Wrenching Analogies

Another tick in the column headed "The Death of Debate" was marked down this week by leader of the Canadian Green Party Elizabeth May's unfortunate attempt to compare Stephen Harper and his new environment policy with WWII era British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement towards Hitler and his rise to power in Germany. As I have suggested in other blogs and writings, the art and skill of reasoned debate has died a convincing death only to continue to shuffle on as a zombie animated by personal diatribe and fueled by scathing invective.

Ms. May, who at one time purported to be the champion of political change and constantly encouraged her audiences with her vision to "do things differently" in Ottawa has entered free fall in the credibility ratings (in this pundit's never-to-be-humble opinion). Her slip began with the cynical and opportunistic deal she made with Stefan Dion to ensure that she could run uncontested against Peter McKay in his maritime riding in the next election. It is now closely followed by this gaffe which has the Canadian media debating Ms. May's dubious oratory skills with greater fervor that they are using to explain the Government's new environment policy. This kind of public debate "bait and switch" is fundamentally disingenuous as Maisonneuve Mediascout points out is becoming all too common in today's exchanges between political, social, cultural, religious and ethical rivals. Debate has devolved to the gutter where the best any of the participants can seem to do is bludgeon one another with accusations of being evil incarnate rather than offer an alternative vision or policy. If the voters remain only modestly attentive and informed I expect that Ms. May will remain in the political wilderness after our next trip to the polls. It will hardly be a shame as she has demonstrated, as far as i can see, that she doesn't bring anything that would make me believe she could influence Parliament to "do things differently".

As an aside; while preparing the links for this entry I discovered that Googling Mr. Harper and Ms. May led me to, respectively, the Government of Canada's site for the Prime Minister and the Green Party website easily, while doing the same with Mr. Dion's name led me nowhere near the Liberal Party of Canada's website - at least in the first few pages of results. I was aware that the Liberals are in disarray but I am shocked that they can't manage this bit of technological promotion and communication. As a long-time critic of the Liberals I am perhaps a little too happy to see that the confusion within their organization is so pervasive. While I am no fan of Liberal policy generally, I am always concerned when the opposition cannot be effective in their role and present a viable alternative to the current government, be it federal or provincial. My 42 years as an Albertan schooled me in the pitfalls of a constituency being governed by a party that fears no opposition and takes its power to govern for granted. No one will hear this but somebody with some intelligence in the Liberal Party better WAKE UP! And soon.

Back to the issue. The death of debate is having serious consequences for our nation. With the media jumping on the tactics, or lack of tactics, employed by politicians in denouncing one another we find less and less news coverage devoted to the issues at hand. Every policy announcement and program launch is met by inevitable slurs and sarcasm. The reporters wind up reporting who called who what and how both sides reacted. The paper, radio and TV reports are increasingly filled with articles about words said rather than ideas communicated. And thus we are all made an little more ignorant by the ignorance of the politician's comments and the duplicitous ignorance of the reporter's choice of focus.

These analogy bombs that get used almost every day need to be fixed. We need to step down the rhetoric. We need to call our politicians on this stuff. In Saskatchewan the opposition Sask Party has begun what I expect will be a series of ads, most likely anticipating an upcoming election. They have begun with a negative message right off the top. My disappointment is very great and I am going to the MLA's riding office today to tell either him or his assistant so. I'm not trying to throw a wrench into their communications plans. I'm only trying to suggest they need to take their policy wrench out and fine tune their message a bit. I guess this is participatory democracy.