At 5:01 AM -0400 11/11/2000, Brett Coster wrote:
Brett, your example and comments are instructive. Thanks for sharing them!
You asked:
>(why do
>conservative parties always assume a "born to rule" attitude?).
Heh. Probably a rhetorical question, but, well, it makes sense doesn't it?
Just what is it that these people want to "conserve" from the past? The
only thing I see changing from the past is a social and economic system
that benefits a small minority and their inherited aesthetics and
contemporary personal (familial and class) interests; this protective
stance is something they feel they have a right to asserting out of
personal motivation, yes, but I think it runs deeper.
Also, as one friend I was talking with mentioned that Barthes had noted in
a way similar to what we were discussing, the "Right" so often seems to be
slicker, more naturalized, no matter how unnatural it seems to be. It has
impacted on the aesthetics of the West in such a way that as much as we
revile monarchy, we still also exult in the glory and shinyness of it; we
still pay attention to the Queen Mum and to Celine Dion (closest thing to
monarchy in Montreal) and Tom Cruise and so on, not to mention the
quasi-aristocratic families of American government (wow, both major
candidates this year were tied to the family business of politics, eh?). We
hate to be ruled, but we can't seem to pull off hating the rulership enough
to be really critical of it. And if you think I'm crazy, watch
Entertainment Tonight [1] just once with what I've said in mind, and you
will shudder.
In any case, I think the hubris is actually built into the system and into
all of us, in vestiges at least, to some degree. It may get transposed to
celebrity, or to parochial status, but it still hangs around. Ptobably it
has even deeper roots, but I would not say that this accounts for the
slickness -- that business is probably from centuries of accretion in
Western culture(s).
>3. Recounts are not automatic? Again, unbelievable. I don't just mean where
>the margin is one percent or so, I mean for every electorate/state whatever.
>Absolutely routine here, so that about 2-4 weeks after the election a full
>recount of every seat is done to confirm the original vote. If you want
>democracy, you've gotta pay for it to work.
This probably also suggests investment in better equipment, if the
equipment is faulty.
>4. The electoral college is based on winner take all for the states? Don't
>you use proportional representation at all? That is, instead of say one
>candidate getting all 25 of Florida's votes once achieving 50% plus 1, that
>Bush should get say 13 and Gore 12 and then you tote it all up at the end on
>a national basis. That way everyone clearly gets their say. I know
>proportional representation is a radical idea, we've only been using it in
>Australia for about 80 years, but you just never know, it might work.
And people have said that this will not work because it will introduce the
problem of fringe parties having undue power.
Let me furnish an example from the recent televised candidates' debate in
Canada. We have several more parties than you: 5 leaders participated in
the debate, and there are others who weren't allowed to because their
polled support was too little (AFAIK).
However, the main issue of the debate was -- predictably -- 2-tier health
care. Basically everyone is against it, but Stockwell Day consistently
claims he will not institute it, in response to Chretien's claims that he
will. The leaders of the Bloc, NDP, and PC parties all served the purpose
of (a) widening the debate somewhat -- raising criticisms of the 2 major
leaders that otherwise would not have been raised; (b) providing a flexible
set of viewpoints that would need to dialogue in order to work through a
problem; (c) ask hard questions that were less about the interests of the
party and more about the interests of the issues not as platforms alone but
as issues; in doing so, they revealed something interesting about the
potentials for representative government in a polyphonic or contrapuntal
setting, as opposed to a winner-takes-all conception. How difficult can
consensus really be if you NEED to work it out, if the system MAKES you
stop playing the "I know you are but what am I!" game? Some people think
this would make Canada split apart; I envision it differently, however.
Proportional representation is at least closer to addressing the
long-nurtured dissatisfactions of the West, just as the Bloc is for Quebec.
Don't get me wrong, I revile Stockwell Day, but I think people are voting
for him out of dissatisfaction, as much as out of any real conservativism.
Hell, Saskatchewan was NDP last time around, and you don't get much more
left than that in a major Canadian party. Or, you didn't used to -- Tommy
Douglas was an avowed Marxist. But NDP today? Ahem.
See, the model I keep getting thrown at me is that is Buchanan and the
Religious Right *did* achieve proportial representation, they would
suddenly have enormous power. They would be able to offer either the Dems
or the Repubs a majority by siding with them -- for a price, of course.
Same goes, the example runs, for the Green Party USA.
Does anyone see a solution to this? Wouldn't proportional representation
work for both the etrreme right and the extreme left? Would you not
definitely have a left-wing government, with the effect of being pulled
slightly further to the left, if this occurred?
And that is ignoring something else . . . that the Dems and the Repubs
*could* cooperate to counter the most objectionable excesses of the far
Right and the far middle (what you call "Left"). I know, it's a new idea,
the two major parties actually maybe cooperating to work out some kind of
representative consensus through dialogue, rather than some kind of
oppositionalist game of king of the hill. But really, looking at the vote
numbers, it seems to me that's exactly what is needed in your country --
some kind of cooperative effort towards consensus and maximized
representation and good for all, rather than some kind of, well, as Bruce
Sterling put it, "senile culture war." Crazy idea, I know, but maybe it's
worth a shot. Maybe politicians would realize it is worth a shot if it was
pointed out how transitory a term or two of office can be, and that
regardless of the shifts of presidency, their real duty is to the people
first, not the party. Crazy, I know, there's Gord talking antipartisan
again.
Of course, to accept that is to accept that you live in a pluralistic
society, and that difference is important and valuable and necessary to a
thriving society and vigorous democracy -- I know it rankles the far Right
but that is just the way it is! That's not a leftist opinion, that's the
opinion of someone looking with eyes open at the world you live in. I'd
guess that is part of what the far Right is against from the outset,
though. But I wonder about the more centrist elements in the Right, and
much of the left. I wonder if they're as sick of this silly tug of war as
is the rest of the world (or at least that part that bothers to pay
attention anymore).
I wonder if anyone anywhere has advanced a model of politics that isn't
predicated on partisans preaching totalizing doctrines and squabbling with
one another like kids. Anywhere? Anywhere?
[Sorry if that's a bit edgy, it's late and I'm edgy myself but I think I
make my argument. Nighto.]
Gord
[1] For those overseas, I don't know if you know this program but
Entertainment Tonight is a terrible Hollywood-centered TV show which is
essentially tabloid TV mixed with movie promotions and celebrity trivia.
