A Comment Pissed Me Off

So, in this little post, I wrote about ... Ah hell, it's so short it's taking me just as long to summarize it. Here it is:

"Change the Culture" - Progressives got to get out and put it out there. People have to take a side: Democracy or Inverted Totalitarianism? Food and shelter for all or super-mansions for the super-rich and starvation for the majority? Dignity or consumerism?
Artists, musicians, business owners, ... we have to make a culture and an economy that is ours and put it before the majority and reject the corporate system and sustain ourselves.
Ah, who am I kidding?

Well, that brought this gem of a comment from one "greg":

What is your solution. You seem to crap on anyone who wants to do something or is doing something. At least lay out a plan. Is there anyone or any group out there you like?

 I replied thusly:

"greg"

I wonder why you saw fit to write that. Your tone and words convey the notion that you're a regular reader of my blog, but the plain facts of the matter show that you don't have a clue.

Here's a post (with links to companion pieces) about how I thought we could "stop harper."

http://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.ca/2013/08/my-plan-part-fourth.html

Here's one of many things that I've written about as a way to fight the larger battle against capitalism itself:

http://mail.enmasse.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8180&sid=c2ca5a0fced95120161bb4afc6f6ef7e

Finally, I find it a bit rich to say that I "crap on anyone who wants to do something or is doing something."

As I repeat again and again and again, progressives tend to do NOTHING when they're not repeatedly doing the same ineffective things that they've always done.

I've stated in great detail why I think afternoon protests, petitions and small acts of vandalism are a waste of time. Instead of sniffling out some vague complaints about how I'm hopelessly negative, you could actually engage with what I've actually said.

As with everyone, there's an open invitation to prove me wrong. But whining that I'm a big meanie isn't going to accomplish that.  

More than two days passed and I guessed that "greg" had nothing more to contribute to the discussion, prompting me to conclude:

I guess the plan was to drop a little brain turd in my comments section and move on, self-satisfied. 

 And the thing is; it started as a mild irritation, but that built up so that I feel compelled to make a post about it. This is the sort of whining, deluded, close-minded bullshit that so pisses me off about the left. I'll admit that I've lost a great deal of my optimism and my passion since 2011. I know that fewer people read this blog and that's not just due to the infrequency of posts. I sound like a broken record condemning the left for its laziness, its lack of ideas and analysis, its delusions and inability to form lasting coalitions.

But if I sound like a broken record ("record" refers to these flat vinyl discs that audio recordings used to be adhered to. When they were  broken, it meant a scratch or a crack that made the needle of the phonograph player - which transferred its movement along the tiny grooves in the vinyl into electric messages to the speaker system - continue to bump backwards, thus repeating the same short bit of sound over and over again), it's because the left never changes.

Progressives continue to split themselves between the corporate scum-bags in the Liberal Party and the wannabe corporate scum-bags in the NDP. Environmentalists divide themselves among those two parties and the Green Party. Leftists divide themselves among the NDP and splinter parties or the "brilliant" tactic (represented by EnMasse's "Slumberjack") of imagining that Canada's 30 million people should refuse to participate in parliamentary politics at all, but should instead sit at home and write cockamaymee, impenetrable post-structuralist prose between masturbation sessions and pointless rallies and demonstrations.

Speaking of masturbation: pointless demonstrations and rallies, often featuring tiresome old white guys reciting the things that everyone already knows and believes in, perhaps hoping that if they say the magic words this time everything will start to happen. ("Duh! Maybe I'm the 'Chosen One,' and my version of the same old bullshit will bring about the Revolution!") 

As I said in my first reply to "greg," I've gone into great detail about my disillusionment with leftist nonsensical day-dreaming. I invited "greg" to prove me wrong. But "greg" is apparently uninterested in proving me wrong. He simply disagrees (although he can't articulate why). And, therefore, the whole leftist circle-jerk can continue in its own pathetic non-progression. (A leftist circle-jerk would probably end in recriminations and back-stabbing [there's a metaphor with multiple meanings!] with a bunch of bitter misanthropes, angrily pulling their puds, having pointedly turned their backs to their erstwhile comrades.)

"Our power is in the streets!" they yelled as the police crushed yet another pointless demonstration.

"Hey-hey! Ho-ho!  So-and-so has got to go!" they yelled repeatedly about the guy who retired five years later and got cushy jobs from his private-sector benefactors whose servant he was.

"The People, United, Can Never Be Defeated!" they yelled before they ever managed to unite "the people" and right before the elites crushed them.

"We're standing up for working families!" said the "social democrats" right before they caved to pressures from the elites on Bay Street and the oil patch.

It's all so depressing. What we need is a new party! And to circulate a petition!

 

Overestimating Them: stephen harper edition

Yesterday I talked about how Dick Cheney was reduced to stammering confusion when confronted with the mildest recitation of the truth about his dismal stupidity and asserted how all these cowardly cretins would fold if faced with genuine challenges.

stephen harper is a sterling example of this cowardice and fraud. harper isn't a very bright guy. he leads a political bowel movement that is mainly based upon ignorance (the mass of their voting base) and greed (the capitalist vermin who finance them). To dominate the pack of idiots that is the Conservative Party of Canada doesn't require Isaac Newton. harper has, as did Dick Cheney, relied on the abuse of power to escape every and any crisis brought upon by his own blundering and corruption.

