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More Election 2015 Thoughts
Oct. 19th, 2015 12:01 pmGet out and vote. Not voting is surrendering to the status quo, not a protest against a system you don't agree with.
Anyway, I'm in a hurry to post this while it's still barely relevant, and they're not the most well-organized points, so don't expect the best written essay ever here. I plan on bouncing around all over the place.
When the Conservatives won their first majority nine years ago, a coworker joked at lunch that I would now be worried about Harper's "secret agenda". I countered that his agenda was hardly a secret - the Conservatives had baldly stated their intentions, and they were no good for the environment, civil rights, international relations with anyone not the USA. How was this in anyway a secret? Quite literally, the only people who were going to benefit from a Conservative government were rich stockholders in large corporations. Everyone else was going to be at best ignored or at worst, ruthlessly exploited.
In nine years, I've not seen anything to contradict what I thought. In fact, things are much worse than I imagined (and I've got a hell of an imagination). I think they're flat out fascists now (seriously, check out the Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism and see how they apply to the Conservatives), and only typical Canadian niceness has prevented them from being so obvious about it that they lose their supporters.
For me, the single most important "issue" of the election is to stop the Conservatives. In much the same way that you have to stop the bleeding before anything else in a traumatic injury. It's hard to save the patient if they've exsanguinated. Once they're gone, we can address the details of fixing what's been deliberately broken or destroyed.
Which brings me to strategic voting. I've heard all the arguments - how it promotes cynicism towards voting and government; how we should be voting for the best Candidate; How it plays into manipulation from other parties. All true. What else is true is that I don't get to vote on hypothetical candidates, and I don't get to vote for who gets to be Prime Minister. My choices are the folks on the ballot of my riding. A split progressive vote in my riding will result in a Conservative candidate. Anyway, I've written about this at length before and I don't want to rehash it all here. In years past, I went for true underdogs who had chance of winning my riding, so they could get the small benefit of a federal voter payment (until the Conservatives quashed a policy that promoted fairness instead of deep pockets). In short, strategic voting is one of the tools of intelligent voting.
Over the last nine years, I've occasionally asked Conservative voters (I used to have a few who read me regularly here and on Facebook - but they've mostly self-selected away since then) the question that's baffled me the most: Why? These were serious questions - i.e. I really wanted to know, I wasn't just looking to pick a fight. I think I got two responses that gave points for Conservative supporters. Of course, my readership immediately dog-piled on these folks (which was not my intent, but in hindsight was predictable). So the question never really got answered.
Thankfully, other people have posted about this stuff in safe spaces, so I can give a rundown. Conservatives generally are given credit for:
Besides, I don't want your taxes raised, I want the taxes of people much much richer than you raised.
Balancing the budget. They only did this in the most recent year, and they only did it by stealing from the EI surplus. In the mean time, they've added massively to the national debt. I'm fine with debt, but shouldn't we have gotten something for it? Like the jobs and stuff that infrastructure spending yields?
Getting tough on crime. Interestingly, violent crime has been falling for years, so this is a problem that doesn't really need solving, just managing, and we've been managing it just fine. Also, every time the Harper government issues a new tough-on-crime bill, it tends to get quashed by the Supreme Court for being unconstitutional. That tells me that these are bad laws. Maybe write some good ones instead?
Saving us from Terrorism. C-51. C-24. The Niqab debate. It's all about othering people isn't it. You don't get justice by rewriting the law so that dissent is terrorism. Canadians are not equal if some can be stripped of their citizenship. You're not supporting women by making them strip. It disgusts me that going, "Look, a niqab, booga booba!" is seen as a reasonable tactic. It disgust me more that it often works.
Here's an interesting snippet I read a few years ago. Canadian authorities working with other jurisdictions, took down a massive international pedophile ring a few years ago. And they did it within the constraints of the law. If we can do that with this class of vile criminals (pedophiles), why do we have to get rid of our civil liberties for some other class of vile criminals (terrorists)?
I'd get into all the vile things they have done, but I'll be there all day. Seriously, I started writing it and realized that I would be at it all day if I continued. It did remind me of something I've noticed. When confronting Conservatives about some vile policy, when they don't just flat-out deny it, they'll respond with "both sides do it."
This seems to be a generalization of "politicians promise things and don't deliver, regardless of what party they belong to." OK, fine, I'll buy that, but there is a real difference between "promised stuff, tried to deliver it and failed because shit happens" and "they were lying all along". Nuance matters.
Last election, I predicted a Liberal minority government. Needless to say I was both wrong wrong wrong, and also deeply disappointed. I'm not going to make any predictions this year, but my hope remains some sort of progressive minority government (i.e. Libs/NDs). One that will reverse as many Conservative policies as possible, while also working towards some form of proportional representation. Will I get even a fraction of that? No, but could we at least stop the bleeding?
Anyway, I'm in a hurry to post this while it's still barely relevant, and they're not the most well-organized points, so don't expect the best written essay ever here. I plan on bouncing around all over the place.
