Fiscal demonization of @OccupyTO continues on CTV | #classwarfare

Like clockwork, the corporate media are swinging into action. Or perhaps like robots.

Either way, the narrative is being reinforced and amplified. Just now on CTV a "news" report is pegging the cost of Occupy at something over $714,000. Police, EMS, landscaping, etc.

@cityslikr lights @SueAnnLevy up like a pinball machine

(With an apology to pinball machines everywhere.)

That @cityslikr fella can be wonderfully succinct sometimes. I retweeted this earlier, but it deserves a whole blog post.

Word. If you're ever curious about why so many of our fellow citizens seem ruled by fear, resentment, and ignorance, the Venomous Loser^TM  and her hateful little screeds are a big part of the reason. Sun Media's toxic effect just wouldn't be as toxic without her.

Some years ago, a singer / songwriter / satirist by the name of Tom Lehrer was said to have summed up his musical career thus:

If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.

He was talking tongue in cheek, of course.

Related posts:

• BCL catches @SueAnnLevy rewriting history, smearing brave firefighters
• @SueAnnLevy in her own words
• Best use of the word "socialist" this month
• Winning back the words: a subversive's work is never done
• #SunMedia and journalistic ethics: another juxtaposition

BCL catches @SueAnnLevy rewriting history, smearing brave firefighters

BigCityLib Strikes Back: In Case You ARE Wondering

Don't know why BCL isn't on the Tweeter, but that's up to him.

In the meantime, seems the Venomous Loser^TM is perfectly happy to use Toronto's firefighters and their taxpayer-funded equipment as a campaign prop ...

Click to view at full size

But, well, you know ... that was then, and this is now.

... one wonders, is it unseemly to point out that the guy has to be there whether there's actually a fire or not, just in case? Just in the cause of raising the tone of civic discourse, instead of pandering to the lizard-brains and all that ...

As BCL writes:

So, no, Sue Ann, the union hasn't been keeping a file on you.  Turns out you were keeping one on yourself. By the way, if you want to theorize on why Sue Ann has gone out of her way to trash T.O. firefighters, well, consider this: their union took her to the Ontario Press Council in 2007 and hosed her down.  

Sue Ann? Time to stop digging, maybe.

Related posts:

• @SueAnnLevy in her own words
• Let's hear from a couple of Sun News Network fans
• Why the liars are winning
• Winning back the words: a subversive's work is never done

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold

  


My friends, there's no denying the impact of the past couple of days. The way it stands now, we're going to have to live with a Harper majority for the next four or five years.

And while it's nice to fantasize about the Conservatives doing themselves in by getting too comfortable, or too arrogant, or taking the muzzles off their backbench whackjobs and throwing some red meat to their so-con base, we can't count on that. How we organize to fight this is going to be the subject of several blog posts, and perhaps the strategic focus behind worthwhile Canadian initiatives such as the one currently being organized over at Sixth Estate. Check it out when you can.

But getting organized is also going to mean facing some uncomfortable truths: about the polarization of Canadian politics, about the role of the media, and about the role of the Liberal Party.

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.

@SueAnnLevy in her own words

What's that website again? Blogging Tories in Their Own Words?

(I have a slight problem with the appropriation of voice implicit in the use of the term "Tories" in this context, but I'll let that go for now.)

Iggy and Harper, one on one?

 

Two white guys in ties

Tricky business, this. What's a good non-partisan guy supposed to do?

Looks like Iggy (14:44 this afternoon) and Harper (16:33) are getting set to drop the gloves. (If anyone's got a screen grab of Harpoon's initial tweet, email me.)

Another malignant election

No surprise. The blogosphere is all a-buzz with talk of impending election. Some of its progressive inhabitants are almost swooning with the thought that we might, finally, be able to rid ourselves of Spiteful Steve.

It's a nice thought. And yet ...

Keith Olbermann out at MSNBC

And here I was thinking that broadcasting in the United States couldn't get any dumber.

Rationality, critical thinking and Phil Plait: the limits of civil discourse

As you can tell by looking over to the right a little, I follow quite a few blogs. Dozens, in fact. Lots of friends on Facebook and hundreds of tweeters as well. And sometimes I just go surfing, clicking on links without any preconceived objective, just to keep reading. So I can't really remember how I found this, but thank you to whoever pointed me to it.

Phil Plait - Don't Be A Dick from JREF on Vimeo.

Rather timely, I think, because it's hard to be a skeptic, especially given the institutional energy devoted to pushing packaged narratives and manufactured storylines. It's never been easy to swim against the current, let alone persuade others to do likewise.

What's particularly worthwhile about Plait's presentation, though, is the passage from which the title is taken (at about the 24:30 mark). As he argues, no matter how wrong people's beliefs are, you're not likely to convince them they're mistaken if you're insulting them. Mea culpa, therefore, given the tone of yesterday's post about Rob Ford's supporters and "suburban fury."

But it raises a number of issues, for me at least, about civility and civil discourse. I've written previously about the obligations of civic engagement, and how the tone of public conversation has been poisoned and corrupted, deliberately, by the likes of Fox Noise and the Rove / Murdoch cult. You don't have to dig too deep to see Stephen Harper, Kory Teneycke and the folks at Sun Media using the same playbook. 

One of the comments on Plait's presentation argues that debate isn't so much about changing your opponent's mind as it is about convincing as many members of the audience as possible. Plait himself alludes to that, I think, in his remarks about the "big tent." Whether you agree with that or not, though, it implies another question: when you're making an argument, whom are you trying to convince? And does it indeed suggest that a commitment to civil discourse implies an obligation to listen respectfully and hear out any and all opposing viewpoints, no matter how outlandish?

I haven't worked this out in full, but this, I think, is where I run up against the limits of Phil Plait's argument. One of the worst aspects of the Karl Rove playbook, and one we see the Harper government embracing with relish, is the calculated devaluing of science, evidence-based decisionmaking, and acquired expertise. The script is familiar: dismiss experts as elitists out of touch with real people, and insist on "balance,"and demand that people should hear "both sides of the issue." It's how the denialists manage to derail any serious attempts to address climate change, for example.  

The effect is to set up a whole array of false equivalencies based on two faulty assumptions: firstly, that complex issues can be reduced to a simple "he said / she said" storyline, and secondly, that both sides of this artificially framed issue are valid and deserving of equal time. Which is why we see entire social movements devoted to pushing creationism, and school textbooks forced to include disclaimers that evolution is just a theory.  

And this is where I get off the bus. Yes, civil discourse is preferable to inflammatory rhetoric, and yes, reasoned debate is better than screaming and namecalling. But there's no obligation to treat creationism, cultish superstition or other forms of manufactured stupidity with the same weight or serious consideration as the body of scientific, rationally tested and demonstrated knowledge we've developed since the Enlightenment. And if people continue to cling to it in the face of fact and evidence, out of laziness, dogmatism or sheer spite, they don't deserve to be treated with respect.

If that makes me a snobby condescending elitist, fine. Sue me.

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.