B.C.’s election could be a time for great and visionary plans, because we are primed for a radical pivot away from “normal” as we knew it before COVID-19 to a new order. (Ditto the U.S. presidential contest).
Here is my wish list for an improved social, moral, and political order:
1. Politicians become unlike ones we have ever known. Cynical decisions to call elections for the sake of a quick-and-easy majority due to popular crisis-management will not be tolerated.
2. Voters/leaders are people who possess knowledge of social situations/ nature/ economy where they live, the institutions of government, the processes of politics. They prove their knowledge, to earn their ballot. They don’t shout “Freedom!” while risking fellow-citizens’ health from fatal contagion.They trust impartial science.
3. A limit on personal wealth-possession is agreed; over that limit, the super-rich voluntarily return 100 per cent of their surplus to the society that originated it.
4. All Homo sapiens go to sleep for one minute, simultaneously, waking up transformed into better beings, Homo angelicus.
Oops. I have allowed myself to lose touch with what we know as reality. Time to sign off.
Charles Jeanes
Nelson