Friday, August 21, 2015

harper's Grim Legacy


I don't want to be premature of course. Vote splitting. Election fraud. Attack ads. They all might still do their part and allow harper to push another "victory" out of his anus.

But, what with the recession, the complete failure of his insane "energy super-power" delusion, and his personal unpopularity combined with the steady drip-drip-drip of the Duffy scandal, it seems that the odds are in favour of harper's defeat.

In light of this, it's time to reflect upon his legacy. What did he teach us about ourselves? Not much that is good I'm afraid. We have a rotten political culture. We are a confused, apathetic people, unappreciative of our democratic inheritance. We don't know how it works and we don't seem to want to know.

Too many mainstream Canadians seem comfortable with the witless notion that "politicians are all the same," while too many radicals drift about in incoherent fantasies of refusal and revolution.

When it comes to our rights, we're indifferent. We accept that we have no privacy and shrug our shoulders at this, as it it is simply impossible to make enforceable laws restricting corporate and state access to our online activities. This same sort of thinking would make it easy for the government to open our mail or for the police to search our homes without warrants.

We should have had a revolt against harper and his cover-up of torture. We showed the world that we really don't care if dozens of innocent people were thrown into torture chambers in Afghanistan.

Oh my fucking god, but we have shown ourselves to be a deeply racist people against the First Nations. When Christie Belchforth called Cheif Theresa Spence's hunger-strike an act of terrorism, and she kept her job ....

I shant continue. Instead I will say that upon harper's defeat (which I am still doing my part to bring about) we must focus our efforts on creating the structures of accountability against the criminal and anti-democratic behaviour demonstrated by the harpercon monsters. And we must work to change the culture of this country.

A big part of this requires a hard look at the tactics of failure that most of you still seem strongly wedded to.

No comments: