From the editor: Clammering voices

Why are there so many absolutes? It feels like a recent thing. Censorship is pretty high in the debate, triggering absolutes. If you don’t like an opinion on telly then it shouldn’t be allowed to be there (sas my echo-chamber) – and it’s a strange position that we find ourselves in as all voices have a right to be heard. But sometimes giving some voices a platform just doesn’t sit right at all.

Every time Katie Hopkins opens her mouth and something calculated to garner maximum clickbait comes out, a raft of intellectuals hang their heads and sigh. And every time Stella Creasy MP gets trolled and threatened with actual physical violence for campaigning to regulate payday loans companies, there’s a horror that this kind of behaviour seems ‘alright’ to so many people.

Maybe we lived in more moderate times before, but right now Trump’s hyperbole feels indicative of the mob voice. ‘These are the best times you have ever seen!’ ‘This is the worst piece of cake that has ever existed!’ Where is the moderation and the qualification? Why has the exclamation point replaced the question mark in so many places?

These things leak into elsewhere in life. On MTV and reality shows you can see that one disagreement risks years of friendship. Maybe the drama is the only way to get through. After years of appalling images from charities fostering ‘sympathy fatigue’, is this the other side of that?

A friend of mine said to me: “I’ve become Angry Dad. I don’t want to be Angry Dad – the kids just won’t put on their shoes before I blow my top.” Perhaps, like his kids, we need to start listening to the quiet voices again. And we’ll have less angry people.

Victoria Nangle
editorial@thelatest.co.uk