Dear editor:
Our political leaders are busy fundraising for upcoming provincial and federal elections.
Be aware that the seeds of blame, shame, anger and fear are being prepared for planting. These seeds have taken root in the United States and have left that country unable to bridge the chasms dividing the electorate.
Congress cannot even agree to form a committee to investigate the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol.
What will the congressional meat grinder, aka the legislature of the United States of America, do to President Joe Biden’s ambitious agenda? This is the bitter harvest of demagoguery.
We have learned to our shock, shame and dismay that Canada is not the racist-free zone that some of us have long proclaimed it to be.
Let us not, then, take for granted that we can escape the crippling consequences of demagoguery.
At least one political party in Canada is preparing to take us down that road. It is looking for a firm that can appeal to emotion over reason, innuendo over fact, duplicity over integrity.
One firm advertises itself as follows. “A social media firehose of attention-grabbing, emotion-manipulating, behaviour-nudging messaging designed to corral the faithful and to convert the fence sitters,” (Susan Delacourt, The Toronto Star, May 28, A5)
Tactics such as these strike at the heart of the democratic process. They make a mockery of elections.
All this is done under the protection of free speech. One freedom used to compromise others, unless we refuse to be manipulated.
What do such methods reveal about the people who would stoop to their use? Surely we can conclude that such scoundrels have no place in our legislatures. I am reminded of a line by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales: a shitten shepherd and cleane sheep.
The last Ontario and federal elections were sorry affairs full of personal attacks. Our prime minister in a national televised debate was called a liar and a fraud, among other slurs. Kathleen Wynne fared no better.
Let’s punish any party that puts winning ahead of integrity, of democracy, and of a Canada to be proud of.
David Lailey
NOTL
