neorhino.ca
Ever since I heard about it as a youth, I have had a slight infatuation with the Rhinoceros Party of Canada. The idea of infiltrating government with the intention of lampooning it - and there is always plenty to make fun of - is just... delicious. I never really looked very deeply into it, though, for whatever reason... perhaps it seemed like it was ultimately a waste of energy, and that maybe you shouldn't mess around with something as ultimately important as a national election.
However, today I registered at Pair Vote - a website that allows you to trade your potentially wasted vote (my riding, for example, is almost without a doubt going to the incumbent Liberal, who has won with a landslide in the last 3 elections, and maybe more before that) for a vote in a different riding that might actually make a difference in that riding. As part of the registration process you choose your desired victorious party, and note what other parties you are willing to vote for, in return for having your vote potentially make a difference elsewhere. Anyway, one of the options was "The Rhinoceros Party", which I thought was long dead.
So, I investigated on Elections Canada Online (A terrifically useful website at election time) and lo-and-behold, there are 14 Rhino Party Candidates running in this election... though none in my riding, or even in Ontario - all but one are in Quebec, the lone outpost being in Vancouver, BC.
Anyways, from Elections Canada I headed to neorhino.ca and ended up reading through their entire... manifesto-thingy?... and was pretty surprised by what was in there:
"Achievable Utopia": The Manifesto (of sorts) of neorhino.ca - the New Rhinoceros Party of Canada
It was definitely absurdist, which I did expect - that is what they are known for, and certainly what I knew about them, primarily. However, it was far more insightful than expected... philosophically quite well-aligned with many of my beliefs - anti-war, pro-electoral-reform, sexually liberal, pro-drug decriminalization, pro-free health care, pro-free education, pro-cultural spending, pro-arts, environmentalist, pro-nudity (at least based on the pictures in their manifesto - oh, right, you may want to be careful looking at it at work), anti-capitalism, pro-reduced work week, anti-big business / pro-small business, against tax breaks for companies and the wealthy, cautious of religion, very pro-independent thought and pro-self-realization... like, far better aligned to my true ways of thinking than any other party I've seen! The only thing that potentially worries me are the strong Quebec-separatist overtones - even if extended to all provinces in suggesting that each province should be it's own nation, unified as a republic of sorts, I guess.
I had definitely expected it to be more simple buffoonery and contrary-ness, and less... idealist protest, I guess? I was surprised, in any case, at how much it appealed to me upon closer inspection... I sorta expected it to be pretty one-dimensional - a funny joke but nothing more, no substance beneath.
The type of humour was also more familiar than I might have expected - it reminded me a lot of the people I know in the Hash House Harriers, the "drinking club with a running problem" that I occasionally run/drink with. I thoroughly enjoy my time with them (despite not attending anything recently) because it's a just bunch of people who don't take themselves seriously, and just want to have some fun. There's other copacetic cross-overs: Rhino Party members frequently adopt bizarre names, as do the hashers, have an affinity for bad, sexually-charged puns (often as part of said bizarre names), and seem to be hedonists at heart.
Anyways, I think it would be pretty easy and pretty entertaining to enter a Rhinoceros Party candidate in the next election with the support of the hashers - especially if it were to be a hasher running (unintentional pun - mental note for the campaign). The combination of being a hasher and an electoral candidate with the Rhino Party would be very symbiotic: the hashers would have a new reason to be even more absurd and over-the-top (not like they need reasons, but they'll take 'em) and the candidate would have a built-in voting block and campaign (mis)management. Not only that, but there would almost certainly be interest from other hashing groups across Canada to support this idea... possibly by doing the same in their cities.
That sounds like a lot of fun and I am going to float that idea around the hashers... it's exactly the sort of trouble they'd love to get themselves into. ;)
B.
However, today I registered at Pair Vote - a website that allows you to trade your potentially wasted vote (my riding, for example, is almost without a doubt going to the incumbent Liberal, who has won with a landslide in the last 3 elections, and maybe more before that) for a vote in a different riding that might actually make a difference in that riding. As part of the registration process you choose your desired victorious party, and note what other parties you are willing to vote for, in return for having your vote potentially make a difference elsewhere. Anyway, one of the options was "The Rhinoceros Party", which I thought was long dead.
So, I investigated on Elections Canada Online (A terrifically useful website at election time) and lo-and-behold, there are 14 Rhino Party Candidates running in this election... though none in my riding, or even in Ontario - all but one are in Quebec, the lone outpost being in Vancouver, BC.
Anyways, from Elections Canada I headed to neorhino.ca and ended up reading through their entire... manifesto-thingy?... and was pretty surprised by what was in there:
"Achievable Utopia": The Manifesto (of sorts) of neorhino.ca - the New Rhinoceros Party of Canada
It was definitely absurdist, which I did expect - that is what they are known for, and certainly what I knew about them, primarily. However, it was far more insightful than expected... philosophically quite well-aligned with many of my beliefs - anti-war, pro-electoral-reform, sexually liberal, pro-drug decriminalization, pro-free health care, pro-free education, pro-cultural spending, pro-arts, environmentalist, pro-nudity (at least based on the pictures in their manifesto - oh, right, you may want to be careful looking at it at work), anti-capitalism, pro-reduced work week, anti-big business / pro-small business, against tax breaks for companies and the wealthy, cautious of religion, very pro-independent thought and pro-self-realization... like, far better aligned to my true ways of thinking than any other party I've seen! The only thing that potentially worries me are the strong Quebec-separatist overtones - even if extended to all provinces in suggesting that each province should be it's own nation, unified as a republic of sorts, I guess.
I had definitely expected it to be more simple buffoonery and contrary-ness, and less... idealist protest, I guess? I was surprised, in any case, at how much it appealed to me upon closer inspection... I sorta expected it to be pretty one-dimensional - a funny joke but nothing more, no substance beneath.
The type of humour was also more familiar than I might have expected - it reminded me a lot of the people I know in the Hash House Harriers, the "drinking club with a running problem" that I occasionally run/drink with. I thoroughly enjoy my time with them (despite not attending anything recently) because it's a just bunch of people who don't take themselves seriously, and just want to have some fun. There's other copacetic cross-overs: Rhino Party members frequently adopt bizarre names, as do the hashers, have an affinity for bad, sexually-charged puns (often as part of said bizarre names), and seem to be hedonists at heart.
Anyways, I think it would be pretty easy and pretty entertaining to enter a Rhinoceros Party candidate in the next election with the support of the hashers - especially if it were to be a hasher running (unintentional pun - mental note for the campaign). The combination of being a hasher and an electoral candidate with the Rhino Party would be very symbiotic: the hashers would have a new reason to be even more absurd and over-the-top (not like they need reasons, but they'll take 'em) and the candidate would have a built-in voting block and campaign (mis)management. Not only that, but there would almost certainly be interest from other hashing groups across Canada to support this idea... possibly by doing the same in their cities.
That sounds like a lot of fun and I am going to float that idea around the hashers... it's exactly the sort of trouble they'd love to get themselves into. ;)
B.