....maybe they do so because they know that 30-40% of the people don't care and don't show up at the polling station, maybe because they know there is a segment of the voters that who don't want to make waves fearing they will lose their place at the trough and then there are those who, like Maple Leaf fans, hope they might win but in their hearts accept minor victories.Canadian contempt
Our politicians can't think much of our intelligence -- they give us the same crap every election
Much has been made of the growing contempt for politicians that voters display during federal elections.
Less discussed, but more significant, is their growing contempt for us.
What else is it but contempt when the dumbed-down message of every party leader in every election campaign these days, regardless of their ideology, is essentially this:
"Vote for me because I'm a leader and they're not. Because my party is good and the others are bad. Because I know what I'm doing and they don't. Because I care about you and they won't. Because I tell you the truth and they lie. Because if you elect me, things will be good, but if you elect them, things will be bad."
Seriously ... who believes this crap?
Who believes any leader is infallible, any one party all-knowing or immune to mistakes, arrogance, greed or corruption?
Indeed, based on the record of past federal Conservative and Liberal governments, and of provincial NDP regimes, there's no reason to think any political philosophy is exempt.
And yet in every election, voters are asked to put their reason on hold and to go through the same ritual, to pretend the world does not actually operate in the way we all know it does.
Who believes any of our political leaders when they insist that this time, unlike all the other times when they promised to do it and failed, native land claims will finally be settled, poverty eliminated, medical wait times slashed?
What is it but contempt for the voters to promise the same things over and over again, but never to deliver?
How can politicians who can't sit across the aisle from each other for five minutes without hurling partisan insults, propose with a straight face plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020, by 2050, by 2080, proposals which would, given four-year election cycles, require decades of bipartisan co-operation of which none has been capable for 72 minutes in Parliament, let alone 72 years? How stupid do they think we are?
GROUPS AND NICKNAMES
What does it show but contempt for voters when the Conservative war room in the last election boasted about slicing and dicing Canadians into various target groups of identifiable voters, each with their own cute little nicknames?
As reported by the National Post, these included, "Steve and Heather" -- in their 40s, Protestant, married with three children and thus likely to vote Conservative, as opposed to "Rick and Brenda" -- common-law partners in the working-class, unlikely to do so.
Quick quiz: How many Conservative attack ads have you seen over the past few months ridiculing Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, as opposed to Stephen Harper giving us his reasons why he would be the best prime minister? Now ask yourself in what job in the real world would an employer -- and we are Harper's employers -- tolerate a job applicant whose strategy to be rehired at the end of his first contract was not to explain his qualifications, but to tear down someone else's?
What is it but contempt for voters when Dion pledges to help the millions of Canadians who can't find a family doctor, as if this problem suddenly arrived out of nowhere?
If Dion wants to know why millions of Canadians can't find a family doctor, let him talk to fellow Liberal Paul Martin, who slashed health care payments to the provinces in the 1990s.
IGNORED WARNINGS
Let him talk to fellow Liberal Bob Rae, who, when he was the NDP premier of Ontario in the early 1990s, slashed enrolments to medical school, as did governments across Canada, despite warnings from medical experts who rightly predicted today's doctor shortage.
At the time, Rae's government and others, were too busy waging class warfare against doctors, appealing to the politics of envy and scapegoating physicians, their salaries and the tests they ordered, as the main culprits in rising health care costs.
And yet today, 15 years later, many of the politicians who helped to create this mess in the first place, are now back assuring us they can fix it.
And if asking us to believe that isn't the height of holding us in contempt, what is?
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