It Ain't a Waste of Time

So, maybe the NDP is going to chicken-out and hide from the electorate, I mean "make Parliament work" by propping-up the monstrous harpercons for some crumbs in the budget. Of course, Liberal bloggers are working themselves into a sexual frenzy at the thought that their party has found its spine and the NDP is humiliating itself and exposing its years of tough talk as having been nothing but disgusting lies.

To his credit, Liberal blogger Steve V of "Far and Wide" has acknowledged that the Liberal Party itself is far from perfect and needs to be captured by progressives if it's to actually be of any use. He admits to having voted NDP and Green in the past and to have never voted for Paul Martin.

The idea of a progressive takeover has some legitimacy, but the problem is that the Liberal Party is almost as dependent upon the same social forces that back the harpercons, and its voting base is comprised of too many people who would be uncomfortable voting for a genuine progressive platform. It's also staffed and led by people for whom the invasion of Iraq sounded like a good idea and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives looks like an organization they'd like to be a part of.

I think it's more plausible to ask progressive Liberals to vacate the mushy middle and take their voters to the NDP and let all those people who think single-mothers on welfare are bankrupting the nation or whatever decide if they can stomach the harpercons.

Whatever. I'm not pretend to instantly dismiss the idea of progressive activists swamping local riding associations and implementing a progressive takeover bit-by-bit. I think it's an inferior option, but I don't think it's evidence of abject ignorance and blindness.

But if the NDP does cave, and the Liberal assault fails, it will not only mean harper lives to do something else disgusting on another day, it means our political system is almost entirely broken.

The opposition can't rouse itself to defeat the single-most anti-democratic prime minister in our country's history. The electorate doesn't care about the forms of our democratic system or the betrayal of our principles (torture, warrantless spying, mass arrests, illegal detention). The country as a whole cannot grasp the bankruptcy of our economic system.

Then I watch the Egyptian Revolution. While Obama stalls and obscures, he tries to cobble-together a working coalition of "pragmatic" pro-Western politicians and "dependable" Egyptian generals, to ensure that as much of the status-quo (which caused the revolution in the first place) is preserved in the post-Mubarak era.

We seem to have to make herculean efforts to achieve the barest of reforms.

But people fought and struggled for centuries to make things better. To embrace our higher selves and to allow others to free themselves from the chains of inferior political systems.

As hard as it is, we have no choice but to struggle. I can't make my peace with this system.