General Politics Discussion

[danbrotherston]

Current voting intent for Ontarians: https://twitter.com/338Canada/status/150...9865969667

• PCPO - 37%
  
• ONDP - 29%
  
• OLP - 25%
  
• GPO - 4%
  

Despite how shit everything is, people still want 4 more years of Doug Ford. Crazy.

I am unsure if its wanting 4 more years of Ford or that the alternatives are just so listless and uninspiring. Our provincial politics has a serious shortage of imagination or ambition. That said, its also a depressing reality of FPTP that 37% is what it takes to flirt with a majority again (and that goes both federally and provincially). Would look a lot different if that 58% had an even partially proportionate share of power.

Our electoral system is so frustrating. But what is weird to me, or at least was weird, is that many people, especially conservatives and centrists liberals, seem to believe that a system of government where we have proportional representation and frequently must form coalitions and cooperate with others is a bad thing. They WANT a strong leader who has full control. The idea of co-operating with others is at best scary.

I was kind of shocked by this concept at first. But I realized that it's a feature of weak minded people. In many ways, a lot of people feel more comfortable under an authoritarian government. It absolves them of responsibility to think for themselves. Democracy inherently puts the responsibility for governing on US, and people often don't like that, they don't want the responsibility of evaluating policy and deciding what is best, they want to be told by someone they feel (through personality) knows what is right. More over, co-operating with others, involves empathy and understanding of others positions. Which is just easier not to do.

This was a very shocking realization for me. And this isn't a totally inherent thing to people, like all things human, it is affected by context. When people are scared (perhaps because of a trifecta of simultaneous global climate, global pandemic, and housing crises) they are more likely to be susceptible to this thinking.

I think this is why you see a rise in the success of anti-democratic movements in many countries like the GOP in the US (yes the entire GOP is fundamentally anti-democratic at this point) as well as less successful but still effective groups in Canada like the PPC, the Ontario freedom party or whatever they're calling themselves, and even Pierre Poilievre.

And I get it, it's scary to give people you disagree with power in our system. I see this with progressives as well. I mean, obviously opposition to electoral reforms use the PPC as a scaremonger "in a proportional system the PPC would have seats SEATS! can you imagine the horror!" But they don't say that the extremists in the PPC have more power today because the CPC is bending over backwards to pander to them. Of course, even some of the progressives I speak with suggest stuff like "well we should have a floor on the support a party must get to seats". So I guess this makes me a radical because I think this is a bad idea, and that the extremists who support the PPC deserve and should get representation.

They should get seats because like anyone. However, their extreme views will relegate them to an irrelevant party that nobody will work with, because nobody CAN work with them. They will either become less extreme and learn to work with people (a good thing) or remain irrelevant. By explicitly disenfranchising this group of people, all you do is make them feel disenfranchised and help them grow their movement.

This has been a common operating script among conservatives, convincing privileged white people (who are perhaps suffering because of the economic situation, but not as much as others, and not for the reason of skin colour) that they are not being represented by anyone, and they are being left behind.

I wish the left would do more to directly attack this ugly aspect of the opposition. Most people, despite how they act, still believe democracy is good, (kind of like folks object to being called racist even when they are acting racist). So the progressive movements should directly call out this attack on democracy.

Of course, I guess the limitation of that is that the centrist Liberals (and Democrats in the US) share the same values, if perhaps to a lesser extent. (And the media coverage reflects that).