The fleeting promise of political change

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/04/2025 (185 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Whenever I hear politicians earnestly promising a change, I am reminded of a joke I read long ago, probably in the “Humour in Uniform” section of Reader’s Digest.

At roll call one morning in a prisoner of war camp, the senior officer announced: “Men, I have good news and bad news. First, the good news: Everyone gets a change of underwear today.” When the cheering subsided, he then said “Sergeant Major, give them the bad news.”

The Sergeant Major saluted, wheeled to face the parade formation and, reading from his clipboard, announced: “Jones, you will change with Smith. Johnson, change with Russell,” and so on down his list.

The idea that Pierre Polievre — a Reform/Conservative apparatchik for most of his adult life and an acolyte of Stephen Harper— will deliver “change” of any significance, should he lead the Conservatives into government, is equally laughable. Or it would be, if we were not watching a parallel (and not funny) situation unfold south of the border.

During his recent campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump whipped up his crowds with the rhetoric of “change.” As Hulk Hogan declared at the Republican convention, his loyal Republican followers had morphed into “Trumpites.”

Convulsions of change certainly have rolled through American society since the inauguration. Trump’s executive orders have cancelled programs, dismantled institutions, and violated contracts and labour laws by firing thousands of federal workers, seemingly at random. Things are changing, all right, but for the worse, erasing the efforts of generations of public servants who had been working toward a better future for everyone, not just for a rich few.

In only three months, Trump has wilfully disregarded the U.S. constitution, ignored the rulings of federal court judges (and likely soon the Supreme Court, as well), and used his executive authority to attack anyone or any institution that he dislikes. The American experiment in democracy will be over by its 250th anniversary next year, if Trump’s version of “change” cannot be stopped or contained by the other two branches of government.

Yet Congress remains ineffectual; the Supreme Court is split down the middle; and any serious opposition to Trumpian whimsy has yet to solidify.

Were that presidential election replayed today, however, I suspect there would be a different outcome. It is always easier to cry out for change, than to deal with what it means for yourself.

But there are no “do-overs” in politics. When 90 million people chose to stay home instead of voting, American democracy was put at risk by 77 million Trumpites, who did vote.

Democracy and the rule of law are fragile things — resilient, but still fragile. Both begin with a vote, and will end when enough people choose instead to stay home.

Here in Canada, we go to the polls in less than a week. For all the red and white demonstrations, the real test of whether we want to remain a sovereign democracy (and not the 51st state) will be how many Canadians actually show up and vote.

To be blunt, anyone who does not vote does not believe democracy is important. There are other forms of government, or none at all. If the American democratic meltdown continues, we will see what they choose instead.

For myself, I definitely want change, but my issues are not on the ballot. None of the leaders, nor their parties, are grappling with the existential threat that faces all of us.

I will vote anyway, because my vote speaks for those who can’t. There are so many people in our world today who have no democratic voice, whose choices are dismissed by the powerful as irrelevant.

Even more voiceless are those future generations who will inherit both what we have done, and what we have not done. All of our institutions are failing them, just as they are failing us. We allow sustainability chatter to replace substantive change, greenwashing our politics and our economies and convincing ourselves that small steps are enough.

Trump declares a trade war, and overnight everyone rallies to the flag, making things happen that a year ago were flatly impossible. Mother Nature has been warning us for decades, and is ignored, still. Whatever you love or think is important right now, it will not exist on a dead planet — and time for the change we need is quickly running out.

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But protest, though necessary, is not enough. Vincent Bevins’ 2023 book If We Burn points out that the decade of protests from 2010 onward only made things worse. It is not enough to just demand change. We need to decide what we are changing to, not just what we are changing from.

We need the substance of real change, not more tired rhetoric from self-serving politicians.

In the words of the stirring finale to the musical, Les Misérables, “beyond the barricades, is there a world you long to see?”

Do you hear the people sing? If we all vote, democracy is so much more than just “the song of angry men.”

Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba.