@JohnTory and the curse of right-wing governance | #TOpoli #cdnpoli

A noxious confluence of events.

In Toronto, the Gardiner East kerfuffle. And the police culture's turgid and shameful insistence on continuing the practice of carding, despite all the evidence that it's useless, counterproductive, alienating, and a grotesque manifestation of systemic racism.

In Ottawa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report on this country's shameful treatment of native people.

We pretty much know what we're going to get from the festering, vindictive, authoritarian Harpoid regime. That it's resisting a fair accounting and hedging over control of resources is no surprise. Nor is its Aboriginal Affairs Minister's literal refusal to stand up at the presentation of the report. Not much left to say about this putrescent government and its contempt for ... well, pretty much everything and everybody except international investors, ideological fellow travellers, and tar-sands diggers.

No, let's keep this a tad closer to home for now. Let's talk about the smooth-talking suit in the mayor's office, and how wrong he is on two of the most pressing issues in Toronto's civic life.

Remember when John Tory used to make sense? (It did happen, and not all that long ago. Like when he was with the Civic Action Alliance.) Isn't that what we were hoping for when he succeeded the Fuckhead Brothers? Whatever happened to that guy, anyway? Was he just saying whatever to get elected, or was there something more insidious at work (geez, can you maybe telegraph things a little more? - ed.)?

Let's run down the signs, shall we? Lines up with the forces of reaction on carding, in the face of pressure from thousands across the city and political spectrum.

Oblivious to injustice, to marginalization, to entrenched and systemic racism. White privilege? Never heard of it.

Lip service. Photo ops. Hollow gestures.

Equivocation on the obvious need to take down the east section of the Gardiner Expressway, all for the sake of a handful of entitled motorists. Hey John, here's a thought: Greatest good for the greatest number? Isn't that what public institutions are supposed to pursue?

Tone-deaf platitudes in defence of privilege.

No overarching conception of the public good.

Wrong on more civic issues than you can shake a recorded vote at.

Yup. Now where have we seen this before? Yeah, yeah, maybe some smart-ass tried to caricature John Tory as Rob Ford with manners, and while that may be good for a cheap laugh, there's a lot more to it.

And before we go down the dead-end road of binary liberal vs. conservative thinking, let's resolve to respect the meanings of words. Words matter. Language matters. Definitions matter.

This isn't conservatism. Conservatives have their faults, but this kind of clueless arrogance isn't a mark of conservatism so much as atavistic entitlement, ignorance, and shallow expediency. It's the product of years of insulation, privilege, and growing ever more out of touch.

And it’s not about fouling public discourse with a flood of lies and bullshit either — the bullshit from Gardiner East "hybrid" proponents being a case in point.

No. This is the inevitable toxic effect of the right-wing approach to (mis)government. Whether it’s drunken oafish crackheads, blue-blooded corporate patricians, or malevolent wingnut-welfare operators, the intent and effect are the same — progressive enfeeblement of government, debasement of language, and reducing the efficacy of public institutions.

We can do better than this.

Conflict of interest, Mayor Stupid, and the Globe's stunning incoherence

There was a short-lived meme on Twitter recently, riffing on the Teutonic gift for coining words that have no exact English equivalent, but nevertheless capture meanings beautifully. "Schadenfreude" is one of the best examples. (I'm trying not to indulge at the moment.)

So I'm left wondering whether there's a German expression for times when reprehensible people appear to do the right thing, albeit for questionable reasons and in contexts which make the rightness of their actions suspect.

As we all know by now, Judge Charles Hackland, ruling in the conflict of interest proceedings brought against Rob Ford, has ruled that Mayor Stupid must be removed from office. No surprise at the finding, although there was a fair bit of energy backing the prediction that the court would somehow find a way not to apply the maximum penalty.

However, it's the reaction of our supposed Newspaper of Record^TM that begs further examination. As the pinstriped pamphleteers of Front Street argue:

Mr. Ford didn’t want to play by the rules. Not the ones he didn’t like, anyway, such as those governing conflict of interest.

Well, no argument there, although it's not as if the observation first came to life in the Front Street drawing room over brandy and cigars. Pious and paternalistic, but essentially correct. But it's what comes after that triggers the WTF:

The country’s biggest city gave him a strong mandate to reduce costs and attack what Mr. Ford described as a culture of entitlement at City Hall. He has even had some success.

Um ... what?

[Slim Pickens voice]
Did you say "Attack a Culture of Entitlement?"
[/Slim Pickens voice]

Is there anyone who embodies that more than Mayor Stupid and Brother Dumbfuck? A pair of guys who think they can flout the rules and blow off the consequences whenever they feel like it because … because ... shut the fuck up, OK? Taxpayers taxpayers taxpayers, subways subways subways, mandate, drool, release the trolls.

