The What and Why of Reboot Alberta. A place for Effective Informed Citizenship to help Build a Better Alberta.

It's election time.  If you what things to change, and who doesn't, it's not nearly good enough, as the old cliche goes, to merely think "outside the box."  Election time is when citizens must "think inside the box...the BALLOT BOX.

The ultimate focus of the power of citizenship is at election time.  The people who run our political systems are never more attentive to citizens than at election time. The political power shifts from the partisans to the citizens. Your personal agency of citizenship, and your vote is the applied expression of that power.  

You have to think about what message you are sending when you mark your ballot and put it INSIDE THE BALLOT BOX.  The Federal election is the next best opportunity to express and suggest where you want to Press for Change. Use it wisely, but use it.

What is going to drive your vote?  What is your Ballot Box question, issue, or concern? Will it be conveyed clearly when you vote? How do you get your intended message across in the election to the candidate, leader, and party of your choice?

This podcast covers ways to think about that as well as what you are voting for and why. Don't make the mistake of thinking only about whom you will be voting for. Don't be gullible, duped, or manipulated. 

Make them prove they are worthy of your support and can be trusted with your consent to govern.  It's a very short campaign so best get at figuring out how to apply the power of your vote.

Citizenship.  We all have it and we mostly take it for granted.  We don't understand the breadth of our Rights nor the depths of our Responsibilities as Citizens.  Nor do we appreciate the power of citizenship to purposefully press for change.  Too many citizens avoid participation in civic life because they equate it with partisan politics.  Everyone knows that is full of vile, malevolent, and abusive people who are self-centered and self-serving..  Who in their right mind would want to engage and encourage such behavior.

This is especially true of those comfortable, content, complacent, and too often compliant people in the Centre of the political spectrum.  There are strong ideological drivers of identity politics that define and motivate those on the Left and the Right.   There are tribal instincts that give a sense of self and place and even purpose.  Labels like Socialist and Capitalist define the adversarial power struggle mostly directed toward defeating  the "Other."  

Our political culture is broken.  The old ideologically binary hobbles of Left versus Right political options is oversimplistic. It is proven to be inadequate in the face of the complexity, magnitude, pace of change, and enormity of the consequences of poor political judgment on the challenges Albertans face.   

Citizenship, not partisanship, is the energy source available to bring forth positive, inclusive, just, and pragmatic political change.   Continued insolence, arrogance, and indifference by Moderates to the responsibilities of citizenship and the duty for political engagement is not an option

The admonition for the majority of Albertans, who are in the Moderate Pragmatic Center, is attributed to Edmund Burke who allegedly said "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

The time has come for the majority of Albertans in the Moderate Center to become radical if we are going to repair and rebalance our political culture.  We need to wake up, show up, clean up and, yes,  grow up as we take up the challenge of complexity and causes.    

If you are ready, willing, and able to take up the challenge, Reboot Alberta is a place for you.