Election Time Again??

I am a self-confessed political junkie - or at least I was. There was a time when I would look forward to reading about or even better, watching a weekend-long televised political convention. I loved listening to the commentators, usually, people who were both knowledgeable in terms of the politics of the times and the players as well as being articulate in their debates. Election night was exciting as I watched the returns come in and listened to the pundits' best guesses as to what it all meant. It was always fun to get into a long conversation about alternatives to the country's/world's problems and how they could all be solved is only the right people were elected. But somehow over the past 10 years, my enthusiasm for watching or even debating politics has waned.

Part of the reason for my ever-declining interest in the world of politics is the amount of and the depth of the knowledge that is made available. There is just too much information. It comes from every conceivable angle, whether one wants it or not. Even worse, much of the information is unreliable. The political correspondents seldom have a deep comprehension of the issues, relying instead on anecdotal proofs and the rhetoric of whatever political stream they were spawned from. The information has been dumbed down so that even the most unsophisticated of us, can get the message. As opposed to an in-depth detailed analysis of the issues, what we now get is a simplistic vision of a black and white world where there is only one correct answer. The media's job now is to longer educate its readers/viewers but rather to sell them on a particular point of view.

The other reason for my declining interest in politics is that there no longer appears to be election cycles, there is no down time between election news. Of course, so much of Canadian news is dominated by what happens to the south of us. In November, the American mid-term elections (which were talked about for the proceeding twelve months) were held. Already in mid-January, Democrats are announcing who will be running. or at least wants to run, for the president in 2020. For the next 22 months, our Facebook pages and our news sites will be ever increasingly flooded with bits of trivia and the findings of irrelevant polls as to who might win and why.

Canadian politics are only marginally less all-pervasive. In spite of the fact that the Canadian federal election will not be held until mid-October of this year, it is clear that Andrew Sheer, the leader of the Conservative party is already engaged in making speeches in key areas across the country. The leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Sing is actively campaigning for a seat in B.C., and one could wonder if Justin Trudeau ever stopped campaigning since the last election. Premiers such as Doug Ford of Ontario are also making speeches that sound as if they are flogging their particular brand of solutions to whoever will listen in the hopes that their preferred national party will become the next rulers. In every national paper and media broadcast, one can find some comment or news bit explaining why one party might win or lose. It is all so tiring. It is all so irrelevant.

One has to wonder if a life-long political junkie such as myself can become tired and jaded - perhaps even occasionally uncaring - with all of the useless political noise that surrounds us, it is not surprising that those who found the whole process less interesting ten years ago - have just given up on it entirely. The political leadership and the owners/managers of our media outlets seemed to have been convinced that if one can't provide good, informed debate (or it is too expensive) that overwhelming amounts of regurgitated crap will do as well.

All of which is rather sad for those of us who always prefer quality over quantity.