Wednesday, June 1, 2011

The Liberals and the Centre

I think it was in the Martin or the Dion years, when, on Canadian Cynic, I told Ti-Guy that I wanted the Liberal Party of Canada to die, because they deceived progressive-minded Canadians and made them believe that they could have their cake and eat it too.

Ti-Guy replied something to the effect that by giving the centrist majority of Canadians a compromise between the extremist Conservatives and the loopy NDP we could avoid disaster. Without the Liberals, the majority of Liberal supporters would stupidly migrate over to the Conservatives (with whom they feel more comfortable).

At the time, I wasn't sure that the thesis was worth the explosion in homelessness, in poverty, in the massive decline in our manufacturing sector, the occupation of Afghanistan and the subsequent war crimes, the increase in inequality, the creeping privatization of health care, the dallying with missile defence, and on and on and everything that Liberal governance represented.

And what if it's the case that "centre cannot hold"? I realize that for a long time I predicted economic collapse, sincerely believing that the debt-crisis, or the dot-com bubble's bursting, or something else meant that our economic system had run out of steam, only to be proved wrong. But this latest crisis, I've waited, and hedged my bets, but there's enough weakness, enough elite stupidity, enough hopelessness, that it looks like a collapse is inevitable. About a month ago, some dude was on a business news program, saying with all the confidence in the world "Demand will come back." I could only wonder where it was supposed to come back from. Seriously, check out those links and ask yourself where demand is supposed to come from? And then, remember that "demand" as he's talking about it, means "effective demand" to consume more and more useless junk, the production of which will plunder the world's resources and destroy the environment. Their system fails on its own terms and in the bigger picture it's going to kill us all.

If that's the case, what do we need with some mewling bunch of neo-liberal, arrogant, elite dumb-fucks who helped bring us to this sorry pass?

There is going to be a reckoning. We have the worst possible political party in Canada in power to meet it with a majority government. Let's make the choice for Canadians as stark as possible: the intellectual bankruptcy of capitalism versus the humanity of social democracy. The last thing we want is a political party lying to Canadians that they can "rise up" to the challenge with rhetoric and lies.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that the Liberal Party forgot about liberalism. They havent seen anyone who comes close to fitting the text book ideology since Trudeau.

I am afraid that in spite of the sheet number of NDP members, there's diddley they can do to stop Harper. He ignored criticism as a minority leader, he'll ignore it as a majority leader.

The only thing that will stop him, IMHO, is a groundswell of people on the street, continuously, so that the press can't imply that they are an aberration. Professional groups, students, unions, are going to have to get their picket signs warmed up. Otherwise, get out the vaseline, could we'll be needing it.

SM

susansmith said...

yeah, I agree with this. Because all I have seen is empty promises but more so, outright lies to keep Canadians docile.

thwap said...

Anonymous,

You're right. The opposition in a minority government is powerless.

It will take extra-parliamentary forces to check harper's insanity.

And it will take more than picket-signs.

thwap said...

JFTB,

The more progressive of Liberal activists might not realize it, but keeping us docile was pretty much what the leadership wanted for us.