As The World Churns

Hold on to your Gravol, because it's time for yet another nauseating edition of everyone's favourite Ontario political timewaster, "Is The NDP Going To Plunge Us Into Yet Another Election"?

You might recall last year's "high-stakes" showdown over the budget when the NDP made a similar show of force before the fact, and then decided to be bought off with a new tax on the rich, and then pretended that they were going to vote the budget down again, and then decided to spend the rest of the year making things difficult for the Liberals with their teacher union buddies. It was an amazing series of reversals made all the more brain twisting by the fact that NDP leader Andrea Horwath emerged with her image as an innocent consensus builder intact. We know Horwath wants to preserve that image because Adam Radwanski is writing columns full of Liberal talking points designed to showcase how generous the Liberals are being and how Andrea shouldn't be a Debbie Vote-Downer and bite the hand that's feeding her.

As far as the Liberals go, not only are they giving away the store to fend off an election, but they are also attacking Tim Hudak's wife in an attempt to change the channel, which is something they keep promising they'll never do and yet keep doing. Doing things they keep promising they'll never do, including pushing the Deb Hutton Panic Button whenever things get heated, has been a defining feature of the Liberals since Day 1, so I can totally see the Liberals contorting themselves into a pretzel to keep their not-real image as consensus builders alive. Consensus builders who attack women, I hasten to add.

If the above two paragraphs make your gorge rise, you might understand, for the briefest of moments, why Tim Hudak and the PCs have declared things unworkable and have signalled for an end to this farce. Then you would read the coming avalanche of columns, tweets, and general derpiness that suggests that by wanting out, Tim Hudak has marginalized himself and isn't working to build a "consensus" (there's that word again). People are going to get really, really mad about how Tim Hudak wants an election in the next few days, just like they did last year, and the reason why they are is because Tim Hudak is making it harder for them to shut their eyes and pretend everything is just hunky-dory in Ontario.

The worst thing you can do, worse than lie about the cost of cancelling a gas plant, worse than bend over for the teachers, worse than bend over for the government, worse than bash someone's wife, is publicly point out that the entire situation is a joke. For the past decade, Ontarians have been putting an insane amount of effort into ignoring the ugly truth; that things have not gotten better since booting out the PC's, that the almighty consensus is brittle and fragile and kept alive with prayers, and that nobody has the stomach to do what needs to be done.

And that is why I believe that despite all the huffing and puffing about how we're definitely going to go this time around, Horwath will once again find a way to save the day by reaching a compromise with the government, where the government gives up a bunch of expensive concessions we can't afford, and she gives up her credibility with her union friends, and everyone learns a lesson about sharing and sharing alike.

Don't get me wrong- I hope we do go so we can break this disgusting stasis, but we've all seen this movie before, and I know how it ends.

The Parting Of The Waters

Let's have a little talk about the rapidly increasing number of Principled Conservatives who think that supporting Justin Trudeau is the new super-cool thing to do. (I really hate how everything is all about him, everywhere, but the point has to be made.)

Last week, a random musing by Le Petit Prince about how raising tariffs was bad caused the National Post's cup to run over at the prospect of Trudeau reinventing libertarianism. You can almost feel Den Tandt quivering with anticipation. Granted, the Liberals had just got done giving relatively pro-liberty candidate Martha Hall Findlay a crushing 6% of support in the leadership race vs. Trudeau's 80% (which is to say, the Liberal voting base that elected Trudeau wants no part of pro-liberty ideas) but we're not going to let a little thing like that bother us.

Then we had this motion of last week that tried to give MP's the right to defy their party whips and make statements regarding abortion or whatever to their heart's content. This, despite the fact that Trudeau tweeted earlier that he believed a woman's right to choose was a fundamental right.

I could write this off as a ploy, but that's not going to do a bloody thing here because a) as I've seen, the people supporting Trudeau now will point out that Harper hasn't been exactly helpful on these issues, and b) it's Trudeau, so nobody will care to point out the contradiction, more so than would be the case for your average Liberal.

No, I know what this is; this is intended to give people who would otherwise support Harper because "well, who else is there?" an excuse to stay home. Trudeau is saying, "I'm gonna win anyway, so here's a reason for you to justify your own lack of involvement in the next election."

I must confess, I had wondered why the "backbench revolution" was taking place now....after all the years of relatively quiet grumbling....but I think the reason has become quite clear. :P

Don't expect these people to admit it in a moment of weakness, though. Officially, the explanation is the chickens coming home to roost after years of not being true to conservative principles. Never mind that you could have said the same thing during the Martin years......the Dion years.....the Ignatieff years......the Rae years......

For the record, the NDP is completely hooped as well. What with their base fuming over having jettisoned "socialism" from the party constitution, the post mortem after the coming red-tinged bloodbath is going to be exactly the same. We all just forgot the true meaning of Christmas. 

"Oh, but Mr. J, the Quebeckers are never going to go for Trudeau after what his father did, just like all those social conservatives.....uhhhh......well, how about all those libertarians who were outraged at the, uh.....War Measures Act, and, ummmm.....oh! I know! The West! The West will *never* forgive Trudeau for the National Energy Program, even though Trudeau.....supports the Keystone Pipeline.....awww, dammit."

Yup. You see it now, don't you? With single statements, this guy is picking off whole chunks of the voting base. How come Ignatieff never thought of stuff like this? (Probably because he had the wrong last name!) Somehow, people are going to find in themselves a sudden courage to vote Liberal, when they never could before! The waters will part, and we will be led to the promised land!

