Political Ignorance and Blizzard's Blinders

If there's a vote, their best hope is that the electorate has a massive amnesia attack or takes their stupid pills that day -- and gives them another tax-and-squander majority.

 

In other words - free speech at all costs, but if you don't think exactly the way we do, you're clearly an idiot.

 

That's a wrong-headed approach - the same one that's gotten Vic Toews into trouble, repeatedly.  If you assume the public is dumb, then you don't want to risk exposing their ignorance to information with which they might form opinions that disagree with yours (and are therefore stupid).

 

But then you're withholding information, denying yourself constructive criticism and stifling a fundamental piece of our democratic process.  Then, to keep the message control up, you end up dictating to the Public Service, going over the head of our democracy entirely.

 

Freedom of speech cannot exist in an information vacuum.  By hiding the facts and indiscriminately dehumanizing anyone who disagrees with them, the "free-speech" Political Right prove themselves to be hypocrites. 

Blizzard can spin all she likes (and I have no doubt that she believes her own reactive rhetoric), but the fact is that every Party left with an unchallenged majority falls into the trap of putting long-term partisan interests ahead of the public good.  That's why we have a Parliament in the first place.  Which is why it's dangerous at any level for government to start interfering with the functioning of Parliament - when the institutional heart of our democracy ceases to function, so does the illusion that we have a representative system.  When government refuses to do it's job, others - like Anonymous - will step in and fill the gap. 

 

We have never had a government try to be as transparent and direct as Premier Wynne is attempting to be - in trying to promote a much-needed political culture change, Wynne is exposing herself and her government to all kinds of attacks from Opposition Parties who see winning power, not serving the province, as priority. 

 

No, she's not perfect and yes, the temptation to circle her political wagons and fall back to the traditional fight-or-flight of blood-sport politics will gnaw at her.  If the Opposition refuses to join the conversation - and if they succeed in using Wynne's open approach against her - you can guarantee that political operatives from all Parties will take notice and information will retreat back into the shadows.  Bureaucracies will increasingly be controlled by political masters.  Individual leaders and their own ideologies will drive the nation instead of evidence and public interest.

 

That's what gets us things like the press being denied the opportunity to speak to Omar Khadr, Canadian military being forced to consider "political truths" and the social costs that come with propping up the Canadian economy with cheap foreign labour.  Who knows how the RCMP bungling of Rehtaeh Parsons case and the politically convenient timing of the would-be VIA Rail bombers fits in. 

 

When governments start to treat the public like idiots and assume they can fool us with political slights of hand, the people will lose confidence in government entirely and turn elsewhere for the leadership they crave. That's how revolutions begin.

 

When you take the approach that you're smart and everyone else is dumb, all you're doing is proving your own ignorance - at everyone's peril.
 

The Greatest Threat to Democracy

 

Despite all of that, the Fidesz-dominated Hungarian Parliament passed the Fourth Amendment with the governing party’s reliable two-thirds majority because, say governmental spokespeople, these are mere “technical” amendments that should not cause anyone concern.

 

What does this remind me of... oh yeah this:

 

"The Canadian public don't care about the maneuvers in Parliament and the wording of various motions."

 

Of course, Harper is probably right.  Canadians consider themselves too busy, too otherwise-engaged to worry about the slow erosion of our democratic institutions.  We are at best indifferent to the even worse erosion happening steadily beyond our borders, even in supposedly "safe" countries like Hungary - and this, not for the first time. 

 

Have we not learned?  We can pretend not to see, we can pretend not to hear because we choose not to be responsible - but we are responsible.  Democracies at all levels require the proactive participation of their members.  Totalitarianism is a social cancer that recognizes no borders, but it doesn't happen out of the blue, on its own - the disaffection of the masses lets it happen.

The biggest threat to democracy isn't external terrorism or The Mule, but the indifference of its people.


The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.
  
    -  Elie Wiesel

Canada's Shrinking Democracy Water Hole

 

 

What’s odd is that Canadian default values, according to Ekos, haven’t really shifted to the right and the prime minister and his government really don’t represent the country’s defining political and ideological beliefs.

 

What has happened, first, is that the overwhelming majority of Canadians under age 45 have stopped voting — not out of apathy as far as anyone can tell, but because they simply don’t see their political agendas mirrored in the agendas of Parliament and the provincial and territorial legislatures. How democratic is a country where most citizens below the median age don’t vote? Canada has become a country governed by a gerontocratic minority.

 

Call it the Tragedy of the House of Commons.  There's little point in placing blame with some arbitrary other - we're all in glass houses.  We've dug this democratic deficit together.  Together's the only way out of it.

 

The leader(s) who inspire Canadians to stop finger-pointing and start communicating, planning and building together as a society will find a country ready to believe again. 

 

Democracy and Service Delivery Renewal in Canada

Think of it: No more wild lurches between reckless largesse, followed by grim years of restraint; no borrowing to finance lower taxes, either. The government is denied the power to spend more than it takes in. In a recession, in order to maintain social programs, governments at all three levels would be forced to work together to reduce costs elsewhere in the system. They could start, perhaps, by trimming the bloated salaries of senior public administrators, whether in health care, policing or education.

Here's the thing that, for some reason, doesn't get discussed as much as it should - when you have a system that's designed like a series of fiefdoms, of course there is money lost to duplication, gaps and overlaps, while overall service delivery suffers.

You don't have to cut services to save money.  You don' t necessarily need to spend more for better services, either.  There is lots of money in the system that is being spent, but not being spent strategically.  It takes coordinated, specialized collaboration to achieve that level of forward-moving efficiency; a network, not a collection of silos.  The focus has to be on the two things people seem to have the most trouble doing; breaking old habits to form new ones appropriate for the times and giving up individual control for collective benefit.

Put it another way - the only way forward?  Together.