Well, it’s that time of a young Canadian’s year when all thoughts turn south, to warmer climes and sunny breaks from the late-fall rainy season. Actually, fuck that. I grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and miss the cold and the snow. That's a rant on a different station though...
More accurately though, it is around this time every four years that many Canadians begin to wonder how the US elections will impact their lives. Will we get screwed by protectionist “free”-trade policies, strongarmed into military expenditures, or granted economic benefits that fuel Stephen Harper’s best wet dreams? Given the two-party U.S. system which limits the options considerably, as a politically conscientious Canadian it seems obvious to pick one or the other. Or more precisely, the one which is not George W. Bush. Frankly, that would be the easiest, most conveniently-illiterate-voter friendly system that could ever be introduced: Do you want George W. Bush to be your president? If “No” wins, then the country gets led by a robot monkey: a Canadian solution to an American problem. It’s likely that the monkey would show up to work more often than Dubya has, and maybe its health care policies would revolutionize America. Besides, by not getting mad about the wired-up speeches given in the presidential debates, America has already accepted the world’s first cyborg leader in G.W. Bush. So it would in fact boil down to this question: Do you want a cyborg or a monkey for president? See Mr. O'Riley, voting can indeed be simple.
Ah, but then there’s voting itself. In America, voting is to democracy what computer flight simulations are to planes. Sure, the basics are there, but it’s unlikely that anybody’s going to get off the ground. See, it’s one of the least popular things to do in America. And so we hear that the vote needs to be Rocked, Smacked-Down, Punked, HipHop’ed, or Prayed (I’m not making that last one up – google “Presidential Prayer Team” for a sublime experience). Just get out and vote, we are told. It doesn’t matter if you know about the candidates or their platforms, or how their particular ideologies could make or break the country. It’s all about the numbers, and everyone should participate. I’d like to think that the upcoming election in America is actually about the vote, but I cannot see the process itself as being all that important. Come to think of it, neither it seems do most of the politicians involved.
The precedent for the unimportance of the voting citizen was set by the 2000 election, in which every single vote cast was thrown away in order to give Florida the consequence it enjoyed (ie: Jeb Bush). Sure there were indeed votes counted, but those numbers didn’t add up to give Bush his office. No, that little slight of hand was accomplished by the whole 9/11 patriotism thing, which allowed the judicial decision for a Bush presidency to go ahead despite the recounts which gave the win to Gore. In fact, it seems more likely that voting actually gets in the way of things, from the point of view of the power elite. Forget for a minute the weighty argument that the democratic process requires a financially stable, educated, and healthy population to be properly realized. That can be faked (ie: Jeb Bush) or otherwise disregarded. Votes themselves are easy to get (ie: Jeb Bush). All you really have to do is speak the right key words (gun control, un-american, socialist, abortion) and you will mobilize a population in your favour. See you need those key words in place or others, like poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, violence, destitution, racism, and even torture, come onto the popular lips. At that point, whoever is in office has a Big Problem, as the citizenry has started to make the revolutionary act of actually thinking about what it needs to prosper.
More important, however, is the increasingly obvious fact that the only votes which count are those given to corporations. The 2000 election was a corporate coup of America, perhaps the only overt coup that the country will ever see. It is unlikely that power will be “voted” back to the Democrats any time soon, as the Bush Republicans are giving corporate America every dream it has always wanted: relaxed labour and environmental laws, new markets for expansion (Iraq, Afghanistan), protectionist trade policies, and the rescinding of personal liberties. Corporate individuals (you know they are legally classified as people, right?) can’t really survive without taking the place of actual persons within the political machine, as each is in a very real way antithetical to the other, despite their mutual dependencies. Political parties cannot survive without the support of such wealthy individuals as $hell, McDonald’$, and Micro$oft, and so those corporations get their justice while the workers of the country wait in line for flu shots and outsourced jobs.
It’s perhaps most fitting that the sole challenger to the oil-fuelled Bush campaign is the obesity-fuelled Heinz heiress and her war-vet husband. What a perfect way to say “Now is the time for change!” I would like here to forward a notion more heavily favoured by recent history: there is only one real political party in America, and so it does not really matter if you vote. Much has been written in the press about how the platform tabled by the Democrats is actually the same as the Republicans’. The war in Iraq will continue (if the money from Iraq’s oil does get into American coffers soon, look forward to a recession the likes of which have not been seen in generations); no actual money will be marked for health care or education; individual liberties will be curtailed by the “War on Terrorism”. Kerry will seek the properly corporate citizens to lend support in his favour, and that will mean less consideration for the working family. And yes, Kerry will surely favour protectionism instead of fair and free trade, O wondering Canadian. Sure a few details of his platform are genuinely in opposition to Bush, but the Big Wheels will keep on Turning for the Right People, if you get my meaning. Four years after a Kerry presidency, many will be calling for some good ol’ Republican change.
I say we let a robot monkey lead the country through world war III until Hillary Clinton is elected president in 2012.
Hopefully that's not the last time that I get to use that sentence...
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