Let's review: here's a guy who thinks he's entitled to

• Phone Andy Byford and demand to know where his bus is
• Abuse and demean public servants
• Ignore the rules whenever they don't conform to his own sense of what's right
• Demand that city staff fix the road in front of his family business
• Blow off his official responsibilities to go coach football, and use public resources to do it

And that's just off the top of my head.

But let's move on, and compare that to the Globe's support for their charming ideological brethren in Ottawa, and ...

• electoral fraud
• robocalls
• naked attacks on dissent
• instructions for disrupting parliamentary committees
• secret "free-trade" deals
• Mordor
• embarrassment and damage to Canada's international reputation.

These are the people, mind, whom the Globe endorses as a way of "finding new ways to protect Parliament."

Are you fucking kidding me?

(But never mind all that just now -- is there a trend we might not be catching? Like, omigaaaawd ... )

In the continuing train wreck otherwise known as the Wente Clusterfuck, it's easy to lose sight of our National Fishwrap's many other acts of civic and linguistic vandalism. While this little corner isn't fit to polish Carol Wainio's flatware, perhaps this one little bit of paint on the cave wall might merit a footnote.

Related posts:

• "Find new ways to protect Parliament?" WTF?
• Woodward and Bernstein are dead
• @marcusbgee calls Ford on his bullshit, but who helped put him there?
• Why it's important to kill off the Pissed-off Taxpayer meme

Hey, Lone Pine Resources Inc. — sue this

NAFTA challenge launched over Quebec fracking ban - The Globe and Mail: "Energy firm Lone Pine Resources Inc. is taking on Quebec’s fracking moratorium, saying it violates the firm’s rights under the North American free-trade agreement and demanding more than $250-million in compensation."

'via Blog this'


Y'see, that's the great thing about "free trade." We get sued for "lost profits" when we try to protect our drinking water.

And the Chinese deal Harper's pushing? Shhh. It's a secret. Everything about it is a secret. Even Diane Francis is shitting on it, for Chrissakes.

Guy's not only letting foreign corporations fuck us over, he's handing out souvenir bags at the door.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it.

Related posts:

• The Ethical Oil Spokespuppet Smear
• Electro-Motive: Foreign corporation takes Canadian tax dollars, fucks over Canadian workers | #cdnpoli
• Lawrence Martin on Harper's proto-fascism | #cdnpoli

Electro-Motive: Foreign corporation takes Canadian tax dollars, fucks over Canadian workers | #cdnpoli

... while Harper's thumb stays firmly planted up his ass.

Montreal Simon and Owen Gray have already flagged this, so I can't really add much.

But hey, I could be wrong, so please -- let me know if I've left anything out.

Related posts:

• Liberals, NDP, whoever. I don't care what we call them | #cdnpoli
• Oh, and while we're busy demonizing the #Occupy movement ... | #classwarfare #cdnpoli
• Lawrence Martin on Harper's proto-fascism | #cdnpoli

Accountability, Harper-style: Intimidation and mob rule

Anyone who's been talking about "scandal fatigue" just hasn't been paying attention.

At a campaign rally Saturday, Harper's minions whip a partisan crowd into a frenzy in order to drown out Terry Milewski's question.

Rise up against the toxic Harper effect: whatever it takes

As I said yesterday, credit where it's due.

Props to Iggy's speechwriters for the Rise Up reference to Harper's slow poisoning of our body politic. And because it's not the Parachute Club, but from a Springsteen tune ...



In deference to the Boss. I'm all about the equal-opportunity Rise Up references.

Related posts:

• Meme for the week: Harper – too dangerous to govern
• Suzanne Trepanier on what Harper's boys did to Remy Beauregard
• What's worse? The lies, or the insult to our intelligence?

Meme for the week: Harper – too dangerous to govern

I had to think about it long and hard over the weekend, in part because I got ahead of myself on Friday when I suggested that the meme for the week might be voter suppression, à la Rove.

There's no reason not to keep repeating that message, because it's such a wonderful illustration of the Harpobots' attitude to democracy, to elections, to fair play, and to governing. Voters in a given poll not likely to go your way? Rent a mob, barge in with a bunch of thugs, start screeching over-the-top accusations of illegality, and try to make off with the ballot box.

The Harper Machine's priorities

Rounding up students who have pics of themselves with Iggy on their Facebook pages: Priority One. Bring the Mounties in if necessary.

Making sure high-ranking officials with access to sensitive information don't have long criminal records and multiple fraud convictions: meh. Whatever.

And don't forget to blame your staff when it blows up in your face.

Come on, now. Harper's no chicken

Stephen Harper is campaigning in a bubble.

He can't face audiences that haven't been pre-screened.

#Elxn41, first week in review: Harper's character flaws exposed

First lap.

