When Hacks Attack, Part Two: Sheer Hack Attack!

As a public service, I hereby append below an internal memorandum allegedly sent by "Conservative" Party brass to "Conservative" riding presidents.

I prefer not to divulge how it came into my possession, and I can’t reliably vouch for its authenticity. I’m rather dubious, frankly: Harperoids have come to be (wisely) leery of leaving paper trails. In any case, it certainly seems genuine. It is most likely the first draft of a memo that was ultimately edited into respectability by one of the party's half-dozen grown-ups, in case it got leaked. Enjoy!

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Dear Riding Association Presidents:


In order to keep ourselves and our camp-following sycophants dunked in the vast plankton-rich trough of federal emoluments, our party has striven to fine-tune its electoral mechanism to the kind of exacting standard that you--the faceless, toadying party functionary--demand and deserve.

We have ruthlessly cut costs. We have performed efficiencies in key process elements. For instance, we’ve realised how unnecessary it is to run homo sapiens candidates in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Accordingly, after careful feedback and focus-group analyses, our party has hypothesised that the carcasses of dead squirrels stuffed with sawdust and impaled on wooden kebabs painted in party colours can hold CPC ridings with pluralities at par with or even greater than current levels. Running low-maintenance road-kill in safe SaskAlberta ridings will allow us to move resources to more challenging ridings.

The short questionnaire you see before you is part of our new, dynamic election-readiness tool-kit. It is designed to help you identify God-fearing CPC-friendly voters among the molten, unsentient mass of fundamentally lazy and bolshevist quasi-Talibs with which Canada is ridden.

We suggest you urge as many of your heathen riding mates as possible to complete the brief survey; then, carefully analyse their responses. Waste no further time and effort on those who score high: they’re ours. Naturally, most will score low. After adding their names to our official “Enemies of Stephen Harper and Therefore Possibly Al-Qaeda Sleeper Agents” master-list, spend some time with them in respectful, constructive dialogue (a cattle-prod is included in your package for this purpose). At the bottom of the survey, you’ll find a legend detailing what the results mean and offering tips on how to proceed with your evangelism.

Good luck, and good hunting!


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1. The word "liberal" makes me think of:

a) Someone who espouses what has arguably been the most potent political tradition in the post-Enlightenment West [1 point];

b) A naive, tax-grabbing statist [3 points];

c) A bilingual ballet enthusiast who thinks he's better than me [5 points].



2. The word "feminist" means:

a) Someone committed to the legal and social equality of women [1 point];

b) A radical who seeks to overthrow Western patriarchy [3 points];

c) A fat ugly dyke on the rag [5 points].



3. The word “France” refers to:

a) A great European nation that has been crucial to the development of Western civilisation and that established the foundations of Canada’s European heritage [1 point];

b) One of the senior members of the European Union [3 points];

d) A nation of over-scented queers in perpetual search of someone to surrender to [5 points].



4. "A Mare Usque Ad Mare" means:

a) "From Sea to Sea" [1 point];

b) Something I need to Google [3 points];

c) Some faggy Latin shit [5 points].



5. The Fathers of Confederation are:

a) The men who knitted together the main elements of Canada's geo-political fabric [1 point];

b) A group of colonial pragmatists desperate to escape the Act of Union's legislative straightjacket [3 points];

c) A bunch of hacks too stupid to sue for admission to the U.S.A [5 points].



6. My favourite political philosopher is:

a) George Grant [1 point];

b) Thomas Paine [3 points];

c) Larry the Cable Guy [5 points].



7. The "War on Terror" is:

a) A misguided and potentially catastrophic U.S.-led militarisation of what is really a development issue [1 point];

b) A noble but poorly executed effort at nation-building [3 points];

c) The inspiration for some of my favourite fridge magnets [5 points].



8. G.W. Bush's words, "You're either for us or against us" were:

a) An unstatesmanlike burst of arrogance unhelpful to the building of an effective post-9/11 Western alliance [1 point];

b) An unfortunate but understandable lapse in judgment [3 points];

c) Redundant. Of course I was going to be for him: he was my President [5 points].



9. Stephen Harper's assertion that Canada is a second-tier socialist backwater was:

a) Boorish and unpatriotic [1 point];

b) Wrong, but fair comment [3 points];

c) So cool that I made my girlfriend scrawl Harper's words onto her left thigh, right next to her tattoo of Merle Haggard [5 points].



10. Canada's consistent record of maintaining a higher standard of living than America's is:

a) Proof of the preferability of Canadian society [1 point];

b) Interesting but irrelevant [3 points];

c) Typical Canadian America-bashing [5 points].




Results:


35-50: Yeehah! This subject is a member of our natural constituency. In fact, he's probably Kathy Shaidle. Only a lobotomy could make him more devoutly committed to our cause. He needs no further proselytising. Move on.

20-35: This subject is in the ballpark, but he’s still far too much of a typical defeatist, can’t-do Canadian. Administer a copy of Atlas Shrugged immediately. Have him re-take the survey within two weeks. Who knows? By that time, he may have suffered an IQ-suppressing head injury and become more open to persuasion.

10-20: Any further effort on this far-left terrorist would be wasted. Make sure to send his name to party headquarters so that we may issue a security certificate and arrange for his indefinite detention.

"When Hacks Attack!": Part One

I think it is now safe to say that the CPC's "Just Visiting" anti-Ignatieff ad campaign has become the most obsessively scrutinised shitzkrieg* ever mounted by a Dominion party in our history. Launched over a month ago, it haunts us still. It has certainly surpassed the P.C. Party's "Is This a Prime Minister" anti-Chrétien sally in '93 as an object of pundit-driven fascination as to its motivation, generation, and effect on voter intention.

The consensus seems to be that it is vile and unprecedented. That it is vile is arguable. That it is unprecedented is even more arguable. If it is unprecedented, it is only so in its timing and in its authorship.

For one may be surprised (and disappointed) to see such a thing occur outside of an election, and one cannot help but be surprised to see the battle-axe of populist class war taken out of the hands of the NDP, its traditional wielder, by the political helots of our affluent continentalist élite, but one cannot be surprised by the campaign's abject meanness, for, as I've been strangely delighted to discover (or re-discover, really), corrosive vitriol on the Canadian hustings is a venerable part of our electoral heritage that an aberrant three generations of relative civility have served to wipe from Canada's collective memory. We Canadians have nothing as famous and widely quoted as the Lincoln-Douglas debates to remind us that we were political beings before the invention of the refrigerator. If we did, we would realise that the rank partisan vindictiveness of the last four years has been not a cultural departure for Canadians as much as a recrudescence.

As part of my summer reading program, I've been delving into S.F. Wise's God's Peculiar People, a collection of essays concerning the political culture of pre-rebellion Upper Canada, specifically its surprising degree of chauvinistic messianism (something we naturally tend to think of as being inherently anti-Canadian). I suppose we should all be grateful that Canada's early 19th-century historical record is dominated by the contest between reformers and Tories, for the accounts of their murderously bitter reciprocal rhetorical eviscerations can be a joy to read and serve as some of the most genuinely compelling sparks of real life amid a record that is often (ignorantly) accused of being soporifically dry.

In one essay, Wise describes an 1834 by-election in Kingston, in which Tory community pillar Christopher Hagerman, expecting to walk into the seat unopposed, ended up being challenged by a quickly drafted Reform candidate from Toronto, one William O'Grady, suspended priest and editor of radical newspaper the Canadian Correspondent. The phrase, "Send in the clowns," doesn't even begin to approximate an adequate invocation for the circus that ensued.

The reform-minded defrocked preacher was apparently no media darling in the heart of Loyalist country. The Tory Coburg Star warned its readers:

"O'Grady, of the Correspondent, has been skulking about here for the last two or three days, by way, we suppose, of trying his sophistry among the Catholics; but it's a no go. The 'Gentleman in Black' can neither hide his tail nor his hoof".

And CPC acolytes whine about "media bias". Talk to me when the Globe and Mail equates Harper with Satan, guys.

