We Should See Other Blogs

The media (pardon the pejorative) has been going into “Wah! No-one wants an election! It’s expensive! Wah!” mode lately. Sometimes I (unfortunately) listen to 680 News in Toronto, or read the Toronto Sun (mostly to see if they can continue their record streak of taking truly horrific photographs of truly undesirable women in bikinis). This is their dominant theme right now. Which, I mean, I understand. They’re both right-leaning hack-or-faux-journalism outlets, and if an election takes the focus away from talking (ad nauseam, for years on end) about how the Toronto Maple Leafs/Toronto Raptors/Toronto Football Club suck at their respective sports, or what reality television show cast member has been ousted (for being a giant douche-bag) or which reality show cast member has “won” (by being a giant douche-bag), or which hare-brained scheme out local gas-bag politician, Giorgio Mammoliti, wants to use to make some quick cash for the city… well, anything else is bad for business.

Okay, so the above paragraph is just a little P. J. O’Rourke impression. Pretty unbearable, right? But, seriously folks:

I want an election. I really do. I get to voice my opinion on the state of the country, have my voice heard, and cast my ballot. This doesn’t happen often. In fact in this country I very rarely get to be involved in the political apparatus. In an election, I can. And I will.

Canada has one of the most fair and one of the cheapest elections in the world. Did you know that? It costs roughly $8.50 per person per Federal election. That’s less than the price of a (cheap) movie ticket. That’s the price you pay for our kind of democracy. And the media would have you believe that’s too high a price to pay.

It’s really, really not.

This year I’m going to be reading the positions papers of all the parties. I’m leaning toward voting NDP. As far as I can tell the Conservatives (not the Progressive Conservatives of years past, but a new name on the Reform party, the most wretched of far right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-union, pro-gun, Leave It To Beaver trips back to the Fifties (ten points if you get the reference)) are in the pocket of business, of at least consider “the economy” as a whole more important than individuals as people who need to be able to afford to live. The Liberals are something, but no-one is quite sure what that thing is; they had a pretty good run under Jean Cretien, who was a decent leader, but they seem rudderless at the moment. The Bloq doesn’t have an candidates in my riding, so I can’t vote for them (though if there were an Ontario party looking to excise my province from the rest of the country, or at least expel Alberta from the Confederation, I’d vote for that). The NDP though, despite it’s union roots, seems focused on the plight of the everyman, which is a good thing. Plus they’re the only party to have a decent tech platform. And they’re not beholden to the titans of industry. And Jack Layton seems like pretty upstanding and principled guy.

That said, I’m going to figure out who I’m voting for, and then vote. I’ll add my voice to the pack. I’ll be happy to do it. An election every 2 years is a small price to pay for the democracy we all seem to take for granted. Imagine the people of Egypt looking down on you when you complain about the cost. At least you didn’t have to have a revolution.

Here in Canada, we have an election approximately every two years or so. This is because we have a minority government. The Conservatives (who are actually called what they are here) got less that 50% + 1 in the last few elections, so they basically have to work together with the other parties to get things done.

This of course means that not a whole lot gets done. Or at least when things are done, they’re driven to the ideological centre instead of the comparatively hard right where The Right Honourable Stephen Harper would, I think, gladly bulldoze us.

It’s a good thing. The various parties dangle the spectre of election in front of eachother, everyone goes home suitable angry and frightened, and the secretaries and bureaucrats who actually do things do things. There is no radical, decisive action, everything is completely gridlocked, and the boat doesn’t get rocked.

This is, I think, how government should be. It should be a lot slower than it is to make big decisions. Take, for instance, the American PATRIOT act (another in a long series of American legislation named the opposite of what they actually are). It was obviously sitting in a drawer somewhere, waiting to be trotted out at the appropriate moment. Should it have waiting a while so cooler heads could prevail? I think so. It’s a bad piece of legislation written by people who are very much not the patriots they think they are.

In this sense, the Republican victory this year is a good thing. There will be no groundswell of liberal or conservative change. The two parties will dangle the “American public” and the “mandate” they received in front of eachother, everyone will go home suitable angry and frustrated, the Democrats to their secret Communist societies, and the Republicans to their secret extra-marital homosexual trysts, and the secretaries and bureaucrats who get things done will get things done.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Yeah, I know, this comes out of nowhere. I’m not exactly active in politics. I don’t care for the ceaseless posturing and partisan bickering that goes on even here in sedate, boring old Canada. Not to mention that I live in Mississauga, and this post is about Toronto. This isn’t even a post about hot-button issues. It’s about local, municipal politics.

I want to talk about the Toronto mayoral race.

With Rob Ford with a large lead in the polls, I think it’s clear that there’s a leadership vacuum in Toronto. Have you ever dug into the man’s history? He’s a bully and more than a bit of a dimwit. That such a politician, whose policies are based on what he calls the “anger” of Torontonians, can be in the running for anything at all… it astounds me. He looks and sounds like he just rolled out of a bar in the morning. He says things that would put even the venerable Mel Lastman–the man who tried to re-unite the Spice Girls, mind you–to shame.

This week he suggested that we do marathons in parks, not on city streets. So we don’t have to close down roads. Um… what? If Mr Ford can’t put himself in a runner’s shoes (pardon the pun), which he clearly hasn’t done in some time, if ever, and begin to fathom what a very bad idea running a marathon in a park is, how can he be expected to lead an entire city? It’s ridiculous sound bytes like this that make him look like a class A moron.

As for the “anger” that Mr Ford claims is out there? I don’t see it. It’s another manufactured narrative that doesn’t exist. If there is any anger, it’s only in suburban Toronto, where they don’t like their mini-highways closed for any reason. It makes it hard to get the Doritos from the convenience store!

That’s not to lessen the burden of blame on the rest of that sorry bunch. How has Mr Smitherman not leveraged his position in provincial politics to take the Toronto leadership bull by the horns? Why isn’t he out there making noise? All I hear about is Ford, Ford, Ford, and you’ll forgive me if I’d rather hear from the catcher and not the pitcher. And why has Rocco Rossi not changed his name so he doesn’t sound like A) a mobster, or B) a pizzeria? It doesn’t seem like a lot of effort comes from the other camps. And until the other candidates manufacture their own narrative, they’re not going to get anywhere.

But I have an idea. It’s American-style, so we might not all like it, but remember that Toronto is a “world class city” nee constantly-surprised-that-a-celebrity-would-visit-our-quaint-little-town!

Let’s go negative. It’s not that hard. Mr Ford doesn’t stand for anything in particular (it’s a miracle he can stand at all, frankly), and he’s basically taking the election by pointing at his chins and telling us how cute they are, so let’s take it one step further. If Mr Ford has made the election about Mr Ford, let’s help make the election even more about Mr Ford. Let’s make the election about how Mr Ford can’t reliable walk and chew gum at the same time. How he’s kind of like that embarrassing kid who always says something stupid when there’s a gap in the conversation. Let’s make the election about Mr Ford’s past leadership style and how many enemies he’s made over the years. Let’s make the election about how Mr Smitherman, by contrast, can walk and chew gum at the same time. It’s not a lot, but it’s not nothing, and it’s sure better than Mr Ford.

With five weeks to go, I think that’s how you’re going to have to win it, boys.

So have at it.

Now, I’m no American. I’m apparently pretty close (I’m Canadian) but honestly, a lot of the stuff that goes on south of the border mystifies me. One thing we could all get behind here in Canada was that Barack Obama wasn’t white, was the underdog, and wasn’t George W. Bush. He seemed different. He seemed to believe in change. He seemed to want to run Washington differently. He seemed… fresh, unlike the string of tired politicians and has-beens both the Republicans and Democrats have been dragging up from the bottom of the barrel lately.

And then he won. It was hard not to get caught up in the groundswell of optimism. It was hard to not feel the great thrill of the victory, the inauguration, the speeches. I don’t usually get swept away with the crowds of hero-worshippers, but even I felt it. It was an almost magical time.

Reality always gets in the way though. There has been a wave of disappointment at Mr Obama’s handling of… well, almost anything. As a liberal, I’m disappointed; as a realist I’m not really surprised.

Let me sketch out a few reasons I’m disappointed in particular and liberals are disappointed in general.

We wanted something to wash the taste of George W. Bush out of our mouth. Instead we got George W. Bush 2.0.

Civil liberties. Warrantless wiretaps. Surveillance on citizens. Guantanamo Bay. The slow erosion of the right to privacy. These are some of the reasons we disliked Mr Bush. (Quite apart from his general buffoon-like public appearance.) And we came into Mr Obama’s administration thinking that was all going to change.

Of course, it didn’t change. Guantanamo Bay is still open. Civil liberties are still being pissed upon. The right to privacy is denied and privacy itself is disappearing. Warrantless wiretaps are still happening.

And Mr Obama is using the same legal language, the same arguments to continue these policies. We have a strange continuity between administrations that gives lie to the chant of “change”. There’s no change. It’s business as usual. Nero is gone, but the human torches are still burning.

