August Is Boring
I always knew that August was probably going to be relatively quiet on the political front since it's traditionally a month for vacations before gearing up for the post Labour Day back to work/school extravaganza, but I wasn't quite prepared for how little there would be to talk about.
Politicians and their staff are off and the networks along with their pundits are talking about stories weeks old, when they normally work off of a 24 hour news cycle. Frankly, there are only so many times I can comment on each of the major stories floating around out there right now, like the Islamic cultural centre proposed to built two blocks from ground zero in New York City and how opposition to its construction is baseless fear mongering.
In Canada we had the census debacle in which the conservative government decided to scrap the mandatory long form census for political reasons, along with the proposed expansion of Canada's prison system all while crime rates have decreased.
The fear of immigrants crossed borders however. While Tea Partiers rallied along the Mexico border, Canadians were fearful and angry about government reports of possible Tamil Tiger militants aboard a migrant vessel which was eventually escorted into dock in British Colombia. All of those on board were taken into custody in order to verify identities and determine risk, but there was very little discussion from the government about the needs of legitimate migrants trying to escape undue hardships. Obviously our poor economic recovery has been contributing to the xenophobia of some people, but ignoring for a moment that it's just the right thing to do to help out people in need, it's hard to ignore the fact, with respect to illegal immigration, that it is an economic issue.
The problem with these stories is that they inevitably get broken down into small bite size talking points and and all of the important bits get filtered out and suddenly the issue is defined by language that has a strong built in emotional conotation. Specific incidents are used to instill fear and steer the conversation away from facts and towards easily manipulated feelings. In short, wedge issues. But, that's the name of the game as it stands now.
August is still boring though, and I can't wait until September.
Politicians and their staff are off and the networks along with their pundits are talking about stories weeks old, when they normally work off of a 24 hour news cycle. Frankly, there are only so many times I can comment on each of the major stories floating around out there right now, like the Islamic cultural centre proposed to built two blocks from ground zero in New York City and how opposition to its construction is baseless fear mongering.
In Canada we had the census debacle in which the conservative government decided to scrap the mandatory long form census for political reasons, along with the proposed expansion of Canada's prison system all while crime rates have decreased.
The fear of immigrants crossed borders however. While Tea Partiers rallied along the Mexico border, Canadians were fearful and angry about government reports of possible Tamil Tiger militants aboard a migrant vessel which was eventually escorted into dock in British Colombia. All of those on board were taken into custody in order to verify identities and determine risk, but there was very little discussion from the government about the needs of legitimate migrants trying to escape undue hardships. Obviously our poor economic recovery has been contributing to the xenophobia of some people, but ignoring for a moment that it's just the right thing to do to help out people in need, it's hard to ignore the fact, with respect to illegal immigration, that it is an economic issue.
The problem with these stories is that they inevitably get broken down into small bite size talking points and and all of the important bits get filtered out and suddenly the issue is defined by language that has a strong built in emotional conotation. Specific incidents are used to instill fear and steer the conversation away from facts and towards easily manipulated feelings. In short, wedge issues. But, that's the name of the game as it stands now.
August is still boring though, and I can't wait until September.
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