Wednesday 3 June 2015

Young Dog and new tricks.

One of my greatest pet peeves is being treated like I'm stupid. I don't have all the answers; never have and never will. But I can piece together the fact that supporting a healthy, empowered, respectful, educated population isn't cheap and it isn't easy ........ but in the long term saves money and more importantly saves people. A society that creates broken, disenfranchised people will always COST, in every way. I feel the people of this country are craving a positive change.

So when a Political Party fear mongers and attempts to coerce support from Citizens, they should AT LEAST not assume those people are stupid. It's insulting ..... and shows an obtuse lack of paying attention to what has been going on. For instance, Alberta just voted in a government that (while it makes ME personally insanely pleased) I think they really chose simply because they were so very tired of being treated like they didn't see what was going on.

So now, in advance of the Fall Federal Election, The Federal Conservative Party is running the following ad (link at bottom of blog). In it they cherry pick some of Mr. Trudeau's positions and discuss how meaningless they are, and assume we, the voting public, can't Google Mr. Trudeau to find out his stand on not only these issues but a ton of other more weighty ones. They make comments about his hair, which in this day and age seems like the male equivalent of cleavage shaming a female politician, and they beat around the bush of "he's too young". Now, they don't actually say "he's too young", instead saying "he's not ready" but the impact is the same. And it's a glib attempt to point out Mr. Harper's "experience". But maybe they fail to see that many Canadians aren't loving the "Harper Experience" and just feel ignored ......... many of those Canadians are about the same age as Mr. Trudeau and we don't feel too young to feel sold out by an uncaring government. The Conservatives seem to have forgotten that.

Lastly, I need to point out the fact that Mr. Harper was first elected as Prime Minister at the age of 46 and Mr Trudeau will be 44 (almost 45) at the time of the election. 44 wouldn't even be the youngest Prime Minister in our history. In fact 8 of our 22 Prime Ministers have been under 50, so relative "youth" in politics is not unheard of. Mr Harper's people attacking Mr. Trudeau for his age seems pretty hypocritical and, again, assumes we are too stupid to google these facts. And isn't age just a number, anyways?

So I wish Mr. Trudeau very well and I hope his party doesn't follow suit with a negative campaign. I believe Canadians feel very tired of that. They want a little hope, honour, and kindness to hitch their wagon to. I, personally, tend to lean a little lefter than Mr. Trudeau but am waiting to see what kinds of campaigns are run before I decide. And to the Conservative Party, I'm 43 (a year younger than Mr. Trudeau) and I am old enough to use that wagon colloquialism, old enough to know that Canadians are being marginalized by their own Government, and old enough to know Mr. Harper won't have my vote.

http://www.conservative.ca/cpc/just-not-ready/?mpi=webpost&sig=220b1eb5&vpi=20150527a



1 comment:

  1. Unfortunately the median voting age in Canada is very high. The highest voter turnout is in the 55+ age groups, and the lowest is the 18-35 groups. So these "election ads that are not election ads because the election has not been called yet" target the 55+ market. I was appalled when I saw this particular one. I don't think it is targeted at anyone being stupid, but at an elder population that is ageist. We live in Alberta with a relatively young population and young elected leaders but the demographic reality is that older Canadians in Ontario and Quebec almost always end up electing our national government. One more reason to move to the ranked ballot option being floated in Ontario? Theresa

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