minister, had a moral obligation to not play this game.
00:31:47.140 He probably had a moral obligation not to call an election in the midst of the pandemic and use that pandemic as a political wedge.
00:31:53.560 I don't think we can stress that enough.
00:31:54.680 So absolutely. When it comes to their moral imperative to highlight the anti-vaxxers, it was very much set in the tone, and I genuinely think they believe it, that it was the prime minister's job to be forceful in recommending people take the vaccine.
00:32:14.700 And by that, I mean, you know, really underscoring the possible dangers of not doing it, underscoring the safety of taking it and admonishing anybody who would contradict that.
00:32:26.560 I think we know emphatically, even if their intentions were pure, that doesn't work. People don't like that. That actually pushes people in the opposite direction. You get people who are skeptical to do something that they're skeptical of by addressing their concerns directly and talking to them about it, not by going on TV and calling them a bunch of lunatics, right?
00:32:50.440 There's no doubt there's people out there who are spreading wild lies like, you know,
00:32:54.900 COVID vaccine is full of snake venom or it's rearranging your DNA.
00:32:58.980 Like these things we know are not true.
00:33:00.900 I don't know what you do with those people.
00:33:02.380 But there was a ton of people out there who were ranged from skeptical to hostile.
00:33:07.780 Maybe some of them could have been convinced.
00:33:09.620 Maybe some of them would never be convinced.
00:33:11.900 Regardless, you do better by having genuine conversations with them and not calling them 1.00
00:33:16.460 idiots than you do by going on TV and calling them a bunch of angry women hating nutjobs. 1.00
00:33:21.980 And this gets back into what I think is the most crucial point of your report, which is the idea 1.00
00:33:27.020 of echo chambers and how it's increasingly comfortable to be in one. And I'm fully aware
00:33:33.740 of this. And this is actually, I don't want to say an uncomfortable topic, but it's a challenging
00:33:37.540 one for me because I realized that independent media that takes a particular political stand
00:33:42.640 will naturally gravitate towards people that like echo chambers.
00:33:48.020 And I always try to do my best to push back against that by saying,
00:33:50.760 I don't want you to just listen to me and only me.
00:33:53.620 I want you to do what I do and get news from a variety of places.
00:33:56.940 But we are very siloed and it's actually fascinating to me.
00:34:01.260 I once did a little experiment where I logged into a friend's Facebook account
00:34:06.560 who wasn't political.
00:34:07.500 This was back when Facebook had news.
00:34:08.800 And I just wanted to see, you know, your homepage, my homepage, just how different is what we're getting and wildly different, just so wildly different.
00:34:18.820 And if you were someone that didn't quite know how these programs work, you wouldn't realize that you're only getting a narrow subset of the world whenever you go online.
00:34:28.840 And I'm curious if you think people are choosing these, you know, people are saying, I am self-selecting out of the world and I want my little slice of it.
00:34:39.600 Do you think people are ending up in this and don't even know it?
00:34:43.480 This is a terrible question because I've been writing my newsletter for tomorrow for the launch of the report on exactly this topic.
00:34:50.120 And so I have, you know, 3,000 words in my head that I'm trying not to dispute you.
