I know, I know. Maybe I'm getting too old for this shit. Maybe I found another hobby. Who knows?
But I just couldn't not share the wit and wisdom to be found in this -- hey! Who said "paranoid fever swamp?" I'll thank you not to finish my sentences for me, and -- hey! Who said "wannabe MAGAheads?" That's just rude!
Patriotic Canadians™, top to bottom, they are. Ask them about George Soros next.
Aw, come on, you old sourpuss! Can it really be that bad? Well, maybe. He smiles nicely for the camera.
What's that? I'm being mean, you say? Unfair, even? Because you just know people so deeply invested in a toxic and dysfunctional status quo will happily hand the top job over to a guy who's going to fix it!
Yeah, well. I hesitate to direct traffic that way by linking to it, but the screen grab's above.
Rest of it continues in the same vein -- sexism, racism, homophobia, and fat-shaming union members, mixed in with the occasional smirking Jack Layton rub-and-tug reference or equally witty and creative reference to Olivia as "chow-chow."
Ah, the Toronto Sun. Not only spewing hatred, ignorance and belligerent stupidity, but providing a home for it from their toothless, badly-tattooed "readers" as well.
Late-night submissions on a heavy Sunday night ...
I thought I'd seen, heard and read it all by now.
That worthless piece of shit used dum-dum bullets. The cherry on the shit sundae.
Another sick, cruel piece of shit says those kids all but deserved what they got because, apparently, they said some things that weren't abjectly devoted to Israel.
And a few other worthless yammering transmitters have been treating the facts as an inconvenient speed bump in their haste to continue repeating their revolting message of Islamophobia and demonization.
A lot's been written and posted about Stacy Bonds and the vicious cowardly scumbags in Ottawa police uniforms who beat and sexually assaulted her, but thwap's just done a masterful job putting it all into context.
I've been on for some time about citizenship and its attendant obligations: essentially, being a citizen carries responsibilities as well as rights. Several previous posts have gone into that in a fair bit of detail. (By no means am I suggesting that those are the last word on the subject; as always, whatever I argue here is intended, more than anything else, to spur dialogue. Healthy democracies require several things, not the least of which is discursive and civic engagement.)
That said, the tragic and infuriating saga surrounding Omar Khadr brings the corollary into sharp relief. In brief, it's the rather obvious truth that citizenship also confers certain rights, not the least of which is that you get to count on your government to look out for you. If citizens have responsibilities, then so do governments, and what could be more fundamental than any government's obligation to safeguard the rights and interests of its citizens?
The circumstances surrounding Omar Khadr and how he came to find himself in front of a U.S. military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay are all pretty well common knowledge. Regardless of his religious and political beliefs and his family background, he is a Canadian citizen and as such he is entitled to expect the Government of Canada to come to his assistance with whatever legal and diplomatic resources it can muster.
That the government of Stephen Harper can simply blow off its obligations in this regard is perhaps the most appalling part. Never mind the dubious and nebulous "illegal combatant" status under which he and other prisoners at Guantanamo are being detained. Never mind the overarching context for all of this, namely the U.S. government's ill-starred imperial misadventure in Afghanistan. Never mind the shabby, racist and Islamophobic political calculus underlying the Harper government's conduct. How can a government of any political stripe blithely and arrogantly shrug off its responsibilities like this and not suffer lasting and fatal political damage?
Since when does a democratic government get to pick and choose which of its obligations it has to honour?
Since when does a democratic government get to pick and choose which of its citizens it stands up for? As Alex Himelfarb argues,
What matters here is that basic rights, the legal rights of one of our citizens, are being denied. These legal rights are about protecting us and our liberty from the intrusive and coercive power of the state. We are all in trouble here – wherever we sit on the political continuum – if any one of our citizens is denied the right of a fair and just process when their liberty is at stake. When this happens, the value of our common citizenship is diminished.
In truth, it's depressing as hell that we even have to go through this. It's like having to explain first principles all over again, when any informed and thoughtful conversation should – must, in fact – be based on mutually agreed-upon ground rules. Further evidence, I'd submit, of just how far the goal posts have been moved, ethically, legally and politically.
This diminishes us all. I don't mean to sound sententious, but it's hard to believe that any polity can sustain this much vandalism to its moral fabric and not lose something of its soul.
