Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Voter apathy is not at an all-time high, yet, or should I say low? In the most recent Ontario provincial election, turnout was abysmal. Perhaps, enthusiasm for apathy is high?

Really, low voter turnout is not so much an expression of a lack of interest as it is a passive-aggressive expression of disaffection with a political and economic system that is increasingly seen through.

Unlike the halcyon days of the 1950s, when cultural conformity was at its zenith, and, with it, confidence in authority, progress, politics and politicians; where Boy Scout Troops dominantly formed; where Church groups were community anchors, and where North American mono-culturalism reigned; today we see behind The Wizard of Oz curtain to come to understand the ugly backstage — the fallacy of political faith, political integrity and the ever-present grit or irony.

There wasn’t much irony in the fifties — people wern’t looking for it either.

Why are we not “into politics” when it comes to actually voting? It is because we know better. I  believe one of the reasons that we, collectively, believed more in the system then, is also due to a palpable understanding of wealth distribution — the system in the 1950s and early sixties had more to say to the middle class. It was larger. It was healthier. No wonder there was more conformity.

There were fewer millionaires and far fewer billionaires 50 years ago. It wasn’t so much a case of “moral clarity,” although that was there too, it was a case of financial clarity. The middle class had more money, families were larger, and divorces were not reflexive.

Today, two people work in the family and have less money than did one person working fifty years ago; during the apex of Western Liberal democracy with roller skate drive-in restaurants, car fins, and Buddy Holly, it was always about the money — about the money for a middle class that today barely exists as it once did.

The Canadian version of the American mid-century cultural and economic experience reached its apogee of optimistic expression during Expo ’67 in Montreal. It was a time of high National optimism and confidence: The middle class was strong, political populism with Trudeau as its expression ascendant, and the Vietnam War an American convulsion that only affirmed our own middle power virtues.

Soon, the American assassinations of the sixties, and the exhausted vexations of our American brother that attended them, and the political and corporate corruption that followed, ate away at us too. While they had their Enron, we had our Bre X; while they had Ken Lay, we have Conrad Black; today, they have Iraq, and we have the less morally troubling, but still muddled, Afghanistan.

Another aspect of our political world that has turned people off is the tyranny of special interest group lobbying. It has driven many, both north and south of the border, insane when it comes to faith in the system. Politics today has become the stuff of O.J. trials: If you have money, you get your way. Fifty years ago it was hidden — today it is openly flaunted, competed for, bragged about and justified in newspaper editorials by lobby members who write the cheques.

A recent example of this is the American Armenian lobby that pressured Capitol Hill in Washington to acknowledge the Armenian genocide that occurred almost 100 years ago by the Turks. With Turkey straddling both East and West, secular modernism with traditional Islam, I cannot think of a more foolish fixation than to alienate such a culturally and geographically strategic player. Yet, there it is, because money talks — but it talks for fewer people.

Our politics these days is not about prudence or common sense. It is about the expression of power by fewer and fewer people, by the movement of money into fewer and fewer hands (all economic indices show this), and corporate concentration, globalized economies, displaced manufacturing sectors with an attenuated, eroded, middle class as a consequence.

We know this. We are not happy. Voting increasingly seems to be an exercise in futility (whether this is true or not in Canada that is the prevailing perception).

As a public we are hip to advertising, spin, manipulations, and outright lies that are sold to us by coiffed, perfumed salesman smiling and with a straight face.

Voter apathy?

The tree of knowledge bears bitter fruit.