But, whenever harper found himself in a genuine tight spot, his chosen tactic was to flee in pants-shitting panic. Each and every single time, when harper could cower somewhere during a crisis, he did. Because he's a bully. And bullies are cowards. Bullies are compensating for some external problems (abusive parents/siblings, some sort of personal trauma) or internal problems (sheer stupidity, sexual conflicts, general feelings of self-loathing and incapacity). It would be nice if harper could wrestle with, and defeat, whatever demons are tormenting him. he should attend to that on his own time and not subject the rest of us to his psychoses.

It's sometimes the case that whatever mental problems are afflicting an individual are, they themselves aren't to blame for that person being generally shitty and unpleasant to be around. I'm pretty sure I'd find harper to be dreadful company even under optimal conditions.

Don't Overestimate Dick Cheney

Perhaps I'm wrong, but, obviously I don't think so. I've long recoiled at the notion that we on the left shouldn't underestimate our political opponents, given that most of these guys are fucking morons. Maybe people who disagree with me see something that I don't. I don't see anything intimidating about stephen harper, or ezra levant or bush II, or any of them.

Case in point: Gary Leupp over at CounterPunch.org describes plodding failure Dick Cheney reduced to incoherence when Megyn Kelly of FAUX News mentions the unavoidable in the middle of Cheney's babbling about Iraq's present crisis:

Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz had published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal advocating renewed U.S. military involvement in Ira to prevent a seizure of power by the al-Qaeda spin-off ISIS (or ISIL) and opining, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,”

Citing this comment, Fox anchor Megyn Kelly unexpectedly snapped, “But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well sir.” She referred specifically the false accusation about weapons of mass destruction used to sell the Iraq War. A flustered Cheney fumbled his interrogator’s name (“Reagan, um, Megyn”) before declaring, “You’ve got to go back and look at the track record.” (As though Megyn were doing something other than precisely that.) “We inherited a situation where there was no doubt in anybody’s mind about the extent of Saddam’s involvement in weapons of mass destruction … Saddam Hussein had a track record that nearly everybody agreed to.”

Cheney's career has been built on the acquisition of raw power so as to compensate for his total lack of talent and ability. Whenever anything turned to shit (as it did again and again for him) he was able to rely on blatant bullying and corruption to see him through. If Cheney came upon genuine, sustained criticism, the rotten old shit would fall out of his chair and suffer a cardiac arrest.

Observations on the Iraq Fiasco

Not that I believe that anything that I say will influence anyone of any political standing. But I'm a narcissistic blogger and I gotta blog!

1. Notice how nobody is all that concerned about getting george dubya bush's views on the Iraq crisis? Doubtless all of his supporters and his media enablers realize that he's an absolute imbecile and there's nothing to be gained from the exertions that would be required to present him as an "elder statesman" at this point in his dotage.

2. Can we really be all that sure that the takeover of vast swaths of the country by Sunni militants is entirely unwelcome by some in the USA establishment? After all, Al Qaeda was a useful tool in Libya and is a useful tool in Syria. It's pretty clear that US ally Saudi Arabia is providing the funding for this mess. If the US were truly serious about bringing an end to this nightmare, they could lean on the House of Saud to cut off the cash flow to these fundamentalist rebels.

3. But if the USA isn't really traumatized by the progress of these Sunni rebels, why all the public wailing and gnashing of teeth? Simple answer: The US political elite is as disconnected from reality a group as you're ever going to meet. IOW: They're completely insane. At one point at the end of the Cold War, the Bush Sr. administration claimed it was withholding economic aid to the reformist Gorbachev government due to its aid to the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. Gorbachev was justifiably frustrated by this because this aid to the Sandanistas was entirely a US propaganda fiction. But, the Americans are so cocooned in their self-righteousness and their bubble of misinformation, that they'd come to believe their own lies and were basing high policy upon them.

4. Further evidence of this thorough delusion can be seen in John McCain's belief that Barack Obama is responsible for the total withdrawl of US troops from Iraq, when in fact this had been negotiated by bush II. (Obama had tried to renegotiate the withdrawl, wanting to keep them there with total legal immunity for any war-crimes, but the Maliki government could not allow this when reports of covered-up atrocities by the US military were revealed by Wikileaks.

To conclude, this is a disaster. A fiasco. The people of Iraq continue to suffer and die because of the blinkered, incoherent (but for their consistent callousness and selfishness) of the US foreign policy elite and their oil industry paymasters. A pack of deluded, violent psychopaths.

Dick Cheney; gall of ...

So, "Crooks and Liars" have a nice little piece called "The Gall of Dick Cheney" about his shameless co-authoring with his imbecilic daughter, an op-ed about how the sectarian violence in Iraq is Obama's fault.

To ask how he thinks he can get away with such nonsense is to explain it. What IS anyone opposed to him going to do about it?

...

Well?

That total non-answer is the reason for Cheney's gall. That's a measure of our impotence.

