Stephen Harper Hates Canada: Part 999(googolplex * π )

Truly noble and heroic enterprises have required scant advocacy before the bar of Canadian public opinion. We met the great global challenges of the last century willingly and eagerly, fielding virtually all-volunteer armies in both World Wars and in Korea. Such advocacy as we harkened to during times of war (from the magnificent Winston Churchill, for an obvious example) merely externalised an already-fixed inner resolve. The moral determination of the Canadian people was spontaneous, unbound by coercion. The struggle against Hitler, which Canada and the Commonwealth carried on alone for more than two years, never needed to be sold to the nation as if it were a brand of deodorant.

Our intuitive ability to distinguish between a just and an unjust war is one of the many symptoms of our collective moral health. It is also deeply frustrating for the degenerates who compose our national managerial élite; approaching as near to Churchillian stature as a soggy hotdog approaches to haute cuisine, stuttering nonentities like Stephen Harper find themselves reduced to the vulgar expedient of dragging a grudging popular assent from a sceptical people by deploying the full arsenal of modern marketing techniques--the kind designed to convince consumers that Utopia awaits them in a box of Corn Flakes.

Clever marketing requires little if any moral integrity; thus one cannot but be astonished at how deplorably incompetent Harper has been at something for which he should be ideally suited. This article offers valuable insight into the specific reasons for Harper's failure. It also carries a subtext which confirms what many of us already suspected.

Ostensibly, the piece is meant to explain why Harper feels ready to become the Afghan war's primary salesman after shamefully letting others do the work for him. The author reminds us that Harper and his government have lately been "invisible" on the Afghan file:

"So much so that the military, in the form of Gen. Rick Hillier, the loquacious chief of defence staff, had to step into the breach with public speeches and his now-famous slide presentation. He even sent returning generals and soldiers out to speak to local chambers of commerce, dinner clubs and anyone else who would listen....Hillier and his soldiers became the face of Canada's war, and a lightning rod for the political opposition. And as the casualties continued to mount, so did the public outcry".

The author wonders whether John Manley had a hand in spurring Harper into a higher visibility:

"The Manley report was critical of Harper, saying he must take charge personally of the Afghan file. It was finally evident last week he was doing so".

The author is reminding us of two important facts--first, that Stephen Harper, a man lauded by his silly cult as a "real leader", was so impotently delinquent in his duty to champion what he claims is a crucial struggle in the "War on Terror" that he forced the Chief of the Defence Staff to politicise himself by effectively becoming Harper's surrogate, and, second, that Harper had to be shamed (by a report filed by a Chrétien-era Liberal) into waking up to his responsibilities. One taxes one's memory to recall a record of prime-ministerial ineptitude as shameful as this. Men are dying; Harper is fiddling, amateurishly.

Most revealing, though, is what the author says about the CPC's new selling point--its new "frame". Apparently, Harper has learned not to sell the war as revenge for 9/11 or as a theatre in the "War on Terror". It would appear that we Canadians are not motivated primarily by self-preservation:

"The mantra almost from the time the Conservatives took office had been that Canada had a responsibility to ensure Afghanistan didn't revert to the status of a failed state that could serve as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against North America. That rang hollow in the ears of many Canadians, a fact that Harper has apparently come to appreciate."

Stephen Harper puts it this way:

"What we've actually found is: when you argue our self-interest, that's actually less appealing to Canadian public opinion than the argument that we are actually concretely helping the Afghan people with their lives..."

The author concludes that

"...in order to win the hearts and minds of Canadians, the political message [must] be phrased in terms that [are] less - well, less American".

Now, I am not surprised that Harper's CPC would instinctively frame the Afghan mission in American terms. The CPC frames everything in American terms. Their political imaginations are entirely colonised by American priorities and values. I am fascinated, though, that Harper seems taken aback by the finding that Canadians are not motivated primarily by self-interest. It clearly never occurred to Harper that we Canadians can easily put others before ourselves, that we are generous--selfless, even. Keep in mind that generosity is a quality that continentalists like Harper reflexively attribute to the United States (just recall the notorious Canada-bashing speech in which Harper refers to the U.S. as "a light and an inspiration to [Canadians]").

I am willing to concede what is obvious, given Harper's rabid free-market fundamentalism (according to which self-interest is a primordial and sacred virtue)--that we should actually be flattered that Harper believed us all to be under the grace of the brutish self-interest that he considers the engine of civilisation. It is nevertheless lamentable to see the office of prime-minister occupied by a man whose ideological puerility blinds him to the real moral character of the people he pretends to lead, a man who has had to be bludgeoned into acknowledging his nation's generosity--a quality he has been only too blitheringly ready to assign to a nation that has done far less to earn it than we have.

So, Stephen Harper has learned that Canadians are generous. Good for him. Who knows? If he works hard at it, he might even learn something else about us before his term is over.