Saturday, February 5, 2011

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.

7 comments:

Sir Francis said...

Honestly, the budget is almost irrelevant at this point. If the Libs/NDP/BQ fail to bring Harper down on this "security perimeter" nonsense, they will have totally nullified their status as a parliamentary opposition. And if Canadians don't rise up and halt this Orwellian Harper/Obama initiative, or at least insist that it undergo parliamentary or plebiscitary ratification (like the FTA did), we will have officially become a failed state.

thwap said...

Sir Francis,

That's exactly right. We'll be a failed state. We'll be a failed democracy.

Last weekend there were two editorials in the Toronto Star. One on Ontario election prospects the other on federal electoral outlook.

Both of them normalized the idea that the harpercons, or the new harrisites are an acceptable part of our political culture.

croghan27 said...

The NDP caves?? After waiting for the Liberals act in a sane manner, dump Harper, for years and seeing nothing happen - they finally find a way to make a Parliament demonated by what you admit is the same party under different names, and you say they are caving????

Canada needs a few more 'caves' like this.

croghan27 said...

The NDP caves?? After waiting for the Liberals act in a sane manner, dump Harper, for years and seeing nothing happen - they finally find a way to make a Parliament demonated by what you admit is the same party under different names, do something useful, and you say they are caving????

Canada needs a few more 'caves' like this.

thwap said...

croghan 27,

What is this "useful" thing that you speak of?

opit said...

" I can't make my peace with this system."

It's been around a long time, tinkered with constantly to reflect the schemes of the autocrats calling themselves the Right.

From Perception Alteration in the Topical Index at opitslinkfest.blogspot.com...one of the suggested links to consider

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

thwap said...

opit,

Yep. It's a plutocracy. An oligarchy.

And I don't believe in the legitimacy of such things.