The FOX network has long been rightfully derided for its umbilically intimate relationship with the Republican Party and America's broader right wing. Of those two hateful hemispheres of planetary idiocy, though, FOX has traditionally been the more thoughtful--the analytical foil to the feckless party on whose behalf it speaks. Throughout the Bush II era, the blithering cretins at FOX usually managed to be just barely close enough to the right side of sanity to seem downright moderate beside the cackling hysteria and stumblebum ineptitude of the Bush/Cheney misadministration. FOX's mere carrying of The Simpsons gave it a credibility the Bush White House could never hope to approximate.
Apparently, Team Obama considers this asymmetry to be too deeply embedded in the American psyche to be changed without massive systemic damage. Accordingly, soon after FOX releases a candid clip featuring some of its vulgarly anti-Canadian talking-heads sensibly denouncing Homeland Security for treating the Canada/U.S. border as a serious threat to American security, Obama's security doyenne Janet Napolitano repeats the odious slur--iterated across American right-wing talk-radio since literally days after 9/11--that many of the WTC terrorists had entered the U.S. through Canada and that Canada therefore needs vigilant surveillance.
In a heartwarming gesture of bi-partisan asininity, John McCain later gave his sclerotic endorsement to this preposterous urban myth. McCain, at least, has an excuse: he's clearly in the early stages of senile dementia. I suppose Napolitano's excuse is that she's an American (an excuse which, in its basic purport, is not unlike McCain's), but I do believe that her bottomless ignorance and its possible executive ramifications (she's in Obama's cabinet, remember) serve to prove that Americans' utter lack of understanding of and respect for Canada is not (as so many of us believe) a harmless eccentricity--a patronising nervous tick that we should simply ignore, laugh off, and learn to live with. It's a deeply worrying neurosis that chronically impedes the very continental security about which American official blowhards claim to be so preoccupied.
Former Mulroneyite Michael Wilson, Harper's ambassadorial appointee, appears to think that being "frustrated" by Napolitano's stark stupidity is somehow good enough. This extravagantly-paid stuffed cardigan was supposed to use his wide network of U.S. connections to change the reflexively anti-Canadian tone in Washington, made all the more urgent when the traditionally protectionist Democrats regained the White House late last year. If Ignatieff manages to kick Harper's well-marbled ass to the curb this year or next, I will enjoy watching him yank Wilson off of D.C.'s "exclusive" (i.e. all-white) golf courses and back into his rocking chair where he’s harmless. We need somebody who can bring the kind of balls Frank McKenna brought to the job before Harper's shabby partisan hackery brought his successful term to a premature end.
Until then, fellow Canucks, please enjoy your utterly unearned and quintessentially "American" reputation as the folks who helped bring down the Twin Towers--brought to you today by "Change We Can Believe In"!
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27 comments:
I'm not clear on why you think Michael Wilson is a less effective Ambassador than Frank McKenna.
Tomm
Did we have this kind of nonsense happen when McKenna was down there? Sure, the talk-radio clowns and neocon "pundits" would spout off now and again, but there was nothing like this. The situation has seriously deteriorated since then, and this was simply not supposed to happen--not with Wilson on the case. I guess all that presumed post-FTA Stateside goodwill was just a will o' the wisp.
Off topic: Tomm, you should always sign in before commenting, to indicate you're not being spoofed. I learned that the hard way, back in my old "Sir Isaac" days. That moniker was worn by more strange guys than a "Marilyn" wig at a transvestite bar.
SF:
I really believe we should recall the Ambassador over this. Even if just for one day.
The assertion seems most deliberate - especially after all these years.
Tomm, you should always sign in before commenting, to indicate you're not being spoofed.
I'd like to meet the person who can convincingly spoof Tomm.
This kind of thing is inevitable. Americans are, deep down, flattered by the notion that everyone, everywhere, wishes them ill. It just demonstrates that everyone envies them.
I really believe we should recall the Ambassador over this.
Bah. We didn't recall the ambassador when Condi Rice publicly mused about slowing down border traffic to a crawl over our decision on Iraq. We'll swallow every outrage. As I said before, we're political masochists (by "we", I mean our twigdick "leaders") .
This kind of thing is inevitable.
The fact that a member of Obama's cabinet believes something that I had assumed was an article of faith strictly amongst Americans who think Elvis is still alive is actually shocking to me. I didn't think I could be surprised by anything down there anymore--not after eight years of Bush II; but I was wrong.
I literally could not believe my eyes when I read this story. This administration has fallen faster (and farther) in my esteem than Bush's did in its first few months.
We'll swallow every outrage.The worst thing we are doing is letting the moral imbeciles in our own elite get away with believing it is their duty to explain to us the prerogatives and exigencies of power. A case in point is the supercilious Andrew Coyne here explaining the conceptual, legal and moral quandaries involved in the idea of holding American officials responsible for having sanctioned torture.
These insensate courtiers really do believe that the rest of us are little children waiting at their feet to learn the lessons of the real world.
The fact that a member of Obama's cabinet believes something that I had assumed was an article of faith strictly amongst Americans who think Elvis is still alive is actually shocking to me.Not to me. American liberals are famous for being overly confident of their own understanding of the real world (whereas Republicans are just fucking stupid).
What continues to shock me is the response by our own officials.
Not to me.
Ah, the wisdom of age!
You're correct of course: American liberals distinguish themselves from their right-wing counterparts primarily in their assumption that spending a few years abroad on a Rhodes or Fulbright makes them meaningfully worldly--or, as Canada's New Prime Minister recently coined, "worldy" (did you see that bizarre quotation from Harper re: the Alberta tourism ad fiasco?).
Ah, the wisdom of age!
And experience...my earliest involving meeting someone in Germany (before I had even completed my undergrad) who had a Masters degree from Harvard. Although really sweet, she was the dimmest person I had ever met and for years, I was baffled by that. Turns out she had very rich parents and so did her husband.
did you see that bizarre quotation from Harper re: the Alberta tourism ad fiasco?
No, I missed that. To tell you the truth, I've been in a fugue state for the last week as a result of being exposed to "balanced" discussions on torture involving "very serious people."
..."balanced" discussions on torture involving "very serious people".
Indeed. Balanced discussions on abortion are out of the question for many of those people, but they're happy to split scholastic hairs when it comes time to decide whether one should be permitted to crush both of a detainee's testicles or whether that would constitute a gaucherie.
No, I missed that.
Here's the article. Go about eight paragraphs down: Harper calls Albertans a "worldy people". What the hell is "worldiness"? Is that like "truthiness"?
For more mangled English, read this piece about Obama speaking to a group of CIA officials. Obama tells them, "You don't get credit when things go good".
"Go good"? May we assume he knows better? Is this an example of a self-conscious "élitist" trying to sound all "homey", or does that construction actually sound grammatical to him?
It would be nice if the leaders of the "Free World" could condescend to make decent use of the language that is the fairest flower of the civilisation they pretend to cherish. Fucking Vandals.
Sir Francis,
Your argument regarding:
McKenna - good
Wilson - bad.
Is weak. In fact, it smells of...
Wilson, appointed by Harper, ergo Bad.
In regards to the torture argument. Coyne might be splitting hairs, but the hairs are certainly there to be split. If we refuse Coyne's argument, we ultimately end up at Canada's Charter and Canada's judges.
I have absolutely no faith in the Charter ever upholding the State's right to interrogate a witness or use discomfort as a tool. Canada would become a Monty Python sketch brought to life.
The Charter would ultimately be the blunt tool used by Trial attorney's, activist NGO's, or even publicly funded agencies such as the CCP, to throw a blanket on anything but a Lazy Boy and 3 squares a day. It's a much better deal than working 9-5 for minimum wage.
