Pierre Poilievre and the Paradise Papers

I haven't looked at the Paradise Papers or read any of the news stories about them. I already know that the corporations and the rich hide their wealth from the taxman in ways both legal and illegal. (And that they strain mightily to make even the most blatant, unjustifiable, and therefore illegal tax avoidance legal through their hirelings in politics.) And I know from the results of the Panama Papers, that both Canada's corporate media and our political system will do as much as possible to deflect attention from the criminal behaviour of Canada's ruling class and there will be empty rhetoric about coming down hard on these tax-cheats, and that nothing will be done. I am too resigned and apathetic to really stir myself about much these days. I'll let the progressive super-stars who know better than me how to effect genuine social change implement all their vast, ambitious plans and happily await the revolution.

It doesn't surprise me that wealthy supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada (and politicians from that party) are involved in these tax-avoidance schemes. Nor am I surprised that the pathetic, putrid Pierre Poilievre is pursuing the pretense of being offended by their behaviour. He doesn't care that his own party and its masters do the exact same thing. He just knows that the media will give him plenty of screen time or waste a lot of ink, reporting his bullshit condemnations. He also knows that the vast majority of the voting base of the Conservative Party of Canada are far too stupid to recognize his deceit for what it is, and that a frightening percentage of these morons are so debased that if you pointed out the facts to them as if you were rubbing their noses in their own shit, that they'd simply embrace Poilievre's own tactic of hypocrisy and continue to shriek.

This back-and-forth of stupid, hypocritical bullshit is par for the course. Something I experienced firsthand when I took my son to Queen's Park:

The other, more important thing, was listening to these clowns. The discussion had to do with some latest example of Liberal incompetence and failure on the health care file. Money that was promised to meet a long acknowledged problem wasn't being delivered and the Minister of Health was refusing to account for anything. The ONDP was asking the question when I arrived and the Liberal opposite gave a meaningless reply about how important the subject was and how they were working on it, giving no specific explanation for the delay. But it was when the Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP stood up to trash the government on the same issue that I saw how sordid mainstream politics really is. The O PC was asking about the same issue, so it was obviously a well known semi-scandal. The O PC was hammering the Liberals quite hard on the subject. But the Liberal response was to issue the same platitudes as had been offered to the ONDP, but to then condemn the O PC's for the documented catastrophe that was their record of management.

I'd noticed that aside from banging their desks in support of a question from their own MPP, the NDP listened (or tried to listen) to what was being said on the other side. (A couple of MPPs occasionally said something into the ear of someone sitting next to them.) But during the government response, the Ontario PC's hooted and hollered and jeered. During the government response, the Liberal MPPs banged their desks and cheered, and hurled insults and accusations at the opposition. I noticed ONDP leader Andrea Horwath looking pained and irritated as the two parties traded insults about their own destruction of public health care in Ontario. Peter Kormos, sitting near her, and supposedly a legislative firebrand was also listening to these self-serving, stupid exchanges with disgust.

These two parties are supported by the Canadian ruling classes. Their behaviour represents this. Our ruling class is selfish, short-sighted, corrupt and, to a great degree, populated by psychopaths. In many ways, the worst elements of society. Because capitalism, to the extent that it puts profit over people, is inhuman. The capitalist ruling class reflect the system they have risen to the top of. An inhuman, immoral, selfish, boorishness.

We're all participants in this nonsense. We're all debased by it. But those closer to the top are the worst.