It just occurred to me today that I have a blog, and that such has become the ideal venting point for every opinionated frustration in the literate, technologically-endowed world. Since it's been a few days, I figured it would be reasonable to sum up my most recent reflections.
To put a long story short, I voted Liberal. And, in unrelated news, the Liberals got their worst defeat in Canadian history. So continues my long tradition of picking losers. In all my life I don't think I've actually ever voted for someone who subsequently won. Not, at least, if you don't count class valedictorian last year.
One of the great sad disadvantages of our increasingly-networked lives is that we have a front-row seat to people campaigning at each other on Facebook or through Twitter feeds. Lots of people say this is great for freedom of information. But I lament a newsfeed filled to bursting with polemic, misinformation, and unsophisticated arguments for all sides. I was speaking with my folks about this who were frustrated at their Liberal friends who were very sore losers on the internet. That's fair, actually. Lots of people are sore losers, I suppose. I have had the reverse problem, of being Liberal this time but being surrounded by a horde of Conservative friends who now only barely restrain themselves from gloating. If there's such a thing as being a poor loser, than there are definitely some awful winners on my friends list.
Here's why I think it's a moot point, though: politics isn't a hockey game. Actual lives, principles, and strongly-felt issues fought it out here and I lost. Does that mean I have to stop believing what I believe about our country? Do I, as a patriotic citizen, have to swallow my disagreements and 'support our government'? Hell, no. This election mattered. For example, because we re-elected a Conservative government, more people around the world will die this next year as a result of Harper's withdrawing of most of our foreign aid. That's actual dead people. Because we like our GST reduction and low taxes. I find the short-sightedness of Canadian politics offensive.
The issues here were actually never what the CPC spin-machine tried to convince us they were. The speaker of the house shut down parliament on a vote of contempt. This has never happened in any Commonwealth nation ever in all of history. It means the speaker had to rule that the government had broken the rules of parliament on three separate occasions.
By giving them a majority, Canadians have told Stephen Harper 3 things:
- You are not legally accountable to us so long as you fill our pockets
- We do not understand our own political process, nor do we care that we don't understand it, so long as you get results
- We respond positively to cheap and sleazy attack ads on the TV, intellectually insulting misinformation and verified illegal abuses of power, so long as you don't throw it too heavy in our face.
I refuse to suffer anyone to call me a sore loser. This election mattered and my country chose wrong. We voted selfishly, we voted short-sightedly, and we voted un-informedly. I find it repugnant. I've never loved everything about living in this country. But small, insular politics like this is underserving of one of the greatest, most prosperous, most influential nations on the planet. And so for the next 4-5 years, we deserve what we're going to get. This is going to get much worse before it gets better.
As a post-script, if I have offended some of my friends or family, which I suspect I may have, by emotionally combatting your political convictions, I meant to. I am offended by what this country has done. I thought we were bigger people than this. I actually cared about this election, and so, like 60% of Canadians, I reserve the right to be upset about what happened on Monday.
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