When the Conservatives won their first majority nine years ago, a coworker joked at lunch that I would now be worried about Harper's "secret agenda". I countered that his agenda was hardly a secret - the Conservatives had baldly stated their intentions, and they were no good for the environment, civil rights, international relations with anyone not the USA. How was this in anyway a secret? Quite literally, the only people who were going to benefit from a Conservative government were rich stockholders in large corporations. Everyone else was going to be at best ignored or at worst, ruthlessly exploited.
In nine years, I've not seen anything to contradict what I thought. In fact, things are much worse than I imagined (and I've got a hell of an imagination). I think they're flat out fascists now (seriously, check out the Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism and see how they apply to the Conservatives), and only typical Canadian niceness has prevented them from being so obvious about it that they lose their supporters.
For me, the single most important "issue" of the election is to stop the Conservatives. In much the same way that you have to stop the bleeding before anything else in a traumatic injury. It's hard to save the patient if they've exsanguinated. Once they're gone, we can address the details of fixing what's been deliberately broken or destroyed.
Which brings me to strategic voting. I've heard all the arguments - how it promotes cynicism towards voting and government; how we should be voting for the best Candidate; How it plays into manipulation from other parties. All true. What else is true is that I don't get to vote on hypothetical candidates, and I don't get to vote for who gets to be Prime Minister. My choices are the folks on the ballot of my riding. A split progressive vote in my riding will result in a Conservative candidate. Anyway, I've written about this at length before and I don't want to rehash it all here. In years past, I went for true underdogs who had chance of winning my riding, so they could get the small benefit of a federal voter payment (until the Conservatives quashed a policy that promoted fairness instead of deep pockets). In short, strategic voting is one of the tools of intelligent voting.
Over the last nine years, I've occasionally asked Conservative voters (I used to have a few who read me regularly here and on Facebook - but they've mostly self-selected away since then) the question that's baffled me the most: Why? These were serious questions - i.e. I really wanted to know, I wasn't just looking to pick a fight. I think I got two responses that gave points for Conservative supporters. Of course, my readership immediately dog-piled on these folks (which was not my intent, but in hindsight was predictable). So the question never really got answered.
Thankfully, other people have posted about this stuff in safe spaces, so I can give a rundown. Conservatives generally are given credit for:
- Lowering taxes.
- Balancing the budget.
- Getting tough on crime.
- Saving us from terrorism.
Besides, I don't want your taxes raised, I want the taxes of people much much richer than you raised.
Balancing the budget. They only did this in the most recent year, and they only did it by stealing from the EI surplus. In the mean time, they've added massively to the national debt. I'm fine with debt, but shouldn't we have gotten something for it? Like the jobs and stuff that infrastructure spending yields?
Getting tough on crime. Interestingly, violent crime has been falling for years, so this is a problem that doesn't really need solving, just managing, and we've been managing it just fine. Also, every time the Harper government issues a new tough-on-crime bill, it tends to get quashed by the Supreme Court for being unconstitutional. That tells me that these are bad laws. Maybe write some good ones instead?
Saving us from Terrorism. C-51. C-24. The Niqab debate. It's all about othering people isn't it. You don't get justice by rewriting the law so that dissent is terrorism. Canadians are not equal if some can be stripped of their citizenship. You're not supporting women by making them strip. It disgusts me that going, "Look, a niqab, booga booba!" is seen as a reasonable tactic. It disgust me more that it often works.
Here's an interesting snippet I read a few years ago. Canadian authorities working with other jurisdictions, took down a massive international pedophile ring a few years ago. And they did it within the constraints of the law. If we can do that with this class of vile criminals (pedophiles), why do we have to get rid of our civil liberties for some other class of vile criminals (terrorists)?
I'd get into all the vile things they have done, but I'll be there all day. Seriously, I started writing it and realized that I would be at it all day if I continued. It did remind me of something I've noticed. When confronting Conservatives about some vile policy, when they don't just flat-out deny it, they'll respond with "both sides do it."
"They're muzzling Federal scientists."Since the assertion isn't necessarily correct (often times both sides do engage in some awful behavior, but not always), doesn't this mean you've just acknowledged that your side is behaving abominably? If you, yourself, admit that what they're doing is wrong, and you're still voting for them, I think you can stop holding yourself up as a rational voter, and are now clearly a tribesman.
"The Liberals would do that too, if they were in power."
This seems to be a generalization of "politicians promise things and don't deliver, regardless of what party they belong to." OK, fine, I'll buy that, but there is a real difference between "promised stuff, tried to deliver it and failed because shit happens" and "they were lying all along". Nuance matters.
Last election, I predicted a Liberal minority government. Needless to say I was both wrong wrong wrong, and also deeply disappointed. I'm not going to make any predictions this year, but my hope remains some sort of progressive minority government (i.e. Libs/NDs). One that will reverse as many Conservative policies as possible, while also working towards some form of proportional representation. Will I get even a fraction of that? No, but could we at least stop the bleeding?
