Kootenay Crust

By Ian Cobb

The only Conservative Prime Minister to ever make me wish I were anything but a small C conservative this morning called an election.

Now we Canadians get to sit back and watch, listen and read about politico XYZ for 11 (insert your favourite ‘go-to’ cuss word here) weeks. That’s right – 78 days of complete and utter bullshit will be splattering across the Canuck ‘awareness-scape’ before the Oct. 19 election.

Near future CBC news piece: “Prime Minister Stephen Harper today said Canada will be lozenge free by 2019. Citing his complete disdain for anything ‘lozenge like,’ Harper said during a baby forehead kissing barbecue he promises he will order his newly, secretly created crack Force 51 Brigade to surround all lozenge factories and, by hopefully using peaceful methods, ‘smash them like a UN-situated shoe belonging to Khrushchev.’ The largely partisan crowd roared with approval.”

Here come the litany of promises never to be fulfilled; here come the entrenched party positions slathered in every speech mass distributed to candidates nation-wide from every party.

The political line quivers like a seismograph as ‘old warhorses’ clop into action. Rousted from spending the past four years with their heads up their bums, they swing open wide the tenets of the party, whilst all around whips and chains rattle in the hollow winds of hot air venting.

They are bound by RULE NO. ONE on every party’s ‘rules of the game’: Thou Shalt Get Re-Elected. NOT Just Elected but RE-ELECTED, for then thine shall dine on taxpayer dime for time eternal and the party shall advance. Repeat: the party shall advance, the party shall advance…

And you thought people ran for office to ‘do the right thing’ or ‘lead the way to a better future’ or ‘save the world from itself’ or ‘get a passing lane on the fucking highway.’ Oh no no no – they do it for the party and then they get elected and realize their souls have been eaten. Such a grisly beast, Ottawa.

But do not feel too poorly for them for they shall and will accept their pensions after having robbed such cretins as veterans of what was once promised to them. One example of a terrifying long list of crimes against common good in the name of the party – from current Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s shrill oligarchy to Paul Martin’s wincing wing-nuttery to Jean Chretien’s tyrannical circus to Kim Campbell’s nanosecond of fame to Brian Mulroney’s Reagan-lite tura lura li to John Turner’s hallucination to Pierre Trudeau’s twirling flights of fancy and on back through time to John A Macdonald’s flammable breath, the man and woman Jack of them were slaves to the party before they became the party and enjoyed their times atop the throne.

And again, oh Canadians, we are invited to participate in ‘democracy’. However, think twice now when you hear: “You don’t vote you don’t get to bitch.” That old saw needs to be put away. More and more people are refusing to vote in provincial and federal elections for really good reasons, as well as some really weak ones.

For example, I’d like to be able to judge David Wilks, Wayne Stetski, Don Johnston and Bill Green on who they are as people, what their visions are for what they think they could achieve as the person I entrust to represent the region/riding I call home. That is what each and every one of us, as voters and keepers of the right to live in relative freedom, should expect and want from those we eventually present with large pensions culled from our blood, sweat and tears.

Instead, and I mean no disrespect to the four men running for the Member of Parliament seat for Kootenay-Columbia, we will all hear what voters 1,000 miles away will be hearing as well as those 2,000 miles away. The same PR machine managed party line tripe, that should have been cut away from the body like a testy appendix decades ago, is handed out across the nation; the inner-sanctum’s approved scripts. LET THE PLAY BEGIN.

Some candidates will tell you that’s not the case. I am here to tell you they have no choice as candidates but to spout the party line. If you don’t, you get whipped into oblivion. I always appreciate those who try to skirt the line.

Another massive thing about this morning’s announcement: we taxpayers will be on the hook for an estimated $56-57 million more so Harper and challengers can drive us all batshit nuts with the ‘blah blah blah burp’ in what will be one of the longest election campaigns in Canada’s history.

Are you still wondering why fewer and fewer people vote? Apathy stems from defeat. Voters in this country are growing tired of pouring slop into the trough that is Ottawa so the big businesses that are the major parties can exist in such opulent fashion. (See RULE NO. ONE from above.)

Finally, there is one thing about this election that has me excited – the possible outcome.

As of July 31, the Conservatives (31.5%) hold a narrow lead with voters as per surveys, with the NDP at 30.1% and the Liberals 29.3% – or in other words, they are basically neck-and-neck as this marathon begins.

One can assume the Green Party will snatch votes from the Liberals and NDP but Harper’s reign of terror has been well documented.

Shockingly, my oldest friend, Dingbat Alien, admitted to me yesterday he hopes the NDP win “just to shake things up.” That’s like hearing Ezra Levant speak 200 words without wanting to slug him in the beak or Don Cherry admit he’s a Swedish spy.

Dingbat would make Genghis Khan nervous.

So to hear a hardline Conservative admit he’d like to see his party-of-choice get stomped by a pack of socialists, it tells me Capt. Smarm is in for the fight of his ‘political career.’

And we’re going to hear all about it for the next 11 weeks.

Enjoy.

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