John Ibbitson's Stupid Column

So, my previous post was going to describe how Globe & Mail columnist and full-time shit-licker John Ibbitson is nothing more than a mainstream media version of an internet troll and to establish this by going through his execrable column on harper's response to the "Idle No More" protest movement.

But my discussion of Ibbitson as a troll ended up being pretty fucking long, so I'm going to make the specific discussion of his stupid column the subject of a separate post right here.

Let's begin with the title, wherein Ibbitson says that harper should "stay the course" in his strategy of general non-response plus cowardly, anonymous smearing of the First Nations protesters. As I said last time, harper's response is the exact opposite of how decent and sane people would respond which is exactly why a degenerate like Ibbitson likes it.

Public support for the Harper government in the weeks ahead will hinge on how well it handles the native protests that threaten to escalate this week.

 Public support for the harper government rests upon 30% of the voting public, consisting of the most selfish, greedy and stupid citizens of this increasingly debased country.

Thus far, the Conservatives have gotten the big things right, by ignoring peaceful demonstrations and engaging with the responsible leadership in order to marginalize extremists. That is about what Canadians expect from their government at times like this.

 Here we see in Ibbitson in full-on troll mode. You can just picture him smirking as he typed that. Sixth Estate points out the inconsistency of this bit of childish prattle with the professed opinion of Ibbitson's paper's editorial board:

Here’s what the Globe’s non-plagiarizing star columnist had to say about Idle No More yesterday:

Thus far, the Conservatives have gotten the big things right, by ignoring peaceful demonstrations… in order to marginalize extremists.

And here’s what the paper’s anonymous editorial writer proclaimed today:

Chiefs who are advocating radical tactics should reconsider in light of the progress that peaceful measures have brought.

I don’t know which of those statements is more accurate, but I’m not sure how both can be true. And I seriously question Ibbitson’s logic that the more the government ignores peaceful protests, the less radical aboriginal groups will be likely to contemplate non-peaceful ones.

Obviously, the Globe's editors probably agree with Ibbitson more than they do with their own words, but to say so would threaten to pull the wool from over the eyes of all the peaceful chumps who imagine that afternoon demonstrations, camp-outs in public parks, flash mobs in malls and online petitions are the way to change things. Sorry people. Ibbitson (safe from his perch at the nation's newspaper of record) knows the score and he's laughing at you.

Ibbitson then goes on to talk about how important this movement really is, with some people saying it's about finally rectifying over a century of injustice:

But public expectations are low. Last summer, Nanos Research and the Institute for Research on Public Policy produced a study that rated major issues by two criteria: how important a policy challenge was to the public, and how confident the public was that government could meet the challenge.
First nations issues ranked at the very bottom in both public importance and in public confidence that government could make things better.

Ibbitson is such a fucking idiot. What does the cretin do? Look to the TV ratings to decide what he should watch that evening? Attend and enjoy a movie based on its box-office receipts? Listen to the latest boy-band hit on his ipod because it had the most "likes" or downloads or whatever?

It is an asinine argument to say that since many Canadians don't give a shit about the First Nations, harper shouldn't do the right thing on the issue. (Obviously, harper can't do the right thing for any issue because he's a rancid tower of spoiled ham. Secondly, Ibbitson would encourage harper to act against public opinion if Canada's ruling class wanted something. He would then praise harper for his "political courage." Ibbitson is an amoral disgusting hack who uses whatever argument helps his case, intellectual consistency be damned.

Perhaps the word "whore" should be, now and forever, uniformly mean "person who sells out what is really important to their self-worth in exchange for an unequal amount of money" rather than how it's commonly associated with sex-workers. Because a sex-worker might be very casual about what he or she does and considers his or herself adequately compensated for it. But to be called a "whore" is to imply that a person has disgraced his or herself for material benefit . And that's pretty much what Ibbitson does to himself with pretty much ever column he writes.

While the Idle No More Movement and Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike may have increased the importance of native issues for most Canadians, it is unlikely they are any more confident that anything can be done. Mr. Nanos described that attitude as a sense of “public-policy futility.”

More sleaze. If, because of decades of successive federal governments willful failure to do anything to solve the problem of the First Nations, a majority of Canadians begin to think that the problem will never be solved, that's to be used as yet another excuse to do nothing. Actually, that's being charitable. The whole point is to abuse the First Nations so that they'll be forced to join the "mainstream" where they can be discriminated against and abused and used as cheap labour the same as all the other non-whites.

"Malign neglect" is the same sickeningly cynical process used as the "Middle East Peace Process" to steal all of Palestine.

While they may empathize with native Canadians, most immigrant Canadians are willing, even eager, to integrate into Canadian society. It would hardly be surprising in that case if they had only limited empathy for native claims to land and sovereignty, and little sense of collective responsibility for the poverty on many reserves.

Remember: There are roughly 370,000 first nations living on reserves. About 250,000 immigrants, almost all from non-European societies, arrive in Canada every year. Time is not on the natives’ side.

 In other words, Ibbitson recommends that harper take advantage of the ignorance and indifference of immigrants to Canada, to avoid doing the right thing for the First Nations. Complete and total fucking asshole.

There then follows a bit about how harper should utilize divisions among the First Nations to divide and conquer, followed by this bit of insanity:

The wild card is anarchy. If the chiefs opposing Mr. Atleo and the Idle No More activists escalate their demonstrations to the point where there is risk of violence or serious economic disruption, then the federal government will have to be firm in enforcing the rule of law.

 Ha! The criminal harper "enforcing the rule of law." Ibbitson would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that he's being a deliberate disgusting hypocrite. Ibbitson believes that the law is to be used against the weak, and only against the weak. The law, in Ibbitson's warped mind, is a weapon to be employed selectively to reinforce the status-quo. I would thank Ibbitson for being so candid here if it weren't for the fact that I think he's a despicable, monstrous psychotic fuckwad. Do you now see what we're up against peaceful protesters? Do you now see that much more serious thinking is needed about what forms of protest work and what don't? Do you not see that we have to do much more than just resign ourselves to the general public's delusions about how Canada functions and argue with the public to convince them of the amorality and selfishness and naked thuggery of our rulers?

But that is exactly the moment at which events can spiral out of control: Oka; the Dudley George shooting. Then no one can predict what will happen.

Short of that, if the Harper government stays the current course, then the Conservative coalition of support should hold and the government should emerge from this winter of native discontent in reasonable shape – politically, at least.

In other words, harper should continue to enforce a policy of oppression and injustice. Hopefully the diehard opponents of this struggle can be marginalized into insignificance and return to their lives of misery and poverty and systemic racism. There's a possibility that this policy might lead to an explosion of anger and maybe a couple of people (probably poor and therefore of no account) might die, but too bad, so sad, if that comes to pass.

What Ibbitson's disgusting column completely ignores though, is that it is a response to harper's unilateral tearing-up of solemn treaties made by the Crown with the First Nations and recognized and upheld in the Constitution Act of 1982. As well, it is a reaction to harper's evisceration of environmental regulations in the service of the petroleum industry and which will render the communities of many First Nations (located along pipeline routes and etc.,) unlivable.

I'll hazard a guess that Ibbitson deliberately ignores this aspect of "Idle No More" because he's an asshole and an intellectual coward.