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.