Hopeless

Imagine a friend or a loved one with a debilitating disease. It's going to kill them one day, but nobody can say when exactly. It could be a month, it could be years from now. In the meantime, they're wracked with excrutiating pain and the slow degeneration of their body's functioning. They're either whacked on sedatives that reduce their pain to a constant, throbbing ache, or they're gritting their teeth in a hopeless frenzy.

No dignified suffering. No lessons on living to impart to those around them. Just a hopeless waste of a life.

That's kind of the level of futility I feel watching progressives and leftists stumble around in their delusions and schisms and impotence. It's hopeless to ask for anything more or to expect that something meaningful will come out of this stupidity.

Change the Culture

Progressives got to get out and put it out there. People have to take a side: Democracy or Inverted Totalitarianism? Food and shelter for all or super-mansions for the super-rich and starvation for the majority? Dignity or consumerism?

Artists, musicians, business owners, ... we have to make a culture and an economy that is ours and put it before the majority and reject the corporate system and sustain ourselves.

Ah, who am I kidding?

Hopelessly Stupid People Talking About Iraq

Back in the day, when perhaps only 500,000 human beings had been killed in Iraq, I had an exchange with "conservative" blogger "Papa Junker" from the blog "Celestial Junk." While we were talking about some other subject, he asked if I'd care to admit that my side had gotten Iraq completely wrong.

Given that there had been no "Weapons of Mass Destruction" found there and that the occupation had turned into a bloody civil war, I could only sit stunned as I read his version that, ignoring the naysayers, bush II had gone in and removed a tyrant from power, freeing the Iraqi people who, together with bush II and other brave US Americans, pluckily stood together against the lefty pessimists and the Jihadists, defeated the bad guys and built a thriving functioning democracy with purple fingers and ponies and rainbows forever. Whiskey, democracy, sexy.

Obviously I wasn't convinced then and, obviously, I'm less convinced now, as Sunni rebels have conquered one city and are closing on Baghdad. Not even the delusions of someone like "Junker" could ... who am I kidding? He's probably got some new insane way to spin all of this (or blame it on Obama) that I'm incapable (being sane and all) of comprehending.

But right-wing blogging nobodies are one thing. What about the drooling alcoholic idiot bush II painting hackneyed portraits of his puppies and his feet? What about stephen harper? What about Paul Martin Jr.? What about David Brooks? What about John McCain? What about Tony Blair? What about all the powerful lying frauds who used their power and influence to sell this disastrous war and push it through to its hideous outcome?

Well? What about them?

What's the point of complaining about any of this? By that I mean, what's the point of CONTINUED complaining about any of this? Instead of complaining, wouldn't it be better if we, the people who have been consistently correct all the time, somehow figured out how to change things (at least in Canada) so that the ONLY people talking about the next imperialist adventure are impotent loser bloggers like "Papa Junker"? That there are no major political figures or media owners or pundits blathering on about more stupid nonsense, because they've all been driven from power?

Why don't we think about what is necessary to accomplish THAT rather than years of more sniping from the sidelines? Why are we all so incapable of even thinking about how this could be achieved? Why do we choose to spend our lives in impotent frustration?

Election Autopsy

Wynne's majority win is a testimony to how scary and awful Ontarians thought Tim Hudak and his innumerate platform was. (All the right-wing pundits and etc., who endorsed this piece-of-shit have managed to hammer another nail in the coffin of their credibility AFTER it was long ago buried under the ground!)

A majority government for these Liberal sleaze-balls is the worst thing in the world though. These people cut taxes for the corporations and the rich, waste BILLIONS on various mad schemes and corruption, and then charge us for it with higher taxes and reduced services. Expect a majority of seats to change the quality of Wynne's eye-sight, for now she'll go there and the cupboard will "gasp!" surprisingly be bare.

If Hudak had won, the ONDP would be accused of having given it to him. Are people accusing them of giving Wynne her majority? They should. Horwath's campaign was a schizophrenic attempt to navigate our "first-past-the-post" election system. People didn't see the point of voting for flailing criticisms of both parties, backed up by a slurry of vaguely centre-left, right-wing populist rhetoric.

I'm still relieved Hudak lost, but this is a sad day for Ontario's democracy.

This Putrid Election

Vote for the thieving assholes to stop the psychotic, stupid, monsters' party!

What a choice.

I voted for the milquestoast Liberal-lite party, thank you very much.

Horwath's problem is that she doesn't have enough analysis and enough faith in socialism to push back against the hegemony of stupid bullshit. Instead, she tries to accommodate it.

Don't ask me about any other party until we get proportional representation.

Oh! Those Fucking Liberals!

I don't usually make two posts in one day. But it was one thing after another thing.

Go through this blog's archives and you'll see that I almost always credit liberals for being generally decent, intelligent people. But I disavow liberalism the philosophy and I despise liberal poltical parties like the Canadian Liberals and the USA's Democratic Party. And I positively loathe Liberal hackery. (And, any honest reading of this blog will show that I'm no die-hard Dipper hack.)

So, here's "Big City Lib Strikes Back" belittling the gas-plant scandal in Ontario:

Gasplantsgasplantzgasplanzz

gasplazzzgasplzzzzgaspzzzzz

gaszzzzzzgazzzzzzzgzzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I can't think of anything else to say on top of my reply/rant:

Yeah. What's $1,000,000,000?

