I know this non-issue is a couple of weeks old now, but the more I think about Ms Worrall, the more she seems to exemplify what's wrong with Democracy; and like Churchill famously said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
I can get past the fact that Worrall couldn't spell Barack Obama's name (even blaming her spellcheck at some time later in the day -- really? "barraco"?), but she's British -- didn't she know that Obama wasn't her government's leader? Didn't she know that Britain has a Prime Minister instead of a President? But here's my biggest complaint: Why did she think that she had enough information on the Crimean issue to want to start a public, political conversation about it in the first place? The fundamental mistakes she made in her tweet make it look like she's never read a newspaper or paid much attention to what is happening in her own country -- so why does she think it's "scary" if Obama is "getting involved with Russia"? (And it may well end up being a scary situation -- as today Obama is saying that the world will not recognise the results of yesterday's "illegal referendum" -- but it's a serious issue that needs serious people to get involved, not dilettantes who heard something somewhere and immediately formed an opinion.) And what really bothers me is that someone so misinformed or uninformed has, on election day, a vote that is in every way equal to the votes given to those who do understand what's going on. It's Worrall and her kin who make this guy possible:
This is a municipal election year here in Ontario, so Rob Ford is running again for mayor -- and I have every reason to believe that he could be reelected. After countless stumbling drunk, foul-mouthed videos, admitting to smoking crack and other drugs while in office, hints of domestic abuse and no actual accomplishments heading the government of Toronto, he could be reelected. On the comments section of a news story this morning -- about Ford caught disheveled and cursing on video by a 13-year-old in front of City Hall on the weekend-- in between a pretty equal number of people attacking and defending Ford, someone posted the following:
It is time to elect a new world leader, and only your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three candidates.
Candidate A.
Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with an astrologist. He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.
Candidate B.
He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.
Candidate C.
He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, only drinks an occasional beer and never cheated on his wife. Which of these candidates would be your choice? Decide first ... no peeking, then scroll down for the response.
.
.
Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Candidate B is Winston Churchill.
Candidate C is Adolph Hitler.
Well, so what? They were all democratically elected, and the fact that Hitler was elected just makes the point that Democracy is fundamentally flawed. What bothers me the most about Ford is that he's the so-called "conservative candidate", and while Toronto desperately needs a conservative agenda after too many years of lefty profligacy, Ford has not had the leadership skills (and maybe not even the brains) to implement real change over the past four years, and his presence on the ballot this fall probably means that the vote will be split and a real conservative won't be elected. I don't know what's worse -- Ford getting reelected or the left's star candidate, Olivia Chow, breezing in. And thank goodness I don't live in Toronto anyway.
This leads me to a facebook post that bothered me yesterday. As I've said before, my friend, Delight, has a facebook group that was originally meant to track environmental issues but is now used to cover all lefty agenda items -- and, in particular, Delight posts a lot of articles about the "terrible things" that the Republicans do down in the States : blocking important environmental legislation; fighting back against raising the minimum wage; promoting handouts to rich corporations, etc. I appreciate the fact that Delight is trying to keep informed, but besides getting her daily outrage from agenda-driven sources like MotherJones and OccupyNow, like Ms Worral up there, she has about 0% chance of affecting American policy. Delight went from being apolitical to now saying that she wishes she had a rocket launcher (like the Bruce Cockburn song, not an actual weapon of war) whenever she thinks of our own Conservative Prime Minister, and yesterday she posted this in her group:
Really? In my world, that's pretty much the opposite of my thinking. To me, a conservative is someone who fights for what is fair and equitable for everyone; someone who promotes law and order and family and community stability; someone who doesn't think that future generations should be left on the hook for run-amok budgets that pay off special interest groups for votes and support; someone who supports a positive corporate atmosphere in order to attract jobs and investment. To me, liberals are always chasing after the special victim of the day: I absolutely agree that gay rights, for example, are fundamental to a fair society, but I am honestly confused about where it all ends -- of course same sex partners should have always had equal rights when it comes to support payments and inheritance laws and end of life decisions, and while I wasn't 100% behind equal gay marriage here in Canada (because, if as the proponents said, the actual definition of the word "marriage" is malleable, then the institution isn't a fixed idea and then what's the point anyway? And I want to note that it was