If you go back through the pages of this blog to the years when stephen harper was desecrating all of the customs and conventions and the very letter of the law of our parliamentary system, you will see that I was constantly "harping" about how dangerous and disgusting his behaviour was. I also expressed my dismay at the lack of push-back against harper; both from the super-radicals who believe that the real world is a waste of time and that if only everything magically changed, their little Marxist grouplet or "anarchist" collective would sweep away all before them and so to hell with worrying about something as ridiculous as Parliament and the semi-quasi-democracy it represents - AND - from the "respectable" left and center who thought shouting "SHAME!!" [leftists] or "Tsk-tsk!" [centrists] was the extent of their responsibilities.
I'm not saying that Canadians' incapacity at resisting harper produced the rise of Donald Trump in the United States. I'm saying that progressives and leftists failures to counteract the fascist turn of decaying capitalism has produced [in the USA] a fascist movement, united under a grifter, who has, in the real world, with real resources, created an army of lawless goons, inspired by racist ideology, targeting scapegoats and anyone who wants to resist them.
As economic conditions deteriorate, more people become insular, reactionary, "conservative." We had certain rights under our system of government. We could have built upon them. We should be outraged when ... ahh, I've too much to say and no time really to say it.
Remember when harper stymied investigations into human rights abuses in Afghanistan? Remember when he stole an election? Remember when he refused to provide Parliament with cost estimates of his policies? Remember when the falsified expert advice to justify cutting funding for KAIROS? Remember when he used his stolen majority to ram through gigantic omnibus bills? Remember when Elections Canada refused to seriously investigate his election fraud and selectively granted legal immunity to different sets of witnesses?
As a people, we should be passionate about defending the rights we have. Instead, the far-left smirks and shrugs their shoulders and says something eloquent about "bourgeois liberties" while the progressives mouth whatever platitudes their own hypocritical leadership in Liberal, NDP, Green, Democratic, whatever parties tell them to say. (And then hope they forget those platitudes and what they were supposed to represent whenever one of those centrist parties gain power.) And, of course, the vast majority of people, incapable of lifting their eyes from their own immediate concerns, simply ignore it all as a farce.
We see the results of this massive human-societal failure in the murderous, illegal, unconstitutional behaviour of Trump's ICE.
