The older I get, the more tolerant I become with those who believe they can smell the aftershave on each of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The darkly glittering treasure hoard of human depravity seems, each day, to be newly enriched by gems more resplendently base than anything seen before, carried in the jaws of dragons to which we feed what is best in us, about us, and among us. To wit:
War, Disorder and Bad Government: The Canadian Way--Harper Style!
What does a boorish, lead-hearted partisan hack of a prime minister do? Abide by the carefully deliberated findings of a Canadian federal court on a matter that strikes at the core of our fundamental values, or prolong a disgraceful miscarriage of justice and deepen a young man's agony in order to pander to the worst, xenophobic instincts of the most verminous elements of his quadruped base?
You guessed it.
America Elects A President Who Knows How To Pronounce "Nuclear"; World Still In Deep Shit!
Don't get me wrong; there are many reasons to be worried at the sight of the Taliban patrolling Pakistani territory only sixty miles from the nation's capital as if they own the place (because they do own the place), eight long years after the invasion of Afghanistan.
I'm just saying that the main reason might be that Pakistan has an arsenal of deliverable nuclear weapons, gifted to them by the folks who hate to see violent Islamist regimes make nukes with their own money but who gladly invite violent Islamist regimes to make nukes with crisp U.S. greenbacks.
Mission As Accomplished As It Ever Will Be
So, let's see: Iraq's current "stability" consists of a religiously segregated, deeply corrupt society devoid of meaningful institutions and functioning infrastructure, scarred by daily suicide bombings and routine sectarian assassinations. After six years of occupation, Baghdad can hardly keep the lights on.
Thus, thousands of American dead and tens of thousands of Iraqi dead have fertilised the flowering of another Lebanon. I'm not sure this is what Wilson had in mind.
Canadian Values: They Suck, But They're Good Enough For Immigrants
Jason Kenney apparently wants immigrants to be more deeply imbued with "Canadian values" upon their entry to their new country. He failed to say whether this policy would apply to American emigrants, whose values Kenney clearly considers so much better than ours.
Really, being lectured on "Canadian" values by a senior member of one of our two officially Canada-hating parties is a bit like being yelled at by the madam of a dilapidated whorehouse for entering the vestibule with our shoes on: it's embarrassing, degrading, and symptomatic of something profoundly wrong about our lives.
Kenney seems comfortable expecting immigrants to know more about their new nation than their hosts care to know. One cannot expect a political and moral castrato to challenge Canadians on their own cultural ignorance and champion the kinds of radical institutional changes that would (finally) fully immerse us in our civic heritage. No. All Kenney can manage on his empty nutsack is a pathetic innuendo about the mongrelising influence of dark-skinned exotics on a people ruled by a clique of continentalist deracinés who take their cultural orientation from daily viewings of South Park.
As mascot for this imbecility, please take Susan Boyd. She was one of the prime agitators against principal Erik Millett after he decided to suspend the singing of "O, Canada" at Belleisle Elementary School in New Brunswick.
This CBC documentary on the controversy is fascinating. It includes an interview with Boyd, who lost a nephew in Afghanistan. Go to 4:10 in the documentary, and be amazed. Boyd says, "the Lord’s Prayer is gone, the Pledge of Allegiance is gone... because we don’t want to offend the minority, but what about the majority? Now our anthem is disappearing".
The Pledge of Allegiance is gone! This woman--not obviously an idiot by any means--believes that the Canadian majority mourns the loss of the Pledge of Allegiance. I've rarely seen a sadder, more lurid spectacle of cultural senility.
While it is inconceivable that a French woman would pine for the old days when class would begin with a stirring rendition of "Das Deutschlandlied", while one would not dream that a Swede would ever wonder why children are no longer required to start their school day with "La Marseillaise", we Canadians have learned to tolerate and even expect the absurd surreality this woman represents.
Boyd is in the heart of "Conservative" country (her M.P. is Greg Thompson, Harper's Minister of Veterans' Affairs), yet she's not sure what country she's in. She's precisely the kind of vain, vapid, pseudo-Canadian who thinks she needs protection from the alien, valueless "minorities" that Kenny seeks to "civilise". Kenny strokes her vanity: he keeps his power; she keeps her ignorance.
These "conservatives"--the Kenneys and Boyds--strain so hard for patriotism; they're like superannuated sopranos with laryngitis, attempting arias and emitting only rusty croaks. They've got the "Support the Troops" bumper stickers and the Maple Leaf lapel pins, but they're incapable of understanding how thoroughly compromised and worm-eaten their Canadianness has become. Their citizenship is a corpse in full rigor mortis that the "Conservatives" have embalmed and propped up against a wall in order to make it "stand up for Canada".
I Guess You’ll Not Be Needing Those Firewalls
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach seems to have decided that Ottawa can meddle in Alberta's affairs if it wants--as long as the "meddling" consists of a huge gift of 700 million dollars. The millions Alberta already receives through the Western Diversification Fund just aren't enough to buy baby his new shoes, apparently. It was inevitable that Alberta--that pious inculcator of fiscal thrift and high priest of anti-Ottawa individualism--would eventually find itself panhandling on Parliament Hill without a shred of shame.