00:34:54.620 um the short answer is yes people chose it but they were also pushed into it the reality is we
00:35:01.340 actually know from a bunch of really good social science people are not naturally inclined to just
00:35:06.620 consume things that they agree with from people they agree with we're actually very much more
00:35:11.820 complicated creatures we tend to go out of our way to get information that contradicts our worldview
00:35:17.100 or the very least tends to be a little bit oppositional to it and this has been the history
00:35:21.980 of people since the dawn of time i mean you know i hosted a podcast about right-wing radio um and
00:35:27.100 found myself not being a hundred percent against all of it right like you know i i i can't i have
00:35:32.620 to confess like rush limbaugh is really fun to listen to and then through doing this show i talked
00:35:35.980 to a bunch of people who are generally liberals who would say the same thing would turn on rush
00:35:40.060 limbaugh because they wanted to hear the other side even if they disagree with it we are naturally
00:35:44.220 predisposed to being curious weird creatures who who want to hear the other side now facebook and
00:35:51.180 and facebook was the instigator but not the only culprit for this facebook consistently tried to
00:35:56.620 convince us that we didn't want that right facebook consistently tried to give us information that
00:36:01.580 it thought we wanted information that we agreed with information that people like us liked and
00:36:07.340 consistently we actually have a bunch of internal facebook memos that were leaked last year to
00:36:11.260 congress um that that show that people don't like it people were unhappy with it the problem is
00:36:16.860 facebook earned more money and got more engagement by continuing to do it in some cases by making us
00:36:21.820 angry it actually convinced publishers and political parties by uh you know using facebook
00:36:28.860 sorry using anger as the most powerful metric to to share information on that news feed by
00:36:34.220 juicing it up in the algorithm it convinced political parties and news outlets to make their
00:36:38.700 headlines angrier you can see i mentioned this study the stat in my report but you can see a
00:36:43.740 300 percent increase in the number of headlines that use anger and fear and anxiety in their
00:36:50.140 headlines at the same time you see a massive decline in headlines and news articles that
00:36:55.420 generally employ you know happiness and joy and positive emotions right so facebook directly
00:37:01.500 contributed to the mainstream press by the way this is not even the alternative press this is
00:37:05.180 the major news outlets to them becoming angry and more oppositional right so that led to a catalyst
00:37:12.860 of a whole bunch of startups replicating that emotion right that's where you get a lot of the
00:37:18.140 bright parts it's where you get the press progresses and the daily coast and these
00:37:22.460 other outlets that tend to use this high emotion language you know watch joe biden destroy bernie
00:37:28.940 sanders watch donald trump eviscerate ronda you know this is where you get that language from
00:37:34.060 and even if we're not naturally predisposed towards that kind of stuff if you keep pushing
00:37:40.300 it in people's faces they will consume it right because it sounds exciting and if you're in this
00:37:45.340 rage arms race to make everything this high emotion competition people will will engage with
00:37:52.300 it and the problem is we've done this now for so long we have not tried anything different we've
00:37:58.220 baked in this angry rage inducing media culture and now we don't know how to get out of it right
00:38:05.660 the old publishers are dying they're now facing a huge distribution problem because social media
00:38:10.940 is discouraging them they they're having a hard time recruiting subscribers they're losing their
00:38:15.740 print subscribers so on and so forth and c18 is making everything so much worse meanwhile
00:38:20.380 alternative media outlets like yours like the national observer like the rebel you name it
00:38:25.980 are speaking to their own crowd and no one's quite sure how to do that cross-cutting conversation
00:38:32.140 like we used to have. No one's quite sure how to get someone to buy a copy of the New York Times
00:38:36.680 and then go listen to Rush Limbaugh in their car. We are at a real problematic point right now.
00:38:42.480 And it's only going to be through people kind of waking up to this and going, oh God, you're right.
00:38:47.380 I have to find something to listen to that isn't what I always listen to. And that's going to be
00:38:52.580 part of the solution. But it's going to be a tough slog for the next little while.
00:38:57.240 and and i it is interesting because i like in theory what you're saying that we're not as
00:39:03.420 inherently tribal on these things i'm a bit skeptical i mean i remember when you had me on
00:39:07.820 your podcast you were very kind enough to withstand the deluge of oh how are you dignifying this guy
00:39:14.300 why are you having on and i'm sure my commenters may return the favor but i mean even last week i
00:39:19.020 had a self-professed marxist on the show named stewart parker and we had a nice chat and he's
00:39:23.920 you know, all over the leftist causes on everything except one, which is the transgender issue. And
00:39:29.200 I even with that had people that were commenting being like, I won't hear anything this Marxist
00:39:33.640 has to say, because they're just, there is sort of that natural instinct of I just want to hive off
00:39:38.680 these perspectives. Now, I think that's probably a minority. I think, you know, people seem to be
00:39:44.760 enjoying so far the conversation you and I are having, and I'm glad we're having it. And I don't
00:39:50.200 know if that's enough to to right this ship because there is a a psychological component to
00:39:56.580 this and and that's the worst thing is that you're talking about things that have very real effects
00:40:00.860 on people's brains in what they choose to click on and what they choose to engage with and i don't
00:40:06.560 know and it's bigger than your report here but i don't know what you need to unwire that
00:40:11.360 no i i don't 100 no either i mean i think step one is is really measuring it and auditing it
00:40:17.480 which was the point of this report we really don't get into solutions really um part of the
00:40:22.500 point of this report is to grab it look at it recognize it how it's happening in your life
00:40:27.340 maybe see some of it in in some of your own behavior and to start thinking about it and then
00:40:31.980 be receptive to solutions or be thoughtful about them you know personally i have a few ideas right
00:40:36.900 like i i think political uh party financing is part of the problem the constant demand the parties
00:40:42.540 raise huge amounts of money is part of what's making us crazy i heard conservative mps who
00:40:47.460 were shocked to hear the words come out of their mouth, who said, I think it's time to bring back
00:40:51.840 the per vote subsidy, right? You know, we can't keep shaking down all of our supporters for money
00:40:56.620 constantly in order to fight elections. Ditto. I heard those conservative MPs say, you know,
00:41:01.700 God, it might be time for proportional representation. You know, first past the
00:41:05.860 post is, you know, Justin Trudeau has mastered first past the post. He has perfected the way
00:41:12.120 in which to squeeze the NDP, stoke up fears about the conservatives and kind of balance in the
00:41:16.640 middle, right? Like he's really good at it. Proportional representation, you know, alleviating
00:41:21.700 some of that pressure on the conservatives from the right by letting Maxime Bernier win like seven
00:41:24.880 seats or whatever, you know, letting the NDP kind of a little more breathing room on the left. All 0.97
00:41:29.420 of that might actually help reinvigorate our democracy to some degree, but those aren't
00:41:33.320 solutions either. I mean, those won't fix polarization overnight. It's also going to require
00:41:38.740 a rebuilding of state capacity, which is bigger than any of us can kind of do individually.
00:41:43.060 We need to be able to get the homelessness problem under control.
00:41:47.260 We need to be able to build housing again.
00:41:48.680 We need to be able to build new transit to get stuff done again.
00:41:52.140 And that is a much deeper problem than kind of anyone policy can solve.
00:41:57.620 And I think once you see things kind of rebounding properly, people will get less anxious and
00:42:02.680 more inclined to having kind of real conversations with people.
00:42:05.180 So you're totally right.
00:42:05.960 I mean, this is a much, much bigger problem.
00:42:07.980 But, you know, I think it's also going to be a feature of the internet thing, right? Like where we're at right now, we don't have a platform for conversations anymore. Twitter has, not that it was great before, frankly, I think it's even worse now and people decamping to their various kind of preferred social media platforms is not really enabling us a space to sit in the middle and talk anymore.
00:42:32.600 So I don't know where that is. We're going to have to figure it out. Because unless we can actually talk to each other again, get used to hearing people who disagree with kind of actually explain themselves in real terms. I think it's going to be really important and really necessary going forward.
00:42:50.740 Yeah, and just on that, I mean, your report identifies how deplatforming, which has often, in my experience, been viewed as a predominantly left-wing phenomenon that's used against right-wingers, although I know that I'm simplifying it, but how deplatforming actually drives this further and actually forces people into their own little echo chambers.
00:43:12.460 And I was actually just on a related note, kind of encouraged that some of the people you spoke to had a very, I would say, enlightened view of cancel culture that isn't what I expected from the under 35s. 0.63
00:43:24.200 They were almost universally, it seemed like, from what you included, against it.
00:43:28.980 Yeah, I mean, part of the report, we had a particular focus on the experiences of youth.
00:43:33.640 We did some polling, particularly amongst youth who don't normally respond to polling.
00:43:38.640 But we also have these kind of long-form roundtables where the kind of focus groups where we talk to under 35-year-olds about their experiences with polarization and politics more generally.
00:43:49.140 And we actually had no questions in there about cancel culture or deplatforming or anything because we really didn't – we wanted to let the conversation drive itself, but also it really wasn't part of the study.
00:43:57.220 It was something all of them volunteered.
00:43:58.580 We heard it again and again and again.
00:43:59.920 And it was really interesting because, you know, I might disappoint some of your listeners, it's not like there was some huge upswell of conservative sentiment amongst these youth.
00:44:10.340 A lot of them are progressives, right?
00:44:11.720 A lot of them are, you know, talking about homelessness as one of the biggest problems in this country, desperate need for affordable housing, you know, racial justice as being one of the top priorities, Indigenous reconciliation, all these things.
00:44:22.100 But what they told us was that the constant demands from their peer groups around kind of being ideologically perfect, around denouncing the right people, around never kind of questioning orthodoxy was making them anxious and slightly crazy, right?
00:44:38.060 Like there was a feeling like cancel culture and deplatforming as a tactic had run contrary to the principles on which it was founded, right?
00:44:47.820 The hope of cancel culture and de-platforming was it was supposed to respond to inadequacies of the state and the media to deal with, you know, sexual predators and abusers and all this, you know, the Harvey Weinsteins of the world or the Jeffrey Epsteins or whatever.
