Insomnia and Rage

I can't sleep.

I'm too upset at the State Police murder of Robert Dziekanski at YVR last month.

That started me thinking about how my country has been changing since the Harperites have been in charge.

The list is too long to enumerate and besides - you're the choir.

I see far too many signs that the Harperites may be re-elected, maybe even to a majority government.

That they even poll above 20% boggles my mind and shakes my faith in the sense of the Canadian people. They're a rump coalition of a failed splinter party conjoined with a gang of opportunistic leftovers from the most despised and corrupt government the modern country has ever known. Yet they govern.

Damn the Liberal Party for their lazy assed entitlement attitude under Chretien and Martin. Damn the NDP for glossing over the radicals in the Conservative Party and giving them a kind of tacit cover by their grandiose fantasizing about their own electoral glory at the expense of the Liberals.

Damn Stephen Harper and all his caucus and minions and all their supporters.

The country I have loved and been proud to call mine for all my 60 years is gone in all but name.

Now Canada condones torture. In fact we knowingly and gloatingly turn over prisoners taken on the battlefield to people we have been told repeatedly will torture them. We justify this by calling the country to whom we surrender those prisoners a "democracy". An equal horror is that there are Conservative supporters who trumpet our new barbarianism as though it were a sign of our advanced civilization

Now Canada doesn't care whether it's citizens overseas are sentenced to death in "democracies". Like, presumably, the democracy we know tortures the prisoners we turn over to them. Why? Because we have a "law and order agenda" and evidently state execution is an inherent characteristic of said agenda. Drip, drip, drip. Incrementally re-introduce the idea that state executions are not always wrong. Move from there to the idea that they're frequently right. And on from there to let's hang 'em all. Rah, rah, rah, pass the potatoes, god bless Canada.

Now Canada has a national state police force that is able to pretty much take whatever action it likes. We've seen many, many examples over the past couple of years. The murder of Robert Dziekanski is only the latest and most callous example. There will surely be more. Mr. Pritchard, who shot the video of the murder, should be paying extra attention to his surroundings for the next several months. He shouldn't drive his own car but have someone sober drive him always, or take cabs. He's a target now. By saying what I've said here today so am I and so are any other bloggers who get on this. Random pointless traffic stops and safety checks. Squad cars parked across the street. Pointed questions asked of your neighbours. They can make life quite uncomfortable while they watch for you to make a mistake. Do you think they've never done such things before when it suited their purpose? They'll pepper spray children when it suits their purpose.

I need sleep. I'm going to try again.

I grieve for Robert Dziekanski's mother.