An Insight Into Yet Another Thing Wrong With 'Politics'

"I'm not sure I could do it, the temptation to beat somebody may be overwhelming and I am doer not a 'let's meet to discuss and plan' kind of guy. I would find it way too frustrating I think."

This post isn't about taking the piss out of online comments. (the DFC feature notwithstanding, I tend to do that privately. A lot.) It's actually about something that's far more scary and unsettling to me than any finger-pointing that can be done towards anyone currently on Council...mostly because I know the dangers of squandering kicks at the can. Yes, time marches on, and there's always another day, another chance...but it's important to remember the cumulative effect of 'defeats'; eventually, the spirit is sufficiently crushed, and/or the resultant adhesions and scar tissue prevents further sallies. (This is what worries me the most about the ward boundary review process.) It's about how, even in mining positive energies towards making things better, we can actually demean the entire process...and couch it in what really amounts to self-referential arrogance. 

Allow me to go back a couple of years. To the last election. To Ward 10 candidate José Pablo Bustamnte's gambit to- Well, here's the video of his 'press conference':

(If you want to understand more about all this, just do a search on this site's posts with the tag 'Election 2010')

Granted, his behaviour can be viewed more as 'ill-advised' than anything else, but it relates directly to my point: apparently people have so little regard for the office to which they crave election that they're apparently not honest with themselves on the most important levels. Combined with this, apparently people see themselves as being far better equipped than the incumbent...and apparently often have no difficulty in getting friends and fellow-sycophants to agree with them. 

How did we get here? How did we reach the point where people feel such ire towards local elected officials on the one hand, yet on the other, await with bated breath for the 'saviour candidate'? Further, how did we get to a point where some people take the effect of the former, push aside the latter, and propel themselves into the candidate's role?

I read a lot of online comments. So I have to recognize that there's a lot of bile being passed around out there. A ton of frustration, of disappointment, cynicism, mild despair, paralyzing-

Anyway, from all of this apparently comes this "I can do better than some of them on Council with one arm tied behind my back," mindset. 

My reactions to this are various. First, I do an eyebrow-raise worthy of Mr. Spock. Then I tend to get a little defensive on the part of the people being labelled as 'defective'. Then I bring in a little incredulity at the person's chutzpah...and finally, I can't help but wonder if there's something in the water, because so many clearly not-idjit people come off as, well, idjits. 

(I need to clarify here: I'm not saying that there aren't some pretty sound potential candidates within the community of 'dissenters', some good raw talent that -with the right input and opportunities for 'instruction'- could make fine councillors or trustees. But there's a huge difference between what rage and fedupedness can produce in terms of 'You know what I think?!?' declarations, and genuinely well thought-out ones, where there's been as equal an amount of consideration given to honest self-assessment as there has been to the bilious bloviating. 

And yet it's not just out of convenient, or situational anger that people seem to put the cart before the horse. Last election, we had somewhere in the  neighbourhood of 15 candidates for Mayor, and 20 in Ward 2. How many of these were actually 'qualified' to run?

During that election, I had a conversation with a neighbour from across the street where I was living. I was curious as to why he was running. The first time I asked him, he got all red in the face and started off galloping down Tirade Road, beginning his venting with 'So that Larry DiIanni doesn't win!'

Arms crossed, I just listened for several minutes, fascinated by this quite self-absorbed mindset. This neighbour wasn't stupid. In fact, he was quite an intelligent guy. But I suppose that understanding this about him actually made what he was doing seem all the more...unsavoury. (We had a further discussion about his motives; on that occasion, I went to town on him, in a quite unneighbourly way, kicking at him so hard he left a good portion of his stuffing behind on the driveway.)

This 'problem' of ours points to a larger one: a disconnect from the very process that inspires their reactions. I've come to believe that so many of us feel so utterly apart from what happens at The Governance Table that we end up responding in ways that are far beneath us. But frustration and desperation can elicit some pretty questionable reactions, so I'm not surprised. But it makes me embrace all the more heartily that the 'answer' isn't just getting 'better candidates' running, that has more to do with making a deeper commitment to, and investment in our own governance, one that goes well beyond online commenting and poster-creation. Otherwise, we're going to end up in an endless loop of bitter naval-gazing that results in opining such as the following: 

"You have passion and a real desire to make it a better city, and in my books that is the number one reason to elect someone."

To which I replied...on tippy-toes on my stable soapbox:

"As opposed to hiring the person who's best qualified?

Oh, that's right; we don't have a mechanism in place, a guide to 'hiring practices' of our councillors and trustees, so that we can properly assess their capabilities and feel confident in being able to project their competency and performance in the job, once hired. 

That, and we're so damned frustrated and angst-filled that we can't see straight, and so want to partake in 'The Cult of Personality'.

Riiiiiiight." 

M Adrian Brassington