We wanted wars to end. Instead we got two wars that aren’t ending.

The Iraq war was a huge, awful blemish on the already-soiled presidency of Mr Bush. No one really knows why the war was fought. No one really understands the motivations of Mr Bush or those people controlling him. All we know is that many bald-faced lies were told to start the war. A national tragedy was exploited to start the war. Sons, daughters, parents, grandparents: People of all stripes died in the way. And for what reason? No one knows. We can only guess.

It sounds like something out of 1984. It really does. We have always been at war with Iraq; and for a long time it seemed like we always were going to be at war with Iraq. And we just wanted it to end. I can’t speak for Americans, but from what I’ve read and from what I can imagine there was a nationally-felt sense of fatigue. The war that would not end needed to end, and soon.

Mr Obama promised that the war would be over. He said he would withdraw troops from Iraq. Yet here we are, and the war hasn’t ended. The troops are still there.

Not only that, but Mr Obama is sending more troops to Afghanistan! So instead of one war, there are two wars, neither of which seems likely to end soon.

We wanted fiscal discipline. Instead we got a radical increase in spending.

The jury is still largely out on whether stimulus helps or hinders an economy. Yet here we are spending (literally) trillions of dollars on stimulus, which has to be the most incredibly inefficient way to get an economy going every invented.

Add to that a badly-timed health care plan, and suddenly Mr Bush’s spendthrift ways seem again like a pattern Mr Obama is continuing. Instead of change, instead of a move towards austerity and fiscal constraint, we have a runaway train of spending that becomes more difficult to stop with every passing budget. (Pardon the pun.)

Our children will have to pay for our spending. Maybe their children’s children as well. They’re going to pay with coin or with collapse, but they will pay.

We should be looking at austerity measures Germany is so fond of. We should be adopting a posture of shoring up the fundamentals of the economy instead of plugging every hole in the dam with cash. We run the very real risk of developing an economy so addicted to the feedback loop of federal and state money that it can’t develop an innovate on its own (and I say this as a Canadian whose economy has been like this for decades; we a very, very low comparative productivity rate in Canada and I have a sneaking suspicion this might be way).

We should be adopting that posture of repayment long before reaching crises like Greece and Spain have been seeing. I don’t think the US will change until things become unbearably bad, but a visionary leader who wants change should probably be able to see at least that far ahead and be able to sell austerity to a waiting nation.

We wanted reform with teeth. Instead we got compromise and pandering.

I’m not going to say the Republicans are without fault here. They almost never are. This time around Republicans have taken a turn for the crazy, with birthers, and tea partiers, and Sarah Palin, and all sorts of crazy leaking out from under the floorboards. But the one thing that’s really characterized the Republicans during this administration is no willingness at all to play nice. No bipartisanship whatsoever. They oppose everything Mr Obama does, and this makes is hard to do things. So we need to compromise.

Good government is not made of compromise, just like good products are not designed by committee. There is no bravery in compromise, no radical break with the past in compromise, there is no glory in compromise. What compromise does have, though, is less risk.

You know, I’m going to say that it’s better to go big and fail than to go middle-of-the-road and succeed. It’s better to try to do the right thing than try to do the popular thing, or the easy thing, or the politically expedient thing.

You’re always going to have a hard congress to deal with. But that doesn’t mean you get to compromise on everything. You don’t get to give the farmhouse away but keep the silos.

We got more of the same.

Mr Obama promised not to be more of the same. Yet here he is, more of the same.

This is horrible in two different ways. First of all, he’s made a liar out of himself.

But to add insult to injury, with that he’s also proven himself to be every bit the “politics as usual” politician, who will say anything, promise anything, to get into power. And then when in power try desperately to hold onto it.

That’s why I’m deeply disappointed in Mr Obama. Not because he didn’t live up to the hype and the euphoria, but that he didn’t even try.

Remember when Bush was president of the US? Remember how people would make fun at him and basically call him a monkey? That wasn’t good or right; I think we can all agree on that. I personally disliked the man’s policies, actions, and his Texas cowboy impersonation annoyed me. It seemed–and in retrospect is almost certainly–a façade put on to endear him to the common man, whoever that is. I think he did a lot of evil during his time as president. I don’t think he was a good president at all, and I’m pretty sure in retrospect however many years from now his time in office will be viewed as dimly as it is now.

