Let’s see: a Canadian federal election, an electoral reform referendum in the UK, a new opposition leader and talk of an early provincial election in British Columbia, and lots of coverage of the likely US Republican party presidential candidates, all together, simultaneously, and at the same time?<\/p>\n
No wonder politics has been on my mind a lot lately.<\/p>\n
It’s not just me, either – politics has been dominating my real life and online conversations to a much greater degree than usual (except on Canucks game days, of course). A couple of interesting themes have developed…<\/p>\n
1) There’s been a lot of very creative fun, satire, and silliness around during the Canadian federal election campaign. Spoof Twitter accounts, viral<\/a> videos<\/a>, fun<\/a> websites<\/a>, and other good things. The thing is… all of it that I’ve seen has come from the left. (Beth<\/a> agrees! We discussed it during the intermission of Friday’s Canucks game!) Is there right-wing creativity and silliness out there that I’m not seeing because I’ve got my left-wing blinkers on? It’s possible, but I have enough right-leaning friends in real-life, plus on Facebook and Twitter (on Twitter I go out of my way to follow some intelligent right-wingers), that you’d think at least one of them would have posted a link. Is the left-wing contingent just naturally enriched for creative, fun, and silly people? Or is it a function of opposition versus governing parties, or of the age and other demographics of the left versus the right?<\/p>\n 2) Discussing federal versus BC politics at the same time has been an interesting experience, and has led to the following observation:<\/p>\n Two-party system (e.g. BC, USA) ———-> Black-and-white thinking, “I’m right and you’re wrong” arguments<\/p>\n Multi-party system (e.g. Canada, UK) —–> Shades of grey, more nuanced debates<\/p>\n I’m just not sure the arrows are pointing in the right direction…<\/p>\n Thoughts? Observations? Arguments? Debates?<\/p>\n Anything but apathy, please. Apathy drives me NUTS!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let’s see: a Canadian federal election, an electoral reform referendum in the UK, a new opposition leader and talk of an early provincial election in British Columbia, and lots of coverage of the likely US Republican party presidential candidates, all … Continue reading