under the Conservative government that the law was enacted) -- but back to where it's leading: I am confused about the "two spirit" folks who argue that there's no such thing as a fixed gender and who want, for example, anatomical "boys" who self-identify as "girls" to be able to use female facilities (from elementary school washrooms to adult prisons), and the question I ask myself, as a conservative, is, "How is it fair to make the vast majority of people uncomfortable or inconvenienced in order to accommodate the few who self-identify as needing accommodation?" And I chose a gay-rights-type example on purpose -- this seems to be the top agenda for everyone everywhere anymore. The people of Toronto are upset that Rob Ford doesn't attend the Gay Pride Parade, and why doesn't he have that right? From what I've seen, it's now a semi-nude, semi-pornographic bacchanalia, and I wouldn't want to be a part of it either. I would also want to distance myself from the Queers Against Israeli Apartheid group who demonstrate as part of the parade -- and that's another liberal group that rubs me the wrong way: Don't even get me started on the liberal intellectuals who want to isolate Israel with terms like "apartheid" and "occupiers" and "warmongers", but for gay people to want to protest against the only Middle East country that isn't out to execute them is beyond bizarre to me. So to me, liberals aren't people who are out to help everyone, but out to promote special interests (pro-recreational drug use, pro-legalising prostitution, pro-abortion on demand, anti-traditional marriage, anti-religion, anti-results based education, etc, etc) that only serve to chip away at the foundations of a stable society. This kind of thinking has run rampant in Quebec and led to this:
I've heard that up to 60% of pregnancies end in abortion in Quebec (supported here) and the main cause (besides no one wanting to question the morality of it, of course) is the fact that here in Canada, abortions are free and contraceptives cost money. As the mother of daughters, I don't want to return to a world where their desperation might lead to some back alley butchers, but I also hope that they are not so liberal-minded that terminating a pregnancy would be a primarily financial decision. Quebec has $5/day daycare, and while many feminists see this as the proper evolution of things, what it does, in effect, is force mothers into the workplace -- it would be a horrible financial decision, indeed, to have the mom stay at home. Quebec also has the lowest birth and marriage rates in Canada and the most children born in common-law relationships -- they are a perfect example of where liberal thinking leads. And what it leads to is the picture above: In 2012, post-secondary students went "on strike" in Quebec, marching in the streets and blocking fellow students from attending classes, in order to protest modest tuition increases. They pay the lowest tuition rates in North America, but came to the conclusion that tuition should actually be free, paid for by the fatcat corporations who prey on whatever, blah blah. (Delight actually posted on her group the other day: "I think the next time I see someone like some corporation or commercial product I am going to un-friend them. I wonder how long it would take before I would have no friends?" So, even though everything she owns was made by some corporation, they're all evil enough to lose friends over?) So that picture is of Pauline Marois, marching in the streets with the students, banging her pot lids, and a few months later, elected Premier of Quebec. Her most important contribution so far? In a province plagued with debt and corruption and falling standards of living? The Charter of Values that will, among other progressive measures, strive to ban all government employees from wearing religious symbols -- and what that means is no surgeon in a yarmulke, no police officer in a turban, and no daycare worker in a headscarf. This is a perfect example, to me, of where liberalism leads.
I have often quoted, "To be young and not a liberal means you haven't got a heart. To be old and not a conservative means you haven't got a brain." I'm old now and I have made this progression across the spectrum. I mentioned meeting a woman named Dianne when we were in Vegas recently, and she was telling me about how she was a Legal Aid defense lawyer when she was first starting out on her career. She said at the time she was a committed liberal, young and idealistic, and it didn't take her long to become soured on her beliefs: The longer she spent around people who she thought needed her, the more she realised that she was involved with a segment of the population who were in it for themselves, refusing to cooperate with the police or other members of "the establishment", trying to rip off the government or big corporations for whatever they could get. That's a different perspective than that cartoon on conservatives vs liberals, no? Dianne is now a Prosecutor who works with environmental law and I think that's a fantastic merging of her interests and passions. Note this well: I may be a conservative, but I do care about the environment -- I simply expect fact-based actions and not reflexive anti-corporate protests.
This is a very long post to make the point that Democracy is, indeed, a crazy system with people electing "the government they deserve". It is fascinating to me that, in the age of instant information, so many people remain uninformed and yet -- they have every right to shape society through their votes. I can see no alternatives, of course, and wonder what Churchill would make of this wacky world of ours.
/end rant
