The Mental and Moral Consequences of Long-Term Partisan Hackery

 

I usually don't read the idiot anymore but it was morbid curiosity that made me click on the link to his blog at the blog-roll of The Galloping Beaver.  Montreal Simon was writing about the Liberal's anti-conversion-therapy bill and something about the Conservative Party's fraudulent behaviour. As I've been saying for years now, I don't follow the news closely anymore. And last I'd heard, the Liberals had a bill that hadn't passed the Senate before Justin Trudeau called that totally unnecessary election last September. 

You can read about what happened at his blog if you're interested. All I want to point out is this bit of narcissistic, self-righteous, hypocritical drivel that Simon (as he descends further into madness) felt compelled to include:

P.S. I'd like to end my post with that, but I couldn't help noticing that none of the old geezers at Progressive Bloggers bothered to write a word about this significant step in the human rights struggle in this country.

Including those who are retired TEACHERS.

How dare they call themselves progressives? Why do they bother to blog?

What bloody FRAUDS...

Really Simon? Let's ignore the stupid ageism. Simple Simon is going to be old himself one day. I'm sure he'll be delighted to hear his critics dismiss his opinions, not only for their stupidity, but also due to his geezerdom.  Let's deal with the hypocrisy. Currently the RCMP (a federally-run institution) has invaded the sovereign territory of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation, (the First Nations' well-being is the stated responsibility of the Canadian federal government) in order to advance a natural gas pipeline that will only increase Canada's greenhouse gas emissions (which the Trudeau government itself committed to reducing at the latest international climate-change conference). 

Simon has said NOTHING about this. Instead he has chosen to continue to deflect with his obsessive chronicling of the doings of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada.  I condemn both the Trudeau Liberals and the BC NDP in this matter. Montreal Simon just imitates Sergeant Schultz from "Hogan's Heroes" and says "I see nothing!!"

But speaking of global warming, ... one writer after another after another after another wrote about how the results of the COP26 were a disaster for the world. The wealthy countries made empty promises and uttered platitudes. And Trudeau played his role as the errand boy of Canada's (foreign-dominated) fossil fuels industry and the privileged Bay Street elite mediocrities who invest in it. But Simon managed to find one commentator, Michael Mann, who (for whatever reasons, which I personally think was mainly an attempt to avoid the doom and gloom that continues to descend upon climate activists) chose to write as if these politicians meant their promises and that some of those promises were very big indeed. Then, like the crude, untalented propagandist he is, Simon uses Mann's opinion to talk about Canadian opinion polls showing majority support for genuine policies to reduce global warming and then somehow uses those opinion polls to argue that Justin ("No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there") Trudeau is committed to taking on the Petro-State here in Canada. What a fucking joke. Goddamnit! Global warming is going to kill us all and Trudeau has neither the courage or the inclination to stand up to Calgary and Bay Street and yet Simple Simon continues to demand that we all drop to our knees and worship him!

Has Simon said anything about his precious dreamboat Trudeau's defense of the profitability rights of Big Pharma over the lives of literally BILLIONS of people in the Global South (and also the well-being of those billions and the few billion more in the wealthier countries which will be compromised as COVID-19 continues?)

Has Simon ever acknowledged the ghastliness of Canada's foreign policy under Trudeau and the rancid Crystia Freeland? To take just one example; Our targetting Venezuela with murderous sanctions because of trumped-up "human rights" concerns in the so-called "Lima Group" which is itself filled with genuine fascist mass-murderers?  No. Simon would rather write about the opposition Conservative's internal problems on an almost daily basis than confront the monstrousness of his dreamboat Justin Trudeau.

At the end of the day you have to take stock of Simon's record of cowardice and deceit and ask if he isn't a shameless hypocrite. But I have to wonder if Simon has the brains to understand how and why he should be ashamed. As his blogging began to corrupt I would occasionally say that Simon's heart was in the right place. Because I didn't really think he had much in the way of penetrating intelligence. His criticisms of stephen harper were always more emotional than rational. And while I deludedly thought that harper would end up in prison, Simon would end post after post saying that "we" (the anti-harper resistance) would "defeat" and "destroy" him. It took a couple of years of disappointment for me to come to the conclusion that the left (or "progressives") are hopeless and that the world is a shit-hole of evil and failure. But Simon has never lost that intense desire to do battle with right-wing monsters.  Even when those monsters aren't in power and it is the Liberals who are continuing their policies. Maybe Simon genuinely can't see what a pathetic joke he is. Maybe he is simply too stupid to grasp that he is a partisan hack whose opinion is worth shit because of his towering hypocrisy.

I felt moved to write this post both out of personal disgust at that specific instance of Simple Simon's hypocrisy about "old geezers" not writing about the anti-conversion therapy bill. But I also think there's a wider relevance. The Liberal Party, the Democratic party in the USA, the BC NDP, ... all political parties, ... they're all filled with and supported by partisan hacks who ignore their own sins to focus on the sins of others. They all shriek and thunder about crimes elsewhere while committing similar or worse crimes. And to the extent that they succeed in deluding themselves and others, to that extent does humanity continue to stumble dowards the edge of the cliff.