Movies About Childhood

I'm still working on the next chapter of my "Justin Trudeau vs. Free Speech" series. (The world awaits the next installment with bated breath, I know!) But today I feel like typing about three movies about childhood that really moved me.

The first film I'll talk about isn't so much about childhood as it is about single-parenting. In "The Babadook" an isolated single-mother begins to receive sinister messages from a mysterious book. The reasons why she's found herself alone with her son, and the reasons behind her son's difficult behaviour are all connected. And they combine to put this woman on-edge even before things begin to take a frightening turn.

But through it all, you can also see the scared little boy trusting earnestly in his mother's ability to protect him, even when it seems least likely.

In the end, they realize that there is just the two of them together and they both have to accept that fact. Very good acting and directing. It's a small, low-budget horror movie that produces some of the most intense feelings of dread that I can remember. (To say I'm not a fan of slasher/gore "horror" films is an understatement.)

Next up we have "Room" based on the novel of the same name by Emma Donoghue. Remember how a few years back there were two cases of Austrian girls kidnapped and forced to live in confined quarters as slaves to their psychopathic male captors. (In one of these incidents, the psychopathic abuser was the young woman's father who imprisoned her for years until she escaped.) This was followed up with those three women in Cleveland imprisoned for a decade by another scum-bag and the young woman in California kidnapped and held captive for 18 years by a deranged couple of meth-heads.

So, the novel, and the book are about what it would be like to survive such an ordeal as well as to be born and raised in such circumstances. Now, the actor playing the little boy "Jack" (Jacob Tremblay) was a natural for the part. I don't know if he'll go on to mature as an actor, but he's perfect in this role. And, for my part, though I don't really see that many films, when I was watching Brie Larson as "Ma" trying to explain to "Jack" that the world she's been describing for him for the past five years (she's tried to raise him so that he doesn't think he's a captive who can't escape) is all a lie, and her desperation in the face of "Jack's" refusal to accept this new narrative and her panic over the risks they're taking when they attempt their escape; I thought her acting was amazing. She would eventually receive an Oscar for it.

The kidnapper is given very little screen time. But his few moments are disgusting. Credits to the actor, the script and the casting director. He exhibits such clueless self-pity and entitlement.

The thing that affected me the most was the little boy's experience of a paradise lost. As he grows older he'll come to understand more and more that his early world was a nightmare place for his mother. You see, the mother tried to make their world as good a place as she could for her son. And when you're a child, the world does seem to be a better, magical place. "Room" really made me think that the innocent world of childhood can never be returned to. Because it never existed. For instance; there is no lost, glorious, perfect "Canada." This country is steeped in racism and theft. It's a story of plunder and bigotry and elitism.

I heard one review say he didn't like the last shot, but I thought it was powerful.

Finally, there is "The Florida Project":



It's also a story of the innocence of youth. Even children living in rather squalid circumstances. The cinematography is brilliant. The acting is great. It's a sad story about people forced into desperate circumstances. The mother character in this film isn't supposed to be an inspirational figure. But she's trying to provide for herself and her daughter as best she can. And she has her moments where her love for her daughter is transcendent.  Will Dafoe's character is someone else trying to do the best he can. Caring for people without letting himself care too much.

The director was trying to do a few different things at once and one of them was to recreate the spirit of the "Lil' Rascals" films. Where (basically poor, Depression-era) kids were left on their own to their own devices. The scene where the kids get into some dangerous mischief in the abandoned motel complex feels quite real. And the way the little boy stared at the TV set afterwards, with a worried, guilty look on his face, seemed very real too.

I guess I'll add another film. "Slumdog Millionaire." Because it too was about childhood to a great degree. And writing the last paragraph reminded me of that one scene where the "bad" brother is about 12 years old and he's coming to the realization that he has to kill the two adults who are harassing them or they will never be out of danger. That kid was brilliant in that scene.

Humanity is Doomed: Part LVXII

Of all the things you could be going after that degenerate Trump for, you choose to go after his "maybe avoiding nuclear war with Russia" thing.

This is why I've given up. Humanity is simply TOO FUCKING STUPID to survive.

Justin Trudeau vs Free Speech Part II

So, in Part I, I talked about the Russian-origin "fake news" that supposedly destroyed Hillary Clinton's campaign (all on its own, with no help from the fact that Clinton was a terrible, uninspiring candidate, offering traditional Democratic voters more of the same rotten status-quo; who pissed-off the progressive base of the party by stealing the nomination from Bernie Sanders and then telling them "Fuck You!" by selecting a pro-war, pro-TPP right-wing Democrat for her VP; and who arrogantly ignored vital Democratic states like Wisconsin; and whose team said out loud that they were ignoring their base and going after conservative suburbanites) .... and I showed how this Russian "fake news" from Putin's dastardly "troll army" was, when all added up together, a molehill made out to be a mountain.

But it is this molehill that we are supposed to be afraid of. Our neo-liberal authoritarian rulers believe that "democracy" in the USA (and Canada) is so fragile, the citizenry so stupid and gullible, that we need to be protected from "foreign disinformation." I'll pick-up on this notion later on.

Right now I think it needs to be said that the first time I really noticed the term "fake news" was when Donald Trump kept using it to condemn any and all negative coverage of himself and his presidential campaign. Of course the concept behind "fake news" has always been around. We called it "propaganda," or "lies" or "bullshit" or "deceit," or any number of terms. Perhaps even "fake news" once in a while. FOX News was a notorious source of false facts, sins of omission, slanted editorials and other crimes against truth. As was right-wing (there really isn't any other kind though) Talk Radio, a-la Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. Stephen Colbert mocked this propensity with his concept of "truthiness," to whit; If something sounded semi-plausible and (more importantly) aligned with the preconceived ideas of the right-wing universe of "The Colbert Report," then it could be spoken of as if it were true.

But, again, the real popularization of the specific term "fake news" appears to have come from Trump. And this is interesting, because Donald Trump is a shameless con-artist. He's a liar. A fraud. He's a flim-flam man. He is the epitome of the sewer of mainstream junk culture in the US of A. By that I mean that racism, sexism, greed, violence, selfishness and crudity are far more mainstream than we'd all like to pretend. This is not a specifically US-American thing either. But only the USA has the resources to make an extravagant spectacle of it. And, Trump embodies it.

The reflexive defense mechanism of a liar/con-artist is to deflect attention away from their own lies and to go on the offensive against their accusers. Now, Trump is gifted with a low cunning and (for a certain segment of the population) charisma, but it's becoming increasingly evident with each passing day, that he is a moron. It's rather terrifying when you think of it. Imagine (for instance) that you meet someone and you start to have a conversation with them about the weather, where they're from, when the subway is going to arrive, and you start to idly imagine about this person's life, background, etc., and then this person says a couple of incoherent, nonsensical things until, suddenly their face turns out to have been a rubber mask and it falls off and it turns out that this "person" is actually a robot full of thousands of tiny gears and pulleys, powered by two mice on methamphetamines, running frantically on two exercise wheels. The thing that you thought was human is actually nothing of the sort, but a crude approximation of human.

Which is not to say that Donald Trump isn't human. He's just so shallow, so stupid, so unmoored by any sort of ethics or morality, that he seems half-formed. How does someone consort with prostitutes and porn-stars, divorce his wives when they begin to age, barge-in on naked teenage girls in the dressing room of the beauty contest he runs, and then shamelessly suck-up to "Evangelical Christians" and promise them he'll attack birth control and abortion access? (How do these self-identifying "Christians" overlook their own hypocrisy in supporting him?) The same way that late-Mayor Rob Ford professed to have "zero tolerance" for drugs and gangs but still smoked crack with gangsters, refused to resign when found out and went on to endorse the racist police policy of "carding" minority youth? One has to be completely shallow, Void of introspection. Crude, stupid, lazy, narcissistic, etc., etc., ... to behave, no, TO LIVE that way.

So, Trump has to call critical coverage of his failings as "fake news" or, IOW "lies" as a means of self-defense, since he's a total fraud. To do this he resorts to the whole idea of a corrupt "liberal" media that right-wing hypocrites and morons so love to wail about.

Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for Trump) his target (the "liberal media") is an easy one. Here are some complaints we on the Left share with many Trump supporters:

1. The media lies. (see: "Iraq", "Russiagate", protest movements)

2. The media is slanted.

3. The media is elitist.

4. The media serves the powerful.

Obviously the denizens of Trumpland and "Ford Nation" and "InfoWars" and Ezra Levant's "Bigotry Cruises" have their own spin on what they consider to be lies. These are such people as to notice that a sympathetic portrait of a Black person, or a First Nations person in the news is not 100% indifferent (and therefore "neutral") and choose to rail against that. But they share with us a disdain for the media's craven worship of "free trade." (At least we used to condemn corporate free trade deals. Alas, Trump Derangement Syndrome has got many leftists defending NAFTA.)

