The vote
According to the tribal consensus, in my neighbourhood at least, there is a federal election today. We had been waiting for the campaign to start, but after a few weeks there wasn’t much more than tired media attacks on “the right-wing fanatics,” who hide their political views, to avoid social unpleasantness.
All the numerous parties in Canada are left-wing, including the Conservative Party, which beat the Liberals in the last election two years ago. The Liberals won it by the “efficient” distribution of their vote. They had been exposed for various forms of corruption, but “the people,” who lack something in the brains department, decided to forgive them. The former Conservative leader, an apparently sincere Catholic, Andrew Scheer, was believed to secretly hold conservative views. (Perhaps he did.) For instance, he did not show enthusiasm for killing babies, or the elderly and despairing. But he has been replaced, by media demand, with someone named Erin O’Toole (openly), who has no opinions that vary from the clichés of the smugly fashionable.
Like Mr Justin Trudeau, O’Toole also has no known religion. Religious belief has been largely extinct in Canada since the 1960s. As a Batflu precaution, it was phased out in the three remaining provinces.
A tiny “People’s Party of Canada,” under a possibly pro-capitalist leader (albeit French Canadian), has emerged to drain the “conservative” vote this time.
Really, there are hundreds of issues that could be discussed in an election campaign, but the citizens are too shallow to participate. Justin Trudeau, called “Blackie” in the blogs out West, or “Spendy McBlackface” for his junior-school behaviour, is the shallowest, most contemptible politician Ottawa can offer. He is also the most popular — especially with women — although he is closely rivalled by the airheads who lead each of the other parties. One of them is memorable for wearing brightly-coloured Sikh turbans. (He is the official socialist.) The “PPC” leader, Maxime Bernier, has a soupçon of courage. That’s what makes him exceptional, as well as inconvenient.
My brief discussion of the election with a local intellectual (I saw him examining a book once), ended when he said that Bernier is “a fascist,” &c. (I wasn’t listening for his precise terms.) “That’s why I’m voting for him,” I explained, even though I doubt he is a “serious” candidate, who could win even a free coffee at Tim Horton’s.
The election authorities have had a great deal of trouble recruiting people to mind the polls, in this most boring and pointless election — called so the Liberals could win back their majority. With luck, the staff will not be able to judge the result, and the established constitutional system will collapse.
Canada, like other countries, would benefit by doing without a federal government, indefinitely, or for fifty years. We could never have afforded what the governments we elected cost us, and a constitutional crisis could get us off the hook for repayment. (This works for other third-world countries.)