Political Dance

   I think I was about 10 when the basic idea first formed in my head, but it wasn't until I was in my 30s that I heard it neatly summed up:
                "You dance with those who brought you to the dance."

-- Pres. Lyndon Johnson

   On Feb 14th, The National on CBC ran a story about a convoy of truckers, angry at feeling 'abandoned' by Ottawa.

Pro-pipeline Protest Convoy Leaves Alberta for Ottawa

   The government is currently run by the Liberal Party (The Red Party of Big Business that pretends to care about the middle class). The Prairie provinces, where all these truckers come from, and who most apparently support, voted almost unanimously for the Conservative Party (The Blue Party of Big Business that supports very rich people).
   So, to sum up: people who aren't ever going to vote for the Party in power are protesting that the party in power isn't paying sufficient attention to them.
   They are going to continue to vote for the Party that tried to ram through their beloved pipeline with a kangaroo-court, show process that basically ignored the legitimate concerns of the people who would have to deal with any pollution or other issues, and failed utterly to allay all those concerns.
Which is why we have no pipeline.
   It's not that pipelines are inherently risky, just that the company that was supposed to build it has a bad track record of cutting corners and an appalling record of failing to deal with spills and therefore is not trustworthy or credible in its claims. It's not that pipelines are bad methods of moving liquids, but expanding fossil-fuel production in the face of all the evidence that it is causing unpleasant weather effects might not be the smartest policy action we could take. Bottom line: if you cannot actually get it past the smell test honestly, then we must conclude that they are wrong.