[Craic] Election results - meh!

Tue Sep 21 16:36:57 PDT 2021

Thank you Allan, a succinct summary of our eroding democracy or as Sheldon
Wolin called inverted totalitarianism!  Bread and Circuses.

A sad day for Canada

Greg

On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 7:14 PM Allan Baker via craic <
craic at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

>
> A bloody fight, with not much changed. Where do we go from here?
>
> Hi, I’m Kai Nagata, a community organizer and former political reporter.
> Welcome to The Run.
>
> Five weeks, $600 million and one painful English-language debate later,
> we’re back where we started: a Liberal minority government led by Justin
> Trudeau.
>
> A lot has happened since the 2019 election. Tens of thousands of preventable
> deaths
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E05:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>.
> A massive transfer of wealth
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E06:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> from
> workers to corporations. The confirmation of unmarked graves of Indigenous
> children at numerous church and state-run institutions. And the continued
> unraveling of both our climate
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E07:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>
>  and mental health
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E08:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>
> .
>
> The message back to our ruling class last night seemed to be: *meh*.
> [image: Vancouver Granville NDP candidate Anjali Appadurai with a resident
> of the riding. Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the
> way? Photo for The Tyee by Zoë Yunker.]
> Vancouver Granville NDP candidate Anjali Appadurai with a resident of the
> riding. Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way?
> Photo for The Tyee by Zoë Yunker.
>
> By *Kai Nagata*
>
> Kai Nagata is a writer and community organizer. He works for Dogwood, a
> B.C. citizen group.
> [image: author bio]
>
> But this otherwise time-wasting exercise did offer a glimpse at the deep,
> underlying problems reshaping Canadian society, even as our political
> parties struggle to imagine or implement solutions.
>
> And it hinted at a couple of paths our democracy could take — from the
> inchoate rage of the far right, driven by fears
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E09:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> about
> vaccine mandates to the collaborative, movement-driven campaigns built by
> climate and social justice activists who saw this as the moment to jump
> into electoral politics
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E0A:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>
> .
>
> The truth is the material conditions of life are eroding for millions of
> Canadians on all sides of the political spectrum. Wages are stagnant
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E0B:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> while
> housing prices soar
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E0C:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>.
> Thousands of our friends and family members are dead from COVID-19
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E0D:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> and
> from the poisoned drug crisis.
>
> If you’re Indigenous, Black or mentally ill, your risk of being hurt or
> killed by the police is worse
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E0E:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> than
> before the pandemic. If you’re disabled or elderly, you now have to add
> deadly heat waves
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E0F:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> to
> your list of worries. These are not rules of nature. These are policy
> failures. New laws or government spending could fix most of these problems.
>
> *Not on our list?*
> Subscribe now
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E10:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>
>
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> Forward to a friend!
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/bin/ftaf?id=E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA>
>
> Instead, our elite bubble of policymakers and media figures try to
> maintain a dream world that no longer exists. They talk about getting “back
> to normal
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E11:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>,”
> offering young people 30-year mortgages
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E12:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> and
> pumping oil into the 2060s
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E13:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>
> .
>
> Faced with the gap between the struggle of real life and the fantasy
> marketed by most politicians, we have a few choices. One is to give up on
> what’s left of our democratic process. But that means even less oversight
> for the corporations wringing profit out of our communities. There’s a
> reason they invest heavily
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E14:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> in
> voter suppression in other countries.
>
> Another option is to get really, really angry and try to channel that into
> politics. The People’s Party tried in this election, recruiting vaccine
> skeptics across the country and feeding voters a heavy dose of
> anti-immigrant hatred and climate change denial. It didn’t translate into
> an electoral breakthrough — this time.
>
> I do think the Left needs to get more comfortable with anger. We need to
> talk to people who are being crushed by colonialism and capitalism, offer a
> credible explanation for their pain, and give them the tools to fight back
> politically.
>
> But the People’s Party offers a warning. Maxime Bernier’s political
> project is less a movement than a collection of terminally self-absorbed
> individuals — some even willing to block ambulances
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E15:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> in
> the name of personal liberty. Ultimately, though, you can’t build a better
> world out of a swarm of aggrieved loners.
>
> Progressives can also fall into the trap of thinking of politics as an act
> of individual self-expression. That’s part of why voting can feel so
> pointless: mathematically, it’s true that your voice is unlikely to be
> decisive, under first-past-the-post or any voting system. Instead, we need
> to think of elections as milestones in a larger, collective mobilization.
>
> Last night we got a snapshot of who holds power in Canada in 2021:
> billionaires, banks and oil companies, telecom empires that own media
> outlets, police departments. But that doesn’t always have to be the case.
>
> There’s a growing appetite, evidenced by interest in The Run and dozens of
> other independent media projects, for more satisfying explanations of the
> forces shaping our society and economy.
>
> And we got a glimpse of what politics could look like, in a few places
> where social movements worked collectively to elect organizers and
> activists like Blake Desjarlais
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E16:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>
>  and Mike Morrice
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E17:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>.
> At the time of writing, Anjali Appadurai
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E0A:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&>
>  and Alejandra Bravo
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E18:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> were
> in races too close to call
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41925&l=90&ctl=B2E19:E3985800732C92C674D74B72F595421867ADE39EE60F83FA&> —
> but whatever the outcome, they built extraordinary grassroots campaigns.
>
> I think there are millions of Canadians, many of them young people, who
> are ready for a politics driven less by targeted tax credits and individual
> fears, and more by a vision of the society we actually want to live in,
> together. That will require organizing: taking part in something bigger
> than ourselves.
>
> Much of that work will take place outside of parliamentary politics — in
> unions, schools and social movements, through mutual aid, direct action and
> solidarity work. Until, of course, the Liberals try for a majority again
> and trigger another election. I’ll see you back here when they do.
>
> Posted 21 Sep 2021
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