We're an American Band

Seriously, show me the difference

(Note: I posted this a week ago, but pulled it down when I realized that it wasn’t at all clear who won this election. The word is that tomorrow we’ll finally have closure!)

I was asked on BlueSky, now that the election is behind us, and I’m not so bound by the rules that prevent election workers from doing political stuff, to comment on last night’s British Columbia election results.

For those not following #BCpoli, the results are quite literally a tie between the NDP and the Conservatives. And by “tie” I mean both parties are within a seat of having a bare minimum majority, (or perhaps minority), with a half dozen seats still awaiting recounts because they are separated by as little as 23 14 votes.

For those not following #BCpoli, the NDP is the party described by Lululemon’s Chip Wilson as “communist” while the Conservatives are the party described by me, and many others, as borderline Trump.

More noteworthy is that this political divide is also geographical. Southern, more populated, urban Lower Mainland people voted more NDP, while rural urban people elsewhere voted more Conservative.

Does that sound familiar?

I don’t claim to understand why half of British Columbians voted for a right ring reactionary party that at times went beyond suggesting racism.

I say that as someone who hasn’t for years found any Canadian party or politician at all appealing. Despite the lip-service to both, the NDP abandoned their union roots ages ago in the belief that it was costing them votes if they supported workers, and they abandoned their green credentials when they became believers in the myth that giving lots of money to major corporations would somehow make every day voters rich and happy.

I am as unlikely to believe these things as I am to believe the outright lies spread by Trump, Poilievre, or Rustad.

So where does that leave me? In simple terms, I see BC going down the same path as the federal politics in Canada, splitting the nation into two ever divided camps, based on outright lies and misleading claims. As the US takes that model and ramps it up to Warp 10, we’re likely heading for a very dangerous and frightening time in both countries.

I see that happening because both countries have gutted their education systems, have priced post-secondary education out of reach for so many, and have allowed corporate interests to drive the agenda for education.

An uneducated population, especially one forced to rely on Facebook and Twitter for news because the media companies are also gutting our newspapers and TV stations, is one that simply can’t sort fact from fiction. That makes them far too susceptible to ideologues who will simply tell them what they want to hear, and who offer easy targets for their anger.

And, after working for the last month inside of Election BC, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the problems we face are not because the elections system is broken - it’s not - or because the technology used to make voting easier is damaged - it’s solid - or because the people inside Elections BC are anything but committed and honest and incredibly hard-working.

The problem is that the candidates, and the people who are running the parties, seem to have lost the plot, and have forgotten that their job is to serve the population who votes for them, and to be altruistic, and to set aside re-election concerns to ask: what is needed right now to solve an obvious and simple problem?

Anyhow, if you want a clear eyed look at Trump, please follow Michael Goldfarb’s “First Rough Draft of History.”

From 2021….

Everyone, once they pass the age of seventy, becomes a historian:

There is not a single American life, there is not a single American history. This is the history of my life. An African-American my age, would have a different story to tell, as would a gay man. The personal story of a woman of any color or sexual preference would be more different still.

But there is enough shared history among all the children of America’s World War 2 victory to understand what underpins the counry’s calamity.

First, there is the catastophic decline in education at the top, in the middle and at the bottom. At the top the decline has been caused by the commodification of learning. Elite education has been turned into a product and students and parents are customers purchasing a ticket to permanent residence in the class from which I ejected myself. For everyone else, the decline has been caused by starving schools of adequate funding and then politicizing the curriculum especially the teaching of history.

As a result two generations have been educated with no knowledge of the past, particularly the recent past.