This is the stupid partisan hackery that makes me sick.

The harpercons' torture and election fraud and "Election Fraud Promotion Act" haven't stirred apathetic Canadians either. Whether through successful cover-ups and corruption or sheer laziness on the voters' part.

Does that mean they're not scandals?

You seem like a decent person. Pull your head out of your ass and THINK for a goddamned minute. Do you really think it's a good thing for the Ontario government to have spent ONE BILLION DOLLARS to cancel some contracts to save the seats of three of their own MPPs?

Do you?

Do you think it's a good thing for governments to incur ONE BILLION DOLLARS in fines and then refuse to tell the people's representatives about it and, when pressed, outright LIE about how much their partisan spending cost them?

So, having gotten that off of my chest, I went to "Dammit Janet!" where I didn't see a new post. So next I went to the US pro-Democrat (except for the wonderful Susie Madrak) blog "Crooks and Liars" and found the first story was about my latest hobby-horse, anti-government, right-wing extremist gun-nuts. And the display of liberal cluelessness and hypocrisy there just made me livid. It's about the discovered YouTube videos of the crazy right-wing anti-government gun-nut from Las Vegas who died in a shoot-out at Wal~Mart with his crazy wife after having killed two cops:

Jerad Miller, the Indiana man who with his wife, Amanda, allegedly shot and killed two police officers and a bystander Sunday in North Las Vegas before dying in a suicide pact at a Wal-Mart store, posted several videos at YouTube in the past year that revealed his paranoia and antigovernment views.

One of the videos contains an extended soliloquy by Miller on government drones that turns into a quasi-philosophical rant about the nature of courthouses as centers of “authoritarianism.”

The latter is noteworthy in light of a report by the Las Vegas Review-Journal that among the documents found at Miller’s apartment was a carefully laid out plan to attack an unidentified courthouse building in Las Vegas, taking it by armed force and then executing public officials inside.
The video begins with Miller pulling out a conspiracist magazine devoted to government drones, titled “Drones: Are They Watching You?,” which was published in 2013 under the auspices of magazine publisher Source Interlink – a company that changed its name earlier this year. Miller waxes paranoiac about the likelihood that people like himself are under surveillance by them.

So are they watching you? Probably,” he says. “I mean, they’re already wiretapping your phones. You know, watching your Facebook and everything. And they’re probably watching this video of me right now. I don’t care. Congrats. You’re somebody special. You have” – waving his fingers – “clearance.”
After complaining at length about the ankle bracelet he was forced to wear as a result of being placed on house arrest in 2013 (according to the Lafayette Journal & Courier, Miller was accused of violating his in-house arrest twice that year), he turns his attention to the local courthouse near his home, which is within view of his window:

A beautiful building, even though it is a monument to authoritarianism. It’s just a big concrete building a … thing … that people have to go to, or else they go to jail. You gotta go get your marriage license, you gotta go get gun permits – whatever it is, you have to go down to that big stone structure monument to tyranny, and submit, crawling, groveling, on your hands and knees: ‘Oh, give me permission to do this, give me permission to do that.’

I dunno. Sounds a little like Nazi Germany to me. Or maybe Communist Russia. ‘Where are your papers? Do you have the authority to be here? Do you have the right to be here? Where are you going? Where are you coming from? Who’s in your car with you? Can I search your car? Can I stick my finger up your butt? No, oh, that’s probable cause, you probably got drugs up there.’ Because that’s what they’re doing now. They’re sticking fingers up people’s butts – lookin’ for drugs. Big scary drugs.

Really, people? It’s time to wake up. This is getting ridiculous.

Other videos that Miller posted on the channel suggested that he was emotionally devastated by his conviction and sentence for marijuana possession in 2013. In a couple, directed to Amanda Miller, he weeps bitterly as he soliloquizes about how much he will miss his wife while he is in prison, saying she always makes him smile, “no matter how crabby of a mood I’m in because of the New World Order and shit.”

In another video, he frets briefly about the possibility of something monumental happening while he is behind bars: “I pray to God that this Sunday is not the last time I ever see you again,” he says. “I swear to God that they better not fucking do this shit while I’m in jail. I’m pretty sure they won’t. Pretty sure it’s not happening that fast.”

This kind of paranoia is common among antigovernment “Patriot” movement followers, particularly the reliance on conspiracist publications for information. It’s also reflected, with greater intensity, in the Facebook post that Miller published on June 2:

We must prepare for war. We face an enemy that is not only well funded, but who believe they fight for freedom and justice. Those of us who know the truth and dare speak it, know that the enemy we face are indeed our brothers. Even though they share the same masters as we all do. They fail to recognize the chains that bind them. To stop this oppression, I fear, can only be accomplished with bloodshed.

It appears that in the space of the intervening year, Miller’s paranoia graduated from weepy-eyed frustration to boiling hatred. The combination of radical antigovernment views with personal problems has driven others to commit violence in the past, and Miller appears to be the latest to fall into this downward spiral.

