Canadians Held Hostage

"I live in a riding where a lot of people are so ignorant and/or racist and/or stupid and/or whatever that the Conservative Party of Canada candidate might win. I'd rather vote NDP/Green/Liberal but the likeliest candidate to defeat the Conservative fuckwad is the Liberal/NDP candidate. Once again, thanks to our antiquated electoral system, I'm voting AGAINST something instead of FOR something."

That, in a nut-shell, is how sane Canadian voters (or at least "not deplorable Canadian voters") are held hostage by First-Past-The-Post. And that's what we'll all still be subjected to by Justin Trudeau's blatant betrayal of a much stated election promise.

The Liberals have a huge majority. They could have done anything they wanted. What's more, if they'd imposed their Preferential Ballot as our new system, supposedly they wouldn't have to fear any backlash for their "arrogance" in having done so.

Some will blame the powerless minority parties for demanding a referendum or for doing some other thing that somehow sabotaged the Liberals' dreams of rescuing us from our plight. But re-read the words "powerless minority parties" again and think about how completely stupid that notion is. Justin himself is blaming Canadians for not all being united as one behind one version of electoral reform. However, when looking back on the Liberals' antics from the very beginning of this farce, we can see that they were never serious about electoral reform. They might have been partially serious while on the campaign trail. The start of that election saw them in one of those periods when anger and disgust against them saw them reduced to far fewer seats than their popular support indicated they would have.

But once in power with a massive majority, they remembered why they like First-Past-The-Post so much. And so, at least from election night onwards, electoral reform was dead. They just had to come up with some plausible way to kill it while seeming to try to bring it about. In the end, it was not plausible. It was an insult to our collective intelligence.

I'll conclude by talking about how liberals create monsters. Now that he's put electoral reform behind him, Trudeau can engage in the wholesale give-away of public assets to the private sector that his whole "infrastructure bank" is designed for. He'll strip the federal government of its assets, enrich the wealthiest, allow the real economy to stagnate, toss crumbs to the poor to ameliorate the worst sufferings (paid for with deficit spending because LibroCons have slashed government revenues and eliminated assets). And while he's doing this, Trudeau will continue to indulge himself with soaring rhetoric about equality and justice and inclusivity that (together with ignoring the material well-being of the majority of the population) makes the stupidest, mentally ugliest 25% of the population seethe with rage. Just like the Ontario McGuinty-Wynne Liberals, he'll engage in super-corruption combined with social values bullshit that only serves to discredit those values among the ignorant and the stupid. And then, thanks to his betrayal of us on electoral reform, the vile Conservatives sweep back to power.

In the end though, this see-saw between Bad and Worse is in the best interests of Canadian capitalism. So it'll stay that way. Because there are some things more important than narrow partisan interests.

Edited to add:

Personally, I'd even like the preferential ballot/instant run-off system over the piece-of-shit system we have now. I'd vote NDP and Green would be my second choice. Once people realize that a different electoral system isn't traumatic, future governments could change it more easily if need be.