Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Stephen Harperreality



You know, I was thinking earlier today that Stephen Harper might be the Canadian prime minister to leave a legacy of election fraud and contempt motions.

The contrast between the Stephen Harper in the video voice-over above, and the Stephen Harper, master of a den of liars, theives and charalatans is in some realm of galactic-class hypocrisy. You just have to stare and blink.

I don't know, maybe he once believed his own bullshit about how he could do it better, and Reform that crowd in Ottawa. Maybe not.

What is devastatingly apparent however, is that he started shitting his bed from his first winnable election. His party, now with him at the helm had to cheat at their at their first inaugeral league win. Over the past few years under his leadership they've since lied, misled, refused, and then shut-down parliament. Twice on that last one. And more times on the others than I can recall without google. And nevermind all the wars, riot cops and cages, and brown Canadians in foreign dungeons. 

I mean, you couldn't be paid to write worse political drama. Nobody would believe that Harper's government could be so antithetical to what they campaigned on. One thing after another. Perhaps we've moved the Overton window so far that we've normalised the blackhole of basic reason and logic, let alone ethics, that is our Cons.

Think back. Five years ago if someone had shown you a crystal ball and said in 2011, Stephen Harper was in serious trouble after his gang were caught cheating on an election, forging documents, creatively editing contracts, refusing to hand over the account books, thrice found in contempt of parliament, and renaming the government after himself, you'd have laughed yourself to tears.

Sometimes I'm beyond outrage. I have to stop and wonder if what just happened, actually happened. It is so far beyond the improbably absurd that you could power a starship with it. I mean, I seriously have to wonder if this man with the grey helmet hair, the creepy blue stare, and the cadaverous complexion actually came from one.

If our Harper stood up tomorrow and said so-long and lifted off into space on rocket made of very concerned live kittens, I mightn't bat an eye.

If this is Canadian hyperreality, I'll take Disneyland.

2 comments:

CanadaHolly said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Scotian said...

For what it is worth, I did see this coming, I did try to warn people about the dangers of Harper abusing power in ways unheard of in our history, and that his abuse of power scandals would make any abuse of spending/money scandals/taxdollar theft scandals a minor and far more survivable/less damaging corrosive to fundamental democratic health by comparison. At the time I was mocked, called a Liberal shill/operative, and generally reviled for daring to suggest it would be less damaging to the health of Canadian democracy and our governing institutions to leave a tired corrupt Liberal party under Martin in government than to elect even a minority Harper government.

While there is a certain pleasure to say I told you all so on some things in life, for me this is not one of them. I really wish I had been wrong, even though I knew I wasn't then and as history as sadly shown if anything I actually underestimated the degree of damage he could do even with only minority government.

I opposed Harper so much because he was truly unlike anything we had ever seen before, and he would lead this country and govern in ways that would do massive damage to our reputation internationally and set very scary precedents in our domestic environment. It wasn't on policy issues that I truly feared him for (not that I had any comfort there either, just that was not where I truly feared his impact) but on process issues, and there he proved my worst fears to have been understated.

I wrote as much as I could back then that I thought might have a chance of being believed and it got me what it did, and even then I toned it down from what I was sharing with my spouse, family, and friends. Worse, even what I was telling them did not due Harper justice, something that really freaks me out to see having happened, which is why I pulled out of political blogging/commenting, one can only repeat the same things so many times before one is dismissed/ignored, and I was truly feeling the curse of Cassandra and it was not doing my admitted fragile health any good.