Saturday, April 16, 2005

All Our Weird Tomorrows

What a week. The never ending but largely repetitive Gomery stories are taking their toll on everyone, not to mention the back to back Schiavo-Pope melodramas that sucked the life out of everyone's emotional attention span for a good month. I notice that the Calgary Sun has taken a break from their freakish and maudlin dead Pope coverage. How many angles can you photograph that corpse from? Now the Sun is getting caught up on local true crime stories and rolling into wall to wall coverage of the Anniversay of Terry Fox's cross country run. Now that's something I can get behind, and it comes at a good time. It reminds Canadians that we produce some genuine heros now and again. Sure the Sun's coverage is over the top and exploitive, but it's for a good cause. The CBC replayed an old interview between Barbara Frum and Terry Fox. Frum was known to eat her guests and spit them out. In her interview with Terry Fox she was kind and respectful. Terry Fox was humble and optimistic, and talked about his faith in God. At that time he had not long to live.

My once proud sense of being a Canadian now lies in tatters, the victim of multiple conflicting polls, gloating what-if punditry, and an every widening aura of Conservative self-righteousness. We stand on the edge of God knows what cliff waiting for a strong wind or a push. We are now mentioned in the same breath as Mexico and Zimbabwe. You are tempted to make fun of some third world buffoon government or the latest Bush ineptitude but you catch yourself in an akward moment of hey thats us. It may be a long road back to self-respect. For Liberals and Progessives this is the nightmare of nightmares. For Canadian Conservatives its a glorious dream come true. The yapping hyenas of self-loathing anti-Canadianism get to chew on a carcass they stumbled upon while wandering around in the bush.

I'm a believer in watershed events. Canadian Politics is like the earth's crust. It creaks and groans, and every decade or so throws out an earthquake to release the tension. In the late 80's Brian Mulroney ended his political career and his party at the same time. What would cause a party with two back to back record setting majorities to lose everything except two seats? In Mulroney's case there were constant allegations of influence peddling and corruption, the shocking pictures of him humping Ronald Reagan's leg, and at the same time Western Right Wing Alienation and Quebec Nationalism reaching new heights. In what seemed like the blink of an eye the Progressive Conservatives, the Party of Diefenbaker and John A. MacDonald disappeared into a black hole.

Is it possible that the same deep collapse could happen to the Federal Liberals? It is hard for me to imagine the key battlegrounds of Ontario and Quebec to radicalize as conservatives. Its hard for me to imagine the Conservatives governing as a minority government with only 30%-40% of the popular vote, and no other conservative parties in Parliament. So now the media will begin to work on us, manufacturing a mythology about how the Conservative Party is centrist and moderate. The next election will be dirty and divisive and many people will truly not know how to vote. Many will probably want to sit this one out. Those people need to be reminded that the wing-nuts always vote no matter what. So if you hear someone say I'm not voting this time around, give them a good slap, a pair of nose plugs.

(Editor: can you clean this up a bit, it seems to be lacking in cohesion. Thanks.) Please recommend this post

No comments: