Running for Your Life: Canada Votes

In the United States, Harper’s is a respected progressive magazine. “Harper’s” has an entirely different connotation in Canada, my home and native land. For the past decade, Canada has been Harper’s. Stephen Harper’s, that is.

Today, Canada is voting, and if there is any social justice in the world, the country’s voters will vote Conservative Party Prime Minister Harper out of office.

I wish I were there to cast my vote for either the Liberals or the New Democratic Party. Not because I’m a big believer in politicians, or the idea that, as Lewis Lapham writes in November’s Harper’s, we – regular folks in Canada or the U.S. – can't realistically expect our vote to matter in terms of choosing democracy over concentrated wealth.

I would back the Liberals or the NDP because it would at least FEEL like the side of a civilized approach to government and public problem-solving is in charge. What a luxury to imagine the word citizen as a possible construct in a conversation. That would count for something.

Next: Running for Your Life: Stick-to-it-ness