As I said; liberal cluelessness and hypocrisy. And this is why things WILL get worse. I mean, for fuck's sake: Obama has been exposed (by the right-wing libertarian Eric Snowden) as having the NSA conduct an ongoing, massive, totalized spying operation on every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. One that is TOTALLY ILLEGAL by the way. US and Canadian police forces are trying to get surveillance drones to spy on us. Obama has the "audacity" to claim a constitutional right to kill American citizens without trial via some insane "Star Chamber" process. He (illegally) orchestrated through the Department of Homeland Security the campaign of police-brutality to shut-down the Occupy Movement while he protected Wall Street criminals from bankruptcy and persecution. We've long known that the "War on Drugs" is just an excuse for US elites to oppress the civilian population and to proportionately lock-up more of their population than any other country in the world (by a significant margin).

We all build our world-views to help us process information. But then we start to think these viewpoints are the ONLY way to interpret the world and we expel or distort information that doesn't match with them. How else to explain the otherwise intelligent people at Crooks and Liars for calling a guy "paranoid" just because he thinks the USA's drug laws are oppressive and that the government is spying on him?

Things are going to get worse because fucking liberal nut-bars will stupidly insist that austerity and war and surveillance states and imperialism and elite corruption and theft are unavoidable and/or okay so long as a Liberal or Democrat is doing them. And, as I said earlier today, more people will express themselves like right-wing libertarians, rather than as left-wing libertarians.

I'm starting to think there's going to be a war between the United States, Europe and Japan, and their client states in the Middle East against Russia, China and their allies in Asia. We'll get dragged into this horror and it will be on top of the devastation of climate change, if it isn't caused by climate change. We'll devolve into fascism here along with environmental and economic catastrophe.

Why the Gun-Nutz Posts?

I suspect my 13 fans might be thinking "Hey thwap! What's the big deal with these posts about gun-nuts? Do you think it's a news flash that they exist and that we can't work with them?"

I confess that I wasn't really sure about why I was posting about them myself. Maybe it was their shared recognition with us that a police-state is forming around us and that they're actually fighting back (albeit in a psychotic, stupid fashion). But they're racist conspiracy theorists. There was never any serious belief on my part that they could be our allies. But in retrospect, I think it was the idea at the end of my last post on them:

The sad thing is; as criminals like Obama and harper and the Koch brothers and Wall Street continue to rob people and imprison anyone who complains, and the economy understandably deteriorates, it's these fascists who will form the larger resistance force. New Hitlers will emerge while progressives blather to themselves with laughable rhetoric and impenetrable theories.

Things ARE going to continue to get worse. And more people buy into the right-wing view of the world than buy into the details of our analysis. The natural tendency of ignoramuses and cowards is to respond to bad times by turning on people weaker than they are. Make scape-goats out of immigrants and the poor rather than do the informed, courageous thing, and actually take on the elites. The recent defeat of Wall Street servant Eric Cantor at the hands of an anti-immigrant Tea Party candidate is testimony to the continued (and growing) rise of the far-right in the USA. White supremacist gun-nut conspiracy theorists are just a farther-out-there wing of the right that blends into the Tea Party.  It's the same general idea. Middle and working class racists and right-wingers who think they're being abused by corrupt elites but who take most of their frustrations out on the weakest in society, generally out of cowardice and/or laziness. Whereas progressives seek to make common cause with the weakest so as to raise everyone up.

The tragedy is, as I've said numerous times since 2011, is that we progressives are fucking useless. Laughably so. When have we ever upset the ossified leadership of the NDP? When do governments go out of their way to placate us? In our culture, politicians are praised when they ignore or insult us.

Crazy Right-Wing Extremists

 
So, two crazy people shot and killed some cops in Las Vegas. They see the police as an oppressive force, bullying people on behalf of corrupt elites. Some other guy in Georgia was convicted under some bullshit drug laws for a small amount of marijuna and because of that, the state was coming to take his guns away. So he went to the local courthouse with some guns to take some hostages, but it didn't work out like he planned. There's lots of this stuff in the USA. And, just recently, we had a Canadian version of this anti-authority gun-nut.

Are the police oppressive? Obviously they are. More and more, they're cold-blooded killers. Authoritarian goons, accountable to no one.

Is the system corrupt? Are our elites corrupt and evil and detrimental to our health? You bet they are.

So, what about these people? Aside from their murderous rampages, is there any way we could find some common ground with them?

No. First of all, us wimpy progressives believe that the best way to control the government is through firm application of the rule of law on corrupt elites. (Well, at least us wimpy, wimpy progressives. Fire-eating radicals know that the whole enchilida is a scam. That our elites are crooked our courts are crooked and we have zero rights and voting is for suckers. These radicals know that the best way to achieve revolutionary gains is by discussing things in small groups of like-minded people, and to organize pointless "actions" until the group splits up because they're all a bunch of power-hungry assholes.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, ... organizing to make the government strictly adhere to their obligations on citizens' rights and the rule of law is going to control governments a lot better than putting on sixty pounds and strutting around with semi-automatic weapons while ignoring the police-state abuses of protesters and the poor and minorities ever will.

Ah yes! "Minorities." "Visible Minorities." "Racialized Individuals." It seems that these anti-authority gun-nuts are white supremacists. In 1930's Europe it was Gypsies and Jews. In North America, it's mainly Blacks, Latino hordes, Muslims, ... and various others. I think on the East Coast it's also East Asians and South Asians who they hate. For the white supremacists, the efforts to regulate guns are really about disarming white people so as to leave them at the mercy of the degenerate sun-people. (And, of course, everyone's afraid to admit that it's really THE JEWS who are behind it all! For reasons that only the crazed, paranoid, racist conspiracy theorists can understand or describe.)