O'Grady retaliated against this press persecution with a suitable though perhaps not focus-group-refined performance. He addressed a meeting, and, "holding a copy of the [Tory] Kingston Chronicle in his hand, [excoriated] 'this mean, low, pitiful and grovelling rag,' run by a Yankee editor who is 'an infamous liar and a despicable miscreant'". Goodness me. I think we've just found the patron saint of the blogosphere.

Anyways, once the campaign began in earnest, things really got ugly. At a public debate, O'Grady expounded upon his anti-Tory agenda in defiant and apocalyptic terms:

"It is a glorious thing to commence in this hot-bed of toryism the battle of reform...and though the Reformers may not, for the present, be able to slay the Goliath, is it not a glorious thing, that on examining the materials of the pedestal on which [Hagerman] stands and discovering their rottenness...we may anticipate the not far distant day...when public opinion will dash the proud Colossus in the dust?"

Note to Ignatieff: that, my loving patriot, is how to tell a guy you're going to mess with him until you're done.

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* Shitzkrieg: a neologistic portmanteau Dred Toryism, composed of a truncated form of "bullshit" (i.e. "nonsense", "gibberish") and "krieg" (i.e. "assault"); it denotes any political "communications" campaign designed to flood the media with trivia as a way of distracting the public’s attention from issues that matter.

"Out of the Depths, Have I Sought Even Deeper Depths, O Lord!": Stephen Harper's De Profundis, Part Two

No "Conservative" activist has provided higher multi-fuck-up value for dollar than Ottawa mayor and former temp-agency CEO Larry O'Brien. This man's plunge from the twin Everests of his massive ego and colossal managerial incapability has been painful to witness, especially as so much goodwill is owed someone who has advanced so far in life despite the handicap of looking like he's been indifferently cross-assembled from the physiognomic fragments of Lex Luthor, Daddy Warbucks, and Stalin's most brutish-looking Byelorussian NKVD Commissar.

Now, most of the major national media outlets that have been watching his bribery trial have assumed that O'Brien fully intended to prove himself not guilty of the Crown's charges. That is, after all, conventional. Sadly, things have not gone well for the mayor.

For weeks, the court has been treated to testimony placing O'Brien at the heart of the "Conservative" machine in Ottawa. In fact, he was recruited and groomed personally by John Reynolds, ex-CPC M.P., influential party bag-man and rain-maker, and trusted Stephen Harper confidante. Reynolds wanted O'Brien to run federally, but O'Brien decided to carry the CPC flag in the 2006 mayoralty race instead--selflessly--just to bring a little of the Harper magic to us socialist, Northern European Ottawan barbarians. According to testimony, the O'Brien network is a Who's Who of the CPC's Ottawa nomenklatura: Baird operatives, Poilievre aides--they're all there, brokering (allegedly) some sort of deal between O'Brien and Terry Kilrea, the potentially vote-splitting right-wing candidate whom O'Brien is accused of buying off with an appointment to the Parole Board.

On Monday, after watching witness after witness effectively corroborate Kilrea's damning version of events, O'Brien's defence team performed a stunning volte face; it asked the presiding judge to render a directed verdict, something normally brought down in order to dismiss a Crown case for lack of evidence but which would, in this case, dismiss the charges for not fitting into the relevant provisions of the Criminal Code. In effect, the defence is arguing that O'Brien's alleged offence is not covered by the law and is thus perfectly legal.

Specifically, the defence contends that the law is meant to criminalise only the act of promising a monetary reward for doing someone a political favour; the promise of a political reward, they argue, is lawful. Thus, it would have been corrupt of O'Brien to have tempted Kilrea with an envelope full of cash, but, since he sought to have Kilrea whore himself for a seat on the Parole Board, O'Brien's in the clear. Lost in this mincing quibbling, apparently, is the obvious fact that a lucrative Parole Board position is, collaterally, a monetary reward.

Ottawa scribe Randall Denley puts the situation in perspective quite lucidly, I think:

According to the defence, offering someone a federal job as an inducement to drop out of a mayoral race is legally acceptable behaviour. The Crown contends that it's not, despite politicians' history of using Senate and cabinet appointments to politically benefit the party in power...If [the judge] determines that there is nothing illegal about what O'Brien is alleged to have done, he is putting a judicial stamp of approval on conduct that stinks...The political culture of senior levels of government has played a dominant role in what is actually a municipal issue...The defence is relying on Canadians' deep cynicism about the honesty of politicians...In the world described in court, unethical behaviour and even stuff that is technically illegal is the everyday fare of what is rather grandly referred to as "political discourse"...Our standards of political behaviour are certainly low. If his defence is successful, O'Brien will have done his bit to help move the bar even lower.

Stephen Harper's "Conservative" party has finally effected a profound reform of Canada's culture of governance, one entirely consistent with its tradition of grotesque political perversity. This party, that strode and swaggered across this country in strident presumed possession of a total monopoly of political integrity, that vowed to extinguish corruption and maintain the highest ethical standards of conduct, that made the "Accountability Act" the key element of its legislative agenda and the heart of the party's moral bona fides, has now outdone the mere passive betrayal of its ideals.

This party has requested, through its loyal Ottawa agent, that political bribery--the most egregious of all the forms of corruption that appal Canadians--be enshrined in Canadian case law as an acceptable, lawful practice. This precedent having been set, the "Conservative" Party will have succeeded in legally institutionalising the worst, most ignoble manifestation of the very corruption the eradication of which is ostensibly their raison d'etre.

The CPC has become the most avidly concupiscent carrier of the venereal disease that has been chancering our body politic for decades. The "Conservative" pretence to be anything else but the defalcating exploiters and enablers of what is worst about our society is the most offensive and least convincing piece of political quackery to be inflicted upon this country in living memory. This earnest appeal on behalf of the élite's right to scoff at the natural law, by the way, comes right on the heels of the CPC's attempt to force judges to impose harsh prison time on people caught growing a quantity of marijuana carrying an intoxicating effect roughly equal to that of a bottle of wine. Bribe an ideological co-militant to slime into City Hall, and walk away with the prize; grow some grass, and go to jail. That's "justice" in Stephen Harper's Canada.

In order to rinse out the bitter taste this case leaves in my mouth, I read this piece about Alex Munter, the young, bright and capable man whose mayoral aspirations were crushed by the demagogic smears of the smiling CPC simian who now begs us to shrug away his flippant debasement of normative civic standards. I read that Munter is not bitter; he seeks no vengeance; he is happy doing productive, necessary work with at-risk youth.

I reflect that, in Stephen Harper's Canada, it seems to be the doom of the good, the honest, and the virtuous to lose, and the fate of the scum to rise to the top. If legally codifying that civic dysfunction is not a crime against humanity, I don't know what is.

"Out of the Depths, Have I Sought Even Deeper Depths, O Lord!": Stephen Harper's De Profundis, Part One

One of the drollest of neo-conservative follies is the belief that government can and should be run "like a business". This formula--often taken seriously even by those alive to the futility of trying to run a train like a yacht--presupposes the notion that the ethos of selling as dearly as possible what one has made as cheaply as possible is both the key to sound national stewardship and the very essence of ministerial integrity.

This notion totally inverts the facts, of course, as does every article of neo-con faith: the optimal way for a government to pursue its rational self-interest (defined by maximising its return and minimising its costs) is to do precisely nothing on behalf of the electors it ostensibly serves: according to pure market values, it is illogical for a federal government to waste its four-year span of electoral impunity working on behalf of a people whose assent it no longer requires and who haven't the power to penalise the incumbents no matter how wasteful, arrogant, or inefficient they are; instead, the logic of pure self-interest requires government caucus members to use their four-year executive monopoly to enjoy and invest whatever personal equity they can extract from their position, particularly by cultivating the kinds of corporate contacts that will enrich them after their legislative mandate elapses or is withdrawn.

If this sounds uncomfortably close to the way Canadian governments actually operate, it is only because governments from across the ideological spectrum all do tend to behave like businesses, as will any human system that confers instant privilege, power and wealth upon ambitious social climbers with weak or expired commitments to any notion of civic responsibility.

