Reality, why live in it? Unobtainable fantasy is much more productive.
If you look at the options in front of you right now and see no difference between the two, (and don't kid yourself, there are only two) then you're a lost cause.
Think of every person in your life who is a minority, who depends on social safety nets, who would like to live on a planet that's not literally dying before our eyes, who prefers not to lie in bed with actual Nazis, then look at your two choices again.
Yes, there's a gulf of difference between the two. Mind you, my two choices don't include a Liberal, so...
But even taking that into account and assuming that my two options are Liberal and Conservative, once you peel back the ideology that they use to get elected, they start looking more and more the same. I live in a province where the leading conservative party provincially was born of a merger between Liberals and PCs, so I'm keenly aware of how well the 2 can blend together.
And yes, if you're in a position where a bad ideology can have catastrophic implications for your security and way of life, the choice is natural and obvious. But aside from climate change being a part of that, the average (read: above-poverty, cishet, usually white) Canadian doesn't fall into that cohort, so voting on ideology makes little to no sense to many of them.
One could argue that the way to take down Conservatives is to call out their poor track record of kept promises about economic responsibility or being anti-corruption on top of their reckless and marginalizing ideology, but... the Liberals don't exactly have a leg to stand on with regard to promises kept in those regards (leaving out other promises unkept that only progressives care about *cough*), so it's a strategy that will never be realized. Liberals being more like the Conservatives in this regard is part of why Conservatives win in the first place, because when you strip away the ideological difference in their governance, they can't be credibly attacked on the issues that matter to every average Canadian by their primary opponent.
It may be disappointing, but the reality is that to many Canadians, ideology is just political theatre, and without ideology being something you weigh political decisions on, Liberals and Tories look remarkably similar in their behaviour.
Yeah, Canada is a happily centrist country that prides itself on being "better" than America when the truth is that we're basically more alike than people would like to admit.
Which is also why a "Conservatives are evil" strategy just doesn't ring true to me, because the average Canadian voter doesn't see it that way and doesn't really care either. Rather than live in a perpetual cycle of the Liberals own-goaling themselves over and over again and handing victory to their centrist cousins, I just wish we had a better alternative.
Amen.
I have probably helped more homeless, poor, and unemployed people than any of you.
I know conservatives and new democrats who are good people. I can drink, hang out, and have a discussion with them without being called a fucking nazi.
Judge away though folks. You are so persuading with it all.
Leaving out that no one was arguing that you don't personally do good things and how that doesn't make you a universally good person or doesn't preclude you from having a political position that could disadvantage just as people or more than your good samaritan work helps...
"I volunteer/help the unfortunate" in discussions like this is no different than "I have lots of black friends" in discussions of race. You're not absolved by association with the marginalized and disadvantaged, so present something more substantive. Like answers to the questions you've been asked.
Of course the idea that voters are having to contemplate this devil we know vs don't know situation is only due to the absurd, structurally broken nature of FPTP. If Trudeau had not gone back on his word we'd have a PR system such that voters could feel free to punish the Liberals by voting for another option, while not necessarily inducing some lopsided, undeserved Conservative majority.
I can't agree wholly on some of the other points you raised, but this one never stops ringing true.