Basically the corporate media espouses the neo-liberal corporate agenda. It's inevitable. It's what they do. It's in their DNA. The problem for them is that the corporate neo-liberal agenda has fucked so many ordinary people over that left-wing and right-wing are turning against it in its entirety. "The center cannot hold." The elites cannot paper-over the shitty outcomes enough to hide the stench. That's why Trump destroyed his Repugnican rivals. They all clung to "free trade" and he promised to bring jobs back. It's why Bernie Sanders was filling stadiums with thousands of cheering supporters and Hillary Clinton was talking to gatherings of hundreds (or merely dozens). If any of the other Repug candidates had had a lock on the nomination of their party the way that Clinton did with the DNC, they would probably have defeated Trump as well. Hillary's people helped her through corporate media debates; manipulated the primary process and corrupted the voting at the primaries, in order to steal the nomination from Sanders. The largest proportion of the blame for Trump's presidency is Hillary Clinton's sense of entitlement.

But the reality for our elites is that the majority have turned against the system. As was the case in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, these elites believe that your average right-wing shlub can be manipulated and controlled. Germany's capitalist leadership either assisted, or at least were sympathetic to, Adolph Hitler's rousing of their country's right-wing "rabble." Making scapegoats out of the Jews and other groups was tolerable. Fighting against the left-wing was excellent. It wasn't until it was too late that they realized they could not control the monster. It will be the same this time around. Which is not to say that Trump is the new Hitler. He's not even the new Mussolini. (He's not smart enough.) But the lumpen right-wing followers are just as capable now of supporting a new Hitler and dragging us all into the abyss as they were then. They're the same people. Perhaps some members of today's elite are dimly aware of this and are therefore hoping against hope that one of their own (Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio) can somehow squeeze out a victory.

The 100% absolute danger is the rise of the Left. Right-wingers believe that society is dominated by impoverished weak people. That's why they go after the unemployed, minorities, immigrants, non-heterosexuals, etc. They call for "law and order" which only makes it easier for the state to dominate them along with everyone else.

Left-wingers [ON THE OTHER HAND!!!] believe that society is dominated by wealthy, powerful people. We believe that we live in an oligarchy and that therefore it makes much more sense to go after the oligarchs, the plutocrats, the capitalist exploiters, the enforcers of state power, the corrupt liberal and semi-fascist politicians. We call for human equality, human freedom, social justice, environmental sanity, fact-based public policy and increased democratization. Things that are incompatible with our rulers' self-interest. And given the comparison, it is no mystery why the oligarchs fear us more than they do the right-wing chumps.

But either way, the want us both silenced. Hitlers are unreliable, untrustworthy. Inconvenient. They get ideas above their station. They'd like us all silenced. And so that's what they're going to do.

And, sadly, I think I'll end this portion of this wider presentation here. I'm busy. Hope you liked the pikatuhcherrz I stolet from the innernet.

Justin Trudeau vs. Free Speech PART I

So, there's this insultingly stupid meme going around that Russia's Vladimir Putin stole the 2016 US presidential election for Trump. He didn't. Trump is not Putin's puppet. Trump is a con-artist and he has a lot of financiers in Russia. Because there are a lot of uber-crooked oligarchs in Russia with lots of liquid assets they need to launder. This access to dirty money endears Russia to Trump and he sees them in a sympathetic light. It is this sympathy that allowed Trump to shake-off the propaganda system's spin on Russia in Syria to be able to ask: "If ISIS is such a deadly threat, then why are we angry at Russia for helping Syria's Assad to fight them?"

This is heresy apparently. The USA's foreign policy elite want to humiliate and weaken Russia. They want to shoot down Russian planes over Syria and let Jihaadist nut-bars tear it apart as they did in Libya. They want to continue to surround Russia with hostile states and nuclear missiles and they want to do the same with China. Not because the USA is the hope of the world. But because the US political system is about promoting the right of US banks to rob people worldwide. To obtain raw materials at cheap prices through compliant puppet regimes. It is the servant of every exploitative, gouging, grasping, corrupt, self-centred, psychopathic capitalist you can imagine. Because the USA is a capitalist country and both of the allowed political parties self-identify as "capitalist."

But, anyway, one of the props of the bullshit story that Russia stole the election for Trump is the "fake news" that the dastardly Russians circulated on social media. Ordinarily, you'd expect progressives to be intelligent enough to laugh off the purported election-swinging social media memes that "Putin's Troll Army" supposedly utilized. Sadly however, "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is a real thing and many progressives are not at their best these days.

