Tuesday 23 October 2012

Canada's Sleeping Peasants

The Sleeping Peasants by Picasso. An accurate depiction of the
the everyday Canadian. 

Ladies and Gentlemen as many of you know I am a political person. Sometimes too much to function. Lately I have become less political. Why? Not because politics isn’t important to me anymore. No, I still feel it is one of the most important things to understand if you want to be a functioning adult. As a sidebar, I am often surprised to find how many of my compatriots and indeed, people I call my friends don’t have the slightest clue about how politics influences their lives. Some cannot even name who the current Prime Ministre is. It’s Stephen Harper by the way. Moreover  we are no longer friends. So pack up your idiocy and go. Lately, I have found my fascination with politics, especially Canadian politics, a bitter pill to swallow. There is a poison that permeates the practice now and I find myself emotionally vomiting every time I either watch the CBC or pick up my daily Star.

On the municipal level, the city is not even functioning. The council seems to have more similarities with a Battle Royalesque jungle arena where Adam Vaughan wields a broadsword and Karen Stintz cltuches a cross bow, while the Mayour has taken to cannibalism. The city council is made of series of ignorant prats that think if one wants to be a good politician, one must constantly assert his/hers opinion to the point of absurdity rather then over coming their differences to find compromise. Compromise is not possible when the folks that one represents are as navel gazing as the representative.

Provincially things are even more dire. The great nine year Premiere has felt himself too hot and pulled himself inexplicably out of a place of leadership. This should be a good thing, as he was a corrupt beast who had more ghosts then a British Mansion from a Bronte Novel. It is not. It seems he thought the Germans were invading and deployed a scorched earth policy worthy of Eastern Front Soviet tactics. He, for no reason other then the fact that he no longer wished to lead the Liberal minority government, prorogued Queen’s Park. For the uninitiated, that means stopped work for the entire government (Also why are you still reading? We are no longer friends. See first paragraph). How can this happen without widespread angry backlash in the streets? When Charles I prorogued the legislature in seventeenth century England, a ten year civil war ensued. Sure that is a bit of an over simplification of the actual event but I draw the comparison to emphasize how bad of a blow to democracy Premiere Dad’s move was. 

Premiere Dad took a page from the Feds, for Harper’s government showed Canada exactly how prorogation should be used by the corrupt politician. When you’ve misled Canada, stop parliament. I could go on for seven thousand words on the egregious poisons of the Feds, but I won’t do that. Just look up a great Canadian political commentator called Chantal Hebert. She can say it way better then I can ever hope too. 

Politicians are wronging me and all of us. We are wronging them. One of the major tenements of a functioning democracy is an informed voting pool and face it folks, we are uninformed. Why? It is because we spend, and myself is included in this, too much time looking at our own lives than at the collective good. The Dark Ages have been over for eight hundred years, we no longer need to focus all our energies on protecting ourselves and our livestock from marauding Nordic pirates. We can now look out for our neighbours. We are too busy bemoaning the loss the our beloved hockey teams or, more aptly in my case, a misperformed Shakespeare play, then holding our politicians to the fire of scrutiny. 

I am sure you are saying to me “Julian well this is the same old shit everyone gripes about: the uninitiated political voter. We can’t do anything.” 

You are right. 

That is the truth. 

How do we fix this? 

I am not sure. I have no conclusions. I have nothing to offer and this is why I have trouble following what was once for me, an every day interest. I look at Canada and I see corrupted leaders and a population of sleeping peasants. Perhaps the Dark Ages have returned.... Best get the livestock into the barn.