According to the 2018 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, 86 percent of 15-year-olds struggle to differentiate between opinion and fact. This doesn’t come as a surprise to older journalists who were trained in a time when news and opinions were clearly separated in newspapers. Nowadays, very few 15-year-olds read newspapers, let alone ones that adhere to traditional journalistic principles. In school, critical reasoning skills are not taught, but instead, students are influenced by social justice ideologies. They are not encouraged to write persuasive essays on different sides of an issue, but rather, they regurgitate settled truths that they have learned.
When someone cannot distinguish between a fact and an opinion, they tend to respond to opinions supported by evidence with their own opinions supported by emotion, believing that their personal feelings are a valid rebuttal. In our current “feelings” culture, young people are taught that words can be a form of violence. This leads to the belief that if published words can be violent, then tears can be a shield or a form of force used against ideas they disagree with. As a journalist, I was once advised against using my own emotional reaction as a rhetorical weapon in my writing. This lesson has made me more aware of instances where identity politics activists use crying as a manipulation tactic.
An example of this is seen in a recent op-ed in the Toronto Star, where a contributor, who identifies as a parent of a transgender child, uses her alleged tears to argue against a decision made by the Ontario Educator Minister regarding notifying parents of pronoun changes at school. The emotional response seems disproportionate to the situation and serves as a distraction from the importance of parental rights. This type of sentimentalism is a form of kitsch journalism, much like velvet dogs playing poker in the art world. Kitsch can mimic great art, but it lacks authenticity and is often used as a virtue-signaling tool.
Kitsch can be easily recognized by the visceral “yuk” response it evokes. One example of this is the recent exhibit of children’s shoes on the steps of Vancouver’s art gallery, which was meant to symbolize the alleged mass grave of residential school children. This project lacked originality and appropriated the shoes image from Holocaust memorials, cheapening the emotions associated with the true victims of the Holocaust. Politicians sometimes use kitsch as a way to appear compassionate or evoke a specific response, but it can be dangerous when it involves sacred victims. Ultimately, if something feels like kitsch, it most likely is.
Please note that the views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.