Warren Kinsella writes this week: Stephen Harper gives Canadians the finger The discussion is Harper's latest snub of the media, no longer caring whether they challenge his decisions. It was deliberate and calculated. He didn't have to answer to them regarding his Senate appointments. They are no longer useful to him.
Let them stomp up and down. For the next 4-5 years he will no longer have to explain his actions to the Canadian people. He's always done what he wanted anyway, but now his control of our country is absolute.
Lawrence Martin writes: Behold the most powerful PM ever
He has it all:
•A fractured opposition and decimated Liberal party.Not to mention the fact that within a few months, he will also have control of the Supreme Court, and the Governor General is a Conservative insider.
•An overpowering political machine that doubles and triples rivals in financial resources.
•A preponderant media advantage with most of the big fourth-estate players on side.
•A public service more submissive than ever before.
•Agencies and watchdog groups that are intimidated or stacked with governing party partisans.
•A majority in the Senate and the House, plus command over an increasingly dysfunctional parliamentary committee structure.
•A bossist structure in the governing party that allows no dissent from within.
When Jack Layton teamed up with Harper to destroy the Liberals, he must have felt pretty powerful. But looking around at the carnage, just how powerful is he really? Leader of what?
Stephen Harper is ending the democratic voter subsidies, where less than $2.00 was taken from each voting taxpayer, and going to the party of their choice.
Layton's surge was mostly superficial, and I doubt it will generate into massive fundraising, given that he's pretty much impotent, with few allies in the House.
And how easy will it be for the Liberals to rebuild? Their membership is currently on the rise, as many Canadians now realize that the Harper/Layton team has gutted the centre, but can the interest hold?
It's a very terrifying time to be a Canadian progressive.
"It is a terrifying time to be a Canadian progressive." Emily, this is, in fact, an invigorating, epochal time for progressive change in Canada.
ReplyDeleteUntil now, the dangers of the Koch Bros' bought and paid for oli-government had to hide themselves inside various attempted rationalizations in order to advance their stealthy march towards unfettered power. Now, all that energy-diverting effort can be dispensed with and added to the headlong rush to consolidate the corporatist coup. Fearing nothing, the prideful beast will now demand the preeminence it has long believed to be its due. What better means to do so than to revel publicly in displays of arrogance and power?
In so doing, it will fulfill the very warnings that went too unheeded and make the real stakes clearer than ever. Clarity on that front makes decision-making easier, meaning that many a waffling quasi-progressive will now be forced to choose sides and will do so with greater zeal and a true firmness of resolve.
True change demands that the choices be clear; and events are moving to make them so. Of course the road to meaningful change will be daunting and perilous: there is nothing benign in Harper's personal control of CSIS while the RCMP is under the fist of his sycophant. But it has ever been thus: a route well beyond the reach of some conventional political party - let alone one distracted with rebuilding itself while its primary opponent is busily at work scorching the earth behind it and leaving its wreckage strewn as obstacles in the others' path. Small matter; for those others are offering more of the same but at a slower pace and with the odd feint towards compassion here and there. (Remember their charlatans' declaration to eradicate child poverty in Canada, only to see it get steadily worse in the twenty years that followed?)
To its strategic credit, the corporatist front saw and exploited the many weaknesses in our pre and post-WWII governance models. Its skillful blend of ruthless pragmatism beneath a cloak of relentless incrementalism has turned individual greed and venality to masterful use. Its ouster will require an even greater strategy, many difficult decisions and an unflagging resolve to eradicate those weaknesses. Within our conventional parties and their ranks we will search in vain for any of the above.
That revelation along with the starkness of the choices facing us will be the galvanizing factors long required to put the wheels of true, meaningful and lasting progressive change in unstoppable motion.
So, if there is terror afoot, it is that of realizing that a world of possibilities we have dreamed of for so long can - with courage, sacrifice and vision - truly be ours and that we, alone, will bear the responsibility for its failure or its success. So immense a prospect deserves our terror, first, but our most earnest and unrelenting efforts thereafter.
Just reading Naomi Klein's book "Shock Doctrine" so yes, it certainly is a terrifying time for Canadians who love what our country did value and stand for in the world.
ReplyDeleteI just bought the "Shock Doctrine". Haven't read it yet but looking forward to it.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes Captain is a perfect time to illustrate why neoconservatism and corporate power doesn't work.
I have not given up. Just get down sometimes.
Shock Doctrine is a fantastic book. It changed my life forever.
ReplyDelete