Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Harper Majority

Harper is presently running around the country begging for a majority. Maybe he's got a running chance, maybe he doesn't. If he gets it, we will be faced with an interesting situation in this social and political economy of this country. We will have a government openly hostile to lived and professed interests, values, beliefs, and norms a great many, if not most, Canadians. And definitely the latent interests of all by a slim minority, given that Conservative supporters in many ways are voting against themselves (think angry conservative seniors and oh say, health care funding).

This is a recipe for disaster. And resistance.

He says he's the only leader that can handle Quebec separatism. Quebec is best handled in the best of liberal traditions of tolerance and negotiated accommodation. Does anyone seriously think Harper's Conservatives have any sense of the nuanced approach needed to keep the separatist flames at a smoulder and not a full blown inferno? A Harper government in Ottawa might be the best bit of luck the separatists have had in a while!

If you're any single descriptor or combination of female, gay, left-leaning, living in a non-Conservative riding, ethnic, pro-choice, senior, young person, student, working class, poor, Aboriginal, climate scientist, or belong to some other cohort that the Cons wish did not exist, a Harper majority government will do its best to disenfranchise you. It will intentionally set out to make your life harder.

If you're a member of the Opposition, a Harper majority will cut the financial legs out from under you, and do whatever else it can to weaken you to the point where you won't be able to pay for a lawn sign.

Its hostile, authoritarian, and misanthropic tendency makes the Harper government unlike any we've ever had. Other conservative governments have played on the ideological. They've enacted policies counter to many interests, but they've never done it with open and established contempt, they've never brazenly attempted to subvert laws and institutions. At some level, they've stuck to convention and coloured within the lines. As we've all seen and documented, this Harper and his gang of thugs don't.

So, what do tolerant and kind Canadians do with a government that seeks to oppress and harm them?

Why should we consent to be governed by a Harper majority that actively destroys the Canada we feel we belong to?

Why should we give them an ounce of cooperation or collaboration?

4 comments:

aardvark said...

You are dissing us seniors unnecessarily. We do NOT all vote against our self-interest. We were also educated at in a time when the principles of operation of Westminster-style parliament, in all their nuance, were taught in public schools.

In other words, we feel just as threatened by the Harperite agenda as any group on your little checklist.

More of us are volunteering for Anyone-But-Harper political action than ever before.

It's the Canada our parents built, and that we loved and maintained that is threatened.

Boris said...

WNF,
Please note that I was quite specific in the cohort of seniors I was referring to.

aardvark said...

I know. No offence taken, and none intended. I realize what you said, but the point needs making that we are not all clones of Gordon OConnor.
Cheers, and thanks for your efforts.
(name changed to protect the innocent)

Dana said...

Prove it. And I'm 63.

Seen any live Harper coverage lately?

Every single shot he's standing in sea of grey heads. Like mine and I'm assuming like yours unless you're lying about your age and just trying to generate something. (People on this website know me and my age and appearance, btw.)

So prove it. Change a poll.

Get several hundred thousand of your compatriots to jump off a bridge or set themselves on fire or flee en masse off of the Rideau cliffs behind Sussex Drive - I'm sure the RCMP would allow it.

The greatest problem faced in Germany in the early 1930s is identical to the problem we face right now. Right...Fucking...Now.

What did they do about it?

Nothing.

What are we doing about it?

Nothing.