Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Visceral hatred

They were “viscerally hating their political opposition,” he said. “Sometimes it was just startling to me.”

- David Emerson quoted in Lawrence Martin's new book about Harper.(via Buckdog)

It's a safe bed that at the end of the day, that hatred is the motivation behind everything Harper and his band of orcs do. From visits to the Governor General, to mass prisons and beat-downs in the streets of Toronto, the one 'ideology' we see is a pathological hatred of anything and everyone standing against what they do or think.

This isn't politics. They aren't interested in parliament. There's no tradition of intellectual or philosophical thought underwriting their platform. Their numbers betray their rhetoric about small government for a lie. They shut down critical institutions of state that produce information independent of political control. They break protocol and convention at will.  All they want to do is smash and destroy anything and anyone not fitting their worldview.

Good things, wholesome things. Protestors, programs and policies that embrace people and at least try to promote the health and wellbeing of Canadians are attacked and savaged. Our long history of competent parliamentary democracy, in tatters.

What do you call that sort of thing? I don't know exactly, but you won't find a name for it in any politics textbook. Reactionary visceral hatred: the reptile brain fight or flight instinct in a political party.


Give us an election.

3 comments:

The Mound of Sound said...

You wanted a name. I first thought "despot" might work but now I'm leaning toward "Mongol".

CuJoYYC said...

Agreed. Mongol fits quite well.

Niles said...

Isn't that insulting towards actual Mongols? Who are kewl people with fantastic archers in one of the most beautiful high plains in the world?

At least the Vandals aren't around as an extant people anymore if you need an epithet. Vandalism of what this country has tried to build for the last 60 years out of the tragedy of a world war triggered by tyrannical drums of hatred is far closer.

Frankly, I find Harper's attitude far more in keeping with the juvenile male we found working to destroy the election signs on the front lawn because he had personal problems and wanted to destroy something to make himself feel better.

Or maybe Fifth Columnist is the real truth. Since Harper's bandits are wrecking things from inside the system and denying that they're doing it.

vw: coluti. as in, the insular anarchic tribe that colluded with corporate empires to take apart the underpinnings of altruism in our society.