These idiots also disagree with us about the economy. They appear to believe in some mythical never-neverland, where small farmers and small business owners always make a comfortable living because evil governments and corporations don't exist to fleece them. And, decent, hard-working white people can always find a job because there aren't any coloured people with no self-respect who will work at any wage and drive down wages and cause unemployment for white people. In other words, total bullshit fantasy.

The sad thing is; as criminals like Obama and harper and the Koch brothers and Wall Street continue to rob people and imprison anyone who complains, and the economy understandably deteriorates, it's these fascists who will form the larger resistance force. New Hitlers will emerge while progressives blather to themselves with laughable rhetoric and impenetrable theories.

Endorsing Hudak

No surprise that the shit-for-brains Toronto Sun is endorsing the shit-for-brains Tim Hudak for premier in Ontario. And, at first it's a little shocking, but in retrospect, not surprising, that the shit-for-brains at the Globe & Mail endorse the idiot too.

What is it about Hudak and the Ontario PC's do they like? Is it the fact that his tax-cuts and jobs plan is the same failed crapola that brought us to the economic crisis of 2008? Is it the fact that his stupid plan has been exposed as having been based on laughably bad math and is being sold with lies? Do they like the idea of the public service being decimated by 100,000 positions being cut?

Or do they look back fondly to the Harris-era, when First Nations people, occupying their homes after FIFTY YEARS of peaceful petitioning had failed to get them returned after the government stole them, get shot at and killed by the OPP? Do they sigh wistfully at the thought of people dying from drinking the tap water? Do they think constant, needless fights and teacher strikes were a good thing for Ontario students then and they will be so again? Did they chuckle to themselves when they read about people dying in ambulances that couldn't find a hospital emergency room that could even pretend to be able to look at their patients?

You know what? At this point I thought I'd quote from their asshole endorsements and go to town on them, but the fact of the matter is that I'm too lazy and I don't care anyway. I don't care what stupid words those drooling idiots have strung together in an attempt to justify their asinine, anti-democratic decision.

This is what hegemony looks like people. You get to pretend that your own brand of insanity is "normal" and you get to pretend that reasonable, sane policies are "radical extremism."

Here's a thought experiment: Imagine if Andrea Horwath was found to have conflated annual job hours over 8 years to mean actual new jobs per year. Imagine what the Sun and the Globe would say about her. Imagine if it had been Rae's ONDP that was responsible for the deaths at Walkerton. Imagine what right-wingers would be saying today about the ONDP's desire to govern.

Personally, I'm done with caring about the reasons for their stupid delusions. I don't give a flying-fuck about their opinions or their criticisms or anything they fucking say. They were wrong about everything in the 1990s and they're wrong about everything today. We need to change the culture. We need a left that actually stands opposed to capitalism. We need a left that knows how to change the culture and that actually does so. So that we don't have to endure this stupid bullshit.

The Killer of the RCMP Officers in Moncton

What was up with Justin Bourque? I saw his facebook page and it's obvious he's a symptom of Canada's infection from the right-wing disease and garbage epidemic in the USA. Pictures of Sarah Palin and rants against "liberals" and gun-worshiping. There was also a bizarre condemnation of social inequality and professions of anti-authoritarianism. Which is the big tragedy of these sorts of simpletons. Sarah Palin was the VP candidate for a party that is totally about perpetuating and increasing social inequality. For all their drooling idiocy about "elites," right-wing populists don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. They attack the progressives, who, by raising the lowest in society, hope to raise everyone. Right-wing populists can only process that the minorities who they despise are receiving benefits and that they aren't. The Nazis rode this train to power and how did that work out for people? The Nazi Party became an all-powerful, unaccountable elite. The traditional power-structure remained under them and profited. Lower-level party functionaries became local swaggering bullies. Everyone's individuality was subsumed to the "national will" which became Hitler's nation-destroying delusions.

That's what I saw on Bourque's facebook page: fascism incubating.

We Do Nothing

That's the most frustrating thing about Canadian progressives. Our nothingness. I suppose if there was some progressive version of a money-making, self-interested progressive machine, we could get ourselves some of that wingnut welfare and actually influence policy or form astroturf groups that had an actual impact on our world, but since making money is primarily a capitalist undertaking, we're reduced to bloviating on the intertubes.

Montreal Simon, Dr Dawg, .... Now What?

Montreal Simon, riffing off a post of Dr. Dawg's. The Doctor provides the following:

And now we learn—surely this takes the mouldy cake—that all federal departments have been ordered to track and monitor every single demonstration taking place anywhere in Canada. This will be coordinated by a mysterious outfit called the Government Operations Centre, which will feed the information to its “partners,” whoever they happen to be. One shudders to guess.
Obviously this further develops the politicization of the public service, which has been proceeding for some time. It violates, as one astute Tweeter pointed out, most of the Treasury Board Values and Ethics Code, and, as the seasoned intelligence specialist Wesley Wark notes, it’s illegal, too. But since when has that ever stopped the Harperium, with its high-level parade of perps?
Our democratic right to demonstrate our disagreement with the Harper regime will now be more closely monitored than ever. Most Canadians, of course, do not “dissent,” in the sense of dragging themselves to a demonstration or a rally, or even writing a letter to an MP. With this latest revelation, though, how can any of us maintain our blissful state of denial, lulled by pundits and assured that it can’t happen here? Indeed it can. Indeed it is. Take the red pill, folks. Surely the time has come.

