Albertans involved in and dependent on our oil and gas industry feel under siege and they blame others for their plight. Most of the anger and venom is focused on the Notley and Trudeau governments. The nasty divisive political culture leading up to and continuing past the 2019 election, is now normalized in Alberta. And it’s WAR!
The embedded Right versus Left divisive adversarial Politics of Contempt extant in Alberta is not moving us forward. It is hardening hearts, demonizing the “Other” and feeding the legitimate economic-anxiety fears of many Albertans. It is not offering any workable solutions nor creating any resilient, sustainable, progressive and positive path to move Alberta forward.
Albertans are being told by Mr. Kenney we need to “fight back” against misinformation promoted by the enemies of the Alberta oil and gas industry. The way the Kenney government approach to rebut and beat down his deemed and perceived enemies are to establish a surreptitious, secretive politically motivated, tax paid $30,000,000.00 “War Room.”
This unaccountable approach will undoubtedly be a laboratory for the manufacture of deceitful messages and misleading memes about Alberta’s energy industry and about those who challenge its presumptions. The results will be to see how the Trumpian influenced Conservatives will aspire to perfect past abuses of political power for partisan purposes.
All these War and Warrior metaphors are all about beating down the opposition. They will add to the emotional heat on manufactured issues. This political culture of pushing the Politics of Contempt overshadows any other efforts at rational, informed enlightenment.
The Right and Left in Alberta are now pandering to their partisan Bases and the leaderships are being pushed by the extremists within both camps. The Majority UCP is presenting Albertans with a massive to brutal spending cuts framed as a second-coming of King Ralph’s failed but famous Alberta Advantage. The Opposition NDP is trying to keep its public-sector union and environmentalist support Base by trying to help them to hold on to what they’ve got. This is virtually impossible to achieve in the face of an aggressive enemy. in the form of Premier Kenney. who is personally against big-government, public spending and environmental progress.
Both sides are failing, refusing or neglecting to deal with the really serious issues Albertans are actually facing now and can anticipate in the foreseeable future. We need a new 21st Century mission for Alberta and a better quality of caring and capable leadership to fulfill it. Where will this new mission come from and how will it gain attention and respect when the current political culture is only about destroying the other or the other side?
Reboot Alberta has the potential to be a citizenship based alternative. There must be a way to delete the current partisan control of Alberta’s political culture base on Right versus Left mutual contempt.