"Running a government like a business" means producing as much wealth as possible for the party's shareholders (i.e. M.P.'s , party members and camp followers) whilst doing as little on behalf of tax-payers as possible--in other words, doing precisely what causes Canadians to throw out governments in disgust every eight years or so. This is not a formula for "efficiency" or "accountability"; it is a formula for the sad, dreadful status quo, and its dreary consequences are not the result of political "failure" in the strict sense but of an intentionally elaborated programme.

We need to keep all of this in mind when assessing the performance of Stephen Harper's regime: what appear to be its failures and scandals are actually the perfectly normal and predictable output of the CPC's business model of governance. In fact, it is on this most fundamental level that the CPC has arguably performed at its best, at its most creative, and at its most inspired.

Honest analyses of "Conservative" crises will reveal all the symptoms of an aggressive, disciplined approach to the "government-as-business" model: not content with safe, narrow, low-yield disasters, Harper's government has always sought functional depth in its flagrancies and has been content only when its wretched incompetence and venalities have achieved synergistic cross-platform interoperability.

The Lisa Raitt fiasco serves as a recent example. A Liberal version of this scandal would have seen the offending minister misplace a binder full of classified documents, resign in disgrace, and then quietly reappear in cabinet later when the smoke cleared; the typical Liberal inability to innovate, improvise and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances would have allowed this event to pass by without having its full potential exploited.

In sharp contrast, the CPC recognised the polyvalence of the Raitt affair and acted decisively to make sure that Canadians were exposed to the full wattage of its surreal brilliance. First, we heard that the binder was lost; then we heard that its information was classified not because it was dangerous to the state, but because it was dangerous to the party--revealing as it does that the cost of funding Atomic Energy of Canada will likely cost tens of millions more dollars than the government said it would in its January budget. Then we heard that the government fired Raitt's 26-year-old assistant for the misdeed without even bothering to establish that it was she, not her boss, who actually committed the misdeed.

Now, that is how incompetence is done when you really mean it: never be satisfied with the force of just the most obvious dimension of your stupidity; always strive to add value and layered functionality to it. In this case, we have a party caught withholding information the public deserves to have while misusing a classification protocol designed to protect the state while being caught in an act of colossal budgetary ineptitude while betraying ignominious cowardice in its invertebrate refusal to respect the tradition of ministerial responsibility, by which heads of departments have always held themselves accountable for the actions of their subordinates.

Astonishing. That's a four-part invention of uselessness; a tetra-fuck-up. That's the kind of pioneering drive CPC shareholders expect from their party, and, in our increasingly competitive global market environment, it's the kind of drive they deserve.

The Valiants Memorial: Tribute to Cultural Amnesia

Even I failed to notice for far too long.

In late 2007, whilst sauntering across Confederation Square, I was shocked to encounter a series of bronze statues and busts that seemed to have sprung out of the earth overnight. They comprised the new "Valiants Memorial", and they had apparently been there for over a year. Officially unveiled in November 2006, the fourteen larger-than-life-size monuments were commissioned three years earlier by the so-called Valiants Foundation (a motley crew of scholarly and civic potentates) and cast by two Canadian sculptors. The fourteen selected historical personages were meant to embody something very specific. The National Capital Commission puts it this way:

[The statues] become a kind of pageant of our past, showing how certain key turning points in our military history contributed to the building of our country. The memorial is therefore intended to acknowledge and honour the role that military participation, and the men and women who contributed to that participation, have had on nation building.

The memorial's own website (for, nowadays, everything has a website for at least fifteen minutes) says that the statues are there to honour "fourteen valiant men and women, representing many others, who gave outstanding wartime service to Canada during the last four centuries". Now, I do try to keep up with local current affairs, but this project eluded my attention completely during its three-year gestation. There they stood--as if alive--in their grand, massive impassivity. They're quite beautiful, really, though a tad on the socialist realist side. Sue me; I'm a classicist: I expect some stylisation. I don't see the edifying power in the uncannily life-like rendering of Arthur Currie's gaiters.

In a way, this was a wish come true: finally, the nation's capital found the visionary wherewithal to grace itself with monuments to some of the people who have given us our stellar military history--stellar in its humane restraint no less than in its tradition of victory--a history far more praise-worthy than the lamentable chronicle of petty expansionist territorial thievery and banana-republic busting that the southern republic takes as meta-Napoleonic feats of martial achievement.

It was undeniably thrilling to see relative unknowns like the Loyalist John Butler and French-Canadian 1812 hero de Salaberry get their due beside old favourites like Laura Secord (here disappointingly represented as a comely young woman, as cheesy myth would have it, when she was actually well into her thirties during the war).

As the glow of novelty faded, though, I began to find legitimate cause for quibbling. I read the memorial's inscription, "No day will ever erase you from the memory of time," and thought its aspiration absurdly over-optimistic given that so many of the statues were of people who were already erased from Canada's memory--people such as Paul Triquet and Andy Mynarski, both eminently worthy of memorialisation, certainly, but who now live only in the memories of their families and military historians. We are given Sir Arthur Currie, a very able technocrat and the spiritual father of the Canadian Corps, but a man who never experienced one minute of actual fighting and whose achievements couldn't be more perfectly irrelevant to 98% of the Canadian public.

Then I started to notice the bizarre omissions: no Billy Bishop, perhaps the greatest Allied flying ace of the First World War; no Richard Rohmer, the fighter pilot who put Erwin Rommel out of action and thus contributed immeasurably to the success of D-Day; no Guy Simonds, Field-Marshal Montgomery's favourite general-staff officer, the man widely regarded as the most innovative and effective commander during the Normandy campaign.

I thought these lapses odd, coming as they did from a committee boasting scholarly luminaries such as Jack Granatstein and David Bercuson. Then I remembered that Granatstein and Bercuson are among the most strident of Canada's self-hating élite, and I harboured dark suspicions that they had conspired to commit an act of historical sabotage by producing a memorial designed to be irrelevant to the very laypeople to whom it is allegedly intended to appeal.

I tried hard to banish these thoughts; their implications were too odious to contemplate. I gave the Valiants Foundation the benefit of the doubt; I supposed that the memorial was intended not just to commemorate but to educate, to drag from the shadows a series of worthy historical figures who deserve our attention. I immediately wondered, though, why obscure characters even more fascinating, even more reflective of fundamentally Canadian values and aspirations were not chosen.

Where is Richard Pierpoint, a man whose existence has been virtually expunged from our mainstream historical records? A former Senegalese slave, Pierpoint joined Butler's Loyalist Rangers during the Revolution, campaigned against the Americans with distinction, and eventually settled near St. Catherines. At the outbreak of war in 1812, he raised a company of black soldiers (though he was now over sixty years old!) which soon afterwards contributed to the crucial victory at Queenstown Heights.

This qualifies Pierpoint not only as a key figure in Canadian military history but as the first black military leader of consequence in the history of the Americas (as for the Western Hemisphere, Toussaint L'Ouverture beats him by a decade). It would do us no harm to be reminded that 1812 was not just a white man's war: for Canada, it was a multicultural, multiracial mission--Natives, English, Irish, Scots, Hessian Germans, former African slaves, Metis, and French-Canadians banded together in the common cause.

We're told too often that the war's issues were vague, that Canadians were uncommitted and passive, that the stakes were low, and that Canada's militia didn't really know what they were fighting for. Pierpoint and his people knew precisely what they were fighting for: they were free men of colour, repelling a horde of ruthless slave-driving tyrants who sought to extinguish their dearly won liberty. I think that's worth commemorating--that multiracial struggle on behalf of freedom and human dignity, one hundred and forty years before such a thing would be conceivable in the great republic their feats of arms eventually humbled. It's certainly worth more reverent attention than the done-to-death kitsch of Laura Secord's exploit, which merely resulted in the strategically insignificant victory at Beaver Dams.

