Poll results, wishful thinking and realism

My dear friends, it's about finding a balance. There's nothing I'd like more than to see the corrupt, dysfunctional, self-perpetuating status quo shattered into a million little pieces. If we have to stick an Orange Crush label on it, well, I can live with that.

Really, it's like a wish list:

• the end of the malignant Harper Regime
• disentangling ourselves from the rotting empire to the south
• prizing the corporate continentalists' and "free trade" cheerleaders' fingers from the levers of power
• ending the simplistic binary narrative that has, for decades, presented the Liberals and Conservatives as the only serious / realistic possibilities for governing the country
• a measurably significant uptick in civic engagement
• genuine possibility of meaningful democratic reform, including an end to the putrescent First Past The Post system
• ponies for everyone.

It's only because we've seen what that hopey-changey thing can turn into that I'm cautious. The owners, CEOs and aristocrats still have a lot of ways to manipulate us and a lot of shiny objects to distract us. It's in that light that I've been doing what I've doing on the Tweeter.

H/t Frank Graves (@VoiceOfFranky) and Scott Tribe (@stribe39).

Are we really on the verge of a seismic shift in the Canadian political landscape? Damned if I know. It's a nice thought, though.

Related posts:

• Other parties have no right to govern, Harper says
• Another election meme: #progressivemajority
• Meme for the week: Harper – too dangerous to govern
• The Harper Machine's priorities
• Don't know who won the debates, but that's a short-term question