Fear Won. Civil Society Lost.

"In this election Adrian Dix and his campaign hit lots of precise if small notes that a political journalist like myself might keep track of and tally, but overall the New Democrats apparently neither summoned enough fear of their opponents nor struck the themes or meme-like policy ideas that summoned enough inspiration. Campaigns are not PowerPoint presentations. They are emotional narratives. You would think that journalists like me, who describe ourselves as story tellers, would have better sensed where this tale was taking people in the late chapters." David Beers, The Tyee.

The results are in.  The majority of voters do not care enough about their society to learn how power works against them.  They are happy to believe the slogans paid by wealthy transnational interests rather than think about how this affects the quality of life for them and their family.  They want to believe in their own superiority, their natural common sense, rather than find out how the operating system has kept the masses oppressed and ignorant. They want to believe that "Jobs" and "Economy" will be good for them without understanding how power sets the terms and conditions they must work under.

The majority of voters don't want to think about their relationship to social justice, or their role in community building, and so corporate funded media campaigns keep them mesmerized and oppressed. And don't think it will be status quo.  We have told the funding interests we don't care about our province, our neighbours, or our nation.  We only want to be entertained. So they can do as they like with us.

We are now Bangladesh. We are now, in narrative, a third world petro state and the operating system is designed so our elected leaders are powerless. The land will be destroyed by pipelines and tankers and we will pay the corporations to do it.

Our teachers and healers will burn out and our schools become warehouses for our kids while we earn twenty cents an hour in dangerous conditions. Our hospitals will be kept for those who can afford to pay for them while we die in toxic swamps. And if the poisons don't get us we will be too overcome with rage to organize and cooperate.

Over the last thirty years the wise and intelligent have warned us. Yes a minority have marched, protested and contributed to rescuing the human experiment. But the majority have dismissed these efforts for the fleeting giggles of the Dragon's Den.  Our communities will descend into soap opera dramas. Eventually we will pull out each other's hair, gouge out our neighbours' eyes and attach bombs to our own underwear.

All because we were afraid of the word socialism.  All because we became afraid of our own power believing that anything we do for humanity, community and society, is bad for us.

The fangs of capitalism have bled humanity of its worth and integrity. It has made us idiots in our own living rooms and we voted for its end game.