Jay Currie

Or the lack thereof.

I’ve been busy. But I have also been thinking.

I’ve been watching the dance of the Canadian politicians round the Maypole of global warming. I’ve been watching the silence which greeted the CPC budget with its vast expenditures. I’ve been enjoying the inability of the NDP to string two sentences together and the sheer cravenness of the Liberals and the Greens as they cut their “not in the backroom” deals.

A couple of years ago I suspect I would have been able to summon a fair whack of outrage about some or all of this. Now, not so much. (Amusingly, and for no doubt a short time, Blogger seems to have restored my old, back to 2002, blog. For the complete Currie you can go here. I am going to try and download the archives and post them here out of Blogger’s reach.)

The reason, I think, is that I no longer expect anything better from politicians regardless of party. We are blessed with Conservatives who have abandoned even the bedrock of fiscal probity in their gallop for majority, Liberals who have elected a leader obsessed with a non-issue, Socialists who aren’t.

The worst of it is that these politicians are deeply in touch with public opinion. They don’t fart without a poll to tell them which way to blow the wind. And that is about us.

We have become hysterics. No longer fit to debate public policy. No longer able to separate partisan caterwauling from political ground truth. Nice old ladies in tennis shoes are convinced that Algore isn’t telling the half of it and that sea levels will rise 50 feet at least. Well groomed Tories are perfectly prepared to argue that as a third derivative program spending actually will decrease under a CPC government in the year 2046. And if you venture to disagree with either they will erupt with charges of “denialism” or “disloyalty”.

I love politics. I have since I was about twelve. But I love the politics of debate, intelligence and a genuine attempt to frame and decide issues rationally. I grew up politically in the Trudeau era and, while I have no time at all for the Trudeaupian legacy, I enjoyed the man himself. I’ve no doubt that Trudeau was willing to trim for a few votes here and there, and none at all that he was willing to pander to gain seats in Quebec. What I liked about the man was that he had some sense of why his having a majority or a workable minority was important. He had an agenda, a vision and a sense of the nation he wanted to create. It might not have been my vision even then; but it was a starting point for a serious and rational debate.

I’m afraid that at the federal level I don’t see any hint of such resolution in either Harper or his, more or less neutered, Cabinet. Dion…no, but seriously. Jack Layton? These men would be capable of going head to head with, well, Joe Clark. But they simply lack the gravitas to sit in the same seat as a Trudeau or a Stanfield or, for that matter, a Mulroney. They are not serious and, worse still, they are entirely aware that they are not serious.

One of my great pleasures over Lent was my ongoing conversation with Edward Michael George as to the nature of the Anglican Belief. You can be forgiven for not actually reading the now 20-30 thousand words in this incomplete conversation. It was a pleasure simply because there was no sense in which our respective positions can be reconciled nor can either of us prove the other wrong. Like most good conversations it is about the exchange of ideas. An exchange which is only possible between people of good will with a certain basic understanding of the rules of engagement in such a conversation.

Which is what I am actually interested in as I write this blog. While it is fun to take shots at the assorted buffoons who grace the Canadian and world stage, I leave the quick hits and short posts to people like Kathy and Kate who are good at them. I’m going to try to do more of what I enjoy and, on a decent day, am good at: longer pieces a step or two removed from the fray.

Or at least that is my current story. Likely to change now that I’ve written it.