Just how fucking stupid are Ford supporters, anyway? | #TOpoli

Dipshit's latest performance in the wake of Monday night's rainstorm shouldn't be any surprise. Yeah, we know – the mayor's office is currently occupied by a petulant, incompetent, man-child with no abstract thinking skills, no grasp of the difference between true and false, and a sense of entitlement the size of a Cadillac Escalade. Tell me something I don't know.

Seriously, though – Nenshi comparisons aside, the guy's idea of leadership is to sit in his fucking SUV with the engine running and the A/C cranked while the city staffers he spends his days pissing on actually work to fix things? And then tell everyone else to reduce their power consumption? How can anyone still take this fuckwit seriously, let alone support him?

Nothing new here either, except maybe confirmation that reading the Sun or listening to Jerry Agar makes stupid people even stupider. [*cough* NunziataMinnan-WongDiGiorgioKellyPalacioCrisantiMammo *cough*] This is how what's left of Ford Asspimple thinks:

They don't want to pay taxes to fund the maintenance of public infrastructure, but when it rains and the sewer system overflows, they'll complain about having to waddle through puddles of their own shit.

They don't want to pay taxes to support programs that keep at-risk youth out of trouble, and then they sit and bitch about crime.

They don't want to pay taxes for realistic and affordable public transit, but they'll whine about gridlock and blame it on bike lanes and streetcars.

At this point, anyone who can still support Rob Ford is just as much of a moron as he is, and even if there once was a reason to pretend otherwise, that reason's toast by now. These people are so stupid, shallow, resentful and easily manipulated that they'll swim in their own shit just to spite everyone else. I wouldn't give a fuck, except that they're getting it all over everything, and high-fiving each other at what's probably the greatest accomplishment of what passes for their lives.

Related posts:

• Via @cityslikr: #Fordfest, integrity, and the slow but steady fouling of the public sphere | #TOpoli
• Mayor Stupid plays grabass with @ThomsonTO. Fuckwits rush to excuse it | #TOpoli
• @ThomsonTO fires back at @TOMayorFord. Cue flying-monkey / Sun "reader" attack | #TOpoli

David Olive (@TheGrtRecession), Team Ford, and that whole 'deserve' thing again

With this blog post at the Star, David Olive goes on a bit of a roll, getting in some pretty good zingers at Mayor Stupid and Brother Stupider.

Police budgets, and how a phony narrative gets manufactured

Earlier this week, the Star ran an essay in which the best mayor Toronto's had in the last half-century argues that there's plenty of wasteful spending in the police budget, and that if the Ford regime is serious about trimming fat and stopping the gravy train, there's lots of room to cut there.

Ford's ascendancy, explained

For the last day or so, I've been thinking about Alex Himelfarb's wonderfully thoughtful essay on why people vote against their own interests. Again, nothing I can say to improve upon it.

And now, a perfect illustration: from the Star today, it seems that Rob Ford is “tapping into suburban fury.”

So what is this “fury,” and why, since the Star never explains, should anyone take it seriously?

Is it just the usual “I don't wanna pay taxes for those condescending downtown elitists / lazy overpaid unionized thugs / tax-and-spend socialists / artsy-fartsy communists, yargle bargle bleghhh, drool ... ” horseshit?

If that's it, then fuck that and the people thinking it. A toxic brew of inchoate rage, ignorance and resentment is not the same thing as committed citizenship. And it's time we stopped coddling it and pretending it's something that needs to be humoured or respected.

Honestly, are people no longer capable of thinking except in clichés? Has anyone noticed how easily “mad as hell and not going to take it any more” morphs into “lazy, stupid, belligerent and unwilling to do anything that actually requires thoughtful engagement?”

That's why Ford's leading. That's what Stephen Harper taps into. That's why Sarah Palin is, well, Sarah Palin. And that's what's behind the outbreak of teabaggery to the south, along with a healthy dose of bigotry, racism, and well-orchestrated fear and scapegoating of The Other – all conveniently misdirected so that no one can see who really benefits from just how dysfunctional things have become.

It's a simple, easy-to-grasp narrative, unaffected by facts, devoid of context, and willingly propagated by the Fox Noise wannabes at Sun Media. An easily exploited, all-purpose current of spite, resentment and anti-social sentiment – in other words, the perfect basis upon which to build a healthy community. Not.

Ok, this census thing is getting out of hand

Two of my favourite progressive observers have noted the speed and suddenness with which the flying monkeys of the right have swung into line behind the Harpokons' inexplicable attack on the long-form census. As Chet Scoville notes at The Vanity Press, a couple of weeks ago nobody was even talking about it, but now it's tapping into long-held beliefs and long-suppressed rage and resentment of Condescending Urban Elitist Big Government Socialism. The fact that even Tom Flanagan's baffled by it is beside the point.

And note as well the all-or-nothing nature of some of the anti-census commentary. As Cathie from Canada notes, there's no nuance, no grey, nothing – it's all wrapped up in one big ball of string. If we let them collect census data, the next thing we know they'll be coming for our guns and forcing us to marry gay Muslims.

Another manifestation of the toxic right-wing tropes the Harpokons seem determined to import from their teabagging friends to the south. As we've seen in the case of the birthers, facts don't matter to these people. And when the facts get in the way of the narrative or the ideology, guess what gets thrown out the window?

That's the thing about manufactured controversies. For decades, nobody's gotten their knickers in a twist about the census, but out of nowhere, there's this huge groundswell of organized opposition to it? A grassroots movement of resentment that's been building for years? Can anyone say astroturf?