Anyways, those were my initial thoughts upon seeing the collection for the first time. It was only a month or so later, after passing by the memorial and casting it the briefest of glances on a handful of occasions, that it came to me. I actually stopped to let it sink in. I think we have all at least once in our lives felt the shock of re-emerging into consciousness after blurting an expletive to no one in particular whilst in a momentary trance.

I could not recall which expletive I chose to hurl as I awakened, but I was still reeling at the fact that had inspired it: this Valiants Memorial, erected to "represent critical moments in our military history" and to show how "certain key turning points in our military history contributed to the building of our country" is missing two military footnotes, two of our historical bit-players. You history nerds out there may have heard of them: Generals Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and James Wolfe. Those punks ring a bell?

Christ Almighty. We really are that pathetic. Everywhere else in the world, the Plains of Abraham really happened. In Canada's capital, though--in the very place set aside to celebrate its nation-building military heroes--the event that led to the establishment of the Anglo-Canadian fact, the event that arguably made the American Revolution inevitable and thus represents one of the most significant battles in Western history, did not occur.

Neither Montcalm nor Wolfe died, like the men and women of our Afghan battle-group are dying, in a foreign, unloved land on behalf of spoiled, avaricious élites for whom war is a deliciously diverting board game. No. They never even existed at all. Would any another Western nation stoop to a Stalinist revisionism this incandescently puerile? Would an American foundation dare to erect an equivalent national memorial that excluded George Washington? Could the Valiants Foundation not at least have paired this non-sequitur of omission with one of commission--perhaps a huge statute of Donald Duck in full khaki WWII battle-dress with Cameron Highlanders shoulder flashes?

What will it take for the stewards of Canada's cultural memory to realise that we Canadians can handle our history, that we are prepared to encounter it in all its beautiful, awkward, perpetually newly discovered incommensurability, and that sanitisation is nothing more than squalid historical vandalism?

Jack Granatstein, who has spent a decade whining about the "killing" of Canadian history, has just kicked the history he claims to love into suffering a monumental spontaneous abortion in the middle of the nation's capital. Meanwhile, in his spare time, he's been kicking the nation he claims to love into cringing Manifest Destiny subservience. Let's hope this fiasco finally drives a stake through the black tar-coated heart of Granatstein's waning scholarly reputation. If he is made to shut up at last, perhaps this disgrace will have been worth it.

Mélange Adultère: Part Four

Sloth Makes Waste:

The extravagantly titled Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Minister John Baird recently yapped excitedly about his expectation that federal infrastructure funds will flow "ten times faster than anything in the modern era". That's a relief, because the Building Canada Fund his government created in 2007 to dole out infrastructure money to municipalities has, so far, transferred precisely nothing: breaking its funds-disbursement speed record might just be something this government can do.

I was amused to hear Baird explain why he sees no need to conduct strict oversight of the way infrastructure funds are spent: he's not worried, he says, because provinces and municipalities must provide matching funds for their federal money--an obligation which apparently provides "the biggest form of accountability" conceivable. Thus, a senior member of Canada's ostensibly "fiscally conservative" party maintains that the optimal agent of governmental accountability is another level of government and that governments become reliably self-policing whenever they are forced to spend money in order to get more money.

I wonder--is the term "fiscally conservative" really something that this party believes it can claim unironically, or are they aware that it's become merely the punch-line of a sick joke?



The West Wants In (To The Trough):

Just because you allow a barely-staffed "commission" to sit idle whilst funnelling a million tax-payer dollars into its inertia does not mean you can't violate the principles on which it was established in order to toss out partisan pork to under-qualified courtiers.

Only a few years after elevating himself to Canada's pontificate of political moral supremacy and waging an electoral campaign full of ad urbis et orbi fulminations against government waste and arrogance, Stephen Harper invited a lorry-load of his ideological confederates to dip their biscuit faces into rich, thick tax-funded gravy. None declined the honour, though I am sure they all retain their commitment to their libertarian, anti-government ideals.

I love the statement from the PMO on the matter:

"...a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office says the posts went to qualified candidates, and that their partisan activities and friendships with Harper should not exclude them from the jobs".

One is struck by how radically different this exculpatory whine is from the rote statements issued by Liberal PMO's down through the decades; for instance, it contains the word "Harper" rather than "Trudeau", "Turner", "Chrétien" or "Martin". If you don't think that's a huge difference, you're clearly with the terrorists. And you're probably gay. You no doubt also speak passable French.



“Just Because I'm The Minister Doesn't Mean I Have To Do Stuff”:

Minister of Defence Peter Mackay assures us that "the federal government is constantly looking at[sic] ways to improve search and rescue response", except where the need for improvement is obvious and pressing.

Should a transit point for hundreds of heliborne offshore oil-rig workers--a place that witnessed the deaths of seventeen men in a tragic crash a few months ago--be given a dedicated search-and-rescue helicopter? Maybe. Minister Mackay doesn't know. Moreover, he says, it's not his problem: it's the Armed Forces' decision to make. "I guess that's a judgment call that the military make based on the information that they have," he bleated.

Astonishing. Harper's tin soldiers are proudly political about sending young men and women to Afghanistan to die defending a corrupt Islamist narco-state; it's personal to them--a crusade, a vendetta. When it comes to their sedulous patronage of warlords and Talib fellow travelers, offered with a smile from the ivied ignorance of the Centre Block, they show fearless leadership indeed.

When it comes to providing security to their own citizens, to hard-working tax-payers doing some of the world's most dangerous jobs on Hibernia's oil rigs, Harperoids will let faceless, irresponsible, non-executive bureaucrats make the key decisions. After all, the Canadian military cannot be expected to do everything: it can't prop up Hamid Karzai's rule over Kabul's suburbs and prevent needless catastrophes by providing a minimum standard of search-and-rescue capability to its own people. Let's keep our priorities straight: warlords first; Canadians second.

Mélange Adultère: Part Three

Following journalistic convention, I shall now make brief reference to a number of scandals, both real and manufactured, using a flogged-to-death suffix borrowed from America's most notorious--though hardly most serious--political débacle.



Appointmentgate [though I also like "Appointmentscam"]:

Stephen Harper's undertaking to have all candidates for federal office vetted by a non-partisan appointments commission was not just a good suggestion; it formed part of the Accountability Act, arguably the centrepiece of the government's legislative agenda so far.

Of course, the commission's establishment hit an immediate snag when (and please read this slowly) Harper's choice of commission chairman turned out to be a purely partisan selection--namely Gwyn Morgan, a CPC-friendly Alberta oilman.

Naturally, the Opposition declined Harper's generous offer to allow a CPC hack to superintend a non-partisan process, and the commission went into limbo. More pressing matters, such as begging FOX News for interviews, have prevented Harper from proposing another candidate for the chairmanship, and he seems unconcerned that a crucial component of his own law remains unfulfilled.

In Harperland, though, an idle commission can still be mightily expensive. The appointments non-commission, which has yet to deliberate a single case, has already cost taxpayers more than one million dollars. Sure, that money could have gone to hospitals, our Afghan battle-group, or our lamentably outgunned navy and air-force, but health-care and military bureaucrats are notorious wastrels. Much better to keep the cash on Parliament Hill, so that a "skeleton staff" (made up almost certainly of the cousins, nieces, nephews and psychic hairdressers of CPC M.P.'s) can sit on their powdered asses tooling around on their Blackberries or, when the mood strikes them, watching from the House gallery whilst Harper's drones drivel endlessly on about their fiscal rectitude.

It's not quite Adscam, but it'll do. If you prefer, though, just keep watching that bright shiny thing.



Brazeaugate:

As you'll recall, Harper made a slew of preposterously partisan Senate appointments early this year, every one of which so hysterically unfit for legislative office that it seemed part of a plot to push Canadians' loathing for the Senate even lower than it is, down to the level where Harper's appointment of a paraplegic groundhog suffering from tertiary syphillis would arouse nothing more than mild bemusement.

Among this clownish crew was one Patrick Brazeau, former head of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, a federally funded organisation. Pursuant to Harper's passionate commitment to diversity, Brazeau's appointment brought into the Senate a member of a criminally neglected and heavily oppressed community--those who like to party, chase skirt, and drive Porsches on the public dime while damning the ethics of their peers and, bien sûr, loudly endorsing the CPC. He brings with him the wealth of thirty-four years of life experience--thirty-four glorious years: he's all of ten years away from chugging ice-cold Molsons with his frat buddies on ten-cent-wings night down at the local Hooters.

Brazeau's provincial sexual harassment case has been kicked up to the federal level, and the senator will soon be explaining to a federal panel why he thinks the complainant is upset over what he describes as "inappropriate text messages and phone calls". I just hope he doesn't overdress for the occasion:





Really, I just love the "Atlantic City mafia" look he's rockin' here, but I doubt if the commissioners will. Note to Patrick: lose the pink stuff, and buy a tie. You're a senator now, not a goodfella, and you'll still be a sex-machine with the chicks.














O'Briengate:

Too few Canadians realise that Ottawa toils under the most catastrophically inept poltroon ever to lope across the pages of North American mayoralty history. His name is Larry O'Brien. He is a well-connected CPC hack, who, despite running for mayor in 2006 on a drearily familiar no-tax-hike, tough-on-crime platform, has overseen chronic tax hikes and rising crime. He serves as living proof of the old adage: elect a neocon; watch your city/province/country turn to shit.

He is currently being tried on charges of having bribed an opponent to drop out of the mayoralty race with the collusion of several senior members of Harper's "New Government". John Baird is among those under subpoena. The Harper follies have been a morbidly fascinating spectacle, but this trial should be the spectacle to crown all spectacles--the prestige, if you will.

Transcending the squalor of the trial, though, is the sick-making outrage of O'Brien's mere incumbency. If old Ottawa--core, downtown Ottawa--had had its way, O'Brien would still be running his cute little temp agency. It was the suburbs who wafted this ill wind into City Hall. It was the politically illiterate Hummer jockeys of Nepean and Barrhaven who foisted this jesting harlequin onto those of us who know better. As this chart shows, we voted for Alex Munter (while praying that he would overcome the oft-fatal political handicaps of being smart, serious, and well-informed); they voted for the guy who spewed endless gibberish about Munter being a typical tax-and-spend "lefty" (yeah--he ran Kanata for years; a classic Stalinist move). What we got was a civic leader who thinks being arrested is "rock-star" cool.

O'Brien's election brilliantly exemplifies the need for Ottawa's de-amalgamation. I am no longer willing to allow suburbanites, hypo-urbanites, and infra-urbanites to inflict their masochistic, anti-civic irrationality on a people for whom the urban core is home, not just something seen from behind an office window a few hours a day. If you can hear the Peace Tower chimes from your home, you're an Ottawan. If not, you may have your own urgent neighbourhood matters to attend to--where to put the next Future Shop, whether to let the golf course expand its parking lot, whether to allow the developers to tear down the church and make way for a new Costco--but you've got nothing of significance to say about what my city should look like. If you gave a shit about it, you would live in it.


Burgergate:

Because Barack Obama did something vaguely "French", we now know exactly how morally and intellectually bankrupt American conservatism has become.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the leaders of the free world, a nation more trivial than which has never been and, pray God, will never be.

Ignatieff Ignited!

"In Canada, ideas are not needed to make parties, for those can live by heredity and...by memories of past combats". (James Bryce, Modern Democracies)



Last weekend, a not remarkable number of Canadians witnessed the conclusion of the desperate struggle for leadership of the Liberal Party between Michael Ignatieff and his only opponent, his Olympian ego.

The latter, though clearly the more organised, sophisticated and motivated of the two, acceded to a draw. Both creatures have agreed to co-rule their party, the Apollonian ego providing the spirit and the body providing its newly "folksy" corporeal form--liberalism with a human face, as it were (or Stephen Harper's "conservatism" with a pulse). They will likely form the next government, unless Stephen Harper has "Je me souviens" tattooed on both cheeks of his ass and performs a nude pole dance at Place-d'Armes to a dance mix of "Vive la Canadienne" sung by Pauline Marois.

The Liberals have thus re-connected with an important tradition, but not the one Ignatieff wishes to claim. He can invoke Trudeau all he likes; that Liberal icon would never have stooped to writing a loving paean to America's "Empire Lite", nor was he capable of committing the logical solecism of describing democracy and human rights as mere "grace notes" to something more significant, more beautiful, more awesome.

No. Ignatieff's paragon is that politically ingenious founder of modern Liberalism--William Lyon Mackenzie King. Their kinship is deep and abiding--unsurprisingly, given Ignatieff's rootedness in the soil of the mid-century technocratic Liberal élite King virtually invented.

King was Liberal royalty--the grandson of the Reform/Clear Grit rebel William Lyon Mackenzie. After the calamity of the 1911 election, King retreated to the States, where he made his fortune strike-breaking for J.D. Rockefeller, forging an admiring relationship with the magnate (and with America's capitalist leadership) that lasted a lifetime. Later, he published Industry and Humanity, a turgid tome of earnest Gladstonian bromides whose claims upon his conscience evaporated the minute he won his first ministry. This "serious" volume polished an already-shining intellectual reputation, secured through King's receipt of a Harvard PhD in 1909.

Upon his return to Canada and his 1919 leadership triumph, King began his sustained assault upon Canada's traditional moral, cultural and political anchors--relentlessly (and tediously) preaching the virtues of free-trade and continental integration. He found himself in substantial disagreement with American élite values only once--when, despite witnessing the evident dynamism of FDR's New Deal, he rabidly opposed even the slightest interventionist use of the state to remediate the Great Depression's disastrous effects, even going so far as to rejoice when the provisions of R.B. Bennett's modest New Deal-ish program were struck down by the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as ultra vires. King remained publicly undisturbed by the sight of a Canadian government hobbled by the irresponsible fiat of a British Star Chamber (yes, this knight errant of "anti-imperialist" Canadian nationalism was a confused man indeed).

All the while, King fatuously transvested himself as the "populist" champion of Parliament and of the people against the "arrogance" of the Crown. King pursued this sacred mission by running away from the House after trying to have it arbitrarily dissolved (by the "arrogant" Crown, of course) and, more notoriously, by calling a plebiscite in order to be released from an iron-clad pact he had made with Canadians during the last election, just two years before.

Thus, in his exalted Liberal lineage, in his return from a protracted sojourn through the American academic/corporate star system, in his establishment of a scholarly reputation that would precede his candidacy, and in his meek acceptance of America's claim to be the world's only significant force for good, Ignatieff has managed to resurrect and inhabit the body of the Liberals' most successful leader. For them, this can only be a good omen. For us, the situation is, of course, more complex.

In any event, we now have a real contest. Not a contest of fundamental political philosophies, necessarily (which, in any case, has been a rare thing in Canada since the mid-'60's). Rather, the contest between Ignatieff and Harper is a contest between Kings, for Harper--superficially scholarly, rabidly pro-American and pro-corporate--is, too, but a new incarnation of King.

Harper enters this contest holding an unfair advantage: he has had the privilege of being an executive King rather than just a rhetorical one: in his fraudulent populism, in his abdication of responsibility by devolving contentious decisions onto others, in his sabotage of Parliament and rape of the constitution for partisan advantage, and in his basically regionalist vision, Harper has channelled King so uncannily that he could have served as one of King's own mediums.

Whatever choice we make in the next election, then, we shall get a King. Some may rejoice at this prospect. As for me, I am reminded of Eugene Forsey's quip about the Liberals' 1935 campaign slogan: "It said, 'King or Chaos'. We got both".

Some Phrases To Learn And Say

• A "corporation" is most accurately defined as that which expends more energy in the mere maintenance of its existence than in the execution of its purpose. Yet most economists persist in using the word "efficiency" without irony.

• "Freedom" is the process by which we choose the options our instincts render inevitable.

• Nothing is more futile in a democracy than the virtuous pursuit of a political objective.

