Then we can accuse anyone who disagrees of not supporting the troops. And every time they question helping Qaddafi we can tell them how much they're hurting the troops and depriving them of the morale they need to fight.
Of course, that would be a pretty ruthless and stupid way to prove a point. The point which was already proven, to whit: All those "support the troops" jackasses are stupid jackasses.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Things are true because everybody else says that they're true
Like, for instance, that the NDP is weak on economics. Really? It's already been established that provincial NDP governments have the best track records at (least on that "deficit" issue which so many people obsess so witlessly about) among the variants of the three main parties in Canada.
There's more to it though. As I've said numerous times, the policies that have been sold to us by "serious" economists and "serious" political parties HAVE NOT WORKED. Allowing transnationals to sell anywhere, without any responsibilities to the countries they are selling to, has meant the flight of jobs to authoritarian dictatorships where workers' attempts to organize are defeated by state and corporate violence. Workers in the developed countries have been forced to get by on unstable, service-sector employment, which has not enabled them to maintain the levels of consumption needed to buy all the goods now produced in poor country sweat-shops and industrial hell-holes, with those consumers piling on more and more household debt.
Treating workers as an expense to be evaded through off-shoring or automation has produced a hollowed-out economy based on debt, financial fraud, and financial market bubbles.
Cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthiest 5% of income earners has NOT produced surges in job-creating investment. It has, instead, increased economic inequality, which has contributed to the hollowing-out of the economy. This is primarily due to the fall in government revenues and the subsequent slashing of public services and income support programs. (Unemployed public sector workers do not buy a lot of houses or cars. Sick people pushed out of hospitals too soon are not going to contribute in the workforce as quickly. Students broken by high tuitions and later burdened by huge student loan debts don't buy as many houses or cars or what-not either. Poor people, unable to afford rent and groceries do not pay rent of buy groceries. Surprise, surprise.)
It doesn't fucking work. It has failed. It is failing.
Furthermore, given the level of talent occupying the government side of the House of Commons these days (harper, Baird, Clement, Flaherty, Ritz, MacKay, Day, Toews, Ambrose, Oda, Van Loan, Kenney, ad nauseum), I gotta say that I find it rich that anyone is saying the NDP isn't ready to govern.
Look "serious" people: You've had three decades to prove that your neo-liberal, neo-con imperialist fantasies can work, and you've failed. It looks like more and more people have grown unimpressed with your claims and your endorsements. And that looks mighty good indeed.
There's more to it though. As I've said numerous times, the policies that have been sold to us by "serious" economists and "serious" political parties HAVE NOT WORKED. Allowing transnationals to sell anywhere, without any responsibilities to the countries they are selling to, has meant the flight of jobs to authoritarian dictatorships where workers' attempts to organize are defeated by state and corporate violence. Workers in the developed countries have been forced to get by on unstable, service-sector employment, which has not enabled them to maintain the levels of consumption needed to buy all the goods now produced in poor country sweat-shops and industrial hell-holes, with those consumers piling on more and more household debt.
Treating workers as an expense to be evaded through off-shoring or automation has produced a hollowed-out economy based on debt, financial fraud, and financial market bubbles.
Cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthiest 5% of income earners has NOT produced surges in job-creating investment. It has, instead, increased economic inequality, which has contributed to the hollowing-out of the economy. This is primarily due to the fall in government revenues and the subsequent slashing of public services and income support programs. (Unemployed public sector workers do not buy a lot of houses or cars. Sick people pushed out of hospitals too soon are not going to contribute in the workforce as quickly. Students broken by high tuitions and later burdened by huge student loan debts don't buy as many houses or cars or what-not either. Poor people, unable to afford rent and groceries do not pay rent of buy groceries. Surprise, surprise.)
It doesn't fucking work. It has failed. It is failing.
Furthermore, given the level of talent occupying the government side of the House of Commons these days (harper, Baird, Clement, Flaherty, Ritz, MacKay, Day, Toews, Ambrose, Oda, Van Loan, Kenney, ad nauseum), I gotta say that I find it rich that anyone is saying the NDP isn't ready to govern.
Look "serious" people: You've had three decades to prove that your neo-liberal, neo-con imperialist fantasies can work, and you've failed. It looks like more and more people have grown unimpressed with your claims and your endorsements. And that looks mighty good indeed.
Friday, April 29, 2011
A New Deal For Liberal Stalwarts
This completely surprising surge in the polls for the NDP has caused me to reconsider one of my hopes for Canadian politics.
I've long argued that the Liberals representing the mushy middle of Canadian politics could not stand the strains of the inevitable breakdown of late-capitalism. I always thought (hoped) that the Liberal Party of Canada would die, so that the battle could be between the superstitious cromagnons of the Conservative Party and that the party that resisted that would be the NDP (which at least acknowledges that capitalism is flawed to some degree).
The worst thing in the world would be for the battle to be between the Conservatives (behaving very much like US Repugnican slime-balls, religious freaks, morons, and psychopaths) and the Liberals (pretending to oppose most of the extremist corporate-imperialist agenda, but only acting like more mature, technocratic enforcers of the same anti-human agenda, like the USA's Democrats).
But here's the deal Liberals. (By that I mean: those Liberals whose activism is based on careerism; those Liberals like the guy at Eugene Forsey Liberal who has principled disagreements with the NDP (some good, some not-so-good); and those people who genuinely believe that the harpercons are freaks and that Jack Layton is a lefty-extremist [?!?], even though they like medicare, the CPP, and etc.,) If you find yourself in third-party status, and harper has a minority, there's still a way to salvage something from the wreckage.
