By Gustavo Destro
The term ‘partisan politics’ has been a staple of the public lexicon for several decades now; it refers to people who would rather have the government screech to a halt than budge from the beliefs they championed. For a long time such men and women were few and far between. They were the radicals, the fringe of every party, ultimately drowned out by moderates. Regular people did not have a favourable view of such a candidate and they would hardly reach high offices. Not so in the 21st century.
Nowadays we live with constant reminders of how fractionalized the democratic system is. From a Republican-controlled American Congress that will only pass a bill that won’t have any benefit for Democrats, to constant attacks in Canada against the Harper government, to an increasingly disruptive discourse in places such as France and the U.K. over the most minute of political issues.
The worst part of it all is that the very people to blame for all of this are not only the politicians that sling mud across the aisle at each other, but also the people who elect them. Because sometime in the last 20 years, the general electorate took a turn to the bizarre, when we started feeding off of grandiose statements and declarations of faith to the core of the party, sanity be damned; when we started demanding our elected officials to do what is best for ‘me’ and not the collective; when we decided that we would no longer listen to the ‘other side’ because they were always wrong and could not be dealt with. Politics has put one side against the other as if the ‘enemy’ worked for the devil himself, it has turned into something akin to a 17th century religious war, just short of grabbing an axe and a shield.
More bizzare is the fact that this has all come with the explosion of news media and social interaction, which a sane person would assume would make for a better political discourse, since all sides would have the ability to see how each other thought and find a common ground that would benefit all to the greatest extent possible. Not so.
Now I can sit in my living room and watch Fox News, Sun News, and read the National Post and will firmly believe that Obama is a socialist, Jim Flaherty is the coolest dude alive, and the Liberal Party is dead, and I would believe I’m right because three publications agreed. Or maybe I could watch the CBC, MSNBC, and read the Globe and Mail and will just as likely be convinced that Harper is an arts-hating devil-man, the oil sands are actually ‘tar’ sands, and we should raise taxes. Again, who would tell me I’m wrong?
People always want to be right, and when they have the information in the palm of their hands confirming that they are, everything that goes against it must be wrong. But it’s about time everyone swallowed their egos and dropped the bickering, or else we won’t go much further. It’s time to understand that both the Tea Party and the Occupy movements have legitimate grievances, that both raising and lowering taxes could help the economy, and that the oil sands could be a good thing but that there are also risks that should be taken care of. Let’s find some common ground, or soon enough we’ll all be going for those axes.
