Truth in 2019 - Renew Or Redux?

The View Up Here

A new year brings new expectations, new hopes, new priorities and... the same old disappointing circle-jerk of posturing and manouvering for power and narrative control? Can recent history give expectation of much else? One would be described as optimistic, to put it kindly, in hoping for some sort of return to a fact-based process regarding anything requiring consent from the citizenry. After all, it only makes sense from a "business" perspective that the drive to get feelings to dominate facts will roll on with as little opposition as possible. It's where the money is. It's where the data is. Once you accept facts, it kind of ends the revenue stream in "alternative facts" and the opportunity to capitalize on feelings. Everyone has them and everyone is succeptible. So what does 2019 have in store? Will the abomination of the Trump administration be curbed, ended or strengthened? What will the result of any of those three possibilities bring?Will a fictional pipeline be approved again, start construction or be headed right back to the courts? Will the inescapable fact that TMX makes zero economic sense ever be acknowledged?Will vacant emotional rhetoric decide the Alberta election over evidence and reasoned actions despite their true motivations? Why is the "lessor of evils" what it always seems to come down to? What determines the lessor in that question - partisanship, logic or apathy and ignorance?Will the Federal election campaign be nothing but a polar-opposites marketing operation? Despite the narrow actual difference of end games? The View Up Here will remain the same. Facts and credible information matter here. But it's a noisy marketplace of "ideas" out there. We will try to give some hints for what 2019 brings for this show, where we will be looking regarding guests and topics and listener input is invited. Bring it.