Join up with the NDP to form a majority, and use it to destroy harper and the harpercons. Let's haul harper and assorted minions up on war crimes charges. Let's expose the assaults on democracy the harpercons indulged themselves with and heap them with opprobrium. Let's formally legislate safeguards for Canada's parliamentary system which harper abused because they were only customs and conventions, and let's explain to Canadians in minute detail why this is important and why harper was so bad to have broken these trusts.
In short, join with the NDP in enforcing accountability, even if only to destroy the harpercons as a political force so that you, the Liberals can move into their place.
Maybe, if this happens, it could be a sign of the superiority of our political culture to the entirely-debased-by-capitalist-hubris USian political system.
Whaddaya say?
I've long argued that the Liberals representing the mushy middle of Canadian politics could not stand the strains of the inevitable breakdown of late-capitalism. I always thought (hoped) that the Liberal Party of Canada would die, so that the battle could be between the superstitious cromagnons of the Conservative Party and that the party that resisted that would be the NDP (which at least acknowledges that capitalism is flawed to some degree).
The worst thing in the world would be for the battle to be between the Conservatives (behaving very much like US Repugnican slime-balls, religious freaks, morons, and psychopaths) and the Liberals (pretending to oppose most of the extremist corporate-imperialist agenda, but only acting like more mature, technocratic enforcers of the same anti-human agenda, like the USA's Democrats).
But here's the deal Liberals. (By that I mean: those Liberals whose activism is based on careerism; those Liberals like the guy at Eugene Forsey Liberal who has principled disagreements with the NDP (some good, some not-so-good); and those people who genuinely believe that the harpercons are freaks and that Jack Layton is a lefty-extremist [?!?], even though they like medicare, the CPP, and etc.,) If you find yourself in third-party status, and harper has a minority, there's still a way to salvage something from the wreckage.
Join up with the NDP to form a majority, and use it to destroy harper and the harpercons. Let's haul harper and assorted minions up on war crimes charges. Let's expose the assaults on democracy the harpercons indulged themselves with and heap them with opprobrium. Let's formally legislate safeguards for Canada's parliamentary system which harper abused because they were only customs and conventions, and let's explain to Canadians in minute detail why this is important and why harper was so bad to have broken these trusts.
In short, join with the NDP in enforcing accountability, even if only to destroy the harpercons as a political force so that you, the Liberals can move into their place.
Maybe, if this happens, it could be a sign of the superiority of our political culture to the entirely-debased-by-capitalist-hubris USian political system.
Whaddaya say?
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Are Ordinary Canadians Pulling Our Legs?
Us political junkies didn't see the NDP surge coming. Neither did the punditocracy or the pollsters. There was absolutely no sign of it in the letters sections of newspapers or comments sections of online mainstream news services either.
And, while I'll admit that I have considerably more devotion to political issues than your average Canadian, I don't think that I'm out of line to say that there is a prevailing sentiment of "anyone but harper" among non-harpercons in this electoral cycle, as clear as the "anyone but Bush" that existed among what passes for the left in the US population during his reign of error n' terror. Which makes it doubly surprising that the traditional alternative to the Conservatives, the Liberals, are doing so badly.
There's no doubt that the harpercons' relentless attack ads have had an impact there. But it's also true that Ignatieff is a stranger in a strange land. Some social studies that i'm too lazy to look for (this is a morning's post on a frikken' blog remember) have said that there are major differences in the ways that Canadians and USians look at many issues. In some respects, the denizens of Canada's most right-wing province, Alberta, would find themselves more at home among US Democrats than Repugnicans. Ignatieff's stance on economic issues is closer to the harpercons' than it is to Canadian centrists and progressives. And, of course, there's the big bugaboo, foreign policy. Canadians have been lukewarm towards our "mission" in Afghanistan, but tend not to criticize it out of deference to "the troops." But Ignatieff is an enthusiastic advocate of imperialism, and he was an early cheerleader for the bush II regime's invasion of Iraq, which was never popular in Canada. More, Ignatieff is a continentalist, and Canadians wouldn't need harpercon attack ads to be concerned about his unprecedented coronation as the Liberals' golden boy after so few years back in the country.
When he got here, Ignatieff was clearly a political novice. He didn't know the rules of the game all that well or how to play them. He was stiff, and unconvincing. It's taken him up to this election to finally explain why he came back to Canada (a feeling that he had to practice what he preached about civic participation at Harvard). It's taken up to now for him to actually appear comfortable and poised as a politician. Unfortunately for him and for the Liberal Party of Canada, it appears that "now" is too late.
Is that all that explains the NDP's rising fortunes? Ignatieff and Rae stupidly agreed with the harpercons to extend Canada's military mission in Afghanistan without a debate. Chantal Hebert says that that is what soured a lot of Quebec voters on the Liberals. (Hebert is always saying that the sovereigntists are failing, so I don't know much else about what's going on with the Bloc.)
Perhaps the NDP's strength in Quebec is galvanizing their supporters in the West and in certain Ontario regions and making other voters think about where the best place to park their votes and "back a winner" might be. I simply can't account for this.
Is it really the case that the Canadian electorate is polarizing? Have there been all sorts of conversations around kitchen tables and in living rooms about how the country has been going too far in killing decent jobs, in slashing health care, in rewarding the big banks and telecoms, in kow-towing to US imperialist ambitions?
Are English Canadians rejecting the Liberals, or an uninspiring Liberal leader? Are we polarizing between left and right or are Quebec voters picking a viable (and humbled) social-democratic alternative and English Canadian centrists and progressives following suit?
This much is true: For better or for worse, Canadian voters have foiled the idea of strategic voting. If, ... no, let me put that differently; IF this election keeps harper at minority status AND the Liberal Party is reduced to third-party status, this will have been a very, very, very good election. (And as far as discussing the issues that I care about, in the way I think they should be discussed, this has been a very bad election.)
