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Canadian Election
Planet of the Apes
By Kevin Potvin
Elections in Canada are a re-enactment of mating rituals among apes
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A national election campaign such as what Canada has been thrust into by Prime Minister Stephen (The Impatient) Harper is a kind of mating ritual. It is a re-enactment of the social stratifying process by which one ape in a clan becomes the leader while all the other apes become subservient to him.
Among the apes vying to become leader, there are displays of strength, of decisiveness, of firmness and also of a little bit of rage and anger. Among the rest, whose support and acquiescence are the critical factors in a campaign for ape clan leadership, there are a myriad of motivations and strategies. There is, for example, the strongly felt need to choose correctly. Back the ape that doesn’t win, and the one who does win is going to remember you when it comes time to divvy up the food. There is fear: any of those with realistic chances of winning leadership can easily crush any others in the clan, which is why they are a contender for leadership, and themselves face particular crushing by the winner if they lose. And there is sexual energy among the females whose biological urge is for survival of their offspring, a prospect much improved if the offspring’s father is the leader of the clan. Much of the ritual among apes is meant to court the female vote.
We’re not so far removed. Schooled political scientists and analysts and pollsters will fill the yawning hours of television and gaping holes in the print media the next four weeks with speculations about which party policies are attracting the considered vote of the Canadian electorate. But more tuned-in campaigners will know that the more powerful motivations among voters will be un-measurable feelings about choosing correctly, about fear, and about sexual biologically-driven responses. Most of the commentary itself that will appear in the media in the next four weeks can be read and viewed transparently as either urges to pick the winner, as fear of the outcome of the process, or as sexual stimulation.
The fear is particularly noticeable when the outcome is unpredictable, as in this federal election. It isn’t fear of the individuals vying for leadership so much as fear of the momentary loss of certainty and structure that a leadership contest, a fight among the top apes, engenders. As much as we are a social animal, we are equally a hierarchically organized animal as out of sorts during a period of uncertainty about our leadership as we are when yanked out of a social system.
The prevailing preoccupation of commentators, reflecting the preoccupation of the people at large, is predicting who will win, an obsession that assures and re-assures ourselves that there will again be a leader of one description or another shortly. Only once the leadership question is settled again can everyone take a breath and return to the normal processes of examining and evaluating policy proposals. The upset caused by elections is not unlike that felt by a child when her parents are fighting. A lack of certainty about the order of things throws humans into disarray.
For this reason, elections are not widely welcomed. We don’t like to see competing head apes unsure themselves about who is leader, and so reduced to some kind of fight to sort themselves out.
A lot of people assuage their discomfort with the unnerving uncertainty at the top by telling themselves that the real leadership is unchanging and that elections are not the selection process they seem. Still others acknowledge there is a battle among top apes to settle a new leader, but they prefer to be told when it’s done, as though they have no legitimate role to play in the matter and abstain from committing to one or another. Often this nervous reaction takes the form of making jokes or declaiming any interest whatsoever in the whole matter.
All of these reactions will be articulated during the next four weeks across the media in Canada. The sub-text of every opinion column and TV analyst spot will be readily discernable as either an urge to pick the winner and show fealty to him, to express fear (through giddiness or vertigo) of the temporary disorder, or to display sexual stimulation (in all its guises, male and female). This third phenomenon of elections may be the most hidden and yet the most powerful force for all of the electors, the commentators, and most especially the contenders.
Finally, there are those who actually look at policy proposals, decision-making abilities, track records, and intelligence about coming challenges during an election campaign. But this sector of the electorate, the media and some of the field of candidates, numbers so small as to be almost completely irrelevant. What good would it do to go around the clan of apes talking about how many coconuts should be stored for the winter when all the other apes are hyped up on fear and sex or despondent about the temporary lack of order?
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