Political Apathy

I’m sitting at the Starbucks in the mall where I work on the outdoor chairs under the pole heater daydreaming all by myself. There’s usually a gang there but nobody has showed up yet. I look across the outdoor coffee, (and smoking), area, and stuck to the back of one of the stainless steel chairs is a sticker with the Victoria flag and the words, “I voted” on it. There was an election held in Victoria last week. I can’t give you an accurate list of the candidates who ran, (though there IS one from 2009 online), but I read in the newspaper there were over 200 candidates. 212 I think it was. I saw pictures of some of the candidates in the newspaper the week before, (because it’s important for us to elect people who LOOK like they know what they’re doing), and was surprised to see a girl I KNOW running for the school board rep. But then with 212 candidates odds are even a newcomer to Victoria will know one of them.

I also read in the newspaper and saw plastered on buses and buildings, heard on the radio, and couldn’t escape for a while the desperate pleas of those running for office to those of us who have within our power the ability to NOT vote and cost them ALL their jobs to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE enable our seriously ineffective and outdated behaviour for a little while longer. There were articles written by newspapermen and women upholding the traditional habit of glorification of the vote as a responsibility we should all cherish and yada yada yada. The inexplicable voter apathy. So hard to understand! Well not for me, a confirmed NON-voter. I’ll explain why I don’t vote and I am sure some or maybe ALL of the same reasons apply to the rest of the folks who choose to exercise our supposed democratic powers by not voting for those intent on taking them away.

First of all, if you want to see true apathy try going to any of our government agencies. Better yet, try calling them up. First you have to find the name of the agency you are looking for. The names all change regularly as it becomes easier for voters to locate our government representatives and bother them with our little problems. If you need a passport, driver’s license, or even some social assistance you need to know the name of the agency that provides it. Internet? Try it. It ain’t so easy. Phone book? There used to be handy listings in the white pages like, “Driver’s licence – see Access Centre.” Or even in the blue pages. Nowadays, not so much. And for the love of God, ACCESS CENTRE? For welfare I think it’s “Cool Aid.” Could they possibly find lamer, less recognizable titles for such important services?

THEN, if you are lucky enough to stumble upon the correct name for the agency you are trying to locate, we ALL know what happens when we try to call them up. At LEAST a 15-minute session of telephone gymnastics. “If you want endless telephone runaround, press one. If you want some useless recording that does nothing to assist you, press two. If you want to talk to a human being, stay on the line until your problem solves itself, until your start worrying about your phone bill, or until you die. If you want information about taxes you must pay for dying in Canada, press three.”

I wanted to get my driver’s license and had to call an insurance company. They transferred me to the correct office, whatever the name of it was, and whatever their number and only after half an hour of the answering machine labyrinth for BOTH places did I get through to a human being. Then when I wanted to call them back and cancel was faced with the prospect of doing it all over again. Didn’t bother, and will be charged the 75 bucks for not cancelling when I finally DO show up for my driving test. Minimal person-to-person contact with the electorate and 75 bucks for doing NOTHING. The perfect government agency!

Let’s see what our government has been up to recently so we can more fully illustrate my point. The big news in government is Pat Martin’s “industrial language” on Twitter. This is “inappropriate.” It’s “unnecessary.” He said, “This is a fucking disgrace… closure again. And on the budget! No democracy in the world would tolerate this jackboot shit!” Oh how terrible! Disgusting! Those expletives are so harsh!

Oh the endless entertainment one can derive from watching the histrionics and machinations of the leaders within a society trying its best to balance its diametrically opposed commitments to puritanical morality and salacious greed! While I support fully the people out there who try to be profound without being profane, I don’t believe in Santa Claus, I know pro wrestling is staged and I am well aware that people FUCKING swear! Even politicians and athletes! Actually Mr. Martin has pointed out for us all the same thing I’m going for in this post. You see, the REAL issue, the one that’s being almost ignored behind the more pressing issue of Twitter f-bombs, is that the government budget, which, (let’s give our politicians a little credit), is a veritable work of art every year, is being pushed through parliament without enough debate. That is, POLITICIANS, not just the people they are supposed to be representing, are being ignored by federal conservative Harper government and those guys and gals we elected are just doing what they want without listening to anyone in parliament. Hey all you politicians not in the majority government, now you know how we the people, (voting OR non-voting), feel! The government never does what WE want either.

Voting for people makes things LESS democratic in Canada because, (fake well), they’re people! Don’t kid yourself, regardless of party or platform, most, if not all of the important stuff they do is done at the behest of the rich, the corporate and the banks who are the hands up the arses of all our government puppets. It’s for the benefit of our “owners.” And that is almost always exactly what WE don’t want.

The main issue in the budget I must admit I have mixed feelings about. It’s the C-10 or “Crime Omnibus Bill.” This bill will create more minimum sentences on lots of crimes that will land an awful lot MORE people in the clink. Jails are already a huge waste of our tax money to begin with. Hence, politicians like them and want more so their budgets will grow every year. For years in Canada we’ve had very safe streets and very high numbers of people in jail. And it’s mostly poor folks who can’t afford lawyers or don’t have enough money to pay their fines. Fines that are probably just unfair or STUPID fines designed by our apathetic government agencies as ways to avoid dealing with these less appealing citizens in the first place. And in our country where, like many, the money is being more and more efficiently funneled straight to the top, what do you know – there are more poor people! So we need more jails or they might, I dunno, march on major cities across the country or something.

Then again, being a security guard I’m not saying I’d refuse a 20-buck-an-hour job at one of these poverty palaces either. That is if I don’t end up IN one!

It’s similar to another issue our government is trying to sneak past us. Again there is no distinction between the parties and we, the people, could not vote for anyone based on this issue. We just have to settle for what they decide. It’s the oil pipelines. I don’t know a lot about them but I DO read stories in the papers about shipyards in Victoria and Vancouver proposed to DOUBLE in size and pipeline construction and maintenance creating many new jobs mostly to serve the traditional role that Canada has taken on in the world, that of a primary resource provider. It’s mostly about America and China lusting after our oil sands. And the amount of money that could earn for our “owners.” And rather than build refineries here in Canada that would create WAY more jobs than the pipelines and transporting of CRUDE oil would, we are going to be nice to our more powerful neighbours as always. And at irresponsible risk to our planet. If there’s one thing we should know by now it’s that the transfer of crude oil is absolute hell on the Earth. It should be illegal no matter how “safe” a method we devise. Any oil that is transported should be in environmentally safer refined forms. PERIOD! And if people knew the issues I think most Canadians would feel the same.

But then again they wouldn’t turn down an 18-dollar-an-hour job on a pipeline or at a shipyard either.

Which brings up an obvious point: Why don’t people in office do what the whole country wants them to do? The main issues NEVER change! More jobs, less taxes, better wages. Believe it or not this would make our politicians jobs easier. It’s what they probably want to do. More jobs with decent wages would make the citizens of Canada happy and gov’t agencies wouldn’t have to constantly devise new methods of HIDING from us. In fact why not hire about 50,000 people to work FOR the government, (and earn good government wages), answering the FUCKING PHONES! See? Sometimes the f-bombs are warranted. I don’t think “darn” would have been as effective there.

More jobs with higher wages is a nightmare for the government workers though because they’re all Brewsters. Like Richard Pryor in that movie Brewster’s Millions. He had to spend a whole bunch of money and have nothing to show for it. That’s most of our government’s job. And with everyone in Canada working and earning MORE money, that would mean more taxes to somehow waste. So the obvious solution would be to lower taxes. It’s so simple!

Problem is this is NOT what the REAL rulers of our country, (and owners of us), want for Canada. So the government will continue to go about its duty deciding things like corporations no longer have to pay tax on the money they make in Canada. We didn’t vote for that! No candidates even brought that up! Yet somehow it got passed! Do some research. Keep your eyes open. Taxes going up; prices going up; minimum wage going up at a fraction of the rate; major changes to education; cuts in social programs… has anything GOOD happened in Canada in recent memory? More to the point, anything that we voted for? We the people, in our supposedly democratic country get to vote once in a while whether or not to separate from Quebec and whether we want GST or HST. That’s like choosing between lethal injection or firing squad.

I think the voter turn-out numbers are exaggerated in Canada. I don’t think that many people vote any more. It’s a system dying a death. A long overdue death but that’s how we do things in Canada. My government sees me as a numbered consumer and any time they do anything major to change my country, it's something none of us voted for. These are the reasons I don’t vote and probably most voter apathy is caused by the same issues. The only time my government seems to really notice me is when they want me to legitimize their jobs by giving them my vote. Well, as Pat Martin might tweet, fuck that jackboot shit!