It was not been pretty. These fixed elections absorb the politicos and the media for almost ten months. Before it can officially be called an election, we are tired of it. They are more about what could have been than what should have been.
I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness in that seemingly never-ending winter of 2019. I had the nerve to suggest that Justin Trudeau resign while we still had time to choose a replacement. That hardly endeared me to what is left of the liberal party that I had loved so much.
Like millions of other Canadians, I voted in the advance polling. I think we all wanted to get this damnable act over with. And I voted liberal. Luckily, I like the liberal candidate in my riding and he deserves to win. It looks like liberal central agreed with me for once. Justin came to our riding twice and I hear the donations to the local liberal campaign exceeded the budget—which is always good news. I wish I could have done more to help the candidate.
But overall, it has been a mean-spirited, dark and dreary campaign across the country. The conservatives have changed over the years and I find their campaigning today to be based on greed and selfishness and ignorance of the needs of our peoples and our environment. It is their denial of global warming that I consider reprehensible. For a few creature comforts today, these people seem willing to burden their children’s children with a planet on which mankind might no longer be able to survive.
Maybe this election brought out the worst in people. Nobody can be proud of those television debates. The Internet has become a cesspool of false news, personal aggrandizement and vanity. The traditional news media are promoting second-tier parties and their candidates, spawning stories of breakthroughs and minority government. Where there is no news, news reporters have become more creative.
The most creative of all are the pollsters who are building pyramids on spurious presumptions. They hope if they just promote their guesses enough, they might come true. When found false, their alibi is the fickleness of the voters.
Or is it the politicians, who have failed us?
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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