Opinion

Gimme Shelter

Work in Progress By Ivan Morgan

I am politically homeless. (Before someone dashes off a self-righteous e-mail denouncing me for making light of a serious social problem, understand I am using this as a metaphor.)

I want in out of the cold. I want to vote for people I have confidence in. I want my vote to count towards a better future for this place. I want to elect people who will address our problems and make this place better for the younger generations. My generation hasn’t done a very good job of it.

I have been involved in the politics of this place, in one way or another, all my life. One would think that, at the end of a long, rocky “career,” I would know a thing or two about politics (and I do), but I don’t know what we should do now.  

Here’s what I do know.

I know that we will not survive much more politics as usual. I know that politics stopped serving the average citizen long ago. Successive provincial governments have driven us to bankruptcy.

I know our health care system has been utterly mismanaged. Like most of us, I have been paying into this system all my life. I worry it won’t be there for us when we need it.

I know that the old left-right political spectrum no longer makes sense. Once the left wing were liberal, well-meaning people who wanted a better deal for the average joe and were dedicated to battling the right wing – the wealthy business class – to try and share our resources more fairly. The left championed human rights, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, better working conditions and the like.

I was a lefty. I like to think I still am, but I don’t think the New Left thinks I am. (I even felt it necessary to defend the first line of this column).

The right wing was conservative, all about business, lower personal taxes, religious values, personal freedoms, less government.

I know that politics is becoming more and more polarized. Extremists on both sides have now made the nation’s political forum a battleground. You are now supposed to hate your opponents. This poison is seeping into provincial politics.

There was always an extreme right (a conservative friend of mine thinks government should only collect taxes for air traffic control and defence.) Now there’s also a growing extreme left. I have seen the rise of a new, self-righteous, nasty, judgemental hateful edge in left wing politics.  Step out of line and they will try to cancel you. Question what they say, and you or your family will be attacked. Disagree with them? They will shout you down. They believe in free speech only if you agree with what they’re saying and believe in democracy only if it works for them. They are true believers, and anyone who doesn’t share their ideals is evil.

I do not want to be a part of that.

I don’t have any stomach for the extreme right-wing agenda either. Rolling back women’s rights? None for me, thanks.

So, where the hell do I go?

My mother used to call the two main Newfoundland political parties the “innies” and the “outies.”  In her view they were pretty much the same, except one was “in” power and the other was “out.” Every decade or so that would change. That no longer works for me, and it doesn’t for you either, in case you haven’t noticed.

We need to talk to each other, not name call, attack, and demonize. Where are the men and women who are going to come up with solutions to the problems we have, and the ones we don’t even know we have yet? The ones we can vote for with confidence? What is the political system that’s going to foster their careers? I read and read, I search and search, but have come up empty so far.

I am all dressed up and I have nowhere to go.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com

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