American and Canadian voters thrown under the bus
The party system is broken, voters betrayed and disenfranchised.
Later this year the US will be electing a new president. Next year Canada will be having a federal election. There are rumblings the deck chairs on the Titanic are shifting and Canada’s most reviled prime minister is preparing his ignominious exit. Nine years ago Canadians elected a callow narcissistic political dilettante and finally see him as the fraud he has been from day one.
The US and Canada are very much merged countries. Not only do billions of dollars in goods and services cross the border each and every day our political our politics suffer many of the same maladies. Both governments are bloated bureaucracies so much I find myself becoming more and more a libertarian.
Oddly enough the State of California has a higher population than all of Canada. Even so, we are not far behind the US when it comes over paid and redundant federal legislators. Do we really need 338 legislators in Parliament to oversee a population of 39 million, working out to1MP for every 115, 000 voters? Federal politics in Canada is a gravy train. Canadians are probably the most over governed people in world when you throw in the provincial legislatures, and that in so many ways we are merely a suburb of Washington DC.
I have seen more than my share of elections and the steady decline of democracy over many decades in both the above mentioned countries. They used to be fairly reputable events but now they are dog and pony shows where elections and democracy are window dressing for the totalitarians who actually run the show to their liking. The strung out political puppets preach from their podiums the usual lies told too many times.
There was a time when voting had some legitimacy. Liberals were liberal, conservatives conservative, and social democrats socially democratic. You could count on your candidate and party to be somewhat true to the beliefs they espoused.
All that is gone. The integrity of parties and politicians is easily eroded, with pragmatic expediencies and lack of due diligence. Democracy is all about processes that must be honored and respected.
What kills off democracy lightening fast is the rise of ruinous ideologies.
You may have come across the term “death by ideology” and that is just what we are suffering now. There are numerous ideologies influencing our societies at any given time. They are rarely mentioned in the media and never in the mainstream. They are taboo subjects for public consumption as when they are reviewed they simply tell too much of what is actually going on.
My favorite ideology is common sense, but as so many contend it is so common it is passe. Even so I religiously contend too many of the bad things that happen are a result of the triumph of wicked ideologies over common sense. Too much of what is happening now ranges from lack of common sense to pure insanity, and are we choking to death on the latter.
Ideologies can free range in societies undetected guarded by propaganda,lies and endless hypocrisies. Some are more influential than others, all suffer morbidness that can kill off entire societies and precipitate endless wars.
We like to claim we have dangerous and threatening enemies across great oceans ready to pounce. The truth is the actual enemies are the ideologies, undetected and secreted in our own societies. They are the dirty laundry nobody wants to wash. How many times have we heard “the enemy is within the gates”— when it is the greatest truism of our times. The cancers that only becomes more malignant and systemic.
Ideologies permeate our history, there for all to see; except that history is never a best seller especially when tyrants and despots must smother it out of existence. History certainly does repeat itself like variations on a major theme— ignored and abused it brings down societies and empires.
What we are experiencing now is really a gigantic sociological folly to see what combination of the above, over what time span, will it take to fragment western civilization back to a very long dark age, given the appropriate dosages shown above.
I have written on all of these in my archived blogs. When it comes to voters being thrown under the bus I refer back to Neoliberalism, a favorite of mine, the really big “N” word all politicians practice but refuse to talk about. You might say neoliberalism is my Moby Dick— It needs a razor sharp harpoon shot up its ass.
In the 1970’s it became obvious corporate power was on the rise and usurping the role of sovereign governments. There was a steady incremental retreat from governance. In the 1980’s neoliberalism arrived under the auspices of Reagan, Thatcher, Blair, Friedman, Mulroney and others- the “free market economy” was to rule the west .
It was a corporate coup d’etat where government would serve the corporate agenda through free trade deals that were actually declarations of corporate rights and freedoms to exploit national economies. Deregulation, privatization and denigration of government was the new constitution of the west.
If we wonder why there is a glut of multi-billionaires? Why there are so many wars? Why there is a debt crisis for all western nations? Why western nation states have been so weakened and leaders so feeble... the answer is neoliberalism— along with a few other ideologies acting in concert.
Voters under the Bus
To throw voters under is to say we have been disenfranchised as governments are no longer representative, responsible or accountable to their electorates. They are captive to the corporate agendas and the vested interests controlling them.
Accountability is the essential corner stone of democracy. Where it is absent bad things happen and atrocities committed. Where there is no accountability psychopathic ideologues are ready to strike. Politicians can care less what we think as they are no longer accountable to us, they are totally in service to the vested interests, mainly corporate, that control them and bribe them.
We are in a time when political classes have lost control of their agendas. Their global status in terms of political and economic power is in sharp decline. The decline is rapidly accelerated by their desperate measures to control the meltdown through wars, belligerence and a refusal to embrace essential change.
The collapse is of their own making refusing to be held accountable for their own atrocities, mistakes and failed policies. As their incompetence overwhelms them they resort to authoritarianism, and contempt of the electorates they are mandated to service, attempting to erase and undermine long cherished norms and values.
Where elections used to serve a purpose they are now meaningless exercises where defunct politicians are the shameless clowns selling their snake oil to electorates betrayed.
This following interview provides powerful insight into what neoliberalism has done to our societies:
So true!
Notice that our elected NPCs , er, members of Leg, parl, assembly are almost never in public now, and if higher up on the food chain, get security details to accompany them.
In Nelson, our MLA only goes in public for gatherings, and is virtually never in her constituency office.
But don't forget, that our elected officials have no obligation to listen or communicate with their constituents: the Supreme Court of Canda has stated that in a judgement on the obligations of elected officials.
I would say that this has become pretty much the situation in too many countries. The idea of 'democracy' and what it is supposed to represent...under the bus too.