I'm not even going to go into the real details or provide links to any of this nonsense. Roughly speaking, we're talking about less than $200,000 spent on FaceBook ads (in an election where spending was in the BILLIONS). A large proportion of the ads in question were purchased and displayed AFTER the 2016 election. They were "seen" by as many as 125 million people!!! (In the same way you probably see AND IGNORE those sidebar advertisements for Viagra, criminal pardons, useless FaceBook groups to join, and ads for how to be rich and successful on FaceBook or YouTube.) These were pictures of Hillary Clinton arm-wrestling the devil. Some of the ads were in support of Black Lives Matter. (Which, obviously, is far removed from the concept of getting someone to support Trump. The BLM ads were, supposedly, posted to attempt to "sow divisions" in US-American society ... where none existed before [!!!] ... and create "chaos" throughout society.) There was a pro-Bernie Sanders colouring book too.

In short: Ludicrous nonsense.

The laughs continued after I started writing this post. FBI Director Robert Mueller has announced the indictment of 13 Russian nationals for trying to influence the election. The Russians involved are no longer in the USA. It's highly unlikely that Putin will agree to extradite them to the USA to face the music for their "crimes." (Especially since these are still just allegations.) And since they will probably never be tested in a USA court of law, we'll never know if the low-budget actions (wheeling a cart around somewhere in Florida with a cage containing someone playing Hillary Clinton in a striped prisoner's uniform for instance) were actually the work of ex-KGB officer Vladimer Putin, or just some pranks by the booze and coke-addled son of a Russian mafiosa who stayed in Florida too long after Spring Break.

But to hear too many liberals and progressives go on about it: These were "ACTS OF WAR!!!"

Let me explain something to you liberals and progressives about what it means to call something an "act of war." And this is serious, so please pay attention:

If somebody insulted me or somebody close to me and I shouted back without a trace of humour in my voice: "DEM'S FIGHTIN' WOIDS!!!"  .... That would mean that unless I received an apology for the insult, a fight would ensue between myself and my antagonist. There's no other way to understand it. When Homer Simpson was glove-slapping everyone in town and that Southern gentleman (who was visiting Springfield for his own reasons) accepted his challenge, Homer had either to meet him for a pistol-duel at dawn or flee to the countryside.

If you're going to accuse Russia of an "ACT OF WAR" against the United States, you are saying that the two countries are now on a war-footing and that unless the Russian government provides restitution for its acts of aggression, the war will continue.

First of all; if Russia's social media activities (or, more accurately, the social media activities of Russians) are "ACTS OF WAR" then it follows that Honduras, Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, Iran, and quite a few others, can also say that the USA has committed "acts of war" against THEM and go to the United Nations and get sanctions imposed.

Secondly, you goddamned stupid idiots, ... Russia is a nuclear power with enough weapons to destroy human civilization. Spouting out hypocritical drivel about being in a state of war with them over such trifles is out-and-out INSANE.

So ends Part One.

A Word On "Ideological Purity" and Hillary Clinton

Would you like this deranged homicidal maniac to violently stab you to death, or would you like Hannibal Lector to do it with finesse over a period of a couple of days? Or, are you one of those extremists who would prefer neither?

A healthy individual would say "neither."

A healthy, intelligent society, when faced with a similar choice would say "neither" as well. If that healthy, intelligent society found itself, through a long series of circumstances, in a state where it discovered that "neither" wasn't an official option and that it was down to the savagely violent maniac and Hannibal Lector, the healthy, intelligent thing to do would be to work tirelessly to change things so that it would not have such a poisonous set of choices ever again.

Alas! We do not live in a healthy, intelligent society. When faced with something like Donald Trump (the violent maniac) and Hillary Clinton (the Hannibal Lector choice), many, MANY people wisely selected neither of them, but enough people, in enough strategic areas, ignorantly and/or stupidly and/or racistly and/or selfishly, voted for Trump.

In response, Clinton's supporters wailed and screamed and blurted out absurd conspiracy theories about Russia and basically did everything but take responsibility for how their candidate failed to completely demolish a babbling, ignorant, corrupt, perverted, buffoonish, openly racist shit-for-brains. Furthermore (but not surprisingly) they condemn their moral and intellectual betters (Green Party voters and disgruntled progressives who didn't vote at all) as being to blame for Trump and for practicing a deranged ideological purity.

Once again, I say to those stupid asshole Democratic dead-enders: Just as you (rightly) condemn a Trump voter who put their concern for the return of decent jobs over Trump's blatant racism and its likely consequences, I CONDEMN YOU for putting your fear of Trump and for putting your partisan self-interests ahead of the MILLIONS of innocent people both in the USA and abroad whose lives Hillary Clinton has destroyed. As "First Lady" she sabotaged the chances of single-payer health insurance, she championed the "Three Strikes" prison policy, and she endorsed "welfare reform" ... all three decisions having caused enormous suffering to ordinary US-Americans.

