Sukunai wrote:And to all those in the usual 40ish % range that don't vote, STFU you have no opinion if you refuse to vote.
No,
you STFU.
Who did I have to choose from again?
Let me say why I didn't vote:
Conservatives are out by default always. I'll be dead before I vote for the Conservatives, although I might go easier on them if they don't so thoroughly try to suck off the Americans. It's with them in power that, ironically, I feel Canadian cultural sovereignty is most threatened.
I voted Liberal once just to counter the conservatives, but later came to the conclusion that they were only marginally better and I disagreed with them on at least 60% of issues. Never again.
The NDP I voted for a couple of times, especially provincially because our one-time MPP Peter Kormos was quite a good guy whom my family knew personally and who definitely worked hard and helped a lot at the community level. Not that I agreed with the platform. NDP is closest to me politically, but I find a lot of their policies to be half-measures from either a socialist or a liberal-democratic point of view. They support failed/failing immigration and welfare policies. On the other hand I welcome their efforts on healthcare and education. And I support proportional representation, which is mostly why I voted for them nationally before.
However the main reason I outright refuse to vote for either of the three above parties this time is their position on the Georgia conflict. Not because they condemned Russia - Russia should have been condemned by all means. Russia was wrong. But because all three of these parties openly supported war criminal Mikhail Saakashvili and now my tax dollars are going to give aid right into the hands of a nationalist government that had initiated a massed attack on a civilian area using BM-21 Grad rocket artillery. Sorry, no. I outright refuse to vote in anyone who takes a favourable position on something like this. They can and should go suck America's dick. Oh wait, that's why they did this.
Now for the smaller ones...
Bloc Quebecois. Do I even need to comment?
Green. I've voted for them before. I won't again. I find them politically and economically naive, and while left enough and concerned for the environment enough - too mired in trivial social issues to ever effect anything of socioeconomic relevance. They haven't even tried. I like the fact that they raise a ruckus about some issues like proportional representation, but beyond that it's all triviality and naivete.
Communists/Marxist-Leninists. After the last election when I was really pissed at Canadian politics, I seriously thought of joining the CCP. Then I read more of their stuff and listened to their leaders. Ridiculous. As above, they're mired in very poorly-led activism and minor social agendas. There's hardly a trace of interest in the real, massive socioeconomic issues which the socialist agenda has to be founded on and which I am most concerned about over everything else in the country. Meanwhile, what we have here is a bunch of ineffectual, inarticulate, pseudo-intellectual wankers. No thanks.
Net result? If I had to choose between THAT or else STFU, I say take your "choice" and shove it. I'm not voting for garbage. And I'm better-suited to survive even the most unfavourable regime from my perspective than anything this election could seriously threaten. So to hell with that.