Sometimes lines are crossed and someone is discredited and they're not very consequential and so you forget about them. Or I have anyway, in the case of, say, Margaret Wente. I mean, it's long been known that she's an idiot and a liar; but she was exposed about a year ago as a total fraud as well. But Maggie's friends know how hard it is in the labour market for an unemployed older woman with nothing but an English degree, so they rallied behind her and she's still plagiarizing and lying and stupefying to this day.
And I don't care. I mean, Media Culpa kicked Wente's ugly ass all over the place and the Glib n' Stale actively refused to hold their privileged incompetent self-entitled disgrace accountable. What more can you do? So, sure, to the extent that anyone reads her for purposes other than mockery, scorn or whatever; to the extent that someone actually reads her for an honest opinion or for those who even think this shit-head is an intelligent woman, she pollutes our intellectual culture, but what can be done about it? Especially since the numbers of people who could possibly read her and think "Wow! This person is really smart!" must be infinitesimally small.
Then there are people who are more important than Wente, because their actions have a greater impact on my life. stephen harper for instance. But I'm still not particularly interested in chronicling his latest crimes and fuck-ups to any great degree. Because he crossed a line a long time ago. He's crossed several lines, each of which on their own would discredit him as any sort of DEMOCRATIC politician. And the bulk of our corporate media endorsed him politically and report on him today as if he's still some sort of legitimate democratic figure. (To be fair, many media figures have trashed him and continue to do so.)
But we, as a collective, as Canadians haven't done anything about this. The proper thing to do is to forcibly remove him from power and put him up on charges. That's the bare minimum that should have been done. (Whatever the hypocritical howls and screams from his detestable, hypocritical fan base.) But the majority of Canadians don't care about the fundamentals of Canadian democracy. Either that or they're so disconnected from the reality of the democracy in which they live that they're clueless as to the mortal wounds that harper has inflicted upon it.
And then there's the deluded. The people who imagine that a petition, or a rally, or an internet site is sufficient to bring harper down. There's "The Campaign For One Big Campaign" which has degenerated into a Facebook group posting other people's articles about harper like any other anti-harper individual could do. Ostensibly they're supposed to be rallying Canadians to demand that the not-anti-democratic opposition parties present harper with a united front, but posting links on Facebook is so much easier and instantly gratifying. They've got a retired journalist among them who writes great stuff on his own account. Some of it was very heartening. He trashed the supposedly big trade union/NGO media alliance who were going to create a united voice for workers' issues AND put people in the streets in support of it, for becoming just another milquetoast, small-scale, one-off rally after a modest media campaign sort of thing. I contacted him about building a citizen's movement to topple harper and he replied that he wasn't much for doing anything these days but gave me someone else's email, the owner of which never got back to me.
This is, essentially, all that the Canadian Left is good for. Bloviating on the internet or holding one day rallies with the magical thinking that they're going to achieve something. Complaining about the structures that bind us and limit our power and doing pratically ZERO to change those structures.
We're basically reduced to hoping that harper somehow implodes by 2015 so that, supposedly the business-as-usual Liberals or the "We're trying to be business-as-usual" NDP can glide into the place that the self-defeated harper has vacated. Our political parties are all too deluded and too full of sleazy hacks to really be much of a change, but at least the boogey-man harper will be gone, no thanks to us.
Look people; to change the world requires thought and effort. To change other people's minds requires getting off the internet, away from your friends and the loathsome trolls, and engaging with other people. Power concedes nothing without a fight. Fighting means fighting. Fighting means FIGHTING.
And I don't care. I mean, Media Culpa kicked Wente's ugly ass all over the place and the Glib n' Stale actively refused to hold their privileged incompetent self-entitled disgrace accountable. What more can you do? So, sure, to the extent that anyone reads her for purposes other than mockery, scorn or whatever; to the extent that someone actually reads her for an honest opinion or for those who even think this shit-head is an intelligent woman, she pollutes our intellectual culture, but what can be done about it? Especially since the numbers of people who could possibly read her and think "Wow! This person is really smart!" must be infinitesimally small.
Then there are people who are more important than Wente, because their actions have a greater impact on my life. stephen harper for instance. But I'm still not particularly interested in chronicling his latest crimes and fuck-ups to any great degree. Because he crossed a line a long time ago. He's crossed several lines, each of which on their own would discredit him as any sort of DEMOCRATIC politician. And the bulk of our corporate media endorsed him politically and report on him today as if he's still some sort of legitimate democratic figure. (To be fair, many media figures have trashed him and continue to do so.)
But we, as a collective, as Canadians haven't done anything about this. The proper thing to do is to forcibly remove him from power and put him up on charges. That's the bare minimum that should have been done. (Whatever the hypocritical howls and screams from his detestable, hypocritical fan base.) But the majority of Canadians don't care about the fundamentals of Canadian democracy. Either that or they're so disconnected from the reality of the democracy in which they live that they're clueless as to the mortal wounds that harper has inflicted upon it.
And then there's the deluded. The people who imagine that a petition, or a rally, or an internet site is sufficient to bring harper down. There's "The Campaign For One Big Campaign" which has degenerated into a Facebook group posting other people's articles about harper like any other anti-harper individual could do. Ostensibly they're supposed to be rallying Canadians to demand that the not-anti-democratic opposition parties present harper with a united front, but posting links on Facebook is so much easier and instantly gratifying. They've got a retired journalist among them who writes great stuff on his own account. Some of it was very heartening. He trashed the supposedly big trade union/NGO media alliance who were going to create a united voice for workers' issues AND put people in the streets in support of it, for becoming just another milquetoast, small-scale, one-off rally after a modest media campaign sort of thing. I contacted him about building a citizen's movement to topple harper and he replied that he wasn't much for doing anything these days but gave me someone else's email, the owner of which never got back to me.
This is, essentially, all that the Canadian Left is good for. Bloviating on the internet or holding one day rallies with the magical thinking that they're going to achieve something. Complaining about the structures that bind us and limit our power and doing pratically ZERO to change those structures.
We're basically reduced to hoping that harper somehow implodes by 2015 so that, supposedly the business-as-usual Liberals or the "We're trying to be business-as-usual" NDP can glide into the place that the self-defeated harper has vacated. Our political parties are all too deluded and too full of sleazy hacks to really be much of a change, but at least the boogey-man harper will be gone, no thanks to us.
Look people; to change the world requires thought and effort. To change other people's minds requires getting off the internet, away from your friends and the loathsome trolls, and engaging with other people. Power concedes nothing without a fight. Fighting means fighting. Fighting means FIGHTING.
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