Fatuously, Stelmach complained that Alberta "can't carry the country" through the recession, in a risible bid to sustain Albertans' painfully swollen self-concept during what must be a humiliating period for them. For the record, when Alberta's GDP grows beyond being a mere third of Ontario's, we shall talk about it "carrying the country". Right now, the only thing they're carrying is an ego full of helium and a bladder full of gall.
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12 comments:
I've yet to see an explanation of what Susan Boyd thought she was doing when she lamented the disappearance of the Pledge of Allegiance.
I can take ignorance born out of being uninformed, but that kind of stupidity takes real effort.
Ti-Guy:
She's not stupid; she just sounds stupid. She's what I call an "assimilated Canadian", whose consciousness is ahistorical, civically unspecific and culturally deracinated.
I am sure her grief over the loss of the Pledge is absolutely authentic. Her experience of being Canadian is parodic--a grotesque kind of mimesis. Like so much of urban Canada, she feels deeply and substantially what is actually not only a myth but someone else's myth. By appropriating and internalising this foreign myth, she then alienates herself from her own society, which (from her point of view) habitually "betrays" a heritage that is crucial to her but is, in fact, non-indigenous.
This is how relatively bright people like Stephen Harper end up sounding stupid: they are merely culturally disoriented--cultural drunks, if you will--whose intoxication leads them to speak political gibberish. How often have you heard intelligent Canadians refer to our "right to bear arms", a non-existent constitutional right in Canada?
How often do you hear smart Canadians talk about our history as if it were defined by our struggle for "independence" from Britain, as if we ever laboured under British domination? It's a borrowed Americanism, simple and puerile enough to make its reification seem so much more efficient than the study of our own rich but complex history.
And the internet doesn't help matters, alas. I get forwarded emails from a neocon idiot I used to worship with, which are clearly American and Republican in origin, with one or two details changed in attempt to pretend it's Canadian, but I can always smell a rat, and a quick glance at Snopes not only debunks the original American one, but highlights the supreme asininity of whichever self-loathing Canadian neocon jackass decided to start tweaking these to fob them off on ignorant Canadian neocons.
Boyd probably receives her political education through such emails.
How often have you heard intelligent Canadians refer to our "right to bear arms", a non-existent constitutional right in Canada?
Why just the other day, over at the blog of one of Canada's opinion-leading Conservatives, Gerry Nicholls.
Ti:
Thanks for directing me to that post of Nicholls'. There's some quality entertainment to be had there, especially in the thread. Did you see the commenter who charged Nicholls with being a stooge for the "homo lobby"? Great stuff.
Chris Reid chimed in and invoked the Magna Carta as the basis for our constitutional right to own guns. I guess it would be uncharitable to point out that all but three of the Carta's clauses were repealed by 1863 and that firearms didn't exist in England in 1215.
And the internet doesn't help matters, alas.
No, but I and a few quixotic others are doing our best to keep a small redoubt of sanity decently equipped with food, water and ammunition... ;)
No, but I and a few quixotic others are doing our best to keep a small redoubt of sanity decently equipped with food, water and ammunition... ;)
And doing a great job at it, too!
Actually, the biggest problem are people who don't know how to use the Internet properly, who get all their info from forwarded emails, who aren't familiar enough with fact-checking through the vast array of resources available online, and who don't have good BS detectors and can't tell the hoaxes they receive via email. Anyone who knows how to navigate his/her way around the net, and use it as an information resource, can immediately smell a rat when they get a hoax email. Not so the more net-ignorant.
Chris Reid chimed in and invoked the Magna Carta as the basis for our constitutional right to own guns.That's how they all argue these days. It's a lost cause.
Chris Reid is a particularly ignorant and dangerous individual, now living in Australia of all places.
He - in my opinion - is the epitome of the culturally-negligent Canadian.
I CONTINUE to sit in this rusting suit of armour.
Yes, but could you find an example of America bashing pandering along with using Americanisms to do so? In the same sentence?
Behold, the words of "wilson"!
While Liberals have their convention about nothing
to crown their American plant,
the Government of Canada is promoting our country.
Liberal Supporter:
Yeah, I encountered that thread by way of Red Tory's post about it. The farcical anti-Iggy stuff was almost as droll as Hunter's desperate banning of Kevron, Ti-Guy and Gayle as "trolls".
I can't believe the adoring minions of Stephen ("Canada Sucks") Harper would even contemplate attacking Ignatieff from an "anti-Canadian carpetbagger" angle. In soccer, this is called an own-goal.
The BT's are going stark, raving mad. I guess tanking in the polls will do that to a fellow. My heart goes out to them.
spot on, Dred Tory.
I wish these "conservatives" would make up their bloody minds as to where their true allegiances lie and just go get their green cards and leave the rest of us alone.
It makes me sick whenever i hear that lot steal the word "Tory", as if Sir John A would have anything to do with them. They are nothing of the sort.
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