What about my gulags'? At some point we have to define some terms. What is torture? It had better be more than a lumpy mattress and a public shower.
What is punishment for crime? Again, it had better be more than group therapy because of a tough childhood and some substance abuse issues.
I have absolutely no faith in the Charter ever upholding the State's right to interrogate a witness or use discomfort as a tool.
Wow. Where to begin with this? More to the point, where to end?
First of all, you're mercilessly confounding issues. The Charter would not apply to the kinds of cases Coyne/Wells are discussing, as the Charter applies only to Canadian citizens. It would not be the Charter staying our hands against mock-drowning our detainees, if we were ever so tempted; it would be binding international obligations, like the Geneva Convention, as well as however many shreds of Western post-Enlightenment acculturation could be found in the souls of responsible authorities.
I'm interested, though, to see you wishfully endow such full discretionary powers to "the State" when it comes to torture; I've rarely seen you grant the validity of such state power when it comes to taxes and social programs. I guess a violent falangist "nanny state" is fine as long as it's just maiming people--inexpensively--rather than helping them undergo cancer treatment without risking bankruptcy.
What is punishment for crime?
Not that it's relevant to Coyne's argument, but the administration of the criminal law is a provincial jurisdiction--one which the East, by the way, is handling quite well (with cities like Toronto and Montreal boasting the lowest per-capita homicide rates in North America) and which the Prairies are handling catastrophically--with Regina consistently winning Canada's homicide sweepstakes, while Winnipeg and Edmonton lag not very far behind.
So, as to your question, whatever Ontario and Quebec are doing seems to be working. I guess mothers just shouldn't let their sons grow up to be cowboys; they appear to be incorrigible killers...
Where to begin with this?With the DSM-IV.
"I'm interested, though, to see you wishfully endow such full discretionary powers to "the State" when it comes to torture; I've rarely seen you grant the validity of such state power when it comes to taxes and social programs."
Interesting tell, although not surprising. Does Tomm THINK beore he hits send?
As someone who has lived in Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta (and travelled extensively in Saskatchewan and British Columbia) I can offer a few observations:
* Criminals tend to where the "easy money" is;
* The West is under-policed;
* The West's urban population us much more concentrated in fewer cities than that of Ontario/Quebec;
* Provincial/Municipal Social Services are harder to obtain in the West than in Ontario/Quebec;
* Occupational retraining schemes are non-existent - compared to Ontario/Quebec
* There are many more emigrants (read literally here) to the West (in recent years) than to the East, which speaks to social alienation;
* There is a much larger Aboriginal Population (in terms of proportion of the whole) in the West);
* There if FAR LESS Economic diversity in the West, compared to Ontario/Quebec, which points to the dislocations of large swathes of humanity when boom turns to bust.
What does this mean? YOU draw your own conclusions.
Who cares about crime out West? It's still manageable.
What I'd like to have explained to me is why Albertans lie so much.
So no one's going to attempt to enlighten me?
Who cares about crime out West?...What I'd like to have explained to me is why Albertans lie so much.
Perhaps, being natural criminals, they're also natural perjurers. ;)
[Cue Tomm: "Adscam", "gun registry", "NEP", "Crow rate"...]
As for lying, you aint seen nothin' yet. As Alberta's economy continues to tank, expect to see its élites blame the disaster on the usual suspects--The Eastern Bastards (TEB). In fact, Stelmach has already begun the inevitable whining. Whether he manages to out-Klein Klein remains to be seen, but he knows full well that his constituency expects that of him.
Well, that's unconvincing. I'll go back to my original thesis, which can be generalised for these types of conservatives, everywhere: they lie because they are unconcerned about the truth. They lie until they can't get away with it anymore. Then they go quiet about the previous lie and move on to another one.
And in that way, you are correct: The Albertans will find a way to blame their economic downturn on the rest of us, since the NEP and being "marginalised" in national decision-making (we wish!) won't work anymore.
