Too Much Faith, Too Little Time

I remember the day I heard that Rob Ford would be running for Mayor in Toronto. I figured this to be great news. Ford, a blustering idiot councillor from the suburbs needed a good smack down, and there was no way that a racist bigot like him could ever win in a city as beautifully diverse as Toronto. He would be ejected from politics, outed for who he was, an ignorant blowhard who couldn't possibly hope to represnet the most multicultural city in Canada.

Oh how it hurts to be so wrong.

Not only did Rob Ford win, he won with 47% of the vote. That means that 47% of Torontonians either voted for a bigot or didn't bother to do the research themselves to find out that that they were going to vote for a bigot. On top of that, 50% didn't even show up to vote at all. We're past a question of "who stole votes from whom" here, this is problem is systemic.

Dave Meslin had part of it right when he talked about Toronto's invisible primaries, an ugly byproduct of our antiquated first-past-the-post voting system is that we exclude voices from the debate because they aren't loud enough to win. Remember that 50% that didn't even show up to vote? Well knowing that your vote actually counts for something is a great way to energise interest in politics.

But there's a second element that we don't hear discussed enough and that's interest by virtue of time and energy. Ford won because he ran a great campaign. It painted him as a straight-talking, no-nonsense guy who's going to "clean up City Hall" while somehow obscuring the fact that he himself was a millionaire, bent on destroying everything most Torontonians hold in high regard. All anyone had to do was Google his name to find out who he really was, but too few people did -- 380,201 people actually, and now we have four years to find out just how much this man can do, both to the city itself, and to its reputation on the world stage.

For political devotees like myself, it's easy to dismiss 47% of the voting public as either ignorant or crazy, but it's just not true. I honestly believe that people want to understand the politics of their city, province and country, but they simply don't have time. For those of us for whom politics is a hobby or interest, it's hard to accept that someone wouldn't want to burn a few hours a day reading up on local events, or watching a news show, but for most of us, a few hours is all we have, and many of us would rather spend that time on something that makes us happy, whether that be painting, reading, hockey, or just socialising. Democracy is work for many of us, and it's a commitment that some of us can't make without sacrificing our sanity.

Now I'm not excusing political apathy, far from it. For the next four years, every one of the 380,201 people who voted for Ford and the million or so who didn't vote should be reminded that the state of things is in fact their fault. No, I'm trying to point out that any society that doesn't allow for enough time to both do what we personally need for our sanity as well as take part in our own governance isn't really a Democracy. In a real Democracy, a blustering fool like Ford couldn't hope to succeed because the public would actually know what kind of person he is. His comments about cyclists being at fault when they're hit by trucks and his tirades in council would be lunch counter conversation in every home in a real Democracy, his archaic views on homosexuality, a joke told over dinner.

We need to slow down, decompress and work less, engage more... with each other and with our community. Activist groups are great, but they're not much good if they only include people between the ages of 18 and 28, or those over 65. Too many people are just too busy paying rent and feeding their kids to worry about more than the 30second spot they saw on TV and that is the real problem here.

I've attached some Youtube videos to this post along the side to give you a taste for what kind of man is sitting in the Big Chair now. Know that Toronto is not unique in this, in fact I'd argue that such misfortune is just as likely to happen anywhere where the public is sufficiently overburdened and disenfranchised. I can only hope that he angers enough people in these next four years that it inspires others to re-engage with their Democracy.