Simon provides some quotes from the links Dawg provided:

The federal government is expanding its surveillance of public activities to include all known demonstrations across the country, a move that collects information even on the most mundane of protests by Canadians.

The email requesting such information was sent out Tuesday by the Government Operations Centre in Ottawa to all federal departments. “The Government Operations Centre is seeking your assistance in compiling a comprehensive listing of all known demonstrations which will occur either in your geographical area or that may touch on your mandate,” noted the email, leaked to the Citizen.
Wesley Wark, an intelligence specialist at the University of Ottawa, said such an order is illegal. “The very nature of the blanket request and its unlimited scope I think puts it way over the line in terms of lawful activity,” said Wark. “I think it’s a clear breach of our Charter rights.”

Wark said the only lawful way a Canadian government agency, with the appropriate mandate, would have to monitor a demonstration would be if that agency could establish that the protest would constitute some kind of threat to civil order. “But it has to be specific and it has to be justifiable in law to mount such surveillance,” he added.

My question is simple: Now what? Yes, yes, yes. harper is an anti-democratic menace. he's a vile, evil, destructive threat to our standard of living and our way of life. But what do you propose we do about it? What are the concrete steps that you, we, somebody else with more resources, should take to stop him?

That's the big question isn't it? Flash mobs to "raise awareness"? A protest in Ottawa one afternoon? Coordinated rallies in communities across Canada on the same day? Going to the polls in 2015 and hoping that Liberal-NDP vote-splitting doesn't give harper another government? Or that his "Rigged Elections Act" and his talent at election fraud gives him another majority? Throw a brick through a window while wearing a black mask?

Our pundits have actually done a fairly good job of calling out harper for what he is, by the way. It hasn't mattered. Lawrence Martin, Carol Goar, Paul Wells, Andrew Coyne, Murray Dobbin, Michael Harris; just to name a few, have all sounded the alarms about the significance of harper's behaviour. Informing people who read about politics that harper is a menace isn't sufficient to bring the man down. It will take something else. I've put something forward. Perhaps you people can come up with something better?

(For the record, as with Murray Dobbin, I've tried to contact harper critic Michael Harris, to discuss a movement to bring down harper and redeem Canadian democracy. Unlike Dobbin, who told me he was too busy, ... watching the paint dry I suppose, ... Harris hasn't even bothered to respond.)

Limit the Amount of Times People Have the Power of Life or Death Over You (Plus Prostitution)

Seems reasonable no? The power of employers over their workers in an increasingly neoliberal economic order is one such intolerable situation. "Workers as Citizens" is the most efficient way I know of for bringing that state of affairs to an end.

Say! I know what else I can write about!

The harper regime says that its new prostitution law mirrors the new "Nordic Model" of prostitution legislation. In the Nordic Model, prostitution is seen as institutionalized sexual violence, with the prostitutes as the victims. To combat it, the laws only target the users of the prostitutes' services; the "Johns."

Prostitutes, or "sex workers," say that the Nordic Model doesn't work. That it makes Johns more furtive and therefore more dangerous. Prostitutes are unable to screen their clients adequately. I'd have to see some statistics on this before I render any judgment.

Personally, I do not have an objection to a straight trade of sex for money. However, only a fool would deny that most of the prostitutes who ever worked were not there by choice or that they were victimized. It could also be argued thought that the legal regimes in place to discourage prostitution often re-victimized these victims. The Nordic Model is different in only targeting the clients. If it turns out that it hasn't appreciably improved things for prostitutes (I'm surprised there'd still be any prostitution in the Nordic social democracies where men can be criminalized for trying to buy sexual services.)

I think the best way to avoid the victimization of this "industry" is to address the supply. (Something that I believe the Nordic democracies are also doing.) Some women make very good incomes as escorts. They can choose their clients. It's when someone feels compelled to dangerous and degrading situations out of economic necessity that the victimization aspect enters into it. Provide services, housing, mental health and addictions counseling, a guaranteed annual income, etc., ... so that nobody is faced with a choice between prostitution and homelessness. So that vile people cannot take advantage of people with addictions.

Another option would be to change the attitudes of men about sex to those attitudes among women (to the extent that this is possible) which sees a much lower tendency (practically zero?) of women buying sexual services.

How much of that is caused by the greater economic alternatives to prostitution when it comes to men? How much of that is caused by the social conditioning that make men think it too shameful or beneath them to supply such services? How much of that is caused by the physical reality that its harder to fake an erection than submit to penetration? (Of course, men could provide oral services to their clients!)

