on politics

One of the things I don't tend to write about is politics, even though I'm a bit of a political junkie. I have seen how divisive it is, how on the Internet "I disagree with you" instantly turns into "you're an idiot" and I don't like it. I have friends who thrive on that kind of confrontation, but I don't, so I try to stay out of the quagmire. I know what I think and believe, and I am not threatened by other people disagreeing with me — even if they seem to think that my unwillingness to engage in a written boxing match means otherwise. I do, however, find it aggravating, so I tend to disengage.

Last night, though. We lost the election. A wise person (many wise people) once said: the problem with democracy is that the people who don't agree with you get to vote, too. And it turned out that more people disagreed with me than precisely agreed. That happens. And you know ... the world goes on.

It's not that I am terribly happy about the Conservatives being in power. I was an environmentalist before I became a teenager, and I consider myself a radical feminist now. I became aware of politics while living in Mike Harris' Ontario. In university, I took part in demonstrations against NAFTA and the WTO. Throw in my strong belief in the idea that poverty is not a moral failing, and I'm pretty sure the Tories and I are fundamentally incompatible in every way.

I'm saying all this because I want to head off any accusations of secret Conservative sympathies after my next sentence. Which is: I don't think this election was a disaster of epic proportions, and I would like us to recover a sense of perspective. Would I much rather have had another outcome? Yes. Do I think that, as time goes on, I will be deeply unhappy about the road the Conservatives will take us down? Yes. In fact, I am sure that, sometime in the next four years, they will make me furiously angry time and time again, as life gets a little bit harder for the underprivileged, and a little easier for the privileged, and it becomes clear that lower taxes cannot compensate for the loss of services and human goodwill. And I think that it's a shame that Canada will lose a little more of its international lustre.

But on the other hand: will the seas rise and the locusts fall? Will there be famine, riots, "Canada for Canadians" and mass deportations? No. Will we still be lucky to live here after Harper's term? Yes. We might feel a little less lucky, perhaps. But even just a little bit of that kind of luck, the luck that made us citizens in a wealthy, developed country in the 21st century, goes a long way.

It's that luck, for instance, that gives us this window of time to figure out how to work harder, how to work better, so that, in the next election, more Canadian voters will agree with us, rather than disagree. Because that's how democracy works.