16 November 1998
The comedian Woody Allen once joked that on a sliding scale politicians rate a notch just below child molester. He verbalized the disillusionment many feel about the political process. It's one of the reasons for so-called electoral apathy. Case in point - the recent Congressional elections in the U.S.Only 36.1 percent of voting-age Americans went to the polls, the lowest percentage turnout since 1942. This was the fourth national election in the last seven in which the actual number of votes cast fell, despite population increases. And it decreased even though one billion dollars was spent in campaigns - the most expensive election in U.S. history.
Personally, I don't blame the public. The thin line of division between the two major political parties in the "Me No liberal" campaign has vanished. The defining line between what we can amusingly call Republocrat and Demoblican candidates in this election was whether Bill Clinton should or should not be impeached because he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky while holding elected office.
This blurring of lines has also affected Canada. Many Canadian university academics teach the myth that the Canadian political pendulum swings from right to left and back again with each election. Even if this were true, it holds no more.
Liberals act like Tories. Tories act like Reformers. Reformers want to replace the Tories. And it seems nobody wants to be the NDP - not even the NDP.
The smug Liberal government, proud bastion of the fictitious political "centre", implements policies of the very Conservative they loved to hate - former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney - the same Mulroney now being rehabilitated by the press, especially by his newspaper monopolist buddy Conrad Black.
In Quebec, the Liberals are headed by Jean Charest former leader of the Progressive Conservatives. Charest who once preached fiscal restraints is the same guy who now promises an influx of federal dollars into Quebec.
Charest's opponents, the Parti Québécois, was once a haven for disillusioned leftwingers when first organized by Rene Levesque. Winning provincial power grey suited bureaucrats with nationalist sentiments entrenched conservatism. Now these nationalist conservatives support more public spending.
So much for the fictitious political "centre". What about the right wing?
The current Progressive Conservative leadership race features a candidate who was once a closet New Democrat. Tory Premiers like Mike Harris peddle Reform-style restraint and are applauded by Reform party members, some who advocate an alliance with that party.
As for the beleaguered left wing, its generals merely surrendered without a whimper. Bob Rae, former NDP Premier of Ontario is the new shoe shine boy for Wall Street. Like his buddy Ed Broadbent, he is like a deer on a highway dazzled by the lights of a huge rigger called "globalization". Rae is convinced that the choice is no longer between capitalism and socialism, only which kind of capitalism (as if Bobby boy ever advocated socialism in the first place). Swayed by the advice of these two carnie shills for capitalism, Alexa McDonough wants the NDP to be the new Liberal party.
On a world scale the left wing wants to give us capitalism "with a human face". Even the rhetorical claims to "socialism" are now gone. The left has suffered from intellectual impoverishment ever since famous Fabian, George Bernard Shaw became an apologist for Joseph Stalin's barbarism. It ended up in Canada with the drivel of a Bob Rae.
The intellectual black hole of right wing ideologists is no better. They simply carry on a 150 year tradition of being vulgar apologists for the system, for every obscene war, every depression.. In Canada it ended up with the somnambulism of a Jean Chretien and the blatherings of a Preston Manning.
The truth of the matter is that left wing and right wing parties, despite some programmatic differences, defend the interests of capital. The right wing does so openly. The left wing seeks to make the working class buy in to the system. As the rate of "globalization" increases, the blurring of these party programs will narrow even more.
Years ago, a socialist comrade in the Socialist Party of Canada
told me that the bird of
capitalism needs both its right and left wings in order to fly. The older I
get, the more I see how correct he was.