I suppose I can't blame them, really. The Liberals have lied or not followed through on so many issues, most notably the GST. But it seems unfair of Canadians to crap on the Liberals for everything that is not working in this country. Let's look at the issues of lying.
They say the Liberals lied about a lot of things. According to Ira Basen, it's no less than what we deserve. In a Noam Chomsky-like way, Basen describes Canadians as a group with such a ridiculously short attention span that we are unable or unwilling to listen to certain realities that take more than 8 seconds to explain. If it's not packaged up and pretty, as in "I would abolish the GST", then it's in one ear and out the other. And if it isn't, then the politician is waffling or flip-flopping. So basically Canadians won't listen to anyone that actually wants to tell them the truth, that running a province or country isn't as easy as saying, "Yes, I'll do this" and then doing it.
Take the GST, for instance. If it were to be abolished tomorrow, Canadians would be ecstatic. For about six months, and then they would realize that their health care would go further into the shitter, or that their child would have no chance at a post-secondary education, or something like that. But no one wants to take the long view, and in an election, Canadians demand that candidates take the short view. In eight seconds, you have no choice but to take a very simplistic (and naive, if you actually believe in what you are saying) view. But the reality is that things change constantly, and you can't do everything.
Canadians have a bad habit of keeping a despied party in power for a decade and grumbling about it. Only when the leader of said party decides he's had enough, and NOT BEFORE, do Canadians muster the anger to "make those damned Tories/Grits/whatevers pay" by trouncing them in the next election. This has never been exemplied more in the example of Kim Campbell. What a slaughter. Jean Chrétien knew that when she was appointed PM by her party, he would be in power in a few months, and that she should enjoy her "summer job". Campbell was a sacrificial lamb, and what a sacrifice. They went from a majority 168 seats to 2. They were almost eliminated (with no small help from those selfish BQ bastards and Reform Party fuckers.) and lost their official party status. Even better, one of the two remaining Conservative MPs was a bigot, and the other one didn't even belong to Kim Campbell.
But that's Canadian politics. If we like a party but not a leader, we don't get rid of that leader (because we can't), so we put up with them for years until that leader decides they've had enough, then we punish the party. And because we have the attention spans of a four-year-old, the new leader of that party is doomed to failure in the next election.
Let's look at our options. In the English debate of last Tuesday, the summary could be as follows:
Martin to Harper: "You're a bigot!"
Harper to Martin: "You're a liar!"
Layton: "I matter, too!"
Duceppe: "You're all idiots."
Of course, I could vote for the communist guy in my riding.
Posted by JonasParker at June 17, 2004 10:15 AM | TrackBack