However, given what we have discovered about those who have been advocating a class war long before the Liberal intelligentsia began toying with it as the latest path back to power, this so called coalition will eventually devolve into one of two forms. Either the radicals will engage in a War of Purification against the Blue Liberals that have anchored the Liberal Party to the rock of fiscal sanity, or the Liberal social dominators will co-opt the Guillotine Doctrine and make half-hearted attempts to be wealth redistributing populists while continuing business as usual.
This choice is especially evident in the current Ontario Liberal leadership race. In one corner, you have the darling of the teachers' movement, Kathleen Wynne, who advocates a happy reconciliation between bloodthirsty teachers unions and their willing enablers on the OLP's left wing. In the other corner is Sandra Pupatello, who promises to continue Dalton's phony war on the deficit.
From our perch above this fray, we who hope for a return to balanced budgets someday in the far future can only hope that this is just another Liberal scheme to wangle their way back into the mainstream, just like they did when they took up the cause of free trade 100 years ago, and throwing down the cause of free trade 30 years ago.
We recall with fondness Stephane Dion's Green Shift. Poor deluded Stephane Dion, thinking that he was really on to something with that environmentalism. He thought that was the way to get "bock to pawurr as soon as poss-eebl." And he thought people believed in it as much as he did. He didn't realize that all Liberals know how to do is pay lip service to stuff and take credit for whatever good comes out of it.
But OMG! Prof. Dion wasn't content to just devise policy that required that Canadians actually do something to curb greenhouse gas emissions. He actually went so far as to grant an outsider- Elizabeth May- the opportunity to run unopposed in a Conservative-held riding! The Central Nova Liberals were less than thrilled with the notion, and the idea was chalked up to too much exuberance on an obviously clueless leader's part, until everyone decided some months later that collaborating with other parties on the left on a grand scale was a brilliant idea. So now they pay lip service to a merger.....
Now, I don't know if the Liberals really grasp this or not, but if the shoe were on the other foot- if it were the NDP dealing from strength here- then they would not treat the Liberals with such polite condescension and humour them with the idea of actually sharing power.
You see, I have discovered that people on the left have this concept of "allies". You have your marginalized and oppressed group, living in what are obviously third world conditions here in the midst of plenty, and then you have the people who come from privileged groups who want to help. And it turns out that while we on the right are content to point and laugh at these hipsters claiming solidarity and dismiss them as posers, the people involved in these movement find the support of rich white people overcome by guilt to be problematic.
It's problematic because these people want to use their power and connections to give the fledgling movement legitimacy- but for your average leftist, the very idea of working within the system to effect change is a non-starter. It's messy and sometimes there are setbacks and you end up having to compromise and ain't nobody got time for that.
Do all the hipsters sharing this realize that they're laughing at the suffering of an oppressed woman of colour?
OK, OK. So what if I check my privilege and head on down to my local Idle No More protest looking for answers? Surely I'll find some nice Native person who will guide me? Well, not really. See, it isn't the job of these oppressed people to educate you. I don't quite understand yet why it's not their job- I was under the impression that you'd probably do a worse job of trying to bridge a massive cultural gap on your own than if you had someone helping you, but that's probably the privilege talking- but it's kind of like in Avatar when Sigourney Weaver's character isn't really accepted as one of the Smurf people until she decides she doesn't want to be a human being anymore, and the movie holds that up as like the greatest thing ever because humans are bad, and that's probably why that piece of garbage movie got forgotten about instead of awakening humanity to their own selfishness like it was obviously intended to?
By the way- we conservatives are all PRIVILEGED. Even those of us on fixed incomes, those of us who don't drive fancy cars, those of use who work two jobs, those of us who aren't white, or straight, or thin.....and especially those of us who EARNED what we have or CREATED opportunities for ourselves, or MADE GOOD USE of opportunities we were given. Super privileged, the lot of us, which is why we don't understand the plight of those who are oppressed. And here we were, thinking the government was oppressing us......but that's probably what the corporations want you to think, maaaaaaan.
What I'm presenting here is an approximation filtered through all my privileged paternalistic assumptions. To really appreciate it, you have to read it in the original leftist bafflegab, sort of like how, to truly experience Shakespeare, you have to read it in the original Russian (or Klingon).
One cannot help but cringe when members of dominant society tender their prudent instructions to the oppressed. I could not help but cringe when Goldenberg expresses anxiety that Idle No More may devolve into an unpalatable “dog’s breakfast of protest and pageantry” so distasteful that it “alienates the very Canadians who should be its audience.” The message to Indigenous peoples here is that their expressions of cultural resurgence and resistance may be a big turn-off for nervous Canadians, in much the same way I suppose as the genres of jazz, blues, and hip-hop in black cultures of urban resistance were so threatening to white society.
While it's all well and good for the Idle No More movement to dismiss the Harper government for being a bunch of racists while at the same time demanding that the government accede to their demands immediately......there's a big problem for Liberals too. The superficial well-meaningness of the Liberals is not going to convince too many of these people, because to them, the Liberals are just as privileged, and therefore just as bad. Now not only is there no difference between a Blue and a Red Tory, but there's also no difference between a Tory and a Liberal. Send 'em all to the guillotine.
So how long do the Liberal proposers of this union expect to survive with the NDP as the senior partner? Not bloody long, unless the NDP want to find their heads on spikes as well.
What will I discover next as I explore the domain of the far left? Only time will tell!
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