Red Dawn

A Liberal majority government.  184 seats.  Significantly higher than the polls predicted.  I have never been a fan of the Liberal Party of Canada, but this is good news.  Not only because Harper and his Conservatives are finally out - but because he's so god damn young.  Finally, we're moving away from those geezers that have been screwing things up for so long.  Note how fucked up this is - Justin Trudeau turns 45 on Christmas Day - he's not really all that "young".

Harper was pretty young by geezebag standards when he first got in, and he did so after turfing out the Liberal dynasty that Chretien unceremoniously dumped on Paul Martin.  And this was the first election for the "new" Conservative party, having done their soul searching out in the woods, spawning a splinter protest group, and then getting swallowed by the upstart Reformers.  This ushered in a new era where Harper did not give a shit about "the way things are done".

Trudeau's got a similar plate.  The Liberals were going into yesterday as the third party - a long way from their usual position of "Canada's natural governing party".  And while he is the son of a former Prime Minister, those days are ancient history.  He's new.  The Conservative criticism of him - that he's just not ready - I think that's his best feature.  That he's "not ready" by the standards of the geezebag pants to their armpits offa mah lawn crowd.

Pot legalization for example sums up the dynamic perfectly.  This is something that has majority popular support - but you won't find anyone other than young people thinking that it's a thing that's worth doing right now.  So it takes someone under 50 to push for it - which is crazy because I'm pretty sure it's old folks who are lighting up all the time. Anyways Mulcair, purportedly to the left of the Liberals, was still acting like an oldster on it.  Sure he was going to make it a "priority" but all he was going to do was decriminalize - which basically is the status quo.

Women's reproductive rights.  Even political parties that are pro-choice will accomodate anti-choice members and will openly welcome anti-abortionists with the caveat that they keep the whole abortion thing on the DL.  They allow members to "vote their conscience" or whatever because State ownership of uteruses is apparently a moral issue.  Not Trudeau.  He was lambasted for expecting his caucus to vote against human rights violations.  He was attacked for recognizing that one person's religion does not justify control over another person's body.  And this is a young person's view - the perspective of  people who grew up in a world where organized religion had ebbed and waned in cultural importance.

For clarity - I'm not trying to lump all geezers in together.  Bernie Sanders for example is older than dirt.  But Sanders and his platform appeal to young people.  People who the System has had less time to beat "Common Sense" into.

I'm trying to temper my optimism.  It is still the Liberal Party of Canada.  The 2011 drubbing may have winnowed some of the "only there for power" asswipes but there are shitbags of that stripe to spare in the Liberal Party of Canada,  And now that Justin has a majority, they'll all come slinking back to the no longer sinking ship.  And just because he has some ideas that are freed from the shackles of ancestor worship - that doesn't mean that all of them are.  Or even that the new ideas are any good.  But considering where we're coming from, I'm pretty happy for almost any change at all.