00:45:02.540 But what they found was that it was increasingly targeting either, you know, middling celebrities or public figures or whoever for whom the punishment was much worse than the crime or in even worse cases, people in their community, right?
00:45:16.360 We always talk about cancel culture as being this kind of big national thing, but where it actually happens more often than not is in small communities.
00:45:22.940 One person says something slightly untoward, makes kind of an ignorant comment or gets accused of something, and it spirals out of control, and suddenly their lives are ruined.
00:45:32.980 And not only that, everybody else in the community is sort of pressured upon to stand up and denounce that figure or else be kind of labeled a traitor to the revolution to some degree, right?
00:45:42.920 So a lot of these people we spoke to basically said, I agree with the principles underpinning it. I do want to call out, you know, guys who are sexually harassing people on the job or whatever. But I feel like we've wasted a lot of time and energy destroying people who didn't necessarily need to be destroyed, and not most importantly, giving them a path to sort of rehabilitation and for reform and apology and penance and reconciliation. And I think that was really interesting.
00:46:09.040 And I, you know, and I kind of extend this out in another part of the report to talk about de-platforming more broadly. You know, when you take a class of people who agree with something that might be wrong or, you know, might be based on misinformation or might just be sort of contrary to where the conversation is, when you kick them off a platform, they're going to go somewhere else and they're going to keep having that conversation.
00:46:31.340 And in some cases, that conversation might get much more intense. It might be much more driven by animosity. It might be angrier. And fundamentally, it makes some of these topics taboo. If they're really wrong, well, let's hash it out.
00:46:44.660 It's not to say that we have to put every January 6th participants on the debate stage
00:46:51.180 so they can air their views, but it does sort of mean that you kind of have to let them
00:46:54.840 talk.
00:46:55.460 There's no benefit we get, really, from sort of kicking people out of the public square
00:47:01.460 and hoping they just kind of shut up about it.
00:47:03.580 It just doesn't work that way.
00:47:05.660 Well, look, it's a fascinating report, and I think that why can't we all get along might
00:47:10.540 be a bit too ambitious and trite, but why can't we all have it out?
00:47:14.660 and talk about it as adults, I think should certainly be the goal here.
00:47:18.040 The report, which has been commissioned by the Public Policy Forum, comes out tomorrow.
00:47:22.880 You can read it.
00:47:23.820 It's called Far and Widening the Rise of Polarization in Canada,
00:47:27.560 written by freelance journalist Justin Ling.
00:47:30.320 Justin, this was an absolute delight.
00:47:32.160 Thanks so much for coming on today.
00:47:33.980 Thanks for having me.
00:47:35.140 All right.
00:47:35.540 Thank you.
00:47:36.180 That'll do it for us for today.
00:47:37.960 We'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show,
00:47:41.560 the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:47:43.200 Let me know what you think in the comments here.
00:47:45.640 Do you think polarization has gotten worse?
00:47:48.440 Do you think there is hope on the horizon?
00:47:50.580 Are you feeling more or less encouraged after that conversation?
00:47:54.480 I've always said, if people can get off Twitter,
00:47:56.240 it will do tremendous things for their well-being and also for society itself.
00:48:00.720 And not just abandon Twitter, but I mean,
00:48:02.580 keep conversations in real life larger than what exists on Twitter.
00:48:07.500 I think that's key as well.
00:48:08.740 And I've had so many times where I've been like writing something out
00:48:11.740 And I'm like, you know, I know that there's no way I can condense this issue into, I think
00:48:16.820 now you get like unlimited characters, but at the time, 140, 280 characters and I like
00:48:22.040 people are going to take it out of context and you sort of just back off because you
00:48:25.360 know that it's not a place for nuance.
00:48:26.860 Now I love doing a show because on a show I've got conceivably unlimited time to make
00:48:31.440 my point and I don't actually often see or ever really clips of what I've said taken
00:48:36.120 out of context because I always make a point of describing what I think and why I think it. And
00:48:42.080 if people want to vilify me from my beliefs, they can. But I think it is a lot harder to do that
00:48:47.500 face to face. So we should talk about those with whom we disagree. I know it's easier said than
00:48:51.840 done, but it's important. And I was glad to have Justin Ling on to talk about polarization through
00:48:57.220 his eyes. So that does it for us for today. As I said, we'll be back tomorrow. Thank you. God
00:49:01.560 bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by
00:49:08.600 donating to true north at www.tnc.news
00:49:31.560 We'll be right back.
00:50:01.560 We'll be right back.