Bringing Out the Vote

In the land of hard calls and second worst options these are the choices we're offered. A lot of months have passed since I started saying the LPC needed to reset, retool and rebrand. They couldn't wait to undo Dion, who in retrospect looks like four times the leader for all his many failings. The long knives held by the back room brokers were drawn for poor Stephane from the moment the last convention ended. Sadly, the entire nation pays for those long knives and the harm that the corporate cracker club does by their wielding.

The LPC will give Harper another minority if they are lucky. If they aren't lucky, we'll see Harper installed in his long awaited majority like Gollum finally clutching his precious. The party of the sneering middle managers isn't up to beating the party of the inbred preachers kin. We no longer choose from those we best trust but rather from those whom we hold in least contempt. We now hedge our bets against the lesser of damage vectors. The LPC have been playing a losing hand for years running and they haven't learned a damn thing or gained back a lick of trust or respect.

Perhaps having the Kim Campbell moment is the best we can hope. Perhaps it'll wash the sordid dregs of the old party out for once and finally. Perhaps the raw lesson of a Harper majority and having no more illusions about hidden agendas, denials and whispers... perhaps that's what we need to begin to reclaim this country and steer it back towards moderation and common sense. Toward humanity, dignity and peace. Successive Liberal and Conservative (Progressive or otherwise) governments have driven the ship of state up onto the rocks. It is no one group or person responsible. It is the culmination of a political climate that has grown more petty, more greedy and more lazily corrupt. So here we sit with parties that speak to our worst instincts of avarice and fear, led by pissy little people grubbing and sneaking from every aisle and angle.

We are now a nation that can countenance the false arrest, beating and abuse of a thousand of our fellow citizens in the streets of our largest city. We retreat to our lcd screens and prepared foods and turn our blind eyes to crimes against humanity not just abroad but here at home. We share our complicity by the happy glow of Dancing With the Stars as we light up the internets with celebrity sex & death gossip at a pace that defies all logic. We willingly burn off our energy squealing at adolescent confections and shopping with a maniacal fervour. We feed our need to ignore by drowning in a sea of the forgettable.

Perhaps we've gotten the governments and leaders we deserve. It will take more than a charismatic long shot to undo the damage that's been done and that threatens. We're a people asleep or as someone once said, we're amusing ourselves to death and we're desperate to distract ourselves so we don't have to notice. Maybe that's the only way we can face ourselves when we've become a nation that can wink at the rule of law. Maybe the bigotry that dwelt in some of our hearts has metastasized and now one can applaud for tiered justice and selective applications of human rights and not be a pariah. We can as a nation, break our treaties and covenants regarding the fundamental underpinnings of our civilization and rationalize it through cultured fear and weaponized ignorance.