So what's the dominant storyline to emerge from Week One? In my respectful submission, it's got to be the limits of the Harper machine's message control, and his petulant reaction to its failure.

Shamelessly stolen from Far and Wide

Steve V joins Stageleft in the exclusive-but-growing club of people from whom I have shamelessly lifted content.

(Ah, who am I kidding. Said club is anything but exclusive.)

This does not imply endorsement or partisan leanings, mind. It just made me laugh so hard the tea came out my nose.

Sorry, folks, I'd really hoped to have something a little more cerebral, but it's late and I'm suffering a brain cramp. More tomorrow. In the meantime, let's stay on message ...

Updated meme: Harper is a small man

Well, perhaps the Harpobots have turned the page on all that shrill and reckless fearmongering about coalitions, especially given Harper's hypocrisy. No doubt they'll keep the armies of Attack Parrots^TM busy with a daily diet of coalition hysteria, but the ShrillHarper meme is there for that.

Let's update, my progressive friends. Modest suggestion in this regard: the quality of Stephen Harper's character.

Stephen Harper talks about Japan: grace and sensitivity personified

OK, so I'm piling on. Sue me.

Guy takes an earthquake and rapidly spiralling nuclear disaster and tries to milk it for political advantage. Links here, here, here, and here.

Just when you think he can't possibly top himself. Thousands of deaths, a country devastated and about to go radioactive, and he's thinking, hmmm, can I spin this for votes?

Steve? You are one Class Act, buddy.

Stephen Harper's pathetic Zio-fawning

Over at Let Freedom Rain*, two posts from Jymn note the courageous stand taken by the activists of Young Jewish Proud, in contrast to Steve's craven leg-humping. By now we're all familiar with the pattern: "standing with Israel" inevitably dovetails with pathetic and transparent attempts to equate all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, making it easier to criminalize it as "hate speech" and thus silence it along with any substantive debate. Anyone think Ezra, that principled Free Speech Warrior, will have a problem with that? What are the odds? If these little Ziobots have their way, the very phrase "Palestinian human rights" will soon be verboten.

Narratives, from the personal to the political

I keep harping on this, I know, but it's for a reason – acknowledging the importance of the stories people tell themselves and the weight they attach to those stories is frequently the first step in effecting change, whether it's at a purely personal level or at the macro/social level.

Those stories, whether they're accurate reflections of fact or fucked-up dysfunctional compensations, form touchstones. They are the scripts whereby we live our lives. They provide the cues and the guideposts we use in responding to events, to new information. They provide the internal filing systems we use to organize what we know and what we learn and slot it into categories; how we react to things depends very much on how they fit into those categories. The stories may or may not be true. They don't have to make sense or even appear coherent to external observers, objective or otherwise. As long as they make sense to us, we hang on to them.

So much of your identity and sense of yourself is wrapped up in that narrative, in fact, that it provides a psychic and emotional touchstone. To have it challenged, in whole or in part, is akin to having your psychic anchor taken away. The more you have invested in your storyline, the more resistant you're going to be to any attempt to redefine or rewrite it. And that's true, I'd submit, regardless of whether you're talking about a single person attempting to deal with personal issues or a defined group attempting to deal with social and political change.

Could that be part of the explanation for Susan Crean's account of her encounter with Stephen Harper in 1992? She recalls:

When the man learned that she had co-authored a certain book about American domination of Canadian and Quebec politicians, the man responded: "You should not have been allowed to write that book."

The man: Stephen Harper. Crean never forgot his words, but especially the word allowed. The room full of writers in Ottawa issued a gasp.

Crean later elaborated on the encounter. "Harper spoke to me first and asked if I had written 'that book.' I asked which one, and he mentioned Two Nations, which I wrote with Quebec activist/sociologist and well known independentiste Marcel Rioux. ... Harper was clearly still angry about having had to read it at university. In his view, I took it, the book was treasonous. I was so shaken by his words, and his open hostility, that I immediately left the dining room."

-- Lawrence Scanlan, A less proud country, Ottawa Citizen, July 28, 2010

Perhaps Stephen Harper has a different recollection of the encounter. I'd be delighted to hear him share it. Scanlan argues, however, that the exchange suggests an impulse on Harper's part to suppress and control viewpoints with which he disagrees, and that his government is being criticized, almost two decades later, for exactly that.

I haven't read the book in question, and I've never met either Susan Crean or Stephen Harper. What I'd like to believe, however naively, is that we can affirm our individual and collective rights to disagree among ourselves, and to advance the storylines of our choosing -- without bringing the coercive power of the State down upon our heads, and without inviting the rhetorical bludgeons of the Sun Medias / Fox News Corporations of the world.

Disagreement and dissent are fundamental to citizenship in open societies. They're inseparable from civil discourse, free speech and free inquiry. In these times, remembering that is more important than ever.