Saturday, October 24, 2015

35% support, 50% voting = 100% power

Calls for a more inclusive, Big Tent, society have been timeless.

Women wanted in, Immigrants, Aboriginals and Visible Minorities wanted in, the Physically Challenged and LGBT wanted in, Youth wanted in.

The West wanted in.

They all got in.

And now it is the turn of the 2/3 of voters who find no voice in Parliament for their vote.

"The 2/3 wants in !"

They want civil rights for voters, they want human rights for voters.

In particular for the 2/3 of all voters who regularly are left outside in the cold by a FPTP voting system designed centuries ago for a two party only electoral contest.

The fight to replace FPTP with IV (Inclusive Voting) now has an added urgency.

For more and more environmental activists have noted that the oldest democracies (the ones supposedly more advanced in terms of democracy) all still have non-inclusive FPTP systems.

And that they are also all the ones leading the effort to kill off non-human species so as to reserve the world exclusively for human benefit.

These same environmentalists are suddenly realizing that all the newer (supposedly less advanced) democracies all have inclusive voting systems.

And that they are leading the efforts to build a more inclusive world that cares about reserving and welcoming all the human and natural diversity in the world.

The correspondence between politics of inclusion and exclusion, between environment-supporting politics and environment-destroying politics has never been more starkly revealed.

The effort to move the world to IV inclusive voting has a great urgency.

Some might even argue that the cause has a best before date ---- that it becomes pointless, hopeless, on the day the world slip beyond the 2 degree in global warming.

Best on that date, then, to abandon all politics and emulate the people in Nevil Shute's "On The Beach" instead.

One mustn't take this view.

We must always remember that no extension of inclusivity ever came easily.

Long before Act Up, women seeking the vote chained themselves to fences and starved in jails. Died for the cause.

Blacks, Aboriginals, Latinos, Jews, LGBTs, the Mentally Challenged also had to engage in civil demonstrations, protests, even Civil Diso before they won some acceptance and some civil rights.

Some, again, died in the course of reaching that victory.

With the world's fate hanging in the balance on whether or not the climate change denying nations move quickly to IV voting, environmentalists might reflect whether acts of Civil Diso trying to local stop dams or pipelines is the bravest thing a courageous environmental can do...

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