Federal Election Talk and War in Libya

Some random thoughts for this morning:

Obviously there has to be an election. I've long held to the idea that harper is unfit to govern due to his demonstrated contempt for our entire political system. He is by far the most undemocratic prime minister we've ever had. They're a disgrace, they're contemptible, they have to go.

But it saddens me that the NDP makes so many noises about accommodating this abomination. Maybe some of that is just covering their asses politically, trying to pretend that they don't want an election and will move heaven and earth to demonstrate to all the lazy, whining, ignorant potential swing voters who begrudge the half-hour it takes to exercise their franchise, that the NDP tried not to inconvenience them.

It saddens me more than it amuses me to see all the Liberal bloggers fired up about their "Hope and Change" symbol, Michael Ignatieff, as the possibility of an election becomes stronger. I actually agree with their fighting words about the detestable harper and their mockery of Layton's sudden embrace of "making Parliament work" after a couple of years of bombastic brinkmanship. But it's just so fucking ridiculous. Yes Liberals, go on believing that Ignatieff promises something substantially better than harper on the economy, on foreign policy, on the environment, on culture. The fact of that matter is that 21st-Century "liberalism" tends to mean freedom of speech for pornographers and anti-Muslim racists, and the right of women, racialized minorities, and gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals, and transgendered persons to compete in the marketplace (subject to unspoken cultural limits). Aside from that, liberalism means rising inequality, suicidal destruction of the environment, and continued imperialism and torture.

The Liberals, like the US Democrats, will perpetuate the downward spiral of living standards (which they contributed to mightily under Chretien and Martin), with, perhaps, a retreat back from harper's authoritarianism to the more benign bullying of the Chretien years. (It's also possible that the Liberals will take a cue from Obama and actually EXPAND upon the lawlessness and monstrousness of the bush II regime!)

And it saddens me even more to think that our political culture in Canada is so thoroughly debased that the NDP remains a distant third-choice of Canadians, with the present gang of clearly incompetent, clearly ridiculous, clearly contemptible harpercons as the political party of choice of the largest bloc of voters.

And now for Libya. Ah yes, Libya. Gotta get on board with the Western intervention in Libya right? This time the imperialists, the mass-murderers, the plunderers, the rapists, the dictator-loving hypocritical asswipes are being genuinely altruistic right? Of fucking course not.

Given the fact that all they'd need to do to stop the equally barbaric assaults on civilians in Bahrain or Yemen would be to tap their dictator allies on the shoulder and softy suggest that maybe they shouldn't gun-down innocent people in the streets. That Obama is doing nothing of the sort must make sensible people wonder about his sanctimonious droning about Libya's Qaddafi. (To be perfectly honest, I simply skipped those three or four lines of quoted text whenever I read about the Libyan intervention. Obama disgusts me and I can think of no greater waste of time than to read his pedestrian rhetoric and his hypocritical bullshit.)

New rule: No matter how grievous the tragedy, the fact that our governments are staffed by monsters makes it the case that their intervention anywhere in the world can only make things worse. Stop calling for Western governments to "do something" whenever the mainstream media draws your attention to some crisis somewhere in the world.