Thursday, May 28, 2009

Dear Stephen Harper,

I've been reading the papers a lot over the past few years, and I have a burning question for you.

What the fuck is wrong with you?


Are you some sort of mental and moral defective? Do you blink or flinch at all when you lie and slime? Have you had a psychiatric evaluation? I'm beginning to wonder if you're not suffering from some sort of mental illness. Maybe it's basic sociopathy, in which case you really ought to be committed. Or perhaps you were picked on too often for wearing sweater vests to gym class? Are you taking your shitty, lonely, youth out on the rest of us as some sort of vengeance on the entire society you blame for it? Because that's what it seems like. Your weaknesses are written all over you for the rest of us to see. You put on a stone face for your vulgar and cruel supporters: the great and certain leader with his "let me be clears." Really, for the rest of us, your certainty (no matter how many times it contradicts itself), when coupled with your actions makes for a thin and transparent mask covering a wounded child who cannot understand nor accept his life as it was and is. Instead you respond with spite and narcisism. I suspect expressions of kindness and love fill you with an irrational rage and a desire to strike out at those live for that ideal or remain in sore need of it (say a Canadian tortured and imprisoned abroad), because on some level you never got that yourself and you need to punish everyone for it.

This is what I see when I see you. This is what many of us see when we see you. We saw it in your reaction to the coalition proposal. The tears of vulnerability that you suddenly had to face the consequences of your own spite. That could have been a transformative moment for you. A loss that crushed your self-perception and forced you to rethink your worldview. But you sucked it up enough to bully your way out of it. Bully for you then.

We see it now in your threats and attack ads against your chief opponent. I don't like Iggy myself, and God help me I actually vote for a member of his party as long as he is leader, but there is no excuse for of the way you've carried on since you first found office. "Tapes"? Seriously man, you're a thug. And you're terrified because Iggy outclassess you by fathoms - yes we can see that as well. He's the geek who made further that you have. He probably wore sweater vests to gym class too. Red ones. Probably cried his tears too, but he shrugged them off, and played to his strengths. You? You nursed your grievances and rage and let them putrify and corrupt you like Annakin Skywalker.

Really, it must be hard to hang on to that kind of anger. It's the sort of rage that consumes you and rots your soul. On a certain level, I harbour a great deal of compassion for people in your shoes. That soul-destroying feeling is a manifestation of the suffering of a fellow human wounded on a very deep emotional level. There is much room for pity there. But not for tolerance. Oh no.

In the coming months you will lose your job and the house you live in. Learn from this. Step down as leader, and take a long holiday. Go for a walk (literally, walk!) across this land you love to hate some much. Write your book on hockey. Forgive yourself for what has happened to you. Let go of that driving anger. Leave it behind. Let peace and joy find you. If not, the remaining years will be lonely and dark. And that's no way to live, as you well know.

Regards.

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