Nobody's Baby?

      Paul Martin, it seems, has promised to resign in two years if he breaks any of his key promises. Gee, that sounds vaguely familiar. Who else once said she would resign if she couldn't keep a promise.... Hmmm.... Oh, yeah: HER. You know the PM's in trouble if he's taking a page from her playbook.

      In a related vein, I want to say that I am sick and bloody tired of all the reports in the Canadian media about the alienation (and apathy) of young voters (supposedly the people between 18 and 30) and the various desperate gestures being made to get them to vote. The young voters indulge their typical whines and excuses: nobody pays attention to us, our votes don't make a difference, wenh, wenh, wenh. Well, no wonder nobody pays any attention to you, for goodness' sake; talk about the self-fulfilling prophecy. This isn't to exonerate the politicians, either: they don't address youth concerns, and they patronize young voters in the most callous and cynical ways. How do they respond to this disaffection? By trying to make voting seem "sexy" or "cool" or the like, to the extent of spending a great deal of public money on getting people to vote, most of whom won't even bother when the day comes. This is profoundly wrong-headed. In Canada people go on about their rights and their freedoms, about their right to access to this and their freedom to do that, but they've stopped talking about their responsibilities. Yes, I know, I used the "R" word that dare not speak its name. We have to stop trying to court people into voting with carrots and other flimsy ecnouragements, and tell them they have to vote; yes, Canada should follow the Australian model and make voting mandatory. People could, of course, still elect to spoil their ballots and refuse to vote for anyone, but then at least they would have to publically register their displeasure. This pouty, miserable "what's in it for me" mentality (on the parts of both young voters and the politicians vying for office) gets us absolutely nowhere. How sickening is that we focus so much on providing "incentives" (read in: bribes) rather than responsibility (read in: something you have to do, like or fucking not)? I've lost sympathy for the generation that whines so much that it's never listened to, and I've lost sympathy for the generation that only knows how to deal with is youth by throwing money and airy-fairy platitudes at problems. It's nothing more than cheap excuse-making on both sides of the equation, excuse-making that allows people not to have to address one another's concerns, and that allows them to avoid the actual engagement of ideas. If one of the parties announces that it will make voting mandatory (and none of them will, all of them groups of panderers), it'll get my vote. It's my cranky opinion that it's about damned time people either shat or got off the bloody pot. Voting, after all, isn't military service: it's, at most, an hour or two out of your day. Deal with it. And maybe people might actually start talking to one another instead of at one another. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Cantankerous rant now over.

      And, for you "young voters" out there, take this to mind: if all of you started voting, the Marijuana Party could probably form the government in B.C. by the end of the decade. Then you'd know you made a difference.