270) A child-turned-adult's rage and disgust in the adult world

So my son voted for the first time yesterday. He was excited!! He told me his approach.

First, he read all the policy platforms of the 4 key parties, and made a chart, rating their quality and amount of information, issue by issue, according to his best knowledge of how things work. Then he added them all up.

The NDP and Greens had high positive scores. The Liberals had a medium-positive score. The Conservatives had a medium-negative score. He explained that it might have changed, probably in a negative direction although who knows, but they gave so little information it was hard to assess what Doug Ford even proposed to do, other than "spend money" on this and that.

Then he checked the strategic voting sites. Made his decision. And voted.

Last night, after the results came in, he was not only disappointed with the results. He was disgusted. Not even half of Ontarians bothered to get off their fucking asses and vote????

I have never seen him so angry. Truly, that was a first in his life.

As a parent, I'm extremely proud of him. For his integrity. For the work he put into educating himself. And for his rage. Definitely for his rage.

And I'm extremely sad for the future we, the adult world that preceded him, are passing over. What a shitty-ass torch to ask the next generation to carry.

* * * * *

So in the time I have left in this world, I will volunteer and make our politics work better. I have long believed, like for 35 years now, that our citizenry needs to be active, our communities need to be communities and not disconnected people mostly ignoring each other. Our electoral system needs to be fixed.

And political apathy? That dragon needs to be slain.

I once thought climate change would do it. Then maybe ecological collapse.

But nope.

So now we have fascism and war and a hostile superpower we share a border with, to unite against.

It's time to get off our own asses, respect the sacrifices of our ancestors, and change things.

As I said, I've never been more proud as I was last night, experiencing his rage at this province of people, more than half of whom don't even give a fuck about the fact that they live in a basically-free country that HAS elections in the first place.

Remembrance Day? A fucking joke is what we've turned it into. 1 out of every 2 people walking down the street is a hypocrite when it comes to "honouring the sacrifices" of those who fought and died for us. They FOUGHT AND DIED. And we don't even fucking vote.

So let's change this. Let's make the future's kids actually proud of the people who preceded them.

Rather than ashamed and angry.