My apologies to those reading my stuff who would like me to get back to Covid and Ukraine. However, I have some other interests as well. Especially, the need for a transition of most countries into democracies.
That includes my own country of Canada. I have small patience with the prevalent delusion among my fellow Canucks that the system we have is anything like an actual democracy. As I repeat endlessly, representativism is how oligarchies work.
As well, political parties lead to bureaucracy as well as factionalism among oligarchs. A democracy is when the needs and desires of the people are met; really met. By that standard the much reviled People’s Republic of China is more democratic than Canada.
If you would like to examine that subject, I again refer you to Godfree Robert’s tome, “Why China Leads the World.” Go order your copy from that mighty capitalist institution and marvel of central planning, Amazon.
Of course, PRC is not something to idolize. It is still gradually recovering from the effects of an earlier, Stalinist style application of socialism. Yet it is governed by intelligent people who understand what government is for, and who are every day improving the lives of the people.
Government must be about the good of the whole society, not about serving the interests of a small elite. However, that is the nature of most of the national states in the world right now, though this situation is changing.
It is not changing fast enough in Canada, where the public is only now catching on that what is on ‘the news’ is garbage and voting in elections will not lead to solutions to any of the problems building up in the country.
Voter turnout in elections is now quite low, which is a good thing and a bad thing. It would be better if people interested in real change worked within political parties and in electoral districts to the extent of trying to get progressive minded candidates into seats in the legislature. I have explained this in more detail a couple of times, most recently here. https://yaxls.wordpress.com/2022/05/08/hell-bent-for-election/
Yet it is good that people are disconnecting from the political process if it means they are starting to examine the way things work and to look for better ideas.
Of course in Canada representativism is particularly bad because the members have so little control over their leaders. In most countries which, like us, base their legislature on the Westminster model, failing leaders frequently get thrown out by their caucuses. In Canada the party leaders have near total control over them.
This came about in the way reversals of what limited democracy we had, are usually done. It was posed as something making government more democratic. Party leaders came to be chosen by conventions of party supporters instead of by the party’s sitting members periodically knocking off their boss.
Political parties are the vehicles for factions within an oligarchy, and in Canada under our plurality system we have “big tent” parties. There can be factions within factions but the leaders of a dominant faction will be the ones who are good at manipulating any kind of voting process. That is especially so in any ‘leadership convention’ where actual supporters of a party have no hope of really deciding the leader.
In Canada the party leaders are the people chosen by oligarchic political machines to carry out their interest protecting policies. Thus, the oligarchs do not want them to be too bright, or too self directed. They merely have to be able to keep the party caucus in line.
Debate and oratory skills are not critically important. Elections in this kind of system are decided mostly by who has the best spin machine. Voters can only vote on what is served up to them.
So elections in Canada come down to a media promotion contest between the public faces of particular ‘brands’. So Monday night I was looking at the televised “debate” between the four party leaders in the Ontario elections. Like most of the human race, I really dislike watching any kind of debate, but sometimes they exert a hypnotic attraction.
The show confirmed to me that none of these characters is suitable to run a government. It also confirmed to me that Doug Ford is the most objectionable of them all. That he is able to even run again shows just how mediocre his opposition is.
Doug Thug was an adolescent thug who dealt drugs in his neighbourhood and was covered by his wealthy and powerful father. He was not capable of higher education. He ran down the family business and then embezzled his brother’s estate to bail it out.
He was deeply implicated in the coverup of the corruption and harm to the public caused by his brother’s cocaine addiction while mayor of Toronto. His own performance as a city councilor has been described as being; “his own bull in his own china shop.”
He became leader of the PC party after the incumbent leader, one of the rare ‘Red Torys still around, was taken down in a really vicious coup involving sexual harassment accusations which were subsequently shown to be baseless. He then won an obviously rigged party leadership election process in which he came in second in votes.
The first thing he did as premier was to attack the city of Toronto in the middle of a civic election because it looked like a rival faction was going to get control of council. He redrew the ward boundaries to prevent that. Even attempting this should have been enough to get him immediately thrown out of office.
Subsequently he has led a highly corrupt government. He seems to have no interest in his office except to settle personal vendettas and to sell it to powerful interests, especially those behind unneeded construction projects. He has botched and sabotaged the province’s response to the covid pandemic.
At the great debate, it was obvious he is not very bright. He had trouble keeping his lines straight. Given all this, the other three should have been able to tear him to pieces. They were all clearly afraid to really go after him.
This would be because they all have their own vulnerabilities which would destroy them if attention were focused on them. It is becoming known that the ruling oligarchies all over the western world have established a protocol; no one gets into high office unless the oligarch agents have something on them. And to reiterate; no intelligent or self directed people allowed.
Ford has the look of an insecure bully. This is his appeal to “Ford Nation”. There is always about 20% to 25% of a population with the kind of emotional inadequacy that leads them to need a ‘big daddy’. With the large numbers of non voters, that is all he needs to stay in power.
If I had to state a preference, I would rather have Del Duca and his liberals in office. The interests behind that party have come to realize that austerianism has gone too far. Serious disruption and danger of collapse is coming if some resources are not put back into key government systems.
Of course, what I really want to see is an end to this type of system altogether. Executive positions should never be filled by elections. I want the people running things to be selected, not elected.
I want them to be fully qualified for the job, by education and experience. I want the selection to be done by bodies which are designed to be free of political bias, and whose sole job is to select key officials and to monitor them.
Such a body, to eliminate bias and gaming, would be chosen by lots from a large pool of qualified people. The entire process would be overseen by some sort of state council, itself appointed by a public assembly chosen by local assemblies.
This is roughly how real democracies have come to work, all down human history, whenever democracies have been able to survive for awhile.