We are so fucked

[sabotabby]

Not even the NDP becoming the official opposition can mitigate the fact that my country has just given free reign to a monster bent on obliterating our civil rights, shirking our international responsibilities, destroying our social safety net, and probably racking up a tremendous debt in the process.

Enjoy your fighter jets, Canada, and wave goodbye to your democracy.

(I am pleased to say that both the riding where I live and the riding where I work went orange though. Still, it's small consolation when the future looks pretty bleak.)

Comments

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

What's your take on what happened in Quebec? Is it a long term shift or a Mulroney PC type temporary thing based on being pissed off with both the Libs and the Bloc?

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

Mine is that it's the latter. I'll be Very Interested to see what happens next.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Oh dear.
I think it's because the world is full of deranged, stupid, bad people. But I don't know what to do about it. Wah.

[secretsoflife.livejournal.com]

not all deranged people are bad people :(

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

I hope it won't be so bad and that with 105 seats (or whatever the NDP got) they will be a clever, loud and obstinate enough bunch to make a difference. I'm probably very wrong.

[sabotabby]

...Harper has a majority. He can do what he wants and knows his government won't fall for four years.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

I am so tired, and so very sad.

[sabotabby]

I'm tired and enraged.

[treehavn.livejournal.com]

From a largely selfish perspective, bye bye arts funding.

[sabotabby]

That's not selfish! The arts aren't a frill—they're essential to Canadian culture(s).

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

On mefi, there's the typical "blame the splitters" bullshit, and someone points out "if anyone's splitting it seems to be the libs this time, and if you wanted to vote for the strong party, you should have voted NDP"

Others were saying that even if the remaining libs voted NDP it wouldn't have been enough? That a lot of the problem is center/center-right "liberals" were scared of the dirty hippies in NDP and voted conservative?

So sad and frustrating. I hope Layton (as leader) and the NDP in general figures out a way to fight without compromising and still being able to lay blame for the bullshit that's gonna happen directly at the front door of the Cons

[queerasmoi.livejournal.com]

Here's a comment I left on a Facebook rant of a rah-rah-Liberal on my friends list who lashed out against the NDP over last night:

Well I wouldn't give the NDP *too* much credit for Liberal seat losses to Conservatives. Even the country's most ardent Liberals have conceded today that Ignatieff ran a weak campaign that just didn't provide any clear reason to support them. If you compare the results in Ignatieff's own riding, the Conservatives still drew in several thousand more votes than in the last election.

Imagine how different the result would have been if the Liberals had run an excellent campaign *and* the NDP wave had still crushed the Bloc. Those are not two mutually exclusive scenarios!

I do agree that we have to access the means still available to us. Heck, for over a decade of Liberal rule, the queer community consistently had to rely on the courts to access the rights that legislators were not brave enough to write into the law themselves until they were at the brink of losing power. So yes, let's "rise up", because those of us who did not elect Harper will not be a silent majority.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

So you guys are basically us now. Um, welcome.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Well not quite. We have a fairly right wing government with a centre-left opposition but that has to be better than a fairly right wing government with an utterly nutjob ultra-right opposition.

[outcastspice.livejournal.com]

yeah, i feel like i don't know my country. it's weird.

[sabotabby]

I don't know much of my country, because I live in Toronto. I have no idea what they're smoking out in the prairies.

[montreality.livejournal.com]

There is something wrong with our system if Conservatives get 54% of seats with barely 40% share of the vote :( At least we can say that only 40% of Canadians who voted support them, while the rest of the country is more progressive.

I'm proud of how Montreal and Quebec did. I am shocked Gilles Duceppe was defeated, and a little pleased at myself for helping make this happen (I live in his riding).

[montreality.livejournal.com]

Also, I was telling a coworker yesterday that we live in a bubble. I agree with the previous poster, I feel I don't know my country either. I don't understand the motivations behind why someone would vote for the Conservatives. I might be able to swallow fiscal conservatism depending on the situation, but social conservatism is something I can never allow myself to believe.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Quote from an editorial in The Tyee today:

"Stephen Harper won the election, but make no mistake -- yesterday this was a country created and defined by Lester Pearson, Tommy Douglas and Pierre Trudeau; this morning Canada belongs to Preston Manning."

[sabotabby]

God help us all.

[queerasmoi.livejournal.com]

Also you know what really scared me last night? Harper actually sounded MORE HUMAN in his victory speech. It's like he's been repressing some sort of part of him since the moment he entered the political arena without unmitigated power - and now that he has no checks and balances, his constipation is no more.

So in other words he's going to start speaking his mind and doing what he *really* wants. And that gives me the shivers.

[sabotabby]

This is the thing. All of the people who voted for him with the idea that he was a "fiscal conservative" (not that he acted like one), not a social conservative verging on fascist, are going to be very surprised when there's nothing holding him back anymore.

[sabotabby]

I imagine it isn't considered very important in USia. I'm surprised y'all gave a shit about the parasites' wedding, actually. I thought that was just the colonies.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Fuck, where am going to immigrate to now? It looks like Antarctica is now the only place is not politically intolerable, only because there is no people there except for the odd scientist, and scientists usually rock.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

Condolences. Been there many times and recently.

I'm still smarting over Rand Paul getting elected.

[sabotabby]

I still can't believe that Ron Paul named his kid after Ayn Rand.

[ladypolitik.livejournal.com]

Running. Away.

[sabotabby]

But where to?

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Commiserations. :-(

Hard to comprehend the way people are turning stupid the western world over.

The only hope is that an unrestrained Harper government will piss enough people off over four years not only to lose the Tories a load of votes, but for the non-Tories to get sufficiently serious about tactical voting to send the bastards to the sort of oblivion the British Tories met in 1997.

Only hopefully not with someone like Tony Blair as opposition leader.