Stephen Harper and Our Broken Parliament

I see that Parliament has adjourned with the Cons gnashing their teeth flapping their wings over what Justin Trudeau said yesterday.

“Bullshit!” he cried, his fury dramatically framed by flowing locks and sharply drawn facial hair.

“You piece of shit!” he added in Mr. Kent’s general direction.

But I thought Justin was quite restrained considering the circumstances. If I was him I would have added this...

Because Peter Kent deserves every stinky word aimed in his general direction. And if we're talking about contempt of Parliament, I thought this was definitely worse: 
“Mr. Speaker,” claimed Mr. Van Loan, “our government is always performing in an open and accountable fashion.”

Emerging as it did from the speaking orifice of the ghastly little Con who has truly debased our democracy.

No mumbling the normal apologies about “overzealous workers, blah, blah, blah, won’t happen again, etc.” Instead, Canadians were told that this kind of grime should be considered vital free speech – and must be protected, not prevented, by our laws. Efforts to rein it in would have worse consequences than letting it continue. This was the sound of a politician who had left home without an ethical or moral compass that morning.

Like all the other Cons in Lord Harper's sinister regime, who are making a mockery out of our broken Parliament.

But having said that, the question for me is, what are we going to do about it? Are we truly prepared to spend the next four years looking on helplessly as our country burns, gnashing our teeth or biting our tongues?

I don't think so. I can't think of anything more pointless and demoralizing. I think both opposition parties have done what they can to stand up to the Cons in Parliament. But in a Parliament so broken it just isn't enough, and it will never be enough, for the Harper regime will never change.

The opposition parties need to do more than just play old politics. They need to take a page from the Occupy movement, mobilize progressive Canadians, and organize new forms of creative democratic protest.

It could be rallies and marches, YouTube campaigns, or whatever. Because anything is better than nothing. We should be outraged.

We Canadians need to learn to be outraged by the outrageous. We need to learn that democracy is now a full contact sport that requires us to repeatedly raise our voices in order to be heard, and not to wait for our turn to quietly mark an X on a ballot once every four years.

And the more we organize, the more we protest, the more we will expose the crimes of the Cons, the more we will force them on the defensive, and the more we will set the stage for defeating them in the next election.

Am I wrong? Are these not the most important questions facing progressives? Are we the REAL majority? Is our country not in terrible trouble? Should we just sit on our asses and bite our tongues?

Or should we do all we can to save it ?