• All people were created equal in the days when they were created. In the age of the Self-Made Man, however, our value is exactly what the market will bear. I am told this is different from slavery.

• The collapse of the West will occur at the precise moment the term "middle class" ceases to be taken as an insult.

• The genius of America was to marry the ethos of the criminal to the psyche of the victim and enrobe them both in the ermine mantle of the Eternal Law.

• The "élitist" is he who understands the loneliness of the twelve who chose Christ whilst the hundreds chose Barabbas.
  
  
  
  
  

Mélange Adultère: Part Two

The older I get, the more tolerant I become with those who believe they can smell the aftershave on each of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The darkly glittering treasure hoard of human depravity seems, each day, to be newly enriched by gems more resplendently base than anything seen before, carried in the jaws of dragons to which we feed what is best in us, about us, and among us. To wit:



War, Disorder and Bad Government: The Canadian Way--Harper Style!

What does a boorish, lead-hearted partisan hack of a prime minister do? Abide by the carefully deliberated findings of a Canadian federal court on a matter that strikes at the core of our fundamental values, or prolong a disgraceful miscarriage of justice and deepen a young man's agony in order to pander to the worst, xenophobic instincts of the most verminous elements of his quadruped base?

You guessed it.



America Elects A President Who Knows How To Pronounce "Nuclear"; World Still In Deep Shit!

Don't get me wrong; there are many reasons to be worried at the sight of the Taliban patrolling Pakistani territory only sixty miles from the nation's capital as if they own the place (because they do own the place), eight long years after the invasion of Afghanistan.

I'm just saying that the main reason might be that Pakistan has an arsenal of deliverable nuclear weapons, gifted to them by the folks who hate to see violent Islamist regimes make nukes with their own money but who gladly invite violent Islamist regimes to make nukes with crisp U.S. greenbacks.



Mission As Accomplished As It Ever Will Be

So, let's see: Iraq's current "stability" consists of a religiously segregated, deeply corrupt society devoid of meaningful institutions and functioning infrastructure, scarred by daily suicide bombings and routine sectarian assassinations. After six years of occupation, Baghdad can hardly keep the lights on.

Thus, thousands of American dead and tens of thousands of Iraqi dead have fertilised the flowering of another Lebanon. I'm not sure this is what Wilson had in mind.



Canadian Values: They Suck, But They're Good Enough For Immigrants

Jason Kenney apparently wants immigrants to be more deeply imbued with "Canadian values" upon their entry to their new country. He failed to say whether this policy would apply to American emigrants, whose values Kenney clearly considers so much better than ours.

Really, being lectured on "Canadian" values by a senior member of one of our two officially Canada-hating parties is a bit like being yelled at by the madam of a dilapidated whorehouse for entering the vestibule with our shoes on: it's embarrassing, degrading, and symptomatic of something profoundly wrong about our lives.

Kenney seems comfortable expecting immigrants to know more about their new nation than their hosts care to know. One cannot expect a political and moral castrato to challenge Canadians on their own cultural ignorance and champion the kinds of radical institutional changes that would (finally) fully immerse us in our civic heritage. No. All Kenney can manage on his empty nutsack is a pathetic innuendo about the mongrelising influence of dark-skinned exotics on a people ruled by a clique of continentalist deracinés who take their cultural orientation from daily viewings of South Park.

As mascot for this imbecility, please take Susan Boyd. She was one of the prime agitators against principal Erik Millett after he decided to suspend the singing of "O, Canada" at Belleisle Elementary School in New Brunswick.

This CBC documentary on the controversy is fascinating. It includes an interview with Boyd, who lost a nephew in Afghanistan. Go to 4:10 in the documentary, and be amazed. Boyd says, "the Lord’s Prayer is gone, the Pledge of Allegiance is gone... because we don’t want to offend the minority, but what about the majority? Now our anthem is disappearing".

The Pledge of Allegiance is gone! This woman--not obviously an idiot by any means--believes that the Canadian majority mourns the loss of the Pledge of Allegiance. I've rarely seen a sadder, more lurid spectacle of cultural senility.

While it is inconceivable that a French woman would pine for the old days when class would begin with a stirring rendition of "Das Deutschlandlied", while one would not dream that a Swede would ever wonder why children are no longer required to start their school day with "La Marseillaise", we Canadians have learned to tolerate and even expect the absurd surreality this woman represents.

Boyd is in the heart of "Conservative" country (her M.P. is Greg Thompson, Harper's Minister of Veterans' Affairs), yet she's not sure what country she's in. She's precisely the kind of vain, vapid, pseudo-Canadian who thinks she needs protection from the alien, valueless "minorities" that Kenny seeks to "civilise". Kenny strokes her vanity: he keeps his power; she keeps her ignorance.

These "conservatives"--the Kenneys and Boyds--strain so hard for patriotism; they're like superannuated sopranos with laryngitis, attempting arias and emitting only rusty croaks. They've got the "Support the Troops" bumper stickers and the Maple Leaf lapel pins, but they're incapable of understanding how thoroughly compromised and worm-eaten their Canadianness has become. Their citizenship is a corpse in full rigor mortis that the "Conservatives" have embalmed and propped up against a wall in order to make it "stand up for Canada".



I Guess You’ll Not Be Needing Those Firewalls

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach seems to have decided that Ottawa can meddle in Alberta's affairs if it wants--as long as the "meddling" consists of a huge gift of 700 million dollars. The millions Alberta already receives through the Western Diversification Fund just aren't enough to buy baby his new shoes, apparently. It was inevitable that Alberta--that pious inculcator of fiscal thrift and high priest of anti-Ottawa individualism--would eventually find itself panhandling on Parliament Hill without a shred of shame.

Fatuously, Stelmach complained that Alberta "can't carry the country" through the recession, in a risible bid to sustain Albertans' painfully swollen self-concept during what must be a humiliating period for them. For the record, when Alberta's GDP grows beyond being a mere third of Ontario's, we shall talk about it "carrying the country". Right now, the only thing they're carrying is an ego full of helium and a bladder full of gall.

The Obama White House: Mange We Can Believe In!

The FOX network has long been rightfully derided for its umbilically intimate relationship with the Republican Party and America's broader right wing. Of those two hateful hemispheres of planetary idiocy, though, FOX has traditionally been the more thoughtful--the analytical foil to the feckless party on whose behalf it speaks. Throughout the Bush II era, the blithering cretins at FOX usually managed to be just barely close enough to the right side of sanity to seem downright moderate beside the cackling hysteria and stumblebum ineptitude of the Bush/Cheney misadministration. FOX's mere carrying of The Simpsons gave it a credibility the Bush White House could never hope to approximate.

Apparently, Team Obama considers this asymmetry to be too deeply embedded in the American psyche to be changed without massive systemic damage. Accordingly, soon after FOX releases a candid clip featuring some of its vulgarly anti-Canadian talking-heads sensibly denouncing Homeland Security for treating the Canada/U.S. border as a serious threat to American security, Obama's security doyenne Janet Napolitano repeats the odious slur--iterated across American right-wing talk-radio since literally days after 9/11--that many of the WTC terrorists had entered the U.S. through Canada and that Canada therefore needs vigilant surveillance.

In a heartwarming gesture of bi-partisan asininity, John McCain later gave his sclerotic endorsement to this preposterous urban myth. McCain, at least, has an excuse: he's clearly in the early stages of senile dementia. I suppose Napolitano's excuse is that she's an American (an excuse which, in its basic purport, is not unlike McCain's), but I do believe that her bottomless ignorance and its possible executive ramifications (she's in Obama's cabinet, remember) serve to prove that Americans' utter lack of understanding of and respect for Canada is not (as so many of us believe) a harmless eccentricity--a patronising nervous tick that we should simply ignore, laugh off, and learn to live with. It's a deeply worrying neurosis that chronically impedes the very continental security about which American official blowhards claim to be so preoccupied.

