Hmmm, is it worth all the craziness to end up right back where we started?
I voted at the advance poll last weekend partially to avoid the lineups next Monday. But also partially so I could justify tuning out all the rhetoric, backbiting and mudslinging among the political parties and their leaders in the last week of the campaign.
The shortened lead time for the election this year seems to have amped up the nastiness. All the party leaders – with the pleasant except of Green Party Leader Annamie Paul – appear determined to get in as much maligning as they would have in a longer run-up, if not more. Slander is now an approved election tactic.
Most people I speak with say the same thing: If all you can do is tell me why I should not vote for the other guy, why should I vote for you?
But the behind the scene experts appear hopelessly out of touch. They still believe negativity will translate to votes. Maybe they are just caught up in a vicious, addictive circle from which there is no escape. But hey, it pays well.
The particular election has the added elements of the pandemic and the vaccine passport issue to add fuel to the fire. They are political hand grenades that the party leaders keep lobbing back and forth hoping they will blow up in someone else’s hand. But of course, they make sure to get as much mileage out of the issues as they can in the process.
Trudeau is being skewered for breaking his promise not to call an election during the pandemic. He is spinning the issue as be he can. I really did not want to do it, but I had to. We need a new mandate because the old one is… well… never mind about that. Choose forward to get the country through the pandemic. It hasn’t gone so well thus far, but… well, never mind about that.
O’Toole is doing his best to play both sides of the vaccine issue. Urging everyone to get vaccinated without telling them they have to do so, except that you should, but not if you really don’t want to, but you should want to, but not really. The only way to secure the future is to vote Conservative. And a vote for the People’s Party is a vote for the Liberals.
Singh is charting a course down the middle as political expediency dictates for the third horse in the race. Everyone should get vaccinated. Its Trudeau’s fault that some have not. O’Toole is part of the problem. Look at the mess the Conservatives landed Alberta in. We should not be in an election. But since we are, vote for me. We’re fighting for you. No. not you, the ultra-rich.
It is all a three ring circus that has landed us in the seven circles of hell. Spirally madly downward to an election day when chances are we will end up right back where we started – but $600 million deeper in debt and more divided than ever before.
I will be so glad when the whole charade is over. Well, not glad exactly. Relieved, perhaps, that the mudslinging is done. Hopefully, it will take four full years to clean the mud off all their boots.
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Tags: Annamie Paul · Erin O`Toole · federal election · Jagmeet Singh · Justin Trudeau · metaphor · Michael Robert DyetNo Comments