Election Special #4: What's Wrong With You? What's Wrong With Everybody In This Crazy Place?

OK, here comes the big rant. Before I start I'd like to point to these two posts at Three Point Turn which say a few of the same things I've been meaning to much more succinctly than I'd likely be able to.

One of the positive things that I've noticed during from this election campaign is how reasonable and easy going your average Kiwi is about differing political views. I think it's because this is such a small country. Everyone is exposed to all sorts of different opinions because we're all mixed up together, as opposed to say the US, where huge swathes of the country homogenously vote one way or the other and people are screaming about a divided nation, colour coding their states and proposing that people who voted for the other guy should all be shot.

Of course you wouldn't know this from watching the news or reading the blogs in the run up to our election. A vote for Don Brash is a vote to send the country down a road to economic ruin and racial civil war. Labours dwindling polls are the last gasp of a failed socialist experiment. And every two point shift in the polls is the inspiration for a spittle flecked exclamation point filled post. For Christs sake! Who can take the polls that seriously when they're differing by ten points from day to day?

And the most passionate of the people who are behaving like this are supporting either National or Labour. Now the same thing happened last year in the lead up to the American election, but I could understand it a little better there, there's a war on, thousands of lives (at least) depended directly on who got elected. But National and Labour are hardly worth getting so excited about, and I'll tell you why.

While perusing the policies of the smaller parties I always came away with a strong idea of their ideology and what you can expect them to do if elected. National and Labour on the other hand have no central ideology other than a vague hand wave in the direction of the left or right wing. Their policies are in no way in aid of any over all goal, (no matter how much Helen goes on about her vision for New Zealand), they're all just bribes, coloured in differently but fundamentally just there to garner votes. So this is why the only party that has no policies that piss me off is Labour, because their entire campaign is based around the smallest number of people a reason to vote against them.

Now I'm not saying 'the big parties are all the same, man...' there are clear differences between them, and I honestly think that Labour are clearly the lesser of two evils, but I find it quite bewildering that so many people can so passionately stand up for either of them. Supporting either party is nothing to be proud of, they're both just two crowds of loud-mouthed, obnoxious, self-interested idiots who are just doing and saying whatever they need to in order to be elected. The parties resemble a pair of opposing sports teams far more than my idea of what a political party should be. And that goes double for their supporters, the day I hear NZPundit say anything more than mildly critical of National or Russell Brown do the same of Labour will be the same day the population of Christchurch collectively stands up and says how they never really liked the Crusaders that much anyway. Almost all the political blogs in the country pretty much turned their brains off a couple of months ago and have since then stood in the corner waving a flag and yelling “Go team go!”

But back to the parties themselves. I can reluctantly see why this state of affairs is probably for the best. These big parties will never do anything radical or unexpected (unless perhaps there is a real crisis that must be reacted to quickly), meaning the law itself will change only naturally and slowly, trailing somewhat behind public opinion. This means that while it is a slow path to achieve anything worthwhile (for example our country's baby steps taken towards gay marriage), it reduces the chance that some idiot is going to show up and create a huge big mess that will do significant harm to the country in the long term. Of course, even in the most static two party systems this can still happen (*cough*Bush*cough*), but I think we're fortunate enough here not to be in that position, at least not this time around.

So in short, I don't want to vote for a party that has smugly calculated which policies will appeal the most to the broadest range of undecided voters, just so they can keep their fat ugly arses in their cushy seats for another three years, even if (for that very reason) they're the only party whose policies I find palatable. That's why I'm voting for Legalise Cannabis this year.

Next problem: I live in Wigram and refuse to vote for Jim Anderton. I know absolutely nothing about any of the other candidates, who should I vote for? (Current favorite: No Confidence.)