Election Day

"At such hours, the Mariposa barber shop would become a very Palace of Slumber, and as you waited your turn in one of the wooden armchairs beside the wall, what with the quiet of the hour, and the low drone of Jeff's conversation, the buzzing of the flies against the window pane, and the measured tick of the clock above the mirror, your head sank dreaming on your breast, and the Mariposa Newspacket rustled unheeded on the floor.  It makes one drowsy just to think of it!"--Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

It was Election Day last week.  My voting precinct got changed at the last minute, and maybe that's why I got sent to the front of the line!  My candidate had to quit the race after some social media post about Canadian vaccines ending up in Israel, but I voted for her anyway. (So sue me.) The result was like the 1977 Ontario election where Bill Davis' Big Blue Machine called a snap election in the hope of regaining a Conservative majority, but they only gained a handful of seats.

Once again, I did some figuring to see how the election would have turned out with the German-style mixed proportional representation that I favour.  In this system about 70% of seats would be A (first past the post like today); not less than 25% would be B (allotted so that A and B seats together would be as close as possible to the popular votes); and not less than 4% would be C (given to the leading party except if its A seats alone were greater than its rightful A and B share, in which case they would go to the other parties to bring them closer to their rightful share). The three territorial seats would be unchanged, with 2 Liberal and 1 NDP.

On the left I show the actual result for each province, on the right first A (assuming the same proportion as in the actual election, then B and C in brackets, then the sum of all three.

Newfoundland

Liberal             6    |    3 (1)    4

Conservative    1    |    1 (1)    2

NDP                       |       (1)    1

PEI

Liberal              4    |    2(1)    3    

Conservative           |      (1)    1

Nova Scotia

Liberal              8    |    5 (1)    6

Conservative    3     |    2 (1)    3

NDP                        |       (2)    2

New Brunswick

Liberal              6    |    4 (1)    5

Conservative     4    |    2 (1)    3

NDP                        |       (1)    1

PPC                         |       (1)    1

Quebec

Liberal            34    |    24 (4)    28

Conservative   10    |      7 (7)    14

NDP                  1    |      1 (7)    8

BQ                   33    |    24 (1)    25

Green                       |         (2)    2

FPC                          |         (1)    1

Ontario

Liberal             78    |    56            56

Conservative    37    |    26 (13)    39

NDP                   5    |      4 (14)    18

PPC                          |           (5)    5

Green                   1  |           (2)    2

Manitoba

Liberal                4    |    2 (2)    4

Conservative       7    |    5 (1)    6

NDP                    3    |    2 (1)    3

PPC                           |        (1)    1

Saskatchewan

Liberal                        |    (1)    1

Conservative       14    |    9      9

NDP                            |    (3)    3

PPC                             |    (1)    1

Alberta

Liberal                    2    |    1 (4)   5

Conservative        30    |    22       22

NDP                       2    |    1 (4)    5

PPC                              |        (1)    1

BC

Liberal                 15    |   11 (2)    13 

Conservative        13    |    9 (6)    15

NDP                     13    |     9 (4)    13

PPC                              |        (2)    2

Green                     1    |        (1)    1

The overall result:

Liberal                 159    |    108 (17)    125

Conservative        119    |      83 (31)    114

NDP                       25    |       17 (37)    54

BQ                         33    |        24   (1)    25

PPC                                |             (11)    11

Green                       2    |               (5)    5

FPC                                |               (1)    1

Under this system, the Liberals would have fewer seats, mostly in Ontario.  The Bloc Quebecois would also be reduced, while the Conservatives would be about the same.  The NDP would have most of the gains, the rest going to small parties.

The numbers don't quite add up, but it's too late at night to figure it out! 

Twenty years after

"Ethan looked at her with loathing.  She was no longer the listless creature who had lived at his side in a state of sullen self-absorption, but a mysterious alien presence, an evil energy secreted from the long years of silent brooding"--Ethan Frome

Saturday was the 20th anniversary of 9/11.  President Biden called for unity. (What's the Doddering Groper going to call for, disunity?) Did it really change America, or just bring out Uncle Sam's true face?  The American government may not have (or may have) been guilty of imperialistic hegemony in the Middle East before then, but there's no credible doubt that it's guilty now!  We still hear the calls to remember, yet Americans are encouraged to remember without learning, like the Bourbons.

I remember how my flight to England was delayed two days because of all the American planes landing in Toronto, which does seem pretty minor.  And I remember Americans asking "Why are we hated?" but unwilling to listen to any answer that didn't have a pro-American spin. (Which only leaves "They hate us for our freedoms...") I also remember ceremonies commemorating the three-month anniversary on December 11, which was a little much.

Twenty years later, Adolf Bullyani is finally discredited.  But back at the time, of course, the American press turned him into a hero because he'd said some reassuring things. That tells you everything about what's wrong with the mainstream news media!  They decide what the people want to hear and reward those who say it, just like with Reagan. (When Howard Dean raises his voice, on the other hand...)

Twenty years later, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are both discredited.  But I remember all the liberals who supported the Afghanistan invasion to show how "balanced" they were, while hoping that Iraq wouldn't be next. (Who was naive?) In particular, Salon published an article titled "We Were Wrong," by a progressive apologizing for having opposed the Afghanistan invasion, like a heretic's official recantation.  And I remember born-again hawk Christopher Hitchens obtusely insisting that what Noam Chomsky said no longer mattered! (So who looks irrelevant now?)

The remarkable thing about the American response to 9/11 wasn't the predictable self-pity but the quick shift into self-congratulation! (Shortly afterward The New York Times quoted some American asking, "Why did they attack us when we're so good?" I smell doublethink...) The real winners, of course, were the corporations that made a killing from their piece of the taxpayers' billions that were spent on the military adventures that followed. No price is too high when you're "getting tough," right?

I guess I've said most of this before, but it bears repeating.  The Pentagon may misplace trillions and the CIA may keep dropping the ball, but the answer is always to give them even more money and power.  The USA's two-party system has produced a false consensus which endlessly benefits the Military-Industrial Complex.  Thank you, Ronald Reagan.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the local NDP campaign does have an office after all, so I'm doing some office work there.  Yesterday I finally finished Ethan Frome, with the book club coming up on Thursday.  I could have finished it a lot earlier, but I just prefer reading history to reading fiction!  I think that for our next book we'll read Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.