We tend to think politics has gotten out of control (we tend to believe politics today is worse than in the past) in the US.
All we need do is look at a majority of countries in the world and how they carry on in their governments, or just turn to our neighbor to the north ...
Politics in Canada turn ugly - and dangerous
By Ian Austen
Published: October 11, 2008
TORONTO: The seemingly benign decision to stick a Liberal Party lawn sign in her front yard has brought an unnerving new ritual to Marla Waltman Daschko's daily routine. Every morning, she walks around her Volkswagen Passat station wagon and then peers underneath its chassis searching for signs of sabotage.
She is not alone, at least in parts of Toronto, when it comes to kneeling down and examining regions of cars that usually only mechanics see. Last weekend, Toronto residents woke to find the brake lines on their cars severed, their telephone and cable television lines cut, and political graffiti scratched into automobile paint and scrawled on their homes. The sole link between the victims: a lawn sign promoting a Liberal candidate in the current federal election.
The attacks came in two leafy, upper-middle-class residential neighborhoods, including Waltman Daschko's, where raccoons raiding garbage pails are normally a bigger concern than crime. While the sabotage led to only near-misses rather than any deaths or injuries, episodes have provoked a mixture of bafflement, anger and defiance. They have also brought an unwelcome tinge of nastiness to an election campaign that has been short on drama.
Waltman Daschko briefly removed her lawn sign last Saturday evening at the suggestion of the police after the first attacks, which occurred over Friday night and early that morning. But she stuck it back into a planter near the sidewalk before going to bed, partly after considering the history of her Jewish ancestors.
"Perhaps because it's the High Holidays, but I thought of my parents and my grandparents and what they went through to assert their faith," she said. "It's shocking that in Canada, in Toronto and in the 21st century that this could happen when all we're doing is supporting a very mainstream political party."
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