28 Days Later
Hello, Robot! The break from you has been invigorating. You were probably happy to be left alone for a while, too.
I’ve been fairly obsessed with elections. In Canada, ours just wrapped up, and the enlightened pragmatist must be happy with the results: Conservative minority. The Conservatives are trying to say that since their minority is larger than before, it’s an empowering victory that means Canada supports them. Well, what were they gonna say, “we fucked up?” If only we got press releases like that in politics. Truth is, they botched things and now they’re right back where they were before, only now they can’t call another election for a while, in which time the Liberals will replace Dion with what we can only assume will be a more appealing candidate. Who will it be, though, I wonder?
My politics slot me into the extreme bottom left corner of this scale. I’m a small-state leftist. I don’t like the state intervening in people’s lives, yet I do believe we have an obligation to support those going through tough times, and I believe there are spheres of life in which the profit motive has no place. I consider large corporations more of a threat to the typical citizen than the government, yet I’m a huge fan of small business.
Yeah, what are you gonna do. I guess I’d be an anarchist if I thought any of the anarchist models would actually work in real life. So I’m not pretending I have all the answers. Hell, if the best Plato could come up with is the artist-hating Republic, yours truly isn’t going to sort this shit out.
Anyway, let that be a circuitous way of explaining how I was considering voting Green. I had generally been scared away from the Green by a) hearing they actually were more conservative than the NDP and b) thinking voting green would simply drain seats from the NDP (true). But I quite liked their platform and leader. Unfortunately, you can’t look at the Canuck political landscape without seeing a massive splintering of the left vote contrasted with a consolidated right vote that, not coincidentally, is in power. I hope mandatory voting and proportional representation make their way to Canada soon. Not holding breath tho.
On the US side, Obama gives good speech and all, but the policies are actually fairly conservative from the Canadian point of view. He’d be better than McCain, that’s for sure. It’s like Captain Okay vs. Decrepit Lizard Man and Crazy Lady – you gotta go with the Captain. And the campaign has been entertaining as hell, which has kept me glued to TPM and 538 to see what awesome garbage Team Lizard is selling today. And of course The Daily Show and Colbert are totally killing it. The writing on those shows is phenomenal.