Am I angry? Am I upset? Nope.

This proves, more than anything any Liberal can do, that we cannot rely on conservative principles to win elections. Because when a Justin Trudeau shows up, Principled Conservatives bolt like scalded dogs. And it doesn't matter whether they're putting principle ahead of party, or whether they're just so mad at Harper that they're relishing this chance to pay him back in kind.

They are banking on the same inevitability of his victory that 80% of the Liberal voting base banked on, so exactly what the hell is the difference between them and the Liberals?

Oh, I am so glad that we can finally dispense with the dreary, pointless debate of Who Is A Conservative, and the attendant debate over conservative principles. On behalf of all the CPC hacks out there, I'd like to say thanks to all these stalwart Principled Conservatives gleefully rubbing their hands together in anticipation of Harper finally getting his for making this possible.

You know what, even the last provincial election makes sense now! When we were ahead in the polls, Hudak was a really principled conservative, and as soon as he lost, we needed to get back to conservative principles! But the only way Hudak *is* ever going to "get back to conservative principles" is.....if he wins! LOL!   

The Price Is Wrong, Bob

OK children, can anyone tell me what Not-so-Silent Bob Delaney, the Liberal MPP for Gas Plant-ville, Ontario, did wrong when he compared the decision to cancel the gas plant to the first attempt to land a man on the moon?

That's right! He should have blamed it on conservatives, by saying that we didn't complain about the cost of Margaret Thatcher's funeral, so we have no right to complain about this.

Haters Gonna Hate

The coronation of Justin Trudeau has brought several thoughts I've been kicking around into focus.

Up until now I have made the (hopefully) understandable mistake of thinking that the left is interested in things like equality, empowerment of the disenfranchised, justice for those that cannot defend themselves, and the like. They have said they believe in these things and I have believed them, not knowing that in doing so I have allowed them to win the argument before it even got started.

Then I realized that people who loathe conservatives as much as they do- people who sputter at the mere mention of Ford's name, or cheer the death of Margaret Thatcher, or warp reality such that they can be angry at Harper for cracking down on his own MP's for expressing views they find loathsome and would not hesitate to censor themselves- cannot be as worried about any of their stated goals as they are about their actual goal.

What these people want to do is transfer power from us to them. They don't care how it happens and they don't care what they have to do to get it done. Over, under, around, and through.

This is why Liberals have coalesced around Trudeau. His lack of ideas is not a weakness as far as they're concerned, because they don't care about ideas. They care about stomping conservatives back into their holes, and they're more than happy to have a party leader who doesn't care about how he's going to manage Canada. Canada is irrelevant. Power is everything.

 

 

How very right she was that day, as she so often was. These people do not care if everyone is worse off, so long as power is kept out of the hands of conservatives.

 

Hate for the right guides and dominates everything these people do, not concern for the poor or the underprivileged. The venom they hurl at those outside their consensus, the attempts to shut down free speech, the tacit acceptance of anything that limits the power of those in power- it all stems from a blinding hatred of anything we stand for.

 

And so long as we remember that, their attempts to guilt-trip us have no power.

 

A few days ago, nutty self professed communist NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice declared that World War I was a "capitalist war" and that the communists of the day were right to oppose it. Clothing himself in the holier-than-thou language of pacifism, Boulerice got everyone to ignore the fact that the only reason that he, and the communists of 100 years ago, opposed the war was because it was a "capitalist" war. He doesn't have a problem with war or loss of life in war per se- he just has an issue with capitalist wars, and capitalism in general. If something is capitalist, it is bad; if something is not capitalist, it cannot be bad. And just like that, Boulerice's moral high ground evaporates.

 

Let's try it again with something a bit closer to normalcy. The Walkerton water tragedy is often invoked by Ontario Liberals as a reason not to vote PC. Vote PC, they say, and we'll be right back to Harris-era deregulation. But then we remember that the Ontario Liberals hate Mike Harris with fanatical intensity, so much so that it is entirely plausible that they never cared about the deaths in Walkerton at all. They hated the PC's so much that using those deaths to get elected was a lesser evil. Pop! That's the sound of their moral authority deflating.

 

Why support the thugocracy Chavez created in Venezuela? Why turn a blind eye towards, or excuse terrorism? Why stick their heads in the sand when Obama continues Bush's policies? Because they hate, hate, HATE, conservatives and established power.

 

I could keep on going forever. Examples abound. For example, what do you think was going through Elizabeth May's mind when she unironically compared Canada to North Korea? Was this the behaviour of someone who hates Harper so much that all distinction between Canada and North Korea disappeared for a moment? I think so.

 

When you consider the virulent reactions to the Keystone pipeline, or when you look at a website like shitharperdid.ca, or when you read about how the NDP and Liberals need to put aside wide ranging policy differences and unite to beat Harper (because that's the real aim here, not to create a functional party that can govern), you can see that these are not happy warriors or people motivated by love and concern for their fellow human beings. Hate for conservatives comes first.

 

And it can be summoned at a moment's notice to be hurled in a million different directions, at the same time. That's how they come up with these wonderful logic pretzels. Somehow, Harper is spending too much money and too little money at the same time! Harper is an evil genius and a dumb redneck simultaneously! Gay people who are conservatives aren't really gay people! Women who are conservatives aren't really women! Corporations being in bed with the government is bad, and corporations being completely independent of government is also bad! It's racist to criticize foreign cultures that may themselves have racist features! It's not possible for minorities to be motivated by racism against white people!

 

How blind I was, not to see it right in front of my own face. But no more. Now I really, truly get it.