Politics
I’ve been following the Canadian political drama of late with typical morbid train-wreck-style fascination.
<sardonic_elitism>
The media game and political spin cyclone is its own form of insipid entertainment. We watch the manipulators at work with full understanding of what they are up to, and feel sad that it works to sway the masses of suffragable uninformed mouth-breathers. </sardonic_elitism>
<soapbox>
I’d like to remind y’all that there’s a very viable alternative to the big parties, if you’d like to take a break from strategic voting games, that is. Being a god-damned-liberal-tree-hugger, I find the green party is well in line with my pragmatic sensibilities. Reading over their platform, their major selling points are to reform the political process (proportional representation), cut taxes, and invest in green practices. They also have some intertesting more minor ideas such as pushing for more open source projects in government IT, more active democratic participation via the web, and other clues that they are quite progressive and in line with my core values.
I think, unfortunately, a good chunk of canadians believe the green party is the same as the marijuana party, or that the green party is obsessed with tree-hugging and nothing else.
Regardless of your ideological slant, you should take the time to sign the petition to get the Greens in the debate and television coverage. Last election they got 4.29% of the vote. They are a national party with candidates in every riding, and yet seem to be ignored by all the media and blocked from participating in any debates. Essentially our media has complete control over their fate with voters. This kind of abuse of power hurts any viable party and we should express outrage.
</soapbox>
<self_deprecating>
But what do I know, I’m just a damned tree hugging techno-geek.
</self_deprecating>
Your Green Party sounds like it has the same problems as our Green Party. Ours gets a similar percentage of the vote, but because of the evils of the way seats in Parliament are allocated, it only has one. Proportional representation would be a good thing indeed!
Consider it signed. They’re still choice # 2 on my radar at the moment, and not in a "lesser evil than the others" way. I’m not a huge fan of all of their policies, but they’ve got some ideas that are very much in line with my (quite different from your) values.
I just signed the petition. The Greens are green. They lack some of the big league finesse and locally, they get into stupid squabbles. However, how does one get experience without getting experience? A vote for the Greens are a vote for another probable future life for the next generations. It’s respect for the generations that are to come. Greens need support to grow.
tree hugger
Yes, the Green Party.
I was one of that 4.29%. Hopefully I’m part of a larger percentage this coming election.
I’m voting strategically.
The Liberals in my riding beat the Conservatives by only 721 votes in the last election. Not voting Liberal basically just means the Conservatives will get the seat, and then I will have to sit back and watch them waving burning crosses as they drive around in the back of pickup trucks, with their funny hats, rounding up gay people with pitchforks…. or something like that.