My Journey With Health And Fitness – A Political Rant
Well, we made it home late Thursday evening. We’re home for a couple of months then back to Mexico just after
Christmas. We have spent the past 2 days trying to get caught up on everything. We still have a few things to do but we got most of it done.
I just got home from voting in our Provincial election. Last Saturday was our local election (Municipal) and for the first time since I was 18 I have missed voting in a government election. The only reason I couldn’t vote last weekend was because they issued the mail ballots after we had already left for Mexico. I still did my part though by being the Financial Agent for a slate of 6 candidates 5 of which were elected. They ran a great campaign on a pretty tight budget and I am proud of them. I’m hoping they will do an awesome job over the next 4 years.
One of my neighbours has been posting horrible things on FaceBook regarding 2 of the candidates that ran. And by horrible I mean personal attacks against them. I understand that even some of her friends were telling her she was taking things too far but that didn’t stop her. She actually made up a leaflet and went door to door canvassing against them. Truly some of what she was saying was simply her take on certain things but she seemed content on using that opinion to spread what was in my opinion misinformation. It may be why one of the candidates from the slate was not successful but we don’t know that for certain.
I had thought that since the election is over that it would be the end of her posts. Nope, she sent out another one this week. Now since one of her targets didn’t get elected she found another one to go after. This was even worse than before and she even claimed that people told her this person was as dumb as a bag of rocks. She then made misleading statements about the persons on the slate regarding their past voting record when they served last term One of them pushed back on her and requested that she prove her statements. Of course she didn’t. It is people like her that discourage others from running for polical office but to her she is holding them accountable except she is not. That can only be done if what you are saying is accurate and provable.
Now here is where I get really angry. In her last post she claimed that the reason the 5 members of the slate were elected was because their friends voted for them and that those voters hadn’t done their homework to understand how civic government works and why these people were inappropriate to be on Council. I know I didn’t vote but I wholly supported this slate, each and every one of the members that were running. Why? Because many of their values align with mine. I have lived in this area all of my life. I have been friends with several previous mayors and council members. I know exactly how civic governance works. But she says I am ignorant simply because I didn’t vote the way she wanted. I call bullshit!
And here’s the thing that annoys me the most. She has little political experience. I believe she ran for Council once but as far as I know that is it. I on the other hand spent over 13 years in a job in which I had to be elected. That meant every few years I had to run a campaign. Moreover, it is more than 30 years since I worked on my first federal election campaign, nearly 30 years since I worked on my first Provincial campaign and at least 25 years since my first local election campaign. I have worked on dozens of political campaigns and will continue to do so. I am well educated and use my skills and knowledge to help candidates get elected.
Bottom line, if I had voted for these candidates it would not have been because they were my friends. Hell, some of them I barely knew when we first started talking about them running together. Instead, I did things like ask questions, found out where they stood on issues, what they wanted to accomplish in the next 4 years and how they planned to do it. To paint all people with a different political view than you with the same brush just shows who is the ignorant one.
