Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Our binary future


The Liberal party is going to get a lot of unsolicited advice over the next several months, but they could do much worse than listen to Jason Cherniak.
Jason tells the Liberal organization to clean out its Ottawa office, stop trying to pick "winners", and listen to the party membership.
One piece of his advice that I disagree with, however, is that the Liberals should "stay Liberal".
The future for progressives in Canada is to merge with the New Democrats.
As Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom says
Eventually, both parties will be forced to face the mathematics of the situation. Each wants to be the one to defeat the Harper Conservatives. Neither can do it alone.
As many other countries are discovering as well, the 21st Century political model is a binary one -- a yin yang toggle switch; the either-or language of the computer code. Politics is the forces of light vs the forces of darkness, and you're on our side or you're with the terrorists. No time for nuance or tolerance for compromise. The serpentine political slither between extremes is considered to be offensive, and labeled as unprincipled.
Myself, I actually liked the Liberals non-ideological approach, but I grew up in the last century.
Times have changed.

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