That said, I have a right to disagree with the man. I have a right to talk about him and what he does. I don’t have to agree with George W. because I’m a Christian and he claimed to be a Christian, or because I’m supposed to be a conservative, or because he’s a world leader, or because I know a bunch of people who just seemed to like the guy through thick and thin.

They would tell me, “Dan, I know he’s got his issues, but you still have to respect him for who he is.” This is borne out in scripture as well as just making good sense. The office deserves honour even when the man filling the office doesn’t exactly engender respect. They would point to a bunch of people saying some pretty stupid things and dumping on the guy and his party and his intelligence and whatever. And they would tell me these people are doing something wrong.

I agree. So where’s that respect and tolerance now?

Where’s the spirit of respecting the office and not going around calling the president stupid, or saying he’s just a media icon, or attacking him because he’s on the wrong team? Where did that go? Or does extending the sort of grace and love to the president of the US only apply when you’re talking about the other guys? That’s the sort of double standard designed to shut other people up. I can’t really think of a better way not to have to hear bad things about a guy you like.

Having a president from the other team is really a crisis of morality for conservatives, seeing how closely the evangelical establishment is tied the conservative Republican party. It’s a crisis of, How do I act when I’m on the losing side? And from what I’ve seen, the character of Evangelical America is pretty ugly. If anything its uglier than the unwashed, unchurched masses that voted for Obama.

Which is sad. It’s another reason the church shouldn’t be involved in political brinkmanship. There’s nothing like politics to bring out the bad in some people. I know I’m like that. I said some of the same stupid things about Bush and made some pretty unkind remarks about him. I’m sorry I said those things. I should be better than that, especially as a Christian.

But I’ll repeat the question: Where’s that spirit of grace and love? If the president wins a pretty meaningless award–just as a for instance–where a lot of people agree it could have gone to someone more deserving, do you use the opportunity to make snide remarks about the man and pretty much dump a bunch of crap on him? And if so, what does that say about your character?

Let me say one more thing to cap off my last post about the situation in Ottawa.

I’ve seen a number of emails and Facebook groups basically parroting the Conservative talking points. This disturbs me. As people in general, but as Christians in specific, we’re not beholden to one party or one point of view. We aren’t bound to vote a certain way. We’re in a corrupt world full of corrupt people and organisations, and we’re called to be wise as serpents yet gentle as dove.

I know I’ve already made this point before, but I’ll make it again. Our identity as Christians isn’t tied up in any particular political ideology. You may dislike the NDP or the Liberals for various reasons, and you have every right to that opinion; but you don’t have to dislike them, and you don’t have to like the Conservatives.

One side note: it’s remarkable how few people actually understand how the Canadian parliamentary system works. Absolutely remarkable. Maybe it’s because politics in Canada is generally so very dull or something; I don’t know. Either way… keep in mind that we don’t elect governments in Canada. We elect Parliaments. Whoever can form a government from that Parliament forms a government. In recent Canadian history, the Conservatives has been able to form two minority governments. A coalition government has ever right to topple a minority government. It may seem like a game — doesn’t all politics seem like a game? — but that’s how our system works. And it’s worked well for over 140 years.

Dear Conservative Party, can we stop throwing the word “democracy” around like a football please? Is that okay? You know how the Westminster Parliamentary system works: You know it’s not about who “got elected” but that it’s about “who can form a government”. If the people had given you a majority you could steam-roll everyone as you please. But the people in their infinite wisdom (I’ll go along with the trope for a moment, but there’s some bile rising here) decided not to. So that means that you get to form a minority government.

Seats in Parliament are what matters, not which single party got the most votes in the election. We don’t have a presidential-style system where the guy rules as long as he gets the most votes. If the Conservatives have the most seats, but not 50% + 1 of the seats, they form a minority government. If the Liberals and NDP get together and form a coalition, they suddenly have more seats and they can form the government. This is called “having the confidence of the House”, and if the ruling party doesn’t have that confidence, then the ruling party falls and is replaced by another party or coalition that does have the confidence of the house.

This is why, for those Canadians who seem too dense to understand this, we have a Governor-General. She’s there to oversee and make judgment on abnormal situations like this. She’s the ultimate arbiter of our democracy… and she wasn’t even elected. Gasp! Horror! She doesn’t have to answer to the people of Canada — she has to answer to the Constitution, the Ministers of the government, and (theoretically) the Crown. (Not to mention that the Senate isn’t elected either. Gasp! Horror!) She’s there so that, for instance, a Prime Minister can’t just dissolve Parliament and call an election every time he gets a vote in the House that he dislikes. You can google the King-Byng affair for a time when the Governor-General did just that.