As Senator, she stupidly voted for an illegal war of choice against Iraq, based on a case built on what anyone who wasn't a moron could see was a pack of lies. That vote alone should serve to disqualify her as a champion for "progressives" anywhere. That vote produced an orgy of violence, over a million untimely deaths; millions more made refugees, millions upon millions of traumatized (mentally and physically) individuals.

In my view, a blunder of such gigantic proportions is not erased with an embarrassed "Oops!"

Baghdad

As well, during that time, she coddled Wall Street criminals and signed-onto the pro-bankster "Bankruptcy Bill." (To be fair, Clinton was pretty "hands-off" when it came to Wall Street. Being a person of limited brainpower she focused mainly on her insanely stupid delusions about foreign policy.)

Tripoli

As Secretary of State, Clinton presided over the creation and rise of ISIS, the creation of the Syrian Civil War, the imposition of a government of fascist idiots in the Ukraine, the complete destruction of Libya (utilizing the Jihaadist nutbars she seems to love so well), the continued abuse and murder of Venezuelans, and the overthrow of the elected president of Honduras and the imposition of an anti-democratic, brutal, torturing thug regime. In both the Ukraine and Syria, Hillary Clinton, being both a psychopath and a dim-wit, engaged in numerous provocations against nuclear-armed Russia. There was very little on Hillary Clinton's side that prevented us from all being vaporized.

Mosul

This record of violence, of lies, of stupidity, of callousness, of whoring herself out to the financial sector and the military-industrial complex, ... No. If you're going to stand there as some proponent of "lesser-evilism" and try to condemn me for "excessive ideological purity" for rejecting Hillary Clinton, I will tell you to your face to go eat shit and die.

John Ibbitson; Fluffer

I first came across the word "fluffer" while reading a Dan Savage sex advice column. Apparently some hot girl had a hot boyfriend and some twink asked her if he could join them in a threesome wherein said twink would consign himself to sucking her boyfriend's cock between her boyfriends shtupping her.

Savage said (I think) to go for it and to send him some pictures afterwards. But he also talked about the career choice of "fluffer" within the porn industry.

A fluffer is a person employed to keep a male adult film star erect on the set.^[1] These duties, which do not necessarily involve touching the actors, are considered part of the makeup department. After setting up the desired angle, the director asks the actors to hold position and calls for the fluffer to "fluff" the actors for the shot.

I will submit to you that Canadian political pundit John Ibbitson is so debased that he has decided (all on his own and for no extra pay other than what his senile employers would have given him regardless) to act as stephen harper's fluffer.

How sad is that? To live and write in order to make some intellectual non-entity like stephen harper appear to be a vigorous, important political figure.

A few (many?) months ago, I saw the cover of Ibbitson's book about harper on the "new and recommended" shelf of the Hamilton, Ontario Central Library. I read the back cover (I can't remember what it said) and thought to myself how odd it was that Ibbitson had written a book about this political has-been/anti-democratic corporate whore. Of course, perhaps its the case that harper was still in power when Ibbitson wrote the stupid thing. I don't really know and I don't really care. I have zero interest in reading it. After all, Ibbitson is the racist dullard whose big pronouncement that there has been a permanent tectonic shift in Canada towards a more "conservative" (whatever that term is supposed to mean) Canadian polity turned out to be hugely, laughingly, thankfully wrong.

I will never read this, or any other book by John Ibbitson. For the same reason that I don't tune-in to Alex Jones on "InfoWars." Some opinions are garbage and a self-evident waste of time. To put it even more bluntly; John Ibbitson is a stupid asshole who was busy eating worms when Gawd was handing out brains.

I will, though, comment on this fine review of Ibbitson's drivel from Quill & Quire: "

A series of curious adjectives pepper the first half of John Ibbitson’s biography of Stephen Harper. “Calm.” “Measured.” “Reasonable.” These are not, safe to say, words that are commonly applied to Canada’s 22nd prime minister, a man more frequently identified with descriptors such as “remorseless,” “autocratic,” and “cruel” (all of which, to be fair, also crop up in Ibbitson’s book).

Now then; let's also just stop to point out that "calm, measured, reasonable" are also not applicable to the shambling, self-loathing, psychopathic coward that was stephen harper. He could pretend to be calm in public situations when he wasn't forced to honestly account for himself. It's not remarkable that a bully who holds (stole) all the cards can be calm while their victims become emotional. But the fact of the matter is that insiders said that harper was a raging asshole in private. He controlled through fear by being a petty and vindictive madman. He was not "measured." He was an extremist. He was not "reasonable," he was insane. I will grant that he had another quality that helped him to appear placid. He is dead to normal human feelings. Other people are meaningless to him. So it causes him no existential pain to injure his enemies and betray his supporters.

But it becomes clear quickly that, unlike many writers and commentators, Ibbitson is not out to demonize Harper, but rather to examine where he comes from, how his ideology was formed, and why he governs the way he does.

This would actually be a valid exercise. In the hands of a writer other than Ibbitson. For you see ...

And though he addresses the mistakes, missteps, and scandals – he could hardly avoid them – Ibbitson’s approach to Harper is generally approving: “I believe that he sought office hoping to leave things in better shape than he found them,” the author writes in his afterword, “and that he has, in the main, succeeded. I believe he has governed well.”

Wrong Johnny boy! Do you think Afghanistan was a success? Does being implicated in torture and other war crimes give you a tingle Johnny? Does the epidemic of Aboriginal suicides turn you on? Does a government that refuses to give Parliament cost-estimates but which does provide fraudulent verbal assurances of these costs strike you as "good governance"? Does sabotaging parliamentary committees constitute governing well? Is election fraud your idea of democratic behaviour? I could go on, but you all get the idea.

And Johnny, lil' Johnny. Lil' stupid, racist Johnny; NO. harper did NOT hope to leave things better than when he found them. harper was a whore for the Calgary oil industry and for Bay Street. Furthermore, harper serviced these criminal scum-bags as a means to his own personal power. To gratify his ludicrously gigantic personal vanity.

It helps that Harper embodies Ibbitson’s own theory about the direction Canada is taking in the 21st century. In his 2013 book, The Big Shift (co-written with pollster Darrell Bricker), Ibbitson argues that the Laurentian elites –

Blah, blah, blah. The next little bit is just a summary of Ibbitson's failed thesis that Canada had transformed from a basically liberal polity (public healthcare/pro-choice/peace-keeping/social programs) to that of the gutter rats who populate the comments section of whatever media scam Ezra Levant is operating. I shan't deal with it here because it's already been proven wrong. On with the book in question ....

It is foolish in the extreme, Ibbitson argues, to blame a conservative government for acting like conservatives. And the current government is, at least in Ibbitson’s view, the first truly conservative government in Canada’s history. (The author makes it clear that one of Harper’s biggest hesitations in contemplating the merger of the Canadian Alliance with the Progressive Conservatives was his antipathy to the red Tory tradition that persisted in the latter party.)

Right. Because having been slapped around by reality in the 1930s and 1940s, Canadian conservatives realized that they'd have to abandon their previous delusions and accept the reality of the need for social welfare supports if a consumerist-mass production-industrialized society was going to function. But not so the "new conservatives" who have built a mighty edifice of academic hackery and popular culture shit-headery within which they can hide from reality as the taxpayers bail them out of their increasingly gigantic failures, over and over and fucking over again.

Harper’s ideology was forged by his roots in Toronto’s suburban Leaside neighbourhood in the 1960s, combined with western disaffection stoked by his involvement with the Calgary School of academics and a sympathy for the economic theories of Friedrich von Hayek (whom Ibbitson calls “any good conservative’s answer to John Maynard Keynes”).  

That's kind of funny: Using a powerful word like "forged" to describe the way airhead harper simply agreed with the last person he spoke with during his formative years. He was a comfortable white suburbanite in Toronto and he supported the Liberals. Then he went out to the University of Calgary and became a "conservative" (read: "paid agent of foreign oil firms"). After his early twenties were over and his personality ossified, he refused to allow new information into his worldview and became the moronic coward we all came to loathe and despise. Friedrich von Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom which argued that allowing the state to provide public services inevitably leads to slavery. As opposed to unregulated capitalism which is The Road to Pauperism; to whit ... allowing the rich to get richer and screw over the poor will be fucking terrible in the long-run. I'm pretty sure that (as with most things) Ibbitson didn't have a clue what he was writing about in his comment about von Hayek.

Harper believes in a smaller, less intrusive state, a strict separation of powers between the federal and provincial levels of government, lower taxes, and more emphasis on the free market economy. He has provided all of these things.

