Don't Sugar Coat It, Andrew. Canada's Plague of Failed Governance.

 


The Tyee's Andrew Nikiforuk, in an excoriating rebuke to Alberta premier, Jason Kenney, and his chief medical officer sockpuppet, Hinshaw, has captured a broader and potentially lethal failure of today's political caste.

During this pandemic, a certain strain of political leaders and elites have sought to consign us to the Titanic without life-jackets or lifeboats. Instead, they have wished us “a bon voyage” on a badly ventilated ship in an ocean full of variant icebergs.

In plain English, they have admitted that they don’t want to lead in difficult times let alone make difficult decisions, and that ordinary citizens should just fuck off.

Yes, there is an abrupt failure of leadership today that runs from Covid to the climate breakdown emergency. Again and again we see leaders who simply "don't want to lead in difficult times let alone make difficult decisions." In Canada, that goes straight to the top where our leader sees his job as ensuring re-election, with a majority if possible.

Kenney’s decision to abandon Albertans, Florida-style, to the unpredictable evolution of a novel virus defies not only basic science but every conservative tenet of what good governance means.

A responsible government simply doesn’t gamble with their citizens’ health or knowingly put them at risk unless they simply don’t give a damn anymore.

Why civilizations fail.

In his brilliant essay on why civilizations fail entitled “Immoderate Greatness,” U.S. ecologist William Ophuls notes that governments stop working for their citizens when elites lose their consensus, and no one can keep track of the complexity anymore.

Whenever governments stop solving problems and give up on their citizens, lots of bad things start to happen. “Selfishness crowds out sacrifice, the interests of the mass and elites diverge, and the elite itself is divided into warring factions,” writes Ophuls. Trust evaporates, and social disintegration fills the void.

All summer long the media has tallied countless examples of failed governance. Half the United States remains unvaccinated because the government is no longer trusted. A state as wealthy as Texas can’t build a reliable electricity grid capable of withstanding extreme cold. In China, engineers failed to design modern cities resistant to extreme flooding. The Middle East has failed to provide reliable power during heat waves. And on it goes.

So it goes, indeed. They know you'll vote for them anyway.

Comments

  1. the salamanderAugust 10, 2021 at 5:55 AM

    .. Here’s The Alberta Agenda
    Be sure to examine ‘the letter section

    Then look at the legislation or initiatives of Jason Kenney

    He’s on a distinct pathway to seperate Alberta from Canada

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Agenda

    He’s following it point by point

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibAugust 10, 2021 at 8:32 AM

      I think the Alberta Agenda is DOA, Sal. When it was floated 20 years ago the province seemed in a far different place, resting on limitless subterranean wealth. People like Harper dreamed of a stand alone Alberta playing the role of energy superpower.

      That vision may still burn bright in the mind of some but they're the cranks. Kenney has tried to flex the province's muscle and it's gone nowhere. They're up to their collective arse in debt and environmental liabilities, the future of bitumen is bleak, they have a large pool of poorly educated workers who went from high school to the oil patch back when it was dripping with money. Kenney has driven UCP into a ditch. In the midst of a pandemic he went to war on Alberta's essential healthcare workers. That's stupid layered on stupid. Notley and the NDP are rebounding. And now Kenney appears to be turning Alberta into a giant Covid super-spreader. I wonder what Alberta looks like in Kenney's dreams at bedtime?

      Delete

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