I thought it was a simple enough few tweets. The first one started off with "Dear MLAs: we elected you to work together to make Alberta great, not to pick each other apart and fight on Twitter and in the legislature." I went on to say that I wasn't singling out any particular party, just a broad-based statement that seemed to resonate with more than a few people. It was retweeted a bunch of times and generated a few responses who wanted to echo those sentiments.
And yet, it still conjured up a few responses from those not too happy with my supposed "words of wisdom". Responses like: "Do you understand the concept of Official Opposition. The word opposition doesn't mean kum ba yah" and "Maybe that's how you vote, but many of us want an opposition that keeps the PCAA on its toes". There was name-calling and even worse. It won't be repeated here.
By all means, I'm open to criticism and good ol' fashioned discussion. But that seems to be lacking when it comes to politics of late (aka civility). I'm not totally sure if it's always been like this or if the relative anonymity of Twitter and other social media have made people more, how do you say, defensive. You need to have a thick skin when it comes to tweeting about politics. Because if someone takes what you say the wrong way, they're not afraid to "voice their opinions" if you know what I mean.
Realistically, am I wrong with what I tweeted? I don't think so. It's non-partisan and aimed completely at all politicians (this goes for all three levels of government). The grand-standing that's done gets to be a bit much for many, judging by what I see in responses. It's not that people don't appreciate opposition or healthy discussion. But I swear, if you watched what happens with the #WRP and #PCAA hashtags on Twitter on a regular basis, you'd think that one party could say the sky is blue and the other would argue that it was red. Am I being facetious? Check it out and be the judge for yourself.
What I find kind of interesting is how starkly different their two feeds can actually be. The PCAA hashtag usually shows a bunch of tweets about how awesome it is to be in a community or about the funding announcement just made. The WRP hashtag can usually find an abundance of vitriol towards the governing Tories and how "41-years is enough". Not that either is a bad thing. What has grown more and more concerning (judging from the responses to my earlier tweet) is that these politicians and supporters are talking AT their constituents and not WITH them. Don't taxpayers want the exact opposite? Just some food for thought for any politicians out there reading this here blog. Don't get me wrong, some are very good at communicating. But others only use Twitter and Facebook as a way to pass along any message that is supporting their cause. Does that really get anything accomplished in the grand scheme of "winning more votes"? (that's not a rhetorical question, I'm actually curious if it works, because it doesn't with me)
Plain and simple, Albertans deserve better from all. Do we not want ALL MLAs working towards the common goal of a better province? Or do we want all the parties sitting in the sandbox, trying to build a magnificent sandcastle, only to find that they're only throwing sand and toys at one another, blaming each other for why it's not getting done?
The element that you left out was who exactly posts on #wrp and their motives for doing so. There are plenty of people that post on there solely for the purpose of gettinga negative reactions from people. Some of them even compliment you on this blog post.
ReplyDeleteTo the best of my knowledgethe PCs are the only ones with paid employees that actually engage in this type of behaviour. Yes that's right paid staff. This government is panicing and as they get deeper into the corner they lash out more and more. Twitter is a good barometer of how bad things are going in the Legislature.
I find it hard to believe that anyone would want a return to the corruption going unchallenge like is was for some many years by an impotent and ineffective opposition. We finally have opposition that seems to care about more than just collecting the cash.
I understand completely what you mean about civility but I also would like to point out that if you watch very carefully it's a few manipulative people that start and keep ugly conversations going. Some even fabricate things that did not even happen. Most have no facts to back up anything they say.
It's more about what the reader is willing to believe because they want to believe it, not because it has any truth at all in it. My last blog post was an example of what I'm talking about. I challenged Huffington Post on a post that was written around an anonymous video. I wrote a post that was based on a video that wasn't anoymous and yet these same people are showing no interest? But yet I can prove every word in my post, the same can't be said about the post I challenged.
I guess it just depends what you chose to believe. The PCs are attacking everyone and anything but their doing it in an unethical manner which is not a surprise at all.
There is something wrong with your tweet. We have an electoral system that rewards vitriol and punishes civility. Why? Because you don't need to have the support of more than half the voters, which would require some degree of moderation. You just need to have the support of more voters than the other candidates. The more other candidates there are, the less total support you need. People who prefer someone else are your enemy, because their second choice doesn't matter. You can't hurt yourself by being a dick. An electoral system that took into account the second, third, etc. choices of the voters changes that. You need peoples' second-place votes, and so you can't afford to be a jerk to your opponents.
ReplyDeleteWhich is just to say that no, we did not elect them to work together. We elected them to fight. And we will continue electing them to fight until the electoral system is changed.