The Governor-General is going to be making some interesting decisions. But there’s nothing back-door or anti-democratic about the proposed coalition between the Liberals and the NDP. It’s how the Parliamentary system was designed to work. The opposition doesn’t like a heavy-handed minority government, and doesn’t feel like being jerked around for the next three years with a confidence motion attached to every bill, budget, and bulletin that gets tabled in the House? Well, they’re free to topple the government.

There’s nothing anti-democratic about it. And if the people of Canada really feel like this is a bad idea, they’re going to punish the NDP and the Liberals in the next election. Which, of course, there will always be. A next election.

In the meantime, the Conservatives can jolly well stop their whining, and stop their deceitful attack ads. The Governor-General doesn’t make her decisions based on what the people think, okay?

I recently read a screed by some American evangelical group harping on “Obamania”. Their central premise was that we’re expecting too much from this man; politics never saved anyone, and the system isn’t going to start now.

And you know what? They’re absolutely, 100% correct. Obama as a person and as a politician will end up disappointing us, compromising, letting us down, all the things that every politician has done and will do.

But this begs us answer the question: why is it wrong for the left to look up to Obama as a tranformative man, as a way to change things for the better, but it’s okay for the religious right to look at a certain policy or a certain civil servant or a certain elected leader and expect a proposition or a powerful evangelical lobbyist or a political party to bring the change they want to see? Why is that okay?

There are so many churches who have embedded themselves in the Republican Party, wrapped themselves in the flag, and sold their souls to the political process. I personally think they’ve forgotten their real mission, and forgotten what real change looks like. If we’re going to talk about how politics can’t save anyone, let’s not be pointing fingers at the left (who after all this time deserve to have a hero), but instead starting the sticky task of re-evaluating what the church is supposed to be doing.

Let’s start asking questions about how much allegiance one can have for a flag when ones allegiance is supposed to be to Christ; let’s start talking about why Christians favour this party over that party; let’s start at least asking whether or not we’ve forgotten how to be strangers in a strange land.

I’m sick to death of fighting for things. There, I’ve said it.

I’ve stood on the same picket lines as many of you have and held the same sign and fought the same battle… and gotten nowhere at all. We haven’t toppled the abortion edifice. We haven’t changed many (or even any) minds. Look: it isn’t doing any good. We’re not making any progress here.

We live in a post-Christian culture. We really do. It’s no good pretending that the culture we live in is on some sort of axis, about to tip, and if we pull really hard maybe we can make things swing back our way.

The political and social means are out of our hands now. We’re the fringe. We’re the minority. In those realms, our time is past. This is the way it is; get over it already.

It’s time to move on to something worthwhile. Something transformative. It’s time to jettison these old tired ideas that Jesus’ will can be legislated. It’s time to get back to the core of our mission here.

I like to ask this question: How does change come about? What happens when you change your mind? What makes you do that?

For me, I change my mind when I am persuaded to do so; this can take a long time, but like Paul, I can faithfully say that I have been persuaded that Jesus is the Christ. Yet in order to be persuaded of that, I had to hear about it. In order to hear about it, someone had to say it. And in order for someone to say it, they had to believe, but also personify what they believed.

It took a community of believers deeply interested in living the truth to convince me that it was in fact the truth. You know what? I don’t think this is uncommon.

When I changed my mind, I changed my lifestyle. When I changed my mind, a bunch of old stuff went out the window. I got some new perspectives.

There is this dialectic between the heart and the mind, as I see it. If we think something, our actions probably follow; if we act a certain way, our minds follow as well.

This is why I think politics and social change, though important, will never advance the faith. They reach only a certain part of a person. A sign that says that abortion is evil, which it is, does nothing to persuade a heart that life is sacred and it is our duty to protect the weakest members of our society. A sign simple says what it says. A law is meant to be broken. A government agency is a faceless agent of change.

Heart and mind change will do the trick, though. Would a nation of Christian people simply accept abortion as a right? Or that gayness is acceptable or even desirable? Or whatever other issue you could name?

So, yes, I’m sick to death of fighting for things. Is it okay that I simply want to live a life of love instead? I want to love my wife, I want to love my church, I want to love my neighbour, and I want to love God. If that makes me some sort of hippie liberal reject, so be it. I have good company, I think, with Jesus and all.

Seinfeld, season 8, episode 1. Kramer says, “I looked inside myself and found that part of my spirit that said, ‘Yes, I can!’ And now I dominate the dojo!”

Obama, you see, is dominating his dojo. Like Kramer and his karate, he has found that, yes, he can.