Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Kosturbators Coming To Canada
Steve Janke of Angry At The Great White North gives readers a look at what they can expect from Canada's left. Ironically, the very gang that constantly rails against the demon of Americanization has adopted the tactics of the American idiot left. Chief amongst these tactics is the personalization of politics. On the left, this morphs into a hateful rage that demands nothing less than the abolition of the opposition and the imposition of a so-called "progressive" monopoly on government. That's right: fascism.
Janke describes the toxic atmosphere hanging over NDP leader Jack Layton's post-election speech at party headquarters:
Listening to Jack Layton's speech, I witnessed what I thought was the low point of the night, and it made me nervous. Jack Layton of the NDP thanked each of his opponents in turn: Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Quebecois, Paul Martin of the Liberals, and of course, Stephen Harper of the Conservatives. But while the mention of names of Duceppe and Martin were met with polite applause, a chorus of boos greeted Stephen Harper. Jack Layton didn't miss a beat, or scold his supporters, but carried on with a congratulatory message.
I worry that in Canada, the potential exists for what has happened in the US -- the fight between the Left and the Right will become intensely personal, at least for the Left. George W Bush is hated on a very personal level by Americans who have never met the man. Is Stephen Harper in for the same sort of treatment, hated for committing the crime of being a conservative?
No doubt. Let's read some of what Janke observes in the comments of a Canadian leftist blog:
Lets poke a stick at the neocons, turn over rocks, force the wingnuts into the open, expose their rabid face, and force them to eat each other. But right now, lets just flame the media. These lazy, mediocre, right-wing bastards let Harper get away with his dishonest stealth campaign. Let him fool a lot of Canadians. Almost cost us our country. Lets make sure they can never do that again. It’s payback time.
As for gays and lesbians and their friends, our war begins today. Lets make this Harperian interlude a mere blip in Canadian history. Before we smash them once and for all.
Wretchard at Belmont Club comments on the nature of this mentality:
In a certain mental universe the poll victory of Stephen Harper is not one particular outcome in a long series of elections, a process in which sometimes you lose, sometimes you win. It's the northern equivalent of the US Presidential election of 2000. Those who think along those lines do not simply want to win the next election but demonize the enemy and smash them; just as some want to end the reign of Halliburton and BushChimpHitler and establish a progressive hegemony forever.
The result of this thinking is that the thinkers will become their own worst enemies, just as they have in the United States. While their shrillness and volume may warp the agenda for a brief period, they will drag political discourse into the mud, as they have already done, and will eventually marginalize themselves from mainstream politics. Finding themselves on the outside looking in, they will then cast blame outward, rendering themselves even more angry and less powerful. Thus will Stephen Harper and Canadian Conservatives come to be portrayed by the left as an evil monolith, the ultimate mortal enemy, who must be smashed, crushed, destroyed, and submitted to any expression of viciousness and violence the leftist can imagine. And for the most part, the violence will be just imagined; the left in Canada will become a facsimile of the shrill, fevered, irrational left in America: a rump of apoplectic screamers, bereft of vision, bereft of respect for the process of governing or even democracy itself, and powerless to effect change because they have no ideas beyond hating Stephen Harper and his supporters.
In short, another bunch of Kosturbators, just like the bunch in America.
Janke describes the toxic atmosphere hanging over NDP leader Jack Layton's post-election speech at party headquarters:
Listening to Jack Layton's speech, I witnessed what I thought was the low point of the night, and it made me nervous. Jack Layton of the NDP thanked each of his opponents in turn: Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Quebecois, Paul Martin of the Liberals, and of course, Stephen Harper of the Conservatives. But while the mention of names of Duceppe and Martin were met with polite applause, a chorus of boos greeted Stephen Harper. Jack Layton didn't miss a beat, or scold his supporters, but carried on with a congratulatory message.
I worry that in Canada, the potential exists for what has happened in the US -- the fight between the Left and the Right will become intensely personal, at least for the Left. George W Bush is hated on a very personal level by Americans who have never met the man. Is Stephen Harper in for the same sort of treatment, hated for committing the crime of being a conservative?
No doubt. Let's read some of what Janke observes in the comments of a Canadian leftist blog:
Lets poke a stick at the neocons, turn over rocks, force the wingnuts into the open, expose their rabid face, and force them to eat each other. But right now, lets just flame the media. These lazy, mediocre, right-wing bastards let Harper get away with his dishonest stealth campaign. Let him fool a lot of Canadians. Almost cost us our country. Lets make sure they can never do that again. It’s payback time.
As for gays and lesbians and their friends, our war begins today. Lets make this Harperian interlude a mere blip in Canadian history. Before we smash them once and for all.
Wretchard at Belmont Club comments on the nature of this mentality:
In a certain mental universe the poll victory of Stephen Harper is not one particular outcome in a long series of elections, a process in which sometimes you lose, sometimes you win. It's the northern equivalent of the US Presidential election of 2000. Those who think along those lines do not simply want to win the next election but demonize the enemy and smash them; just as some want to end the reign of Halliburton and BushChimpHitler and establish a progressive hegemony forever.
The result of this thinking is that the thinkers will become their own worst enemies, just as they have in the United States. While their shrillness and volume may warp the agenda for a brief period, they will drag political discourse into the mud, as they have already done, and will eventually marginalize themselves from mainstream politics. Finding themselves on the outside looking in, they will then cast blame outward, rendering themselves even more angry and less powerful. Thus will Stephen Harper and Canadian Conservatives come to be portrayed by the left as an evil monolith, the ultimate mortal enemy, who must be smashed, crushed, destroyed, and submitted to any expression of viciousness and violence the leftist can imagine. And for the most part, the violence will be just imagined; the left in Canada will become a facsimile of the shrill, fevered, irrational left in America: a rump of apoplectic screamers, bereft of vision, bereft of respect for the process of governing or even democracy itself, and powerless to effect change because they have no ideas beyond hating Stephen Harper and his supporters.
In short, another bunch of Kosturbators, just like the bunch in America.
