On the eve of our provincial election here in Alberta, I thought I'd offer some thoughts I've had:
Tonight my friend Scott Reynolds was kind enough to offer me a last minute ticket to the Oilers game again the Columbus Bluejackets (the name 'bluejackets' warrants an entire blog entry of its own....but I digress!)
Scott is far more of a 'student' of the game of hockey and specifically the Oilers and the NHL, than your average 'joe' fan. I guess I fall into the later category myself: I basically read the Edmonton Journal sports page and watch the TSN highlights of the Oilers games and that's pretty much it. Scott is far more aware of the statistics of individual players, the various lines that the Oilers have, as well as those of the opposition team. Trying to talk with Scott about hockey leaves me, well, thinking I need to go to an Oilers version of the Eskimos 'intro to football' course!
At any rate, allow me to develop my thoughts further: Sam Gagner is one of the new Oiler favorites this year. People in town think he's simply an amazing rookie hockey player. He's scored a lot of points this year, especially for a rookie. In spite of this, Scott maintains that the Oilers should have kept him in the minors this year to give him more time to develop, rather than making the jump to the NHL. Scott's main reason is that while Sam has scored many points, he's been on the ice for far more goals against the Oilers than he's scored for the Oilers.
The difference between Scott and the majority of Oiler fans illustrates nicely the reality of the current Albertan political landscape.
Tomorrow thousands of Albertans will go to the polls and vote more on the basis of who they 'kind of like' or 'feel good about' rather than on the basis of thought out, fact based decisions. Which party leaders sounds best in speeches and sound bites. Most of us will base our decision on several 15 second TV clips we've seen in the news of the leaders.
Sadly this results in our democratic process being reduced largely to a popularity contest set in the guise of a debate on political ideas.
Lest anybody mistake what I'm saying as a argument for not voting as the answer to political ignorance, nothing could be further from the truth. People who don't vote infuriate me! As I was discussing with my good friend John Hanley tonight, the Australian system where it is illegal to not vote has great attraction to me! (although, I grant that such a system would do very little to deal with the problem of ignorant voters.)
When you go to an Oilers game, you have 16,000 different opinions about what's right or wrong with the team and what should be done to fix it. It's like sitting in a room full of arm-chair quarterbacks.
While watching tomorrow night's election results likely won't be as entertaining as watching an Oilers game, it almost certainly will end up making me think about the people I watched the Oilers game with!
June 4 - Psalm 16
10 years ago
2 comments:
I think it boils down to a population that is asleep rather than a population with varying opinions. Take away sports, recreation, movies, music, shopping and you have severe unrest. Western countries have become highly independent and self-absorbed so to get their attention to focus on social issues that are not perceived to affect them on a personal level is impossible.
Plus, Alberta is a one-party system, so there's no point in voting (that's just to get your blood boiling, I don't think that).
Zaak, I agree very much.
one of the classic problems with financial prosperity in a region (such as we have in Alberta) is that you get political apathy.
one of my earlier posts was about the total lack of discussion in the US elections regarding the problem of climate change.. it's not even on the radar.... this illustrates exactly the point you are making about being self absorbed.
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