Hypocrisy Thy Name Is Government
I came across a post on the internet the other day pointing out the New Conservative Government of Canada's sudden and passionate concern about the possibility of job losses in the future should Canada implement much in the way of environmental protections in order to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
If you really stop and think about it, that's in sharp contrast to the New Conservative Government of Canada's almost total lack of concern about the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of jobs lost in our manufacturing sector.
But there you go. Some job losses matter more than others to New Conservatives, I guess.
In any case, since life according to our governments these days is all about growth and productivity and more, more, more, I suppose it doesn't matter that blatant hypocrisy is the new way of doing politics. Afterall, growth is all about producing more and producing more is all about extracting natural resources out of the earth and extracting natural resources out of the earth is all about environmental decline.
Yay, the New World!
I mean, seriously. Since all our economic success and consequent environmental devastation is based on being consumers to the max, why isn't our government - which is supposed to represent the citizenry - encouraging us to down tools more often, stop buying stuff, learn to live small? Why is our government, instead, always talking the productivity line. Always. Think about it - when was the last time a Federal Government of Canada didn't talk the productivity line? I can't remember when. Can you remember when?
Cripes, I can even remember the Power Corp offspring telling us we were bad little Canadians because we weren't producing enough to keep up with... who? China? India? Jesus Christ on Pogey. Where in hell does the media find these nutters?
But there's a long lost truth here that I'd like to remind everybody of - government isn't business. It's supposed to be the representative of the country's citizenry. It isn't supposed to represent business - it's supposed to represent citizens. But it's all so assbackwards now, isn't it. Did you know that Corporations, for instance, are classed as individuals - in the sense that they have the rights of individuals - and yet, legally, they get to claim a sort of vague ground in the sense that, well, they AREN'T really individuals - are they.
But given that corporations are made up of individuals, who benefits from this steady erosion of citizen representation by our governments? Because it isn't so much like this in the Old World, is it. Governments in Europe tend to respond more to what citizens want, as opposed to what business wants. How did it become so lopsided over here? Or was it ever thus and we have yet to evolve to a point where way of life matters, too. That everything in life isn't about producing. That how we live isn't all a matter of how much we consume. That we have the right to representation by our government that includes not working until we drop.
And you'd think government would, at this point, on its own and quite naturally, be responding to what is obviously, clearly, a citizenry in need of representation. And we shouldn't have to fear that representation isn't full on and consistent and, well, not so blatantly hypocritical that it isn't any kind of representation at all.
What the hell is government for, afterall? Or should we just stop voting? What's the point if the government just gets elected and then doesn't represent the interests of citizens.
A "Citizens Party" anyone?
