Whether it be spring or fall, election time is hovering on the horizon.
With more than 50 per cent of each hard earned dollar being snatched before food reaches your table, and with less than 50% of the population voting, I think it is time that the silent majority wake up, get up, and speak up.
If you don’t vote, you abort your right to complain. If you don’t vote, you are part of the problem. If you don’t vote, you could be risking the right to. Turning a blind eye to a fringing dictatorship is not the way to honour those who fought and gave the supreme sacrifice in order to avoid that.
Sadly the choice is not unlike jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. The King-of-the-Castle bickering of all three parties is nothing more than a mixed addiction of individual power tripping. Calling a, well on its way down the chute, worldwide depression, “a recession,” is only fogging the mirror in which they are looking and seeing the cause of. How dumb do they think the general population is? Because of bungled management Third-world conditions are surfacing, one doorstep at a time.
Jack and the Beanstalk social clamouring should be left in the preschool readers. What could have been, and should have been, was a three-party coalition, forming a government – anxious, willing and able to compatibly solve the country’s problems – in accordance with long-term needs, not individual short-term greed. But you’ll get no correction from any of those now in power, so what have you got to lose by looking outside of the box?
Call me opinionated, if you should so what – that is a prerogative everyone deserves, but at the time of writing, having lived in this country we proudly call Canada for a period of 29,323 days (do the math, folks; that dates roots back to the Great Depression), I feel I am not lacking the right, on occasion, to express my thoughts.
And my thinking, I am certain, is shared by a vast escalating number of those in the know in the past few decades.
What we need is inflation control. What we need is spending within the budget. What we need is to get back to the basics. What we need is transparency. What we need is the reincarnation of truth, integrity, and honesty, as well as common sense. God forbid that I forfeit my standards to ever engage in politics as pictured now. What we need, indeed, is a clean sweep up there on the so-called Capitol Hill.
I know the question looms as to how this can be accomplished. But it takes much less than the hard pressed brain of a rocket scientist to realize that this can be done by you, me, your neighbour, and your neighbour’s neighbour – just by getting off our butts and getting out to vote. It is as simple as that.
I have never hidden the fact that I have long voted for the Green Party of Canada. Their consistent environmental concerns, sustainable farming, and budget retention have long been my attraction.
But lately this has been strengthened 100-fold by an e-mail video that was drawn to my attention by one of my many readers. It was a short statement from Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, in the House of Commons on Dec. 5, 2013.
I have never had the pleasure of meeting Elizabeth May. I have never had the pleasure of hearing her speak previous to this video. But the uncomplicated truth, tone, serenity, and compassion in her voice rang a bell loud and clear deep within me. Why in hell is this woman not the leader of our country???
I am not saying she is a Nelson Mandela; I am not saying she is a Martin Luther King; I am not saying she is a John F. Kennedy; nor would I suggest she’s a Mother Teresa. What I am saying is that she is a stepping-stone in the about-turn direction that this country will deeply regret if not taken.
Get off of your butt and get out and vote – if for no other reason than “Barrie said so.” You’ll have no regrets!
Pin this article on your fridge door just to make sure that you don’t forget.
Take care, ’cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105