Michael Ignatieff and Our Angry Canada

I must say I greatly enjoyed the sight today of an angry Michael Ignatieff.

Ignatieff mocked the latest round of Conservative ads, including a spot featuring Harper working late in his office.

The ads, Ignatieff said, offer a contrast between "leadership that listens and leadership that wants to impose an ideology Canadians just aren't comfortable with."

Because it's about time. Progressives in this country are angry, over the way the Cons are stealing our country.

The new conservative way is seen in the manner in which politics is now played in Canada. The permanent campaign mode, the politics of aggression and intimidation employed by Mr. Harper, a Prime Minister who doesn’t know what the high road looks like, has been a staple of the hard right of the Republican Party. We had seen elements of this in Canada, but not to the degree employed by today’s Conservatives. So far, the PM has gotten away with his anti-democratic impulses, the emphasis being on “so far.”

Angry at the way they are perverting our values, and corrupting our youth.

Angry at the way they are turning so many Canadians into greedy beasts, who can be bribed by a $100 cheque every month, into killing a national daycare program.

In cancelling the child-care program upon taking office and replacing it with a $100-a-month payment to parents of young children, Harper was throwing a tasty bone to conservatives who believe a woman’s place is in the home.

Angry at the way our progressive leaders can't seem to reflect that anger, and keep rolling over.

The real story of the past five years isn’t Harper’s success — his poll numbers have hovered below 40 per cent — but the timidity of the opposition in mounting a spirited case for progressive policies that would have sparked wide public support, particularly after the 2008 financial crash exposed the fallacies of neo-conservative tax-cutting and deregulation.

Harper should be getting pummeled for his pro-corporate, anti-people agenda. Instead, he’s strutting about arrogantly accusing his opponents of being disrespectful, even as he heads a government that is the most disrespectful —to the vast majority of Canadians — in our history.

Or fighting each other, while our country BURNS.

Oh boy. It can't be said enough. The next election will be the most important election in Canadian history.

Organize, unite, get ANGRY.

Defeat those bastard Cons...

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers.