The third temptation

For the third temptation of Our Lord, the devil took Jesus to a high spot, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and promised Jesus would have power over all of them, if only He would bow down and worship him, the devil.

We're having another election up here in Canada.  We had a federal election just two years ago.  No one wanted another one.  No one asked for another one.  The government was not defeated.  Its coalition seemed to be holding firm for the moment.  But the numbers looked promising, and our Prime Minister decided to call a snap election in the hope of turning his minority government into a majority.  It is a cynical power grab, nothing more.  The only upside is that it could possibly bite him in the posterior, hard.

Our system is far from working as designed.  We are supposed to be voting for our local representative, who will then go to Ottawa to try and take care of our local interests in a national context.  What we have instead is the parties in Ottawa embodied in their leaders sending their representatives to us, offering us to vote for the leaders through their proxies.  The result is a government by Prime Minister and a bunch of yes men.

In the meantime, they are all making promises about the sunshine and roses that will come should they be elected.  All these promises have me thinking of the third temptation of Our Lord: we shall have all our hopes and dreams, if only we vote for them.  Even better, these flabby devils in suits and ties have a touch of Screwtape in them.  We are still willing to trade power and gifts to men for their souls, Screwtape tells Wormwood, but the deals that the leader below prefers are the ones where they get a man's soul and give him absolutely nothing in return. 

And we do get nothing.  It has become a tradition in Canada when the government switches parties for the incoming party to almost immediately announce that the previous party lied about our situation: the finances are invariably far worse than the previous party let on, and that means, gosh, that the new party can't fulfill its promises.  Or they lay out a twenty year plan that will lead to Utopia at some future point, knowing full well that no party has ever held power that long so the chance of them seeing their grand plan through to the end is less than zero.  It is mere posturing, empty and hollow.  A vote for them was and is a vote for nothing,

Vote for me and all this will be yours.  Don't fall for it.