Former Mulroneyite Michael Wilson, Harper's ambassadorial appointee, appears to think that being "frustrated" by Napolitano's stark stupidity is somehow good enough. This extravagantly-paid stuffed cardigan was supposed to use his wide network of U.S. connections to change the reflexively anti-Canadian tone in Washington, made all the more urgent when the traditionally protectionist Democrats regained the White House late last year. If Ignatieff manages to kick Harper's well-marbled ass to the curb this year or next, I will enjoy watching him yank Wilson off of D.C.'s "exclusive" (i.e. all-white) golf courses and back into his rocking chair where he’s harmless. We need somebody who can bring the kind of balls Frank McKenna brought to the job before Harper's shabby partisan hackery brought his successful term to a premature end.

Until then, fellow Canucks, please enjoy your utterly unearned and quintessentially "American" reputation as the folks who helped bring down the Twin Towers--brought to you today by "Change We Can Believe In"!

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik: Dred Tory's First Annual Shameless "Pandering to Readership" Post

It should come as a surprise to no one that, since early childhood, I've been a devotee of what one could call "night music"--melodies that weave themselves seamlessly into the fabric of the abyssal darknesses of past-midnights. Fortuitously, Echo and the Bunnymen--one of my favourite purveyors of nachtmusic--also appears to be a favourite of loyal reader (and Loyalist), Aeneas the Younger.

Aeneas happens to be a Taurus (for so says his profile), the sign into which we entered just a few days ago. I've no idea of his exact birthday, but I shall take the liberty of observing it tonight by presenting him with the video below (audio, really) of a live version of "Ocean Rain", a raggedly beautiful tune from the identically titled album Ocean Rain, the band's 1984 creative peak. Will Sergeant's gorgeously understated electrified twelve-string mandolin is a wonder to behold on this track.

Happy birthday Aeneas. Keep the faith. I hope this little bit of Echo sweetens the gall of your Albertan exile.

All hands on deck at dawn...

Waterboardin' U.S.A.!*

* Thanks, guys.


If anybody had a notion,
Across the USA,
To tie scum like Dick Cheney,
Down to a board and say:
"We're going to pour some water
Down your throat 'till you die";
I think I'd laugh 'till I cried;
Waterboardin' USA.



Let's review, shall we? So far, the "Change You Can Believe In" dude has re-imposed duties on our softwood lumber, after we committed the unpardonable sin of offering it to American consumers more cheaply than their spoiled, candy-assed domestic industry cares to.

He has refused to remove Maher Arar from the U.S. no-fly list, presumably because Arar's exoneration by way of the conclusive findings of Canada's security services and a comprehensive House inquiry was the unholy work of Al-Qaeda front organisations.

Now, he's decided to offer a blanket amnesty to any and all U.S. national security personnel who tortured detainees during the Bush II phase of the "Global War On Terror" (or "GWOT", as it was called until Obama officially scrapped that preposterous catch-phrase; actually, I prefer George Grant's term, "orgasm at home and napalm abroad,"* as a ready-made phrase for America's current cultural disposition--not GWOT, but OAHANA).

So, are Canadians done with the degrading infatuation with this man that was so humiliating for those of us in the sane community to witness, or will Obama have to turn into a werewolf on live television before we get the message? Is this act of glibly pardoning torturers and killers proof enough of the man's moral vacancy? I say "killers", for we need to recall that, as of 2005 (when the Americans were still counting), one hundred and eight "terrorist" detainees had died violently in U.S. custody. Given that the former commander of Abu Ghraib once estimated that, shockingly, 90% of her inmates were innocent, one needs to assume that most of those dead were guilty of absolutely nothing--they were murdered, in effect.

In a way all too depressingly typical of our urge to privilege tactics over ethics, Obama is being congratulated for expertly negotiating the fine line between his new administration's need to exorcise the past and America's need to retain its messianic morale: he's releasing the notorious "torture memos" in order to provide transparency (so the narrative goes), yet he's ensuring that the operatives who executed what the memos mandated (in "good faith", of course) remain legally protected. Meanwhile, although Obama claims to be open to the possibility of prosecuting the men who actually wrote the memos, he knows very well that a Bush-era act of Congress ties his hands: his predecessors have already pardoned themselves. They self-Forded.

Unbelievably, Obama's latest mendacities are being hailed as a healthy "reckoning". If I were an American national security official, I would simply reckon that I need not fear being held accountable for anything I may do, as Obama considers me absolutely beyond prosecution: I'm safe as long as I'm taking orders. If the orders are vile, that's not my problem. We found this argument odious at Nuremberg; it's coming in bloody handy for our "best friends" now.

The facts are clear: through these memos, the responsible arm of the U.S. Department of Justice (the Office of Legal Counsel) allowed Americans to behave according to a definition of "torture" totally outside international norms and in violation of the Geneva and Hague protocols. The Nietzschean Superman allowed itself to effectively re-define those international norms. When a Western nation's high judiciary removes itself from the spiritual legal college of the international community, we need to worry; it bodes ill. When the chief executive of such a nation finds the removal pardonable, it bodes very ill.

Those who wish to peer into the moral worlds of the men who authored those repugnant memos may wish to consider the case of John Yoo, the brilliant former U.S. Attorney General official and advisor to G.W. Bush who acted as the éminence grise behind most of the key torture memos. Yoo once debated Notre Dame law professor Doug Cassel on human rights issues. They had a notorious exchange:

Cassel: "If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?"

Yoo: "No treaty".

Cassel: "Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...".

Yoo: "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that".


Thus, on the question of whether it is legitimate to crush the testicles of a child in order to get information, Yoo says "it depends": sometimes, one needs to be an unconscionable savage. After all, we're protecting civilisation here--protecting it from violent, unscrupulous people.

Rest assured that hundreds of Yoo's underlings took his advice and that hundreds of innocents paid the price in dignity, sanity and in life itself for his ivory tower sadism. Nevertheless, John Yoo shall teach law at the best Ivy League schools; he shall become wealthy from lecture tours and books; he shall spend his middle years laved by the amniotic warmth of Establishment affirmation. He shall die, an old man, in his sleep.


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* Here's where the term comes from:

The space programme, necessary imperial wars, and the struggle for recognition in the interlocking corporations can provide purpose only for a small minority. Purpose for the majority will be found in the subsidiary ethos of the "fun" culture. It will meet the demands of those who live in affluence but are removed from any directing of the society.

One is tempted to state that the North American ethos is "the orgasm at home and napalm abroad," but in the nervous mobile society, people have only so much capacity for orgasm, and the flickering messages of the performing arts will fill the interstices.

They provide the entertainment and release which technological society requires. The public purpose of art will not be to lead men to the meaning of things, but to titivate, cajole, and shock them into fitting into a world in which the question of meaning is not relevant. The humanities in the universities will become handmaidens in this task.

George Grant, "The University Curriculum"

Shut the FOX Up: You're Making It Far Too Easy For Me

There is nothing more frustrating for a professional anti-American like me than watching amateurs cutting in on my action--especially when they're American amateurs. Really, I am already painfully aware of the salient reasons to be richly sick of those petulant praetorians; I require no further data on the matter.

Nevertheless, those legendarily generous Yanks just keep on giving. A few weeks ago, we were reminded of the way Americans talk about Canada when they're being watched by millions of fellow xenophobes: with dismissive contempt. Today, we learn how Americans talk about us when they're just making chit-chat amongst themselves: with dismissive contempt.

FOX News saw fit to release a clip wherein a gaggle of anonymous FOX talking-head guests, apparently waiting for their segment to begin taping, discuss U.S. security matters. One of them complains that Homeland Security is spending too much time worrying about the Canadian border, when the Mexican border is much more porous. This aberrant and possibly treasonous outburst of rationality is soon smothered by a peal of condescending quips about Canadians "smoking snow" and threatening to attack the U.S. with maple syrup. Once the gales of laughter subside, the host feelingly, almost wistfully, recalls the time he went to the U.S./Canada border to chase a story: he remembers that there was "just a whole lot of wheat up there", in words carrying a faint trace of trauma. Heads nod in silent empathy.