And, while I'll admit that I have considerably more devotion to political issues than your average Canadian, I don't think that I'm out of line to say that there is a prevailing sentiment of "anyone but harper" among non-harpercons in this electoral cycle, as clear as the "anyone but Bush" that existed among what passes for the left in the US population during his reign of error n' terror. Which makes it doubly surprising that the traditional alternative to the Conservatives, the Liberals, are doing so badly.
There's no doubt that the harpercons' relentless attack ads have had an impact there. But it's also true that Ignatieff is a stranger in a strange land. Some social studies that i'm too lazy to look for (this is a morning's post on a frikken' blog remember) have said that there are major differences in the ways that Canadians and USians look at many issues. In some respects, the denizens of Canada's most right-wing province, Alberta, would find themselves more at home among US Democrats than Repugnicans. Ignatieff's stance on economic issues is closer to the harpercons' than it is to Canadian centrists and progressives. And, of course, there's the big bugaboo, foreign policy. Canadians have been lukewarm towards our "mission" in Afghanistan, but tend not to criticize it out of deference to "the troops." But Ignatieff is an enthusiastic advocate of imperialism, and he was an early cheerleader for the bush II regime's invasion of Iraq, which was never popular in Canada. More, Ignatieff is a continentalist, and Canadians wouldn't need harpercon attack ads to be concerned about his unprecedented coronation as the Liberals' golden boy after so few years back in the country.
When he got here, Ignatieff was clearly a political novice. He didn't know the rules of the game all that well or how to play them. He was stiff, and unconvincing. It's taken him up to this election to finally explain why he came back to Canada (a feeling that he had to practice what he preached about civic participation at Harvard). It's taken up to now for him to actually appear comfortable and poised as a politician. Unfortunately for him and for the Liberal Party of Canada, it appears that "now" is too late.
Is that all that explains the NDP's rising fortunes? Ignatieff and Rae stupidly agreed with the harpercons to extend Canada's military mission in Afghanistan without a debate. Chantal Hebert says that that is what soured a lot of Quebec voters on the Liberals. (Hebert is always saying that the sovereigntists are failing, so I don't know much else about what's going on with the Bloc.)
Perhaps the NDP's strength in Quebec is galvanizing their supporters in the West and in certain Ontario regions and making other voters think about where the best place to park their votes and "back a winner" might be. I simply can't account for this.
Is it really the case that the Canadian electorate is polarizing? Have there been all sorts of conversations around kitchen tables and in living rooms about how the country has been going too far in killing decent jobs, in slashing health care, in rewarding the big banks and telecoms, in kow-towing to US imperialist ambitions?
Are English Canadians rejecting the Liberals, or an uninspiring Liberal leader? Are we polarizing between left and right or are Quebec voters picking a viable (and humbled) social-democratic alternative and English Canadian centrists and progressives following suit?
This much is true: For better or for worse, Canadian voters have foiled the idea of strategic voting. If, ... no, let me put that differently; IF this election keeps harper at minority status AND the Liberal Party is reduced to third-party status, this will have been a very, very, very good election. (And as far as discussing the issues that I care about, in the way I think they should be discussed, this has been a very bad election.)
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Dear Corporate Shills: Fuck Off
The nerve of those assholes! To think that after having brought us the great recession, something that's going to cost us $150 billion minimum, corporate Canada and it its dim-witted spokesmen want to warn Canadians about the economic consequences of the NDP? Seriously?
In the first place, as provincial governments, they're almost always among the more sensitive managers of neo-liberalism. Compared to the problems Bob Rae faced, fuck-head Flaherty demonstrated massive incompetence. Rae saved a couple of important employers ... DeHavilland and Algoma Steel, during a long, drawn-out recession, and in the face of Paul Martin's downloading of federal funding responsibilities to the provinces. Flaherty racked-up multi-billion dollar deficits during a period of consistent economic growth and he presided over a massive rise in homelessness, poverty, and the de-funding of health care and education.
All of it went to tax-cuts for the wealthiest which produced zero benefits to society. Now, these assholes are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars and they're not investing it in Canada and they think that we care about their self-interested whining about how not lowering corporate taxes even further is going to "discourage" them?
Fuck that shit.
For more sober economic analysis, keep watching this blog.
In the first place, as provincial governments, they're almost always among the more sensitive managers of neo-liberalism. Compared to the problems Bob Rae faced, fuck-head Flaherty demonstrated massive incompetence. Rae saved a couple of important employers ... DeHavilland and Algoma Steel, during a long, drawn-out recession, and in the face of Paul Martin's downloading of federal funding responsibilities to the provinces. Flaherty racked-up multi-billion dollar deficits during a period of consistent economic growth and he presided over a massive rise in homelessness, poverty, and the de-funding of health care and education.
All of it went to tax-cuts for the wealthiest which produced zero benefits to society. Now, these assholes are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars and they're not investing it in Canada and they think that we care about their self-interested whining about how not lowering corporate taxes even further is going to "discourage" them?
Fuck that shit.
For more sober economic analysis, keep watching this blog.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
"Edgy Comedian" Guy Earle
Altavista anything about the Guy Earle case, the self-professed extremely left-wing physicist/comedian, and you're bound to get a slew of hits to right-wing troglodytes (Steyn, Levant, Shaidle) for whom the man is a hero in the cause of free speech.
Seems that back in 2008, two lesbian women were having drinks on the patio of a Vancouver restaurant when, at 11 pm, they were told that the patio was closing and they'd have to move their drinks inside. According to the human rights tribunal decision, the two women and a friend went inside and sat at a booth near the stage. There was an open mic comedy night being hosted by Earle going on, of which they had been unaware and uninterested. They began discussing with the waitress what their next order of drinks would be and there was some back and forth about whether some brands of beer were available or not. Apparently, this conversation irritated Earle, and when one of the women kissed her partner on the cheek, Earle began to make disparaging comments about "dykes."
Earle then went on to accuse the "dykes" of ruining the night of awesome talent on display that night and made further comments about how the dykes should go home and fuck each other with their strap-ons. This produced some boos from the audience and prompted one of the women to tell Earle that he wasn't funny. (He isn't.)Things escalated to one of the women throwing water at Earle and Earle taking the woman's sunglasses and breaking them. Of course, everything was punctuated with Earle shouting about “fucking cunts”, “stupid cunts”, “stupid dykes”, and “fucking dyke cunts.”
Earle was taken to a human rights tribunal where he was found guilty of discrimination and fined. He intends to take his case to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Here's the thing. This case has made me reconsider my free-speech extremism. I still believe that people should be free to write about how much they hate defined groups of people. They can even get together, in, say, a church, and say how much they think homosexuals are evil sinners. Or, they can vent about black people, white people, whatever people, on the internet. So long as they don't start advocating physical violence against them, such hatred should be legal. It's stupid, but it shouldn't be outlawed either. Furthermore, if I'm in a coffe-shop somewhere and somebody makes an outburst about, say, white guys, that's legal. Even if it's the owner or an employee. The customers can even directly tell me that they hate white guys like me. If, however, the owner or the employee does that, ... then that is practical discrimination. And that's where the line should be drawn.
Earle, and a lot of other of his defenders, are saying that art is different. As a comedian up on the stage, Earle's right to free speech is even more important than if he were just some guy ranting on the sidewalk. I don't think so. As a guy performing on a public stage, I think Earle's right to be bigoted and prejudiced is LESS important than somebody ranting in private or to nobody at all.
He's a "comedian" is supposedly a defence. Remember when lame-ass Mark Richards destroyed his career by calling a (genuine) heckler a nigger? Well, why should it be any different, any less monstrous to attack someone for their sexuality? Especially since more gay kids are bullied into suicide than practically any other group of young people?
And here's where the idea of practical discrimination comes in: I'm sure black people aren't surprised when they hear some white racist hsss "nigger" at them. I'm sure they hear stupid shit like that all the time. It probably kills them a little inside, but they're resigned to it to a degree (I think).
But I don't think any black person in Canada today, no matter how much scar tissue they have over their feelings, would tolerate cashiers, waitresses, teachers, landlords, etc., pointedly giving them inferior or no service because they're black.
So why should lesbians be expected to sit back during a night on the town and endure some unfunny dipshit yelling at them for being dyke cunts?
How would Guy Earle like it if he went out to a night of "comedy" and got on the receiving end of being a needle-dicked, rapist, pasty-faced man? Every night? Especially in a world where women were always telling him to whip his cock out and if he doesn't, it's because it must be tiny. Or if every black man told him his small white dick couldn't satisfy a woman and that's why all the white women go for the black guys? [In case it isn't clear; all of this garbage is an attempt to reverse the so-called "edgy" comedic stylings of white, male comedians in a white, racist, patriarchal society. White, heterosexual guys don't have to worry about going to see a comedian and getting personally insulted for being who they are] You see, if Earle went out to hear some comedy, and 4/5ths of the comedians were ALWAYS something other than white males, and it was common to hear insults directed at white, heterosexual guys in daily life, ... like, sometimes, black dyke policewomen were always harassing us and the courts were discriminating against us and we were going to prison more often, for more years, than other groups of people, I'm pretty sure that Earle wouldn't find it "edgy" to have to sit there, once again, and be insulted for who he is. Especially if he didn't expect to find himself at some shitty open-mic comedy show.
Seems that back in 2008, two lesbian women were having drinks on the patio of a Vancouver restaurant when, at 11 pm, they were told that the patio was closing and they'd have to move their drinks inside. According to the human rights tribunal decision, the two women and a friend went inside and sat at a booth near the stage. There was an open mic comedy night being hosted by Earle going on, of which they had been unaware and uninterested. They began discussing with the waitress what their next order of drinks would be and there was some back and forth about whether some brands of beer were available or not. Apparently, this conversation irritated Earle, and when one of the women kissed her partner on the cheek, Earle began to make disparaging comments about "dykes."
Earle then went on to accuse the "dykes" of ruining the night of awesome talent on display that night and made further comments about how the dykes should go home and fuck each other with their strap-ons. This produced some boos from the audience and prompted one of the women to tell Earle that he wasn't funny. (He isn't.)Things escalated to one of the women throwing water at Earle and Earle taking the woman's sunglasses and breaking them. Of course, everything was punctuated with Earle shouting about “fucking cunts”, “stupid cunts”, “stupid dykes”, and “fucking dyke cunts.”
Earle was taken to a human rights tribunal where he was found guilty of discrimination and fined. He intends to take his case to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Here's the thing. This case has made me reconsider my free-speech extremism. I still believe that people should be free to write about how much they hate defined groups of people. They can even get together, in, say, a church, and say how much they think homosexuals are evil sinners. Or, they can vent about black people, white people, whatever people, on the internet. So long as they don't start advocating physical violence against them, such hatred should be legal. It's stupid, but it shouldn't be outlawed either. Furthermore, if I'm in a coffe-shop somewhere and somebody makes an outburst about, say, white guys, that's legal. Even if it's the owner or an employee. The customers can even directly tell me that they hate white guys like me. If, however, the owner or the employee does that, ... then that is practical discrimination. And that's where the line should be drawn.
Earle, and a lot of other of his defenders, are saying that art is different. As a comedian up on the stage, Earle's right to free speech is even more important than if he were just some guy ranting on the sidewalk. I don't think so. As a guy performing on a public stage, I think Earle's right to be bigoted and prejudiced is LESS important than somebody ranting in private or to nobody at all.
He's a "comedian" is supposedly a defence. Remember when lame-ass Mark Richards destroyed his career by calling a (genuine) heckler a nigger? Well, why should it be any different, any less monstrous to attack someone for their sexuality? Especially since more gay kids are bullied into suicide than practically any other group of young people?
And here's where the idea of practical discrimination comes in: I'm sure black people aren't surprised when they hear some white racist hsss "nigger" at them. I'm sure they hear stupid shit like that all the time. It probably kills them a little inside, but they're resigned to it to a degree (I think).
But I don't think any black person in Canada today, no matter how much scar tissue they have over their feelings, would tolerate cashiers, waitresses, teachers, landlords, etc., pointedly giving them inferior or no service because they're black.
So why should lesbians be expected to sit back during a night on the town and endure some unfunny dipshit yelling at them for being dyke cunts?
How would Guy Earle like it if he went out to a night of "comedy" and got on the receiving end of being a needle-dicked, rapist, pasty-faced man? Every night? Especially in a world where women were always telling him to whip his cock out and if he doesn't, it's because it must be tiny. Or if every black man told him his small white dick couldn't satisfy a woman and that's why all the white women go for the black guys? [In case it isn't clear; all of this garbage is an attempt to reverse the so-called "edgy" comedic stylings of white, male comedians in a white, racist, patriarchal society. White, heterosexual guys don't have to worry about going to see a comedian and getting personally insulted for being who they are] You see, if Earle went out to hear some comedy, and 4/5ths of the comedians were ALWAYS something other than white males, and it was common to hear insults directed at white, heterosexual guys in daily life, ... like, sometimes, black dyke policewomen were always harassing us and the courts were discriminating against us and we were going to prison more often, for more years, than other groups of people, I'm pretty sure that Earle wouldn't find it "edgy" to have to sit there, once again, and be insulted for who he is. Especially if he didn't expect to find himself at some shitty open-mic comedy show.
cons, dippers, n' libs [finished!]
Maybe we Canadians are going to get the government we deserve. Part of the reason for this, ... a very important reason for this, ... is because the habitual voting preferences of those Canadians who do vote, has revolved around two parties that have no interest in dismantling an electoral system that serves to perpetuate their two-party rule and which, while leaving them high and dry and powerless every once in a while, also gives them as much absolute power as the Canadian political system can give them. Sadly, when in power provincially, the NDP (which tends to absorb more "Liberal centrists" than it sheds pro-corporate slimeballs upon the demise of that province's Liberal party) has also sworn-off dismantling or archaic first-past-the-post electoral system.
But, aside from our electoral system, which makes healthy political diversity a liability, there's also the debased nature of capitalist-democracy and the short-term selfishness of Canadian partisans, we find ourselves in the situation we have now.
CONSERVATIVES
The Conservatives - I find myself living in Forest Hill, Toronto now. One of the wealthiest ridings in the country. So obviously, I see a lot of Conservative signs. These are generally wealthy people who like the Conservative image of being strictly small government and low taxes. I don't know how much they dig the idea of stopping gay-marriage or electing a party whose cabinet masturbates before every meeting thinking about the poor foreigners "the troops" are killing today. (They used to have circle-jerks, but alas! (the male old-timers say) the presence of women in the cabinet broke the chain, and since it's hard for a guy to beat his meat and skillfully finesse a clitoris, they all look after themselves now.) These wonderful people vote Conservative because they like having more money at tax time and they honestly don't give a shit if ordinary Canadians (the majority) are left with a useless, unaffordable health care system or can't afford an education.
Then you have your lower-income, or "blue-collar" Conservative supporters. These are people trained to believe that it's far more important to keep fags and dykes from being able to get married than it is that they can afford a doctor's visit for their kids, or ... well, you get the idea.
Last, but certainly not least, there are people who are just overall stupid. In any group there's likely to be a bell curve, and while "intelligence" is a subjective term, we know that there are some people with hardly any brain capacity who are practically vegetables and there are geniuses whose brains work much faster than ordinary people's. Some people are smart and some people are stupid. In a trippy kinda way, it all balances out in the end. A genuine drooling imbecile really only does as much damage to the world a their body is capable of physically producing, whereas a brilliant but fucked-up artist can traumatize hundreds of people and a brilliant but shallow scientist can build atomic weapons or poison the oceans. Still and all, some people are just stupid assholes who raise their children in nonsensical religions, enthusiastically cheer for wars with anyone because they're "cool," and vote harpercon because they don't understand how the economy works, are twisted closet-cases and they're racist.
I'd say that twenty to twenty-five percent of any large population are of the undeniably, overall stupid, wouldn't really want to have to associate with 'em, "Oh my god! Did you see what that stupid fucker did NOW?!?" variety of stupid.
LIBERALS
The other big party in Canada is the Liberal Party. Who votes Liberal? Well, for a long time, it used to be Quebec federalists. A solid bloc of voters. Used to be, way back in our history, that the Conservative Party had Quebec votes sewn up because they were the party of Confederation and they had an understanding with Quebec's Roman Catholic Church that they wouldn't interfere with religious issues in Quebec. Eventually though, the aggressive Protestantism of the rest of Canada, the bigoted English violations of French language rights outside Quebec, and the British imperialist nature of English Canada, got too much for Quebec voters and they switched to the Liberals (ignoring the Church's sanction against voting for them, which itself had broken down under the assaults from English Canada) and turned Liberal.
This is getting too historical for me. After about four decades as a Liberal stronghold, Quebec turned to Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives until the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord whereupon Quebec votes were divided between the federalist Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois. The vacuous Paul Martin (the "brilliant" finance minister who tamed the deficit -- a couple of years ahead of time -- by slashing spending and raising taxes --- WOW!) left an increasingly numerous group of Quebec voters wondering what the point of voting was and they turned increasingly to the Bloc to reflect their values.
The Liberal losses in Quebec were mitigated throughout the 1990s by the division of the right-wing vote into the rump Progressive Conservatives and the Reform/CRAP reflections of Western Canadian alienation. Jean Chretien's electoral success really needs to be examined in a riding-by-riding study of how the Liberal message really succeeded in the light of the split right-wing vote. Once the Conservative Party of Canada swallowed the Progressive Conservative Party (and spat out whatever didn't agree with it, like tolerance, maturity, a grasp of reality, etc.,) the Liberals immediately fell to minority status under Paul "Mr. Dithers" Martin.
But who really votes Liberal in this day and age?
People who really believe that you can have your cake and eat it too. People manifested of the same delusion that allowed Paul Martin himself to say with some degree of sincerity that the Liberal Party tried to makes sure that no Canadian was left behind, when it was the Liberals who eliminated the federal housing department, raised EI premiums and restricted benefits, lowered the federal contribution to health care and education, implemented "free trade" deals which devastated manufacturing jobs, and on and on. These are comfortable, upper or middle class people who are okay with gay rights, who believe in a woman's right to choose, who like Medicare, and etc., etc., ... but who think that all you have to do to have social justice is vote for a Liberal every four or five years, and you don't have to pay any attention to what they do in between their making that X beside the Liberal candidates' names.
These are people who genuinely believe that the NDP is part of the "loony left" and that the Liberals of Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau just "gave" Canada medicare and the CPP and all that other stuff because they thought it was a good idea, because they were Liberals, because that's what Liberals do, because.
They're like the liberals in Lou Reed's tune: "I try to be as progressive as I can possibly be, as long as I don't have to try too much."
Then there are Liberals who voted to try and keep Canada together by voting federalist in Quebec. And the genuine progressives who find themselves in some right-wing area where the NDP gets 8% of the vote and they feel there's no other realistic option to even try to defeat some "Conservative" homophobic, racist who thinks caring about the environment is stupid, and for fags and who hates fags so you know how much he hates the environment.
Then there are Liberals who know that the Liberals are the players in their area. The ticket to government contracts and favourable legislation is through the Liberals, and if the proles want to hear stuff about "compassion" for the homeless, or whatever the fuck, sure, say it. Maybe even toss 'em a few crumbs, ... they don't really like the idea of homeless people and it makes them feel vaguely pleasant to say they'll "do something" for 'em, but now let's get back to business.
NDP
I'm to the left of the NDP. I'm more socialist than social-democratic. I believe that there's no such thing as a "free market" and that furthermore, what we have for a free market worked relatively well in a number of ways for a number of people, as part of a long, difficult, chaotic, and non-creatively destructive fashion back at the beginning of the last century, for a significant number of people, but we've learned how to do MUCH better after 1929.
I believe that the rightward turn of political-economy after 1980 was incredibly misguided and deluded and has produced all sorts of disasters and failure. If you look at the numbers for the 1970s, GDP growth rates, employment figures, government finances, homelessness, etc., the decade that "discredited" Keynesianism was better than the last couple of decades by far.
What we have been living through is three decades of class warfare fought as low intensity conflict. Money and power (to the extent that it had been diffused downwards between 1945 and 1973) has been redirected to the top of the political-economic power structure. That has been done under the aegis of a sophisticated propaganda campaign to make people believe that there was no alternative but to restore all power to capitalist elites in the desperate hope that they would be pleased enough with our subservience to offer employment and investment. It didn't happen. Instead, investment was channelled overseas or into speculation. If ordinary households hadn't responded by taking on increasing debt levels, if young adults hadn't been able to keep living under their parents' roofs (in large enough houses bought and paid for through unionized wages and sustained by decent union and government pensions) there would have been far less economic activity under the reign of neo-liberalism.
Some of the biggest enablers of this con-game have been liberals. I don't know how much people like Bill Clinton, Paul Martin, Jean Chretien, Barack Obama, Michael Ignatieff, etc., actually believe in the crapola they spew, (and, personally, i suspect that a lot of those guys believe in most of what they say), the practical impacts of their delusions and/or lies have been enormous. To be fair, so-called "social democrats" believed the same nonsense to a degree. The whole culture became infected with this group-think that said that unfettered capitalist oligarchy was the ONLY way to ... well, sometimes they promised "prosperity" and other times (usually after the prosperity failed to arrive) they promised, um, ... well, "stability" and something like the least amount of stagnation of any political-economic alternative.
At least though, social-democrats retained the ability to look at capitalism critically. They didn't tend to believe that "free trade" deals which opened economies to massively powerful competition, which deregulated industries, which allowed transnationals to shut-down here and re-open sweat-shops in impoverished dictatorships, would inevitably bring about high levels of employment, new jobs and high wages in Canada.
At least the social-democrats believed that the poor shouldn't be utterly ignored, their benefits slashed, their housing left to the private sector (read: increased homelessness), and that unions, which extract some of the wealth from the owners of capital to share it with the workers, are an inherently evil thing and a drain on society.
And I think what sickened Canadian social democrats and their socialist supporters about the Liberals was their insufferable smugness and hypocrisy. We really do have a hard time deciding who we hate more: boorish neanderthals like Rob Ford, bush II, or Mike Harris, or simpering, lying weasels like Paul Martin and Barack Obama. Both crews cheer on imperialist war, but the liberals, with their drivel about humanitarianism, their faux-reluctance to spill the blood of others, their cynical exploitation of idealistic buzzwords, ... they're a more difficult opponent to demonize. Perhaps it's better to have "conservatives" to oppose because they don't hide their vile natures as well.
And in Canada, sitting so close to the United States, with the pathetic spectacle of US politics on such close, constant display, with the liberal Democrats exposed as cynical triangulators, exposed as being utterly contemptuous of their progressive base (witness their dismissal of single-payer or even a public option for health insurance), and performing like spineless, mewling cowards in the face of Repugnican aggression, it's been especially galling to listen to Canadian liberals (whether corrupt, cynical Liberal party hacks, or the better sort of Liberal supporter I described above) say that the best option for progressives in Canada is to abandon the NDP and support the Liberals.
(If you're interested [and i'm sure you're not!] you can google my statements on Buzz Hargrove's delusions about the Liberals and what would happen to organized labour if the NDP were to disappear.)
Argh. This post doesn't go near far enough to convey how much I despise the Liberal Party in Canada. I've got some straightening up of the old apartment to take care of. If any Liberal Party supporters are wondering why dippers have such a hate-on for the Liberal Party, this little bit o' writing here might help explain things.
I still say that for this election, defeating harper was and is an important enough sign, symbolizing that Canada, when it counts, rejected the disgusting US-style contempt for democracy that harper imported here, that voting Liberal is necessary. Just as voting NDP is necessary where they're the contender. It will be the saddest thing should Liberals or NDP candidates lose to a harpercon by less votes than was received by an NDP or Liberal rival.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
But, aside from our electoral system, which makes healthy political diversity a liability, there's also the debased nature of capitalist-democracy and the short-term selfishness of Canadian partisans, we find ourselves in the situation we have now.
CONSERVATIVES
The Conservatives - I find myself living in Forest Hill, Toronto now. One of the wealthiest ridings in the country. So obviously, I see a lot of Conservative signs. These are generally wealthy people who like the Conservative image of being strictly small government and low taxes. I don't know how much they dig the idea of stopping gay-marriage or electing a party whose cabinet masturbates before every meeting thinking about the poor foreigners "the troops" are killing today. (They used to have circle-jerks, but alas! (the male old-timers say) the presence of women in the cabinet broke the chain, and since it's hard for a guy to beat his meat and skillfully finesse a clitoris, they all look after themselves now.) These wonderful people vote Conservative because they like having more money at tax time and they honestly don't give a shit if ordinary Canadians (the majority) are left with a useless, unaffordable health care system or can't afford an education.
Then you have your lower-income, or "blue-collar" Conservative supporters. These are people trained to believe that it's far more important to keep fags and dykes from being able to get married than it is that they can afford a doctor's visit for their kids, or ... well, you get the idea.
Last, but certainly not least, there are people who are just overall stupid. In any group there's likely to be a bell curve, and while "intelligence" is a subjective term, we know that there are some people with hardly any brain capacity who are practically vegetables and there are geniuses whose brains work much faster than ordinary people's. Some people are smart and some people are stupid. In a trippy kinda way, it all balances out in the end. A genuine drooling imbecile really only does as much damage to the world a their body is capable of physically producing, whereas a brilliant but fucked-up artist can traumatize hundreds of people and a brilliant but shallow scientist can build atomic weapons or poison the oceans. Still and all, some people are just stupid assholes who raise their children in nonsensical religions, enthusiastically cheer for wars with anyone because they're "cool," and vote harpercon because they don't understand how the economy works, are twisted closet-cases and they're racist.
I'd say that twenty to twenty-five percent of any large population are of the undeniably, overall stupid, wouldn't really want to have to associate with 'em, "Oh my god! Did you see what that stupid fucker did NOW?!?" variety of stupid.
LIBERALS
The other big party in Canada is the Liberal Party. Who votes Liberal? Well, for a long time, it used to be Quebec federalists. A solid bloc of voters. Used to be, way back in our history, that the Conservative Party had Quebec votes sewn up because they were the party of Confederation and they had an understanding with Quebec's Roman Catholic Church that they wouldn't interfere with religious issues in Quebec. Eventually though, the aggressive Protestantism of the rest of Canada, the bigoted English violations of French language rights outside Quebec, and the British imperialist nature of English Canada, got too much for Quebec voters and they switched to the Liberals (ignoring the Church's sanction against voting for them, which itself had broken down under the assaults from English Canada) and turned Liberal.
This is getting too historical for me. After about four decades as a Liberal stronghold, Quebec turned to Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives until the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord whereupon Quebec votes were divided between the federalist Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois. The vacuous Paul Martin (the "brilliant" finance minister who tamed the deficit -- a couple of years ahead of time -- by slashing spending and raising taxes --- WOW!) left an increasingly numerous group of Quebec voters wondering what the point of voting was and they turned increasingly to the Bloc to reflect their values.
The Liberal losses in Quebec were mitigated throughout the 1990s by the division of the right-wing vote into the rump Progressive Conservatives and the Reform/CRAP reflections of Western Canadian alienation. Jean Chretien's electoral success really needs to be examined in a riding-by-riding study of how the Liberal message really succeeded in the light of the split right-wing vote. Once the Conservative Party of Canada swallowed the Progressive Conservative Party (and spat out whatever didn't agree with it, like tolerance, maturity, a grasp of reality, etc.,) the Liberals immediately fell to minority status under Paul "Mr. Dithers" Martin.
But who really votes Liberal in this day and age?
People who really believe that you can have your cake and eat it too. People manifested of the same delusion that allowed Paul Martin himself to say with some degree of sincerity that the Liberal Party tried to makes sure that no Canadian was left behind, when it was the Liberals who eliminated the federal housing department, raised EI premiums and restricted benefits, lowered the federal contribution to health care and education, implemented "free trade" deals which devastated manufacturing jobs, and on and on. These are comfortable, upper or middle class people who are okay with gay rights, who believe in a woman's right to choose, who like Medicare, and etc., etc., ... but who think that all you have to do to have social justice is vote for a Liberal every four or five years, and you don't have to pay any attention to what they do in between their making that X beside the Liberal candidates' names.
These are people who genuinely believe that the NDP is part of the "loony left" and that the Liberals of Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau just "gave" Canada medicare and the CPP and all that other stuff because they thought it was a good idea, because they were Liberals, because that's what Liberals do, because.
They're like the liberals in Lou Reed's tune: "I try to be as progressive as I can possibly be, as long as I don't have to try too much."
Then there are Liberals who voted to try and keep Canada together by voting federalist in Quebec. And the genuine progressives who find themselves in some right-wing area where the NDP gets 8% of the vote and they feel there's no other realistic option to even try to defeat some "Conservative" homophobic, racist who thinks caring about the environment is stupid, and for fags and who hates fags so you know how much he hates the environment.
Then there are Liberals who know that the Liberals are the players in their area. The ticket to government contracts and favourable legislation is through the Liberals, and if the proles want to hear stuff about "compassion" for the homeless, or whatever the fuck, sure, say it. Maybe even toss 'em a few crumbs, ... they don't really like the idea of homeless people and it makes them feel vaguely pleasant to say they'll "do something" for 'em, but now let's get back to business.
NDP
I'm to the left of the NDP. I'm more socialist than social-democratic. I believe that there's no such thing as a "free market" and that furthermore, what we have for a free market worked relatively well in a number of ways for a number of people, as part of a long, difficult, chaotic, and non-creatively destructive fashion back at the beginning of the last century, for a significant number of people, but we've learned how to do MUCH better after 1929.
I believe that the rightward turn of political-economy after 1980 was incredibly misguided and deluded and has produced all sorts of disasters and failure. If you look at the numbers for the 1970s, GDP growth rates, employment figures, government finances, homelessness, etc., the decade that "discredited" Keynesianism was better than the last couple of decades by far.
What we have been living through is three decades of class warfare fought as low intensity conflict. Money and power (to the extent that it had been diffused downwards between 1945 and 1973) has been redirected to the top of the political-economic power structure. That has been done under the aegis of a sophisticated propaganda campaign to make people believe that there was no alternative but to restore all power to capitalist elites in the desperate hope that they would be pleased enough with our subservience to offer employment and investment. It didn't happen. Instead, investment was channelled overseas or into speculation. If ordinary households hadn't responded by taking on increasing debt levels, if young adults hadn't been able to keep living under their parents' roofs (in large enough houses bought and paid for through unionized wages and sustained by decent union and government pensions) there would have been far less economic activity under the reign of neo-liberalism.
Some of the biggest enablers of this con-game have been liberals. I don't know how much people like Bill Clinton, Paul Martin, Jean Chretien, Barack Obama, Michael Ignatieff, etc., actually believe in the crapola they spew, (and, personally, i suspect that a lot of those guys believe in most of what they say), the practical impacts of their delusions and/or lies have been enormous. To be fair, so-called "social democrats" believed the same nonsense to a degree. The whole culture became infected with this group-think that said that unfettered capitalist oligarchy was the ONLY way to ... well, sometimes they promised "prosperity" and other times (usually after the prosperity failed to arrive) they promised, um, ... well, "stability" and something like the least amount of stagnation of any political-economic alternative.
At least though, social-democrats retained the ability to look at capitalism critically. They didn't tend to believe that "free trade" deals which opened economies to massively powerful competition, which deregulated industries, which allowed transnationals to shut-down here and re-open sweat-shops in impoverished dictatorships, would inevitably bring about high levels of employment, new jobs and high wages in Canada.
At least the social-democrats believed that the poor shouldn't be utterly ignored, their benefits slashed, their housing left to the private sector (read: increased homelessness), and that unions, which extract some of the wealth from the owners of capital to share it with the workers, are an inherently evil thing and a drain on society.
And I think what sickened Canadian social democrats and their socialist supporters about the Liberals was their insufferable smugness and hypocrisy. We really do have a hard time deciding who we hate more: boorish neanderthals like Rob Ford, bush II, or Mike Harris, or simpering, lying weasels like Paul Martin and Barack Obama. Both crews cheer on imperialist war, but the liberals, with their drivel about humanitarianism, their faux-reluctance to spill the blood of others, their cynical exploitation of idealistic buzzwords, ... they're a more difficult opponent to demonize. Perhaps it's better to have "conservatives" to oppose because they don't hide their vile natures as well.
And in Canada, sitting so close to the United States, with the pathetic spectacle of US politics on such close, constant display, with the liberal Democrats exposed as cynical triangulators, exposed as being utterly contemptuous of their progressive base (witness their dismissal of single-payer or even a public option for health insurance), and performing like spineless, mewling cowards in the face of Repugnican aggression, it's been especially galling to listen to Canadian liberals (whether corrupt, cynical Liberal party hacks, or the better sort of Liberal supporter I described above) say that the best option for progressives in Canada is to abandon the NDP and support the Liberals.
(If you're interested [and i'm sure you're not!] you can google my statements on Buzz Hargrove's delusions about the Liberals and what would happen to organized labour if the NDP were to disappear.)
Argh. This post doesn't go near far enough to convey how much I despise the Liberal Party in Canada. I've got some straightening up of the old apartment to take care of. If any Liberal Party supporters are wondering why dippers have such a hate-on for the Liberal Party, this little bit o' writing here might help explain things.
I still say that for this election, defeating harper was and is an important enough sign, symbolizing that Canada, when it counts, rejected the disgusting US-style contempt for democracy that harper imported here, that voting Liberal is necessary. Just as voting NDP is necessary where they're the contender. It will be the saddest thing should Liberals or NDP candidates lose to a harpercon by less votes than was received by an NDP or Liberal rival.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
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