I’ve been thinking of reviving this blog for awhile now. Goodness knows, there’s plenty to feel grumpy about. We’re living in dark times, my friends - five years into a pandemic, with civil war threatening in the US, Christo-fascist movements on the rise, the planet on the brink of environmental collapse, and wars breaking out all over. Here in Canada, we’ve got incompetent and corrupt political leadership in most provinces, and an ugly federal election looming next year. I’ve been actively engaged in politics for nearly 5 decades now and I don’t remember it ever being this bad.
The thing that makes it worse is that the electorate has become so ill-informed and disengaged in recent decades. Sorry to sound judgemental but it’s true. Most people don’t pay much attention to politics these days, and many who do lack the critical thinking skills needed to make genuinely informed choices.
None of that is accidental, of course. Wealthy oligarchs, who are the largest funders of most mainstream parties in this country and elsewhere, prefer the kind of political inertia and chaos that makes it easier for them to operate with no accountability to anyone. Fostering disinformation around key issues, while convincing voters that all politicians are untrustworthy, other people are out to get them, and their votes don’t matter has proven an effective formula for discouraging effective political engagement.
So how do we fix it? I’m not sure any of our current crop of political leaders is really up to the job of reviving a healthy democracy. Some of them - including Premier Houston for sure - are happily ensconced with the oligarchs. (More about that in future posts.) Others are so deeply immersed in the existing dysfunction, they haven’t the energy, imagination or inclination to work for real change.
But change is possible, my friends. I believe that. And I believe the only way to get there is one conversation at a time.
We have four weeks before Nova Scotians head to the polls. If more of us commit to talking with friends, family and colleagues about what we think the important facts and issues are in this election, and what we want our next government to do about them and why, maybe we can encourage more people to think seriously about how they should use their precious votes.
Politics isn’t a game. Who gets elected matters. Every. Single. Time. For many, it’s quite literally a matter of life and death.
Don’t believe me?
When Houston ran for office in 2021, he promised to maintain whatever public health measures were needed to prevent Covid19 from devastating communities as it had in other provinces. Then, mere weeks after being sworn into office, he began lifting those protections with no compelling scientific or other justification for doing so. 90% of Covid19 deaths in this province have happened since. That’s more than 1000 lives cut short. (I don’t have an exact figure because his government has also made data virtually impossible to obtain over the past year.)
Here’s another example: I was speaking with a paramedic based in our area last week. He told me he regularly spends his whole shift in HRM (for the benefit of folks who don’t live in NS, that’s Halifax Regional Municipality). In fact, he said, there have been no ambulances available to take calls in Lunenburg and Queens counties for weeks at a time. Instead, ambulances stationed in Yarmouth have been tasked with responding to calls from this area. Yarmouth is two hours away. Anyone who’s ever taken a first aid course knows that, in many cases, 2 hours is too long to wait.
So - yeah. Who we vote for is a matter of life and death. Given that, we have an ethical duty to think hard about who we support and why. Voting blue, red, or orange because our grandparents did is both stupid and irresponsible. We’ll only get politicians we can trust and respect when we start holding the lying, corrupt and incompetent ones to account.
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