Amongst the people I have absolutely no sympathy for

are those who say things like this:

I am a Tory, but like many others who cast their ballot the same way I did not vote for the draconian and misguided measures in this regressive legislation.

It is not like the absolute power of the Prime Ministership has corrupted Harper.  His corruption is a part of his very being and he has always had it on display.  People who voted for him expecting him to behave better once he had a majority are fools.  So are media types who are shocked at the continuation of dirty tricks since the election.


And I also have no sympathy for those farmers who voted for the Conservatives because they promised to get rid of the gun registry and are disappointed at the gutting of the Wheat Board.  Listen up fools.  It isn't like their antipathy to the Wheat Board was part of a hidden agenda.


Oh yeah.  And those, Albertans in particular, who have voted Conservative federally and/or provincially and whine about education and health care funding.  You made that bed go lie in it.


This also goes for my fellow citizens who see Harper for the malignant jerk he is and nevertheless stay home on election day.  What makes them think that the same misanthrope who would spread lies about good and decent men, like Dion and Ignatieff, who have accomplished so much more than Harper, would listen to the desires of the majority of Canadians.


But they will repeat the pattern in the future.  And it isn't their fault.  Like the victim who hopes that by being nice, the bully will change his behaviour, these victims of Conservative bullying will vote Tory next time or stay home.  They will complain and reminisce about what Canada used to do.  But they won't recognize their part in it's destruction.Recommend this Post

Chantal Hebert plays the harridan today chastising the media for abrogating their responsibility by not truly reporting on the seriousness of Jack Layton's cancer.  But this last sentence makes me think that she is trying, on a subconscious level at least, to expiate her sins for mostly giving Harper a free pass for the past 5 years:

Some lessons are learned the hard way. One of the harder ones of the 2011 political year is that the media, when it looks the other way rather than pursue unpleasant, unpopular but yet relevant avenues are really not doing anyone a service, least of all the voters they have a duty to inform.

There are the irretrievably stupid columnists who will parrot every lie the Conservatives put out there.  Then there are the ones like Hebert.  Ready to take a shot at the Liberals because they had been in office so long.  These water carriers of convenience are well informed and had the measure of Harper prior to 2006.  But they turned a blind eye to these faults.  In Hebert's case the venom she directed at Dion might have a tinge of tribalism to it.  But she reveled in piling on Martin and Ignatieff as well.  All of this played into Harper's vote suppression strategy.


Now there seems to be an expectation that we will forget the previous cheerleading if Hebert and her ilk act surprised that the Conservatives are just as childishly undemocratic and full of right wing hate for Canada's institutions as they always have been.


But they have made their bed and history will make them lie in it.  As historians dissect how one of the world's leading nations was systematically pulled apart from within, the role of the media in enabling Harper will fill several volumes.Recommend this Post