No Johnny. Wrong again Johnny. (Ibbitson's got a pretty sweet fucking gig. He says any stupid thing he wants to. Gets his main thesis totally wrong. And just keeps collecting a paycheque. What a scum-bag. Ibbitson's career is yet another indictment of what passes for "political culture" in this country. Toss him on the pile with Ezra Levant, Margaret Wente and all the other hideous, racist, shit-heads.

No Johnny. harper most certainly did NOT believe in a less intrusive state. He used the Canada Revenue Agency as a weapon against groups he did not like. He passed Orwellian surveillance legislation. He "intruded" on Canadians' Charter rights big-time at the G20 in Toronto. No Johnny, ... what harper was opposed to was a state that provided public services to the people. He sabotaged the Census out of privacy concerns but then he passed C-51. Knowing about this stuff is supposed to be your fucking job Ibbitson. Except for the fact that your real job is that of partisan Conservative hack/fluffer.

Unfortunately, in so doing, he has also embarked upon a scorched-earth policy of cuts to services and agencies such as  Library and Archives Canada and the CBC. His government is responsible for the so-called Fair Elections Act, which benefits the Conservatives by making it harder for likely opponents to vote in federal elections; Bill C-51, the astoundingly overbroad government surveillance legislation that even many Conservative supporters have expressed concerns about; and tough-on-crime legislation that increases penalties and restricts rehabilitative measures while ignoring the fact that crime has steadily decreased since the 1990s. If Ibbitson mentions these things at all, he generally glosses over them, or spins them in such a way that they sound much more palatable than they actually are.

Right. Because Ibbitson is a shameless hack.

He expends little time or effort examining some of the other less-than-savoury things Harper has done in office: muzzling his government’s own scientists when they dare to disagree with their pro-oil bosses on climate change; pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol; claiming that the epidemic of missing and murdered aboriginal women “isn’t really high on our radar”; and presiding over the first government in Canadian history to be found in contempt of Parliament (over its refusal to disclose the true cost of purchasing a fleet of F-35 fighter planes). And this is by no means a comprehensive list.

I told you this was a good review!

“Legislatively, the Conservatives have hardly been cruel,” Ibbitson writes, before engaging in one of the most egregious acts of fence-sitting in recent memory: “If you decided that, despite its accomplishments, the Harper government has left the public service so cowed, the flow of knowledge so impaired, and Parliament so weakened that it doesn’t deserve your vote, that would be a reasonable call. If you decided that democratic institutions remain robust and the government should be judged on other aspects of its record, that too would be a reasonable call.”

How true. Ibbitson is such an idiot that he writes the equivalent of "If you think the patient is still alive that's a fair call. If you think the patient has died that's equally valid." I shudder to imagine how much my thinking ability would have to deteriorate to write something as stupid as that!

Ibbitson’s sleight of hand is in employing his own steady, measured tone to convince the reader, despite all evidence to the contrary, of the reasonableness of this latter position.

Right. Because Ibbitson is comfortably employed and he knew he had a publisher for this piece of shit book. And he knows that being a failed pundit ["The Big Shift"] and a liar will have zero impact on his career. 

This deference results in some discordant moments. The Conservatives’ signature Federal Accountability Act, Ibbitson writes, “ensured that Ottawa would never have its own K Street, the thoroughfare in Washington where powerful lobbying firms practically dictate the legislative agenda of Congress.” Perhaps, but if the author doesn’t at least suspect that Big Oil is instrumental in setting policy (see, for example, the Keystone XL pipeline farrago), he is either hopelessly naive (which he clearly is not) or wilfully blind.

First of all, harper's "Federal Accountability Act" was a complete failure at its purported goal. Second of all; Yes, harper was the oil industry's servant and Ibbitson is wilfully blind.

Then there is the author’s lack of inquisitiveness regarding how much Harper knew about the $90,000 cheque his former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, gave to Mike Duffy to repay certain dubious expenses the senator had claimed. “[T]here was much to be said for what critics derided as Harper’s control-freakish handling of his office,” Ibbitson writes at one point. “He knew, for one thing, exactly what was going on in it.” And later, “Nothing of importance is decided until the PM signs off on it.” How, then, can Harper claim not to have known about Wright’s interference with Duffy? For Ibbitson, the question remains unanswered.

Right. Because, at the end of the day, John Ibbitson was like a fluffer on a porno-set. Keeping the "stud" stimulated so as to appear virile and potent for when the camera starts rolling. Except Ibbitson is fluffing up the limp, stupid dick of a flaccid, moronic, cowardly tool of corporate Canada. What a disgrace!

The US-American Thought and Behaviour Control Project

Back in the day when Obama was running for president I thought that it was the genius of the US-American political system to convince jaded US-American voters that their political system wasn't a complete waste of time. After 8 years of Bill Clinton "triangulating" policy to capture right-wing "independent" voters, betraying the Democrats' progressive base over and over; and after 8 years of the bush II regime (two stolen elections) and the uselessness of Democratic opposition, ... along comes public relations construct Barack Obama; to take what is good and noble about so-called "identity politics" and use it to show the core emptiness of "identity politics."

"Look! A Black man is going to be President in a country founded on white supremacy and the enslavement of Blacks! How inspiring!"

And so he was elected twice. (It didn't hurt that his opponents were the aged, detestable John McCain and his loony-toons bimbo running-mate Sarah Palin the first time around; and then the hapless Mitt Romney and the loathsome Paul Ryan the second time.)

And upon election, Barack Obama launched into filling his cabinet with Wall Street criminals/carrying-out the bush II bailout of said criminals/protecting and coddling these criminals and enabling further criminal behaviour [foreclosing on homes they didn't own for one thing]/illegally using federal forces to work with local police forces to destroy the Occupy movement that sprang up to protest Wall Street criminality/doubling-down on the failed, murderous occupation of Afghanistan/pursuing the same old corporate rights "free trade" deals/escalating "death-from-the-sky" drone campaigns that have made innocents (including millions of children) from Yemen to Pakistan afraid of clear skies/continued the murderous occupation of Afghanistan/imposed a coup and a murderous brutal regime on the people of Honduras/supported racist fascist rebels in Venezuela/destroyed Libya (without Congressional authorization)/destroyed Syria/told Black people to get their collective act together ....

(You know, the sick thing about all of this is that Obama was probably about the best that the vile, insane, US-American system could barf-up. Hillary Clinton would have been worse as president as would ANY candidate from the Repugnicans. At least Obama cut a deal with Iran and forced health insurance companies to provide coverage to people with "pre-existing conditions.")

So Black people voted in large numbers to make sure Obama wasn't a one-term President (re: a "failure"). As did many working-class whites.  And they got almost nothing for it. Whereas the corrupt, brutal oligarchy got serviced every single fucking day.

Nobody really wanted to vote for the vile Hillary Clinton. (Sure, people voted for her. More people than voted for Trump. But turnout for the 2016 election was close to 50%. Half the electorate doesn't see the point in voting. Why should they? They live in a goddamned oligarchy. That means it ISN'T a "democracy." Which means that the act of voting is a goddamned WASTE OF TIME.

But just when it seemed like the US political system was gasping for its last breaths, and everyone was ready to admit that it was all a sick, twisted, evil sham, the genius of the US-American experiment reveals itself again!!!

The most disgusting, boorish, openly racist [for a long time at least], corrupt, stupid, (Did I say disgusting yet? Because Trump is really disgusting!) candidate becomes President. Donald Trump is so obnoxious that so many people have gotten excited about voting again. Voting for Democrats again. Furthermore, the more partisan, fanatical, insane, disgusting, hypocritical types are even saying that non-voters and third-party voters are as much to blame for Trump as actual Trump voters! I have zero respect for Matthew Dowd, but observe the loathsome Democratic Party hack "Driftglass" excoriating not only Dowd, but ANYONE AND EVERYONE who didn't vote for the blood-soaked criminal Hillary Clinton:

Here is Mr. Heroically Shining Out In The Dark With Love a year ago.  Y'know, back in the days when some action in the general directions of not being a leader of the Don't Vote For Hillary Because K'rupt Duopoly circle-jerk might have made a tangible difference ... So no, Mr. Dowd, you and your ilk are not heroes of our epic American poem.  See you're the bad guys.  Minor ones, to be sure.  Mere gutless punks and henchmen-for-hire in the grand scheme of things, but definitely not on the side of the angels.

In the end, the stupid rantings of a shameless idiot like Driftglass aren't going to rouse the entire non-voting portion of the electorate to rally enthusiastically around whatever corporate Democrats are put on offer. But enough people will be mobilized by Trump hatred to make it a contest that the Democrats will likely win. And then the disappointment and betrayal and squalid corruption will begin all over again.

The other day I saw a picture of Democratic Senator and pharmaceutical industry whore Cory Booker angrily yelling at some Trump Administration imbecile about his "shithole countries" remark. It was some Senate hearing or other where he got to grandstand for the cameras. That to me epitomized the hollowness of "the resistance" as led by the vile Democrats.

US-Americans have to collectively learn that they live in an oligarchy. And the way out of oligarchy does NOT involve voting for one of the two representatives of the oligarchs.