fear

Coalition

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

The attack ads, and the language of war in the reporting of the campaign, the appeal to fear, the creation of panic, all of these are part of this election as they have been of the last several. I’m tired of it, and of the politicians who have such contempt for the voter. We haven’t had a discussion of the major problems in this country.When one starts, ie the Liberal discussion on health Care, Harper falls back on the  “oh-my-god they might form a coalition”.  I

t appears to me that most people don’t even know what a coalition is, or that it is the usual way of doing politics in many vibrant democracies. If parties won seats in proportion to their popular vote, we would all ready have a government that represented the majority of people in this country, and yes at least two of them would have to agree on how to govern. That means that the NDP concern for the social network, the Liberal concern for health care and the social programs of the Bloc, as well as the environmental agenda of the Greens would be taken into account when drafting policy.

Or perhaps the Conservatives could convince one of the others to join them.

We would be less likely to have a government that was unresponsive to the majority of the  people, reflecting only the views of the neo-con right.

But what was Ignatieff thinking, giving Harper a gift like this? I suppose he got into the habit while teaching to answer questions honestly, and so continues. Yes, under our system a coalition is possible. Will that happen? Would it mean the government was any less representative of the people’s will. i don’t think so, to either question.

Spain and security and fear

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

We’re going to Spain in the fall. At the airports, in Toronto and in Madrid, we will endure enhanced security, some of it very intrusive. Will it make us safer, prevent some young man, in love with the idea of violence, as young men have been in other generations, from triggering some destructive device? Perhaps. But it seems to me that these young men need a more hopeful future, with rewards in this world, not the next. There are too many of them, these young men, as there have been in previous times. The solution in the past has often been war, and their deaths, as they follow old men who fill them with myths of honour and sacrifice, as they do now. People are framing the conflict in terms of religion. I see it as a lust for power in the men behind the violence, safe in their secret lairs.