Letter of the Day | The times, they are a changin’

THE EDITOR, Sir:

We set sail on a weather-beaten, rusty, old freighter called ‘S/S Democracy’ and begin our voyage in Sweden, a bastion of social democracy for many years, but has just elected a right-wing government. In Denmark,social democrats also had a headlock on successive parliaments, but last week only managed to win by a single vote; as Bob Dylan said, “ the times, they are a changin’”. Our voyage continues across the North Sea to the UK, where the revolving door at 10 Downing Street made international headlines. No wonder that the Collins English Dictionary declared their word of the year to be ‘permacrisis’, perfectly describing events in what the English once proudly declared as their ‘mother of all parliaments’. However, British people are a resilient bunch, who will forget that Taylor Swift fills all slots in the top 10, and revert to singing Vera Lynn’s wartime hit: “ There will be blue birds over, the white cliffs of Dover, just you wait and see.”

From the land of omnishambles, we said southwards through the Strait of Gibraltar on to Italy, where a female prime minister has been elected to head a government said to be the most right-wing since Benito Mussolini. Across the Mediterranean into Israel, where fragile pizza parliaments are also the norm, and see Benjamin Netanyahu re-elected for a sixth term as prime minister after 16 months in opposition. This time, his government will include a strong contingent of the Religious Zionist Party, whose leader was convicted for racial hatred not too long ago.

Now heading down the South Atlantic to Brazil, where 125 million votes were cast in the recent presidential election, with only one per cent separating the two candidates. It’s time to head north, and after traversing the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, we reach our final destination just in time for impending and probably fateful American midterm congressional elections.

Sadly, the good ol’ USA is so badly fractured by partisanship that both main political parties accuse each other of being a “threat to democracy” – nothing makes sense any more. From my own nonpartisan perch on the bridge of ‘S/S Democracy’, it looks like the world is going to hell in a handbasket in this post-pandemic ‘new normal’.

Politicians everywhere make their pitch for multiple causes, such as climate change, abortion rights, homelessness, immigration, crime prevention, social justice, wokeness, cancel culture, etc. However, the electorate are worried about how to pay for food, rent, mortgages, fuel, etc, with runaway inflation and a looming global recession. They will rather listen to the words of wisdom from James Carville, the political consultant who headed Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992, when he said: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

BERNIE SMITH

Parksville, BC

Canada