Thursday, November 28, 2013

That man

Harper's fate is being written these days. Creekside records as does this blog, and others. It's a bit strange looking across the Atlantic at events in Canada and the crude, juvenile nature of our politicians. Granted, all politicians are crude and juvenile, it's just that to me ours seem to be so...colonial. There's a naivety to their skulduggery that is missing in the more sophisticated crimes in countries where the politics are still ruled by private schools and classical educations.

Harper is too much of a thug. His remake of the institutions of Canadian government is botched and what emerges from operation will neither be what was, nor what he intended. As others point out frequently now, it's his own judge of character that's at fault. His hires, and his fires. All of them. I cannot think of another politician or gangster who has picked such low-grade talent and survived. Simple Darwinism eliminates them before they get anywhere serious.

There are emails to be sure, whether they are sitting in a back-up server or a thumb-drive under a mattress, we don't know. Whether they make the light of day, we don't know either. There's a question for me of a nano-Snowden simply dumping the lot of them on the internet. And there's the question of what you do if you're the RCMP staring a the big board full of photos of prominent Conservative staffers and your strings and pins are spirographing ever tighter around the photo of the pale-faced man? Canadians would expect the RCMP to do their job, but then we're a little sceptical these days when we see a phalanx of Mounties protecting fracking trucks in Elsipogtog or kneeling blankly on a dying man in YVR. And then there's that trusting deference to authority that blinds Canadians to so very, very much about ourselves and the world.


What actually, perversely, gives me the most hope is Harper himself. Just watch him. He simply cannot make wise decisions. I think he had a clear - if deluded - vision of turning Canada into some kind of fetid little neofascist-theo-Galt citadel, but he hired a Montreal construction firm to build it. Smarter politicians would have resigned by now and a competent GG would have made it known that this was going to happen.

No. Harper will hang on until the palace is ashes. The fanatics always do. But it never ends well.


Kirby Evans said...

Yes, I agree. Nothing will pull Harper out of the PMO and he will only leave feet first. As I have said elsewhere I also believe that he would never accept an electoral loss to Trudeau. He would have such a result nullified by the GG on the basis of some cooked up story about Trudeau. Many bloggers and writers in the MSM are suggesting that Harper will resign before the next election because his ego is such that he couldn't face an election loss. But this overlooks the fact that Harper suffers from some kind of Narcissistic personality disorder and is surely convinced that he could never be ousted. The only hope is that his caucus compels him to step down, but since he intentionally surrounded himself with mindless, dull-witted, simpering, yes men, there is little hope of this.

West End Bob said...


Very true, Boris, very true.

How unfortunate that Canadians have allowed this man to acquire the reins of their government . . . .

the salamander said...

.. an uncommonly positive political obituary ..
.. can Canada be delivered from Stephen Harper, his complicit droogs? Can the damage to Canada be repaired? Your article suggests hope .. and that glowing hearts may win out .. and the Harper jackalpack disgraced

Alison said...

Boris :-)

From Cpl. Greg Horton's affidavit, the first email from Nigel Wright to Chris Woodcock, PMO director of issues management, on Feb 6 2013:

"Let this small group be under no
illusion. I think that this is going to end badly."

Scotian said...

There was a reason (well, more than one but you all know what I mean) I was so anti-Harper all along. I knew what he was, I knew his competency level was not the best, yes he managed some things, but most of it comes from either forcing things, treachery, or doing things no one else would have done because it was not the way things were done. His so called strategic wisdom has never impressed me, although I have to admit he has shown good to occasionally brilliant tactical skills in the past. What I have trouble doing is accepting the notion that those in Ottawa, those that have politics as a profession could not see the same things I could from down here in Halifax using nothing more than a TV and computer. That is why I refuse to cut any of them any slack for deciding it was an acceptable price to pay for their own interests to let this man gain any power as PM, even minority let alone majority. As far as I am concerned those people sold out this nation and what little was left of the powers and interests that worked for the average citizenry instead of only the rich and powerful.

I would caution those that think we can easily fix the damage once we get Harper and the CPC out of government. I have some very serious fears that there are many things that were done using regulatory powers that we are not all that aware of that have greater implications for undoing what Harper did than we currently know. Harper clearly intended all along that whatever he changed would not be easily undone, that was after all his goal all along, which is another reason why he favoured the scorched earth approach. As I also kept pointing out in the past, once a government surrenders a power/authority it is almost impossible for it to get it back, and Harper wanted to weaken the power structure of the federal government to make as difficult as possible to ever again create and implement national plans like medicare, Daycare, and other social welfare/justice type programs.

Harper has done massive damage to our system of government, to our political culture, and to our general focus as a country that believes in democracy, the rule of law, and the desire for a Just Society (I really think most of us do think that is an admirable goal and quintessentially Canadian regardless of what one thinks of PET himself and his exact version of it) for all Canadians. Some of it can never be undone, such as the Wheat Board for example. Harper has left his imprint on the nation, the one hope I have is that it will be so repulsive to the vast majority once it becomes clear what he really was doing to trigger a genuine resurgence of old fashioned Canadian spirit and values in the citizenry, and that they start remembering that any democracy to work requires an informed and engaged voting citizenry, and that it is being a citizen that is what matters, not a mere taxpayer. I really hate the focus on Canadians as taxpayers instead of citizens, I think that is one of the more subtle yet powerful corrosive poisons in our political reality.

Boris said...

Alison, yes I saw that quote from Wright. I imagine he's now thinking that might have been the time to quit.

Scotian, I fully agree that repairing the damage might not be possible and the extent of the damage may run far deeper than we currently realise. Kevin Page comes to mind: My bet is the government's books could be a shell-game on acid. What may be possible is an opportunity restructure how we do government, although I wouldn't bet on this happening.

Steve said...

Harper is spending forty million dollars a year on Oil Sands propaganda, outrageous

Owen Gray said...

Wright has seen the future. This will not end well.