ATY:
That's an excellent summation of the West's current demographic/socio-economic realities. I'm just wondering how many of them were true twenty or thirty (or even eighty) years ago, and whether the same West/East statistical discrepancies existed. I must look into that.
On the face of it, I'm sceptical. Anecdotally, during my '70's and '80's childhood, it was the Western/Prairie cities that were seen as the calm, sleepy, safe havens of old-country civility, at least from Montreal. Winnipeg, especially (the "Paris of the Prairies"), had an excellent reputation. It was places like Toronto, Hamilton, Windsor, and my own Montreal that had the bad reputations (along with aberrant places like Sorel, Quebec, with became Hells Angels' Canadian HQ). Perhaps this was just a function of Eastern urban nostalgia and middle-class fauvisme, but I rarely heard or read of bad things happening out West (and I was a pretty literate and media-curious kid).
I take your point about under-policing, as well. I've never understood why a place like Alberta, with all of the social and law-enforcement challenges forced upon it over the last two decades, has not seen fit to establish its own provincial police force. It seems to me incredibly irresponsible for a province that can well afford to do its own policing to rely on the RCMP, as if it were still 1909.
As policing is colossally expensive, it's tempting to see this laziness as a cheap, cowardly way to keep the books balanced and maintain that glossy façade of provincial fiscal rectitude. I wonder what kind of surplus Alberta would have if it had taken over its own provincial policing in the '70's?
I believe the provinces that contract provincial policing out to the RCMP have to pay for it, SF.
Ti:
How much do the provinces pay? Is it tantamount to the cost of an independent provincial force? It can't be. Does Alberta get any of it back in transfers?
Surely, Alberta wouldn't pay to be policed by the feds unless it made fiscal sense.
Surely, Alberta wouldn't pay to be policed by the feds unless it made fiscal senseI don't know; I startled googling, found a few references about provincial forces being either less or more expensive and then realised I didn't care.
It probably is cheaper to contract out to the RCMP, but that's just guessing.
I'm still focused on the wingnut's worship of "provisional truth." It's intrigued me my whole life.
I'm still focused on the wingnut's worship of "provisional truth."
Not me. The manifestations of that worship can sometimes be horrifically fascinating, but its inner mechanism is, to me, totally banal.
As I said, it has nothing to with "truth", provisional or otherwise. It is merely the Nietzschean will-to-power in full effect, routinely pimped to the masses as "truth" for purely tactical reasons.
I must admit to having a modicum of respect for those neo-cons who, by admitting devotion to Rand's atheist materialism or Strauss' "noble lie", have made it easier for casual political observers to remove the fig leaf of "conservative" respectability from the palsied, wart-pocked genitals of "movement conservatism".
routinely pimped to the masses as "truth" for purely tactical reasons.I don't think that's quite it. As individuals, these "conservatives" seem to prefer a blatant lie to anything that approaches the truth. That's what I don't understand, since that inexorably leads to being wrong and dissatisfied all the time.
But you may be right about it being banal. It's just seems increasingly bizarre in this, the Glorious Age of Information.
...these "conservatives" seem to prefer a blatant lie to anything that approaches the truth... [which] inexorably leads to being wrong and dissatisfied all the time.
But a lie is an artifice; it is made. It results from a creative act. That is why Nietzsche admired "lies" and "liars" (as Platonists would call them). He saw them as the only truly life-affirming creatures.
The truth, though, is a latency. It is a priori. It cannot be made--only grasped. The truth stands over us; the neo-cons are desperate to be the ones doing the standing over. To them, anything else would be a form of subjection. They, like Nietzsche, consider subjection to be the basis of a slave morality--something utterly beneath them.
Ok, sure. That explains Irving Kristol, but does it explain Tomm?
...but does it explain Tomm?
Loath though Tomm would be to admit it, yes...it does.
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