Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Are we letting democracy slip away?

Technology is not only outpacing our laws, we have allowed it to hijack a few of our morals and ethics as well.

Or perhaps it has just exposed how far we have fallen as a society.

Whether it is those who take pictures at fatal accidents rather than help, cyber bullies who hide behind (or under) their keyboards, or now our political leaders, it seems you don’t need to be virtually ethical because, well, it’s not really you. Is it?

It started with Liberal Leader Bob Rae walking across the floor of the House of Commons to publicly apologize to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews after revealing that the VikiLeaks scandal, in which the minister’s dirty divorce dribble was spewed all over Twitter, was the result of a rogue Liberal staffer.

But nothing compares to the Conservatives allegedly using call centres to give conflicting or deliberately wrong information to Liberal voters on the location of their polling station. Welcome to Robo-Gate: At least 31,000 served, and counting.

Smear campaigns and dirty politics are one thing but purposely misinforming voters to keep them away from the polls comes out of the same mentality that our servicemen and servicewomen are fighting (and dying) against in other parts of the world every day.

Some people are quick to compare this to United States style politics. Perhaps that is accurate but Americans also have a tendency to follow up abuses with a tough law and strong penalty message. Just ask the former governor of Maryland whose political manager almost got 12 years for abusing robocall technology.

The truth is, outside the Ottawa bubble, not much resonates with Canadians unless you mess around with their cable TV or their Timmy’s.

But this may be different.

Tom Clark, Global TV News senior political analyst and host of The West Block, agrees and said on CHML, as a Canadian “the one time I intersect with politics is when I go out and vote. That’s my chance to engage. Well if the sense is you can’t even do that without having to think twice because you may be spoofed by somebody, I think that’s where people start getting a little angry about all of this.”

This is why Elections Canada confirmed its investigation, (which it rarely does), is going after more resources to carry on the investigation, and will report back to Parliament (not the government) with its findings.

Hopefully, we’ll then know exactly who was behind this, who financed it and who in the Conservative Party knew about it. Right now the evidence clearly indicates only the Conservatives would have had anything to gain in all of this.

Still, is this enough to get Canadians attention? The veteran newsperson suggests unless someone is eventually lead out of a courtroom in chains on their way to jail it may be no more than an, “irritant”.

The real problem for all of us, Clark says, is that “no rightful Canadian feels where we are now is the right place to be. Interfering with your vote is not where Canadians want to be.”

He adds we could easily nip this sort of confusion in the bud if only at the beginning of every robocall we had the leader of the party being endorsed saying, I am this leader and I approve this message. “Once you put the leader’s name on it, it tends to clean it up in a hurry.

The bigger question we must ask ourselves is: Are we happy with the state of our democracy and where we have allowed it to go? If not, we have to collectively fix it by sending that message to our politicians.

Original Article
Source: the spec
Author: Scott Thompson

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