More on harper and his Brain Farts

Yesterday, I talked about harper as a narcissist, a sociopath and a profoundly superficial thinker. I think the roots of harper's censoring of science; hiding from the press, addiction to propaganda and lies, hatred of democracy, are in his dim understanding that he's a deluded half-wit, and his fear of the unknown that would result if his intellectual house-of-cards were to collapse under the pressure of contrary viewpoints.

Today I'll continue going through the harper quote that I started dissecting. There we discovered that harper opposes "socialist morality," which is to say, attacking social inequality and replacing it with social equality, so that everyone has food, shelter, dignity and worth. Next he accused the left of "moral relativism" ignoring the fact that he practices it on a daily basis. Then he demonstrated that he didn't know what the word "nihilism" means, by equating it with rejection of hoary traditions and uninvestigated conventions. He threw in the term "Post-Marxism" as a meaningless non sequitur. Next, Mr. Contempt of Parliament told us that this caricature of socialist morality leads to a hatred of western democracy. Think of that.

It's not as if young stephen harper from 2003 did not know about the monster he would become after 2006. No. The 2003 stephen harper barely understood what he was saying at the time, hardly believed what he did understand, and easily abandoned any pretense of believing in his platitudes once he seized power.

Make no mistake about it. Stupid people can be dangerous. You wouldn't trust major surgery to a drooling imbecile. In the same way, stupid stephen harper has been an utter catastrophe to the uncertain political project that is Canada. For more evidence of his incapacity, I present paragraph two in his ramblings on socialist morality. Here it is:

This descent into nihilism should not be surprising because moral relativism simply cannot be sustained as a guiding philosophy. It leads to silliness such as moral neutrality on the use of marijuana or harder drugs mixed with its random moral crusades on tobacco. It explains the lack of moral censure on personal foibles of all kinds, extenuating even criminal behaviour with moral outrage at bourgeois society, which is then tangentially blamed for deviant behaviour. On the moral standing of the person, it leads to views ranging from radical responsibility-free individualism, to tribalism in the form of group rights.

Now, it's already been established that the premise the first sentence rests on brazen hypocrisy. It is "conservatives" who cheered on the death-squads policies in Central America throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was "conservatives" who provided cover for Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s. It is the "conservatives" in Canada who tried to rationalize Canada's sickening descent into the immoral practice of torture. On and on it goes with them.

harper is right about one thing though. his own moral emptiness is not a sustained, guiding philosophy. We can see this by observing his lurching from one foul act of corruption to the next. We can see it in his cowardly refusal to face-up to and defend his craven service to corporate greed-heads and US and Israeli imperialists.

"It leads to silliness such as moral neutrality on the use of marijuana or harder drugs mixed with its random moral crusades on tobacco."

Here harper is really pulling out all the stops! Marijuana has proven itself to be 7,000X safer than harper's own drug of choice, alcohol.It would be the height of silliness to continue to waste billions of dollars suppressing a drug enjoyed by the majority of the population, diverting policing resources from more necessary tasks and ruining thousands of lives every year. As far as harder, dangerous drugs go, ... I think one would be hard-pressed to find many socialist moral relativists who are "neutral" about these issues. You'll find leftists calling for treating addiction as a disease, not a crime. You might find leftists calling for the decriminalization of drugs, and their subsequent regulation by the government, to take the industry out of the hands of criminals. harper, and his moronic supporters, appear to prefer keeping the drug-trade in hands of gangsters, and maintaining the system of misery and deaths by overdose and police corruption and brutal (and expensive) prison system, over the "moral neutrality" of the left.

And then there's the reality that most of these "tough-on-crime" "zero tolerance for drugs" right-wingers, from Rush Limbaugh to Rob Ford, all turn out to be the most pathetic, total hypocrites. Then there are former Conservative MPs like Rahim Jaffer, whose charges for cocaine possession were dropped as part of a very lenient plea-bargain.  Jaffer and his "busty hookers," along with complete scum-bags like Bruce Carson and Paul Calandra. (I don't know if either of those two have used hard drugs. They just came to mind as examples of immoral sleaze while I was building my list of drug-using hypocrites.)

"... mixed with its random moral crusades against tobacco."

Priceless. Presumably drugs are bad because they destroy lives. But the enormous human suffering caused by the tobacco industry (documented as increasing the addictive nature of their product) is fine with this simpleton because, "Duh! They're legal!" and because "Freedom!" or some other equally vacuous "argument."

Earth to harper! Anti-smoking movements aren't necessarily Post-Marxist moral relativists. And they don't want to throw thousands of people in prison. They want to prevent people from starting a deadly habit. Help people break the habit. And reduce innocent people's exposure to having to inhale health-injuring second-hand smoke.

"It explains the lack of moral censure on personal foibles of all kinds, extenuating even criminal behaviour with moral outrage at bourgeois society, which is then tangentially blamed for deviant behaviour."

I think the dimwit meant "moral backbone" or something. Otherwise he's saying that it's individual failings that produce a lack of condemnation of drug-use and addiction. Which is completely bizarre. I think he meant to say that the absence of a moral compass allows drug-users to explain away their miserable moral failures as the result of a rough childhood, or a propensity to addiction, or some other set of circumstances, and he extends this to the Post-Marxists who also make up any excuse for addicts besides moral failure. The Post-Marxists are so stupid as to blame bourgeois society for the addicts' personal failure. This, harper finds ridiculous. Why should a society that uses people as expendable resources in the service of personal greed drive people to use drugs? Why should a bourgeois politician like stephen harper be blamed for drug-overdoses just because he would rather see people locked-up as criminals if they go for help, and he'd like to shut-down the award-winning InSite clinic, that lets addicts use their drugs in a setting where they're encouraged to get help and there is medical assistance in case they overdose? Why should bourgeois society be blamed for the drug industry, just because its governments have aided and abetted drug-dealing gangsters decade-after-decade?

By  the way; where was the "moral censure" for Rob Ford's gross display of hypocrisy, in consorting with gangsters, smoking crack cocaine, and making a public spectacle of his intoxicated self? Did harper, or Jim Flaherty come out swinging against his disgraceful moral failure? No. As usual, these moral titans did the exact opposite of what they want for everyone else. Flaherty tearfully hoped that Ford would get help. And the cowardly harper simply went without commenting on the horrible example of the politician he once saw as a member of a triumvirate that included himself, and Tim Hudak.

stevie-boy! How are young people supposed to learn to stay off drugs when their drug-abusing mayor is so coddled by the politicians and the courts????

"On the moral standing of the person, it leads to views ranging from radical responsibility-free individualism, to tribalism in the form of group rights."


I think it's already been well established here that harper cares not a whit for personal responsibility when it comes to his friends and allies. And when one thinks of all the cover-ups and blatant refusals to accept consequences for bad decisions of this government, harper's 2003 words start to become nausea-inducing.

One more example: How did harper respond to Peter Penashue being forced to resign for his complete and total disregard of our election finance laws? Simple! harper allowed him to run again as the harpercon candidate for that riding. (And accept Penashue's idiotic claim that his "inexperienced" campaign manager only made honest mistakes when filing his accounts.)


harper leaping from how moral relativism encourages individual moral failure to the seemingly unconnected swipe against "tribalism" and "group rights" is just a final example of the superficiality of his thinking. Like most "conservatives" harper has a laundry-list of grievances and bogey-men, that are all imagined to be connected in an incoherent sort of way.


I made these two posts because I was genuinely surprised to have read harper stepping out from behind his fortress of platitudes and outright lies, and actually trying to connect his thoughts long enough to make a coherent statement about what he really believes. And, not surprisingly, harper doesn't believe in anything in any genuine or rational way.


It's a testimony to our failure as a democratic people that this idiot has imposed himself upon us for so long.