The start of a return to normal?

I used to be a news junkie. That got pared back when I saw that newsmakers were more often trying to inflame emotions to hide what they were up to, than trying to act responsibly. I don't like people trying to push my buttons, which explains why I bailed on Twitter years ago. As far as I'm concerned Musk can burn it down and it's just dandy if he loses multiple billions of dollars along the way. Or if he carries on down the road he's on so far, the regulators will shut it down, just like they shut down other hate sites.

There is a huge difference between trying to put the best face on an issue, or to present your proposals in the best light, and actually lying. A simple example. In both Canada and USA elections are done via an established process. Voters are checked against a list, there is a process to deal with legitimate voters not on the list for some reason, they are given a ballot or ballots along with the instructions to fill it out properly, the ballots are counted and recounted, the whole decentralized process is supervised by people appointed by the relevant authority, carried out by numerous volunteers, there are provisions for partisan oversight, and there is a process to resolve a close or disputed vote count. There are any number of cases where the loser of a close count asks for a recount or judicial review. There is a process for that as well, and it's a completely legitimate request. 

And then there is outright election denialism, to say that an election was stolen or fraudulent, sometimes even before the election. We're seeing that a lot in USA in recent years and it's bullshit from end to end. There are a small (tiny) number of illegitimate ballots cast by honest mistake, and an even smaller number that are actually cast fraudulently. Out of millions upon millions of ballots cast, we're talking a few dozen cases at most.  

As a digression, for the purposes of this discussion, I'm not considering gerrymandering to be voting fraud, though it is, in a sense.

There were a variety of methods employed to overturn the election results. One of them was to say that because the other side had protested the results, it was fine for them to do so as well, equating a legitimate recount process with an illegal attempt to substitute fraudulent electors into the process, all the way to advocating a violent overthrow of the entire process. The two processes are not remotely equivalent.

Before any candidate is allowed to run for any office, they should be required to read the existing voting process and associated dispute resolution process, and then sign off that they understand it and will abide by the election results, and to publicly state the same. Anyone saying they won't accept the results of the election should be removed from the ballot. Such people have no place in our democratic process. That ought to be easy to enact, and would help us avoid the circus train wreck happening in USA.

It's not so easy to enact a formal fact checking mechanism, with an associated hook to drag the liar off stage. After all, it's a long and slippery slope between obvious verifiable facts, through probabilities, incomplete truths, lack of context, faulty reasoning, honest mistakes, slips of the tongue, attack dog gotchas, dog whistling, retail lies for immediate gain, to wholesale lies intended to denigrate the entire process. 

We could use such a process. We have a variety of carpet bagging politicians that are using such tactics to appeal to their base. The question is how big that base is, and how much the base can be expanded. In the USA it's clear the Trump poison quickly spread from a small rabid base, to almost half the electorate. It seems there is no lie so stupid that it will turn off a partisan believer.

Here in Alberta we have a new premier in Danielle Smith. She is a former politician who betrayed her party by crossing the floor in a crass attempt to gain power. She and the other followers were all voted out at the next opportunity, and rightly so. She's spent her political exile as a shock jock radio announcer pandering to a base that feels ostracized from the mainstream. Every day, such a person has to come up with new red meat for the audience, to keep them agitated. It leads you to saying stupid, sensational things, or audience goes elsewhere.

This is no way to run a province. She's already had to walk back a statement that the unvaccinated were the most discriminated group in history. Bah! The unvaccinated are merely living the consequences of a decision they made on their own.

There is hope, though. Smith recently won a by-election, though the numbers are hardly overwhelming. But let's start with her selection as party leader. It took 6 ballots and barely more than 50% of the vote, from a pool of 112,000 UCP members, who already skew to the conservative side of the spectrum. In the by election she got about 54% of the votes cast, which is about 21% of the eligible voters. Not what I'd call a ringing endorsement. 

Soon she is going to face the general public, many (most?) of whom are to the political left of people who hold UCP memberships. No wonder the NDP is looking good in the polls. For the past several years Notley had the easiest job in Canadian politics, opposing the clown show that was the Kenney government. So far, Smith hasn't made Notley's job any harder. I'm sure there are staffers in the NDP that have been documenting every stupid thing the UCP politicians have said, and will bring it up in the next election.

In other signs of hope in the USA, Trump and MAGA-ism seem to be on the ebb. The Democrats did extraordinarily well in the midterms, holding the senate, and it remains to be seen where the house will end up. Considering the Republicans were expecting a red tidal wave, and historically an unpopular president loses seats in both houses, maybe the pendulum is swinging back to the middle, back to normalcy. We can but hope.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape, but could be river reflections.

River reflection (Yukon)

Tombstone

Green Fools Clown wedding

Celina, apricating

Caribou

Lynx. It's less than 10 feet from me at this point.

Film, the beaver pond beside the Dempster.