Election 2015: Fear and Elections

AUTHOR JEREMY ALDANA NOTES, “Insecurities have the ability to shape and mold our minds to live with things we otherwise wouldn’t accept, thus creating pain.” With the rise of rogue terrorist groups carrying out their actions around the world, we can easily get the sense that we are vulnerable, that all isn’t well with the world, and that, if we’re not careful, we could be placed in danger.Modern elections are all about this propensity for fear and insecurity, and, to be sure, such threats carry weight in any campaign. Trouble emerges, however, when political parties, especially those with an authoritarian bent, opt to use election seasons to rouse up fears in the voters instead of hope and creativity. In such a state of perpetual insecurity, citizens lose perspective on other things they would normally worry about. With global insecurity once again an active element in political life, our own worries can easily eclipse other problems we can overcome.What of our fear for our children’s future in areas of education and employment? Surely those count for something. How will we overcome our insecurity regarding climate change and the coming desolation? With poverty becoming more deeply entrenched every year, how will we deal with our collective worries about our declining social expectations?In each of these areas politics has failed to come up with appropriate and timely responses, and so it does what it always does to distract us: scare us into overlooking such things in our distress over terrorism. Surely a capable government would assuage the fears of its people in all these areas.It remains a foolish thing to believe that military action alone, or exclusive concentration on international trade, will be sufficient to keep us safe in all these dimensions. The number of Canadians involved in international peacekeeping presently numbers less than twenty. How can we fight war when we have undermined the resources for peace? The Harper government’s penchant to shut down embassies, abolish the Canadian International Development Agency (it is now part of the trade file), pull out of global institutions in which it was once an active member, the cutting back of diplomats, and black and white policies that only foster more conflict, means we have become victims of fear as opposed to proponents of peace.  They are signs that we have been in the process of gutting the very international diplomatic, development, gender, even military infrastructure, that were developed to deal with problems where they occurred and not wait for them to visit our shores. It is for these very reasons that Canada couldn’t win the slam dunk opportunity to be voted into the United Nations Security Council.If a government were serious about protecting its people against foreign evils, it would place the bulk of its efforts on prevention, since such actions as peacekeeping, international development, gender equality programs, and, yes, trade deals that benefit the average person in difficult regions, have proven track records. The more we cut them out of our actions as a nation, the more that armed conflict will become inevitable.That will also prove true domestically. Unaffordable post-secondary education, a growing gap between the rich and poor, the refusal to take climate change or our aboriginal situation seriously – these things, along with a growing list of others, will eventually lead to internal discontent in Canada. Perhaps worst of all, our dysfunctional political system shows no propensity for coming up with solutions to such dilemmas.The chief character in the book (and subsequent movie), Divergent, watches everyone shrink back because of collective fear. “Fear isn’t supposed to shut you down; it wakes you up.” she tells the collective gathering.It’s time we all woke up from our fearful nightmares and got to work on our collective dreams to build opportunities domestically and grow the peace globally. Franklin Roosevelt was right; we have nothing to fear but fear itself, especially the kind that renders us inactive in an age when democratic renewal is required more than ever. The opposite of fear is not courage, but peace, and it’s time we had a government that understood that distinction.