The body politic and its
paraphilias

After a detailed clinical examination of the political actors in Canada at the moment, I fear that my diagnosis, outlined below, is not for the prudish or faint of heart. Worse, my prognosis is a pessimistic one.

True, an electorate clearly recovering from acute chremastistophilia* may be a step closer to a final cure after the Liberals, on the ropes and clearly the worse for wear, seem to have talked themselves into thinking that they have a better chance in a Christmas election than a February one. (Is Paul Martin talking to the ghost of his dog? Or is he a taphephiliac?**)

Who knows. The political calculations here must be Byzantine indeed. In any case, the hematolagnia*** of the Opposition, brought to a near-crisis by Gomery's exposure of the chronic Liberal mysophilia,****will reach its climax later this month and thereafter, when the government falls in an almost certain confidence vote.

As a less-than-enthusiastic NDPer, and a strong supporter of proportional representation, I look at the current stats and weep. Public opinion? There is no "public opinion." We have two strong regionally-based parties, neither of which gives a damn about Canada, a great, loathsome kleptocratic party that has settled upon the nation like a noisome cloud, with the continuing support of about one-third of the electors who continue to suffer from ozolagnia*****, and a mildly progressive social-democratic formation that has brought along a fan and a perfumed handkerchief.

How have things come to this? I blame, among other things, our antiquated first-past-the-post system. Once a national party has established itself, the only real hope of beating it in a plurality system is to exaggerate ragional issues, play on disaffection and alienation, and gull the voters into a kind of tribalism that is ultimately destructive of the Canadian polity. If anything points to the serious need for electoral reform, it is the current fragmented state of federal politics. And even with electoral reform, in which a third of the voters insisting on the Liberals will get a third of the seats and no more in the House, it will take time, perhaps too much time, for the Canadian political culture to change, adapt and coalesce into a national vision, or, more accurately, into a tri-national vision where aboriginal peoples, anglophones and francophones can find their common and stable ground.

In the meantime, we're about to watch the country descend into a bout of vorarephilia****** over the Christmas period, FPTP will inevitably mean that my party loses seats that it shouldn't because of some upstart dendrophiliacs*******, and the political universe, instead of unfolding as it should, will suffer accelerating entropy.

Not a pretty picture, as Krafft-Ebbing might have said.

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Notes:
*sexual arousal from being robbed
**a person sexually aroused by being buried alive
***abnormal attraction to blood
****abnormal attraction to filth
*****abnormal attraction to strong smells
******sexual arousal from eating or being eaten
*******those who are sexual attracted to trees