PC Party of Alberta–Proving Einstein and Churchill Right?

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. – Albert Einstein

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. - Winston Churchill

[Author note: A sequel to this blog post can be found here - PC Party of Alberta–Who Will Bell the Cat?]

When the PC Party of Alberta announced a candidate for the upcoming by-election in Calgary-Foothills, I was curious:

What has the PC Party learned from the election loss in May and what would their candidate do differently as a result of those lessons?

With that in mind, I posed a simple question on the Facebook pages of the candidate and the PC Party.  The question was this:

On what platform will he run? Have we admitted our weaknesses yet, why we lost and what we need to do to regain the confidence of the people? No nasty answers please - this is an honest question from someone who would like to understand if stuff from the past has been resolved.

I thought the question to be fair, legitimate and respectfully asked.

The candidate never answered the question as of the time this post was published.

However, on the PC Party wall, I was blessed with this fascinating interaction (click on the image for an easier-to-read version).

“Clowns like me”.  We’re off to an excellent, cerebral start in our exchange.

The interaction continued ….

Now I’m a “clueless clown”.  I’m having trouble keeping up with the elevated intellectual level of the exchange but I feel I must persevere despite my obvious shortcomings.

Mr. June’s rant continued before the PC Party finally addressed my question and I responded:

Note that they did not attempt to refute his comments at all – a curious thing.

However, in a desire not to feel left out of the exchange, Mr. June re-entered the conversation:

Clearly I am not worthy of the intellect of this individual and I disengaged before embarrassing myself further.

The reality is that there are always idiots (Individuals Derogatorily Opining Trite S**t) out there who can’t wait to share their weak, fact-less, disrespectful opinions on the Web.  I feel bad for anyone whose lives are limited in such ways – it must be a dark, frustrating, powerless way to live.

However, what I am fascinated by is that the PC Party did not attempt to silence the individual or publicly disassociate themselves from his opinions.  Even though it is THEIR forum, they are allowing others to shout down anyone who dares to engage in public discourse for the sole reason of making something better and they are not making any comment to the contrary.

And when someone speaks on someone else’s behalf and the latter chooses not to refute what was said, you have to wonder if they agree with what was said or if they don’t care what the potential result could be if they don’t refute it.

The difficulty here is that what we don’t condemn today, we accept tomorrow …..

….. and what we accept today, we embrace tomorrow.

Does the PC Party know what it may be embracing with such a hands-off attitude regarding the comments of the dull and the ignorant?

Does the PC Party care?

Perhaps the PC Party prefers that difficult questions not be asked.

I can’t tell – they don’t answer them but they do allow others to be the hammer in an effort to squelch public discourse, potentially presenting a desirable outcome for the PC Party since someone else gets to play the heavy when the questions are awkward to answer.

Again, I don’t know and can’t guess if an answer is not forthcoming from anyone except the people who have little to share and a lot of energy to do it with.

Interestingly enough, only one individual by the name of Maxim pointed out that the response to me was unfair.  Such little response suggests that others agree with intimidation tactics, no one cares about the interaction, no one cares to take action when they see something wrong, no one cares enough about the PC Party in general or they have better things to do with their Life.

None of these things send a positive message to the PC Party or to the people who might observe or participate in such interactions.

Voter influence is all about perception and so far, the campaign in Calgary-Foothills is off to a bad start from my perspective.

The fact that people prefer me to be in their camp instead of attempting to drive me to the opponent’s camp through intimidation or indifference is a subject for a different day.

The Bottom Line

You should never allow someone else to define who you are with their own message on your behalf.  It may be the last or only message that others receive and you may fall victim to the reputation that becomes attached to you if the message is not a positive one or one that properly reflects what you represent (or at least what you want it to represent).

If you don’t like what that reputation is, then do something about it.

Because if you don’t do something about it, maybe you agree with the message being promoted or if nothing else, you may be perceived as agreeing with it.

Either way, the perception of the recipient will be the same whether you like it or not.

Do you care what reputation is defined for you by others?

Does it matter?

How do you know?

What are you willing to do about it?

For the PC Party, failure to shut down the ignorant who define the reputation of the Party may be proving Einstein and Churchill to be right.

I wonder if they care.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

[Author note: A sequel to this blog post can be found here - PC Party of Alberta–Who Will Bell the Cat?]

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Addendum: A member of the PC Party, after observing the interaction, texted me this thought:

The PC response is pathetic: we’ll get to a platform when we stop being so busy.  How do you commit to run without a platform?

An interesting thought indeed.

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Addendum 2 – A Response From the PCAA

The PC Party Twitter account sent me this tweet in response to my observations:

A few observations regarding their response:

1. It addresses the subject without really addressing it, since it doesn’t reject the comments as not reflecting the position of the Party or the candidate.  While entertaining all opinions is noble, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand when some participants are abusive and should be banned. 
2. The tweet takes the politically correct stand of “we don’t want to say a specific person was naughty” so we will generalize it to be “some people” which technically could include me for refusing to accept the aggressive nature of others.  Meanwhile, last time I checked, “some people” were still continuing their abuse of the opinions of others.  Convenient?
3. If one does not have a policy for healthy discourse in 2015, one is seriously behind the times.  Beg, borrow or steal someone else’s – there are many to choose from.  “Grow a set” as the expression goes and know when it is obvious to shut down those who merely seek to shut down discourse for their own misguided reasons.  We can’t be everything to everyone, otherwise we end up standing for nothing.

The Bottom Line

The damage is done – my question went unanswered by the Party and by the candidate and others have expressed a lack of interest in speaking up as a result.  Is this a deliberate act under the guise of “we don’t have a policy for healthy discourse”?  This would be very convenient if true.

Not much appears to have changed since the Party attitude, poor perception of what the voter wanted and lack of strategic foresight brought the Party down in May of 2015.

Oh wait, many PCAA members still don’t believe that they really lost that election and maybe that’s the problem.  This is especially true given that many PCAA members keep citing the strange, unrelated statistic that since the PC Party and the Wildrose Party combined took more popular votes than the NDP, then it means that the NDP didn’t really win.

To those people, I ask them to look at who sits on the Government side of the Legislature.  That is the only answer that matters.

Those people remind me of the belief of some that if someone dies in a violent way, their ghost remains where the person died, unaware that they have actually died.

A pompous attitude when you are “on top of the pile” is not appropriate.

A pompous attitude when you are not is not intelligent.

One causes you to lose.

One prevents you from winning.

Is there any difference between the two in the end?