At this point, a Canadian viewer is struggling to remind himself that he's not watching security-camera footage of a bunch of slow reform-school inmates serving a detention for smoking dope in the boy's room. He's watching the host and four guests on America's highest-rated cable news show display what passes for foreign affairs expertise down there. These people are among America's intellectual élite. God help us all.

Soon after, one of the guests, a writer for the right-wing National Review, recalls with fondness a story he once wrote entitled "Bomb Canada". He apparently argued that Canada needs "pin-prick assaults" to "slap" us out of our "EU-itis" (which refers, presumably, to our inadequate level of America worship). He is still clearly proud of having called us a "northern Puerto Rico with an EU sensibility". One of his colleagues jokes that his story was obviously an effective motivator, as Canada ended up co-invading Afghanistan: "They were afraid of being bombed!" she trills excitedly.

Another guest reminds the assembly that there was a U.S. plan to bomb Canada. He calls it "Plan Orange" (it was actually Plan Red, but America's élite tends to be as ignorant of American history as their proles are; it is one of the few authentically democratic features of their society). In fact, Plan Red was operative until 1939--twenty year after the end of World War I and sixteen years after the death of the “dangerous” alliance in response to which the plan was created (our own prime minister Arthur Meighen was instrumental in killing that alliance, for obvious reasons).

It thus occurs to me that the United States was still seriously meditating an invasion of Canada (and had appropriated funds through Congress for that purpose) when my mother was nine years old. I'll just add that incredible and sad fact to the vast body of evidence in support of the notion that hysterical, barking-mad paranoia is deeply inscribed in America's cultural DNA. Always has been; always will be.

I was most struck by the tone of this FOX discussion. It is classic. By "classic", I mean that it has a long and direct pedigree. While listening to their flippant talk of "assault", "slapping", and "bombing", I felt that I was hearing a group of senior British civil servants of the Raj--lounging in a late-19th-century Bombay tap room--chortle airily over the amusing pretensions of the simple wogs they rule over: their silly "dignity", their tedious insistence on being treated like equals, their slothful backwardness, and the unfortunately frequent need for their betters to slap them out of their languor--for their own good, of course--to get them to make something of themselves. Similar conversations could have been overheard near the quarters of royal governors during America's colonial era and near the tents of centurions during the Roman occupation of Albion. It's the language of the coloniser, the occupier, the slave-master, the overseer, the prefect, the procurator--the tyrant.

In other parts of the world, you don't get away with fantasizing about bombing people. You invite immediate and vituperate retaliatory rhetoric. Luckily for FOX vermin, Canada is widely, deeply ridden with self-loathing Vichyites. Here, Fox News insolence is not only tolerated but is actually granted a prime-ministerial charter; as one of Stephen Harper's networks of choice, FOX has been rewarded with exclusive interviews--of the kind Harper has consistently denied to domestic media.

Moreover, FOX News' favourite shrill viragoes are hero-worshipped by cringing Canadian right-wing autophobes, whose profound self-loathing is so corrosive as to make them joyfully genuflect before notorious Canada-haters and ask for their benediction (go to 2:00 in this video to hear a Canadian "conservative" ask Ann Coulter, "How can us[sic] Canadian Conservatives earn the love we have for you?”).

I suppose I can understand the American attitude. Why not kick people in the teeth when all you need to fear in return is a toothless, bleeding request (whispered politely--nay, reverently) for another…but harder this time?

The American formula seems to be that backwards, demoralised Third World countries get invaded; countries that behave like backwards, demoralised Third World countries just get insulted--relentlessly. In a way, it makes immaculate sense; we cannot blame an animal for behaving according to its nature.

On "Civility", Again...

We've seen this movie before. I have already delivered my criteria for on-line civility, while noting that the virtue itself is somewhat overrated. I have come to believe nothing a year later that subtracts from the truth of that post. I still believe that a gentleman's only duty is to never offend anybody unintentionally and that the real challenge is to "retain the form of civility while in full process of being bloody offensive to someone on whom genuine civility would be wasted".

That said, I was moved today to leave a lengthy comment at Olaf's place which describes more discursively than does last year's post the way I approach civility and define its limits. Given that I've been invited to "take a shower" after my last post by the ever-ironically Puritanical Tomm, an importation of that comment might be both germane and timely. Apologies to those who've already read this at Olaf's.

Some context: Olaf mentioned that he's been "inspired" to try to moderate the partisanship of his critiques and to refrain from making sweeping, demonising generalisations about his ideological opponents (except "hippies" and "counter-cultural" types; they're still in his cross-hairs!). I told him not to try too hard. Here's a slightly edited version of my comment:

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Would we still be reading Swift's A Modest Proposal if it were a clinical, respectful, "fair and balanced" review of British trade policy in Eighteenth-century Ireland? Fuck that. An hyperbolic rant about callous Whigs serving up Irish babies au jus? Now that's an instant classic.

We should keep in mind that not all generalisations are illegitimate. Some are defensible, while others require vigorous substantiation. For example, I would feel free to say that the vast majority of earnest, committed CPC supporters are economic and cultural continentalists. Now, this view may be contested as a generalisation (in fact, it is), but I doubt if I would be at a loss for relatively persuasive proof. The same could be said for the view that most committed Liberal supporters favour strong, bureaucratised gun control: I think the burden of proof would be on someone who controverted that assumption. Likewise, can we credibly suggest that most Taliban militants are misogynists? I think so. Generalisations must always be deployed carefully and honestly, but I'm not sure that one can or should place them under total proscription.

Ethical (rather than ideological) generalisations are more worrying, and perhaps these are what you specifically wish to target. If so, you're really pleading for what's known as "parliamentary language", one of the breaches of which is the attempt to "impute motives" to an opponent.

As a kid, I found this issue puzzling: I couldn't understand why it was unparliamentary to base an argument on your own (presumably honestly derived) assumption about what your opponent meant to accomplish through his words and deeds. I'm not sure I fully understand it even now, but I think the rule is a purely functional one, designed to keep debate focused: if you assume the guy is malicious, and if you persuade the House of your view, you then get to call the guy an "asshole" with impunity. If you're prevented from acting on your assumption (which may even be correct), you're limited to arguing that the guy is wrong, and that he needs to amend his policy.

Again, though, context is crucial. Is it credible to say that members of the CPC, NDP, BQ, or LPC actually wish to inflict harm on others? Of course not. Is it true that LPC and CPC government policies have hurt people? Of course it is.

The question becomes, then, is it valid to impute motives (and profanely, as I often do) to those government gestures that are definable not just in the abstract (e.g. tax rates, trade policy, Senate reform, etc.) but in their concrete, undeniable effects? Is it valid to call someone an "asshole" (or a party a "party of assholes") when he or they are indifferent or even gleeful before the catastrophic consequences of party policy? The answers are clear, in my view.

Take the case of Adelrazik, about which I'm passionate. In a parallel universe, I'm not sure I would feel compelled to impute motives to a government that brought in a bill making it illegal for Canadians placed on the U.N. no-fly list to return home if travelling abroad. Would I think the bill misguided? Yes. Draconian? Sure. I wouldn't call the party a bunch of "assholes", though--perhaps more a bunch of jurisprudential amateurs who need a crash course in constitutional law.

Now, in our universe, do I feel free to impute motives to two governments (Martin's and Harper's) who have effectively stripped a citizen of his dignity because of a situation either one could have changed at literally the stroke of a pen? You bet I do. This is one occasion when being wrong bleeds into being an asshole, and I feel not the slightest reservation about pointing that out.

Ultimately, those who are unwilling to impute motives under any circumstances are forgetting a key political distinction-- the difference between basically well-meaning legislators whose faults are grounded in incompetence and inexperience and venal hacks motivated by fear, ignorance and gratuitous misanthropy. It's a fundamental difference, and it's the only electorally meaningful one for political orphans like me. It's the difference between the tragi-comic but harmless Dion and the disciplined but odious Harper. The ethical implications of that difference explain why I could grumblingly tolerate the former and why I despise the latter.