To what extent this phenomenon is the result of the repression and shaming of female sexuality and to what extent it involves a better appreciation of the dignity and autonomy of others and the absence of unjustified sexual entitlement, I'm not sure. To the extent that its healthy, men should try to emulate it. On the other hand, to the extent that, if done properly, prostitution could provide sexual gratification to lonely people, or just as a straight transaction between consenting adults, I'm opposed to its total demonization and elimination.

Elections are S-O-O-O-O Depressing

That's when you realize that most of your neighbours are so ignorant or debased that they actually vote Lieberal or Constupe-ative.

Then again, there are progressives who still like the monstrous Obama.

Destroying Information and Blowing Bubbles

The United States of America is having a terrible time economically. The Wall Street crash did much more of a number on their economy than it did on ours. But we're coming up on our own disaster. Here's why:

1. Successive presidential administrations doctored the collecting of economic statistics so that the it became increasingly difficult to know what exactly is going on in the economy.

2. As more and more people fell off the radar, the economy hollowed out and this was covered over with technology bubbles, real estate bubbles and massive transfers as wealth.

So now harper has turned Statistics Canada into a shadow of its former self. his government uses kijiji for its economic statistics. Our economy is dependent upon the unsustainable (because it is both ecologically catastrophic and economically unfeasible) tar sands project and on real estate bubbles in our major cities.

I predict that harper is going to drag things along until he's forced to call an election in 2015. Then he can beat a Trudeau and retire. But, given how horrible the harpercons are becoming, it's possible that even with Putrescent Pierre Poilieverre's "Stealing Elections Act" in place, the harpercons will lose. Then a "hope n' change" blank slate of a Liberal can tell us we have no choice but to swallow the austerity that is supposedly necessary to clean up the mess.

Neither Racism nor Sexism Exist

It must be REALLY strange to inhabit the mind of a right-winger. Despite all the evidence, racism doesn't exist. (Unless it's "reverse racism" for some reason.) And, in the wake of the Isla Vista shooting, it turns out that sexism doesn't exist either. (Unless it's the misandryst hatred of radical lesbian feminists.) This is the world of the "Awesome Canadian." (Or the "Awesome American.")

In this topsy-turvy funhouse of a society, men and women encounter each other as equals. They are different, with their own prescribed roles, but equal. It's only when twisted, man-hating feminists and their pussy-whipped left-wing male sycophants try to stir up trouble by reciting imaginary grievances, that things go wrong. There is no racism. Our society welcomes everyone with open arms and gives everyone the chance to reach their highest potential. Sure, there's a "white, male, Christian power-structure" but it's a benevolent one that doesn't really exist, except in those strange moments when loofah sponges transmorgrify into falafels. It's only when cynical, power-hungry leftist totalitarians exploit the ambition and greed of lazy blacks and First Nations, ... or when Jihad-minded Muslim radicals take advantage of our leftist-imposed human rights legislation, that the grim spectre of race intrudes upon our colour-blind utopia.

There's no need for "gay pride." There's no "straight pride" why do they need a "gay pride"? Especially since we're all basically heterosexual (as God intended us to be). I suppose though, that right-wingers perceive better than I do, that all women could easily become tit-sucking carpet munchers and that all men are tempted by the idea of a rock-hard dick and submitting to the penetration of their greased-up back-doors. Sure, we're ALL tempted. But God will burn us in Hell forever more if we give into these temptations planted by Satan. Only the despicably weak give themselves over to these desires. (And, inexplicably, despite the fact that we're all wired for heterosexuality, many of these weak, damned fools give themselves over EXCLUSIVELY to their inversions! "I know mom and dad would prefer me to be porking dames, but I refuse to stop smoking pole, just because!") Who knows why these perverts do what they do? Right-wingers only know that they don't hate them because they have many friends, often close friends, who are weak, vile deviants.

But, anyway, there's no such thing as sexism. Women still get paid less than men simply because they do different work. Work that isn't valued as highly as men's work. Because men's work is more important because. And, anyway, women on average have been getting higher pay raises than men in recent years. This isn't making up for past inequalities. It's mainly because thuggish unions of lazy public sector workers, run by lazy, greedy, man-hating feminist ideologues are trying to fleece taxpayers and emasculate men and right-wingers hate them, hate them, HATE THEM, in this, our colour-blind, gender equalized, God-fearing society.

Sure, women didn't have the vote for hundreds of years. But they didn't want it or need it really. Men do so many things for women. Like "hunt the mammoth" and dying in wars. Did you know that more men have died as soldiers than have women? (Sure, uncounted women might have been raped and killed in the field of human conflict over millennia, but who's counting?) So, supposedly, men die in wars for women. The War of 1812 was fought to make American women .... well you see, the British were stopping American ships and therefore women, .... um, okay. But World War I was fought because Austria-Hungary wanted to teach Serbia a lesson because then women could, .... um. Well you see, Genghis Khan wanted women to have ... um. Rome and Carthage fought because their women, ... um. Well, anyways, men would go to war to DEFEND their women against other men who attacked them for reasons that had something to do with making things better for their own women, and that's the ONLY reason they fought. That's ALL they were trying to defend. Their WOMEN. And so women should fall to their knees and thank their men. And then make them a sandwich. Ha-ha!

And, anyway, they've got the vote now. So what are they complaining about?

I can't continue with this line of stupidity any longer. People who actually believe this shit are fucked-up.