Ordinary Canadians? Who?

Politicians please stop. Stop it. Stop right now using the phrase 'Ordinary Canadians' to stuff words in our mouths, promote conformity and exclude. Stop it. Nah...ah.. no..da..stop. now. Ok. Now listen without framing.

Ordinary Canadians, apparently now do not care about the Arts.

Ordinary Canadians want to keep our streets safe by putting young people in jail and throwing away the key.

Ordinary Canadians are getting gouged at the pumps.

Ordinary Canadians care only about their piece of the pie. They have two and a half kids, want us to do something about the 'environment', but don't want to rock the boat.

Ordinary Canadians are about the most boring and uninspired people in the world and they are ruining our country.

Artists clearly are not Ordinary. Are newcomers 'ordinary Canadians'? What about the families of citizens imprisoned overseas? What about Muslims, are Muslims to be counted? Who gets to perceive themselves as the centre of the universe, and everyone who is not like us as abnormal? Ordinary Canadians do. Ordinary Canadians can look at other Ordinary Canadians as marginal, depending on which Ordinary Politician has played them.

Ordinary Families are the nearly complete and total focus of political campaigns in North America. Politicians will come and personally pave your driveway with their bare hands during an election campaign if you are Ordinary! Ordinary families can look forward to everything promised under the moon at a reasonable tax rate. Ordinary families have a political dream akin to 'everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die'. They are not expected to give, only receive. They don't have to think, they don't have to struggle with the issues, they only need to consume political advertising to understand their politics. What about the orphans? No family? Not ordinary. Think of the children, think of the poor - for shame the utter privilege heaped upon Ordinary Families. Our politics has created the psychic segregation of the non-ordinary person. Her isolation, his social exclusion.

'I sing this for the captain, whose ship has not come in, the soul without a king, the mother in confusion, her cradle still unfilled' (l. cohen). The smart, the unusual, the creative, the outsider, the anti-consumer activist, the freak, the intellectual, the artist, my washing machine repair man, the local tailor. No one with anything to say has a voice. Only Ordinary Canadian Families do.

Judging by the level of content in campaign messages from the major parties, ordinary Canadians can't think past a Grade Four level of understanding. Ordinary Canadians sit around kitchen tables and say ordinary things that just happen to support political parties. Ordinary Canadians live in an Idiocracy.

Thankfully, Ordinary Canadians, as caricatured by our professional political communication media firms, do not exist. I have never met one. We do have free will. We do have independent thought. We care a lot about the bigger picture. We are not what you make us out to be. We are much more. None of us are ordinary.

Ordinary is something not everyone can be, it's an exclusive club of mediocrity. Extraordinary is something we all are everyday. Imagine the chances of being human in a country like Canada, in this universe, in this time. One time to live this life, a great responsibility, an incredible nation, an incredible fortune just to be here and exist. How could we be ordinary?

Never let them tell you that you are Ordinary!

arif jinha
- extraordinary Canadian