Stephen Harper and the Hockey Doctrine

As we all know Great Nerd Leader likes to pose as a hockey fan, a hockey book writer, and a road hockey warrior.

And wherever he goes a shiny set of goal posts seems to follow him.

Like here on the tarmac of some airport, where his former flunky Dimitri Soudas is seen letting in an easy one...

Because the orders from the PMO are quite clear. Any shot that's on net goes IN. And if looks like it's going wide, move the net so it doesn't. 

But of course, there's a sinister purpose behind everything Harper does. It's just too bad it takes someone from the Guardian to bring this to our attention.

The Harper hockey doctrine operates on more than a simplistic down-home, one-of-us approach to populist politics; it's part of a larger communications strategy. The more Harper turns up at hockey events, the more his face is plastered across a bunch of sports channels that otherwise would rarely, if ever, talk about politics. The more that happens, the more he's seen by a new crop of viewers who would have otherwise rarely, if ever, cared about him. Not that they have to, either, because the association has been made: Harper = hockey, hockey = Canada, Harper = Canada. Or, at least, that's the intent.

And to point out the dangers of Harper's re branding of our national myths and our slavish support of the Monarchy:

There is a lot one can choose to take from Canada's past – one full of interesting stories about how this place came to be – but history is there to teach us when we need it, not to be rammed in our faces as part of a moralising search for warped nostalgic national character. Which is effectively what we're getting – not history, but historical pastiche: a medley of images and myths that are credible only on the basis of their repetition and vaunted placement in skewed narrative that is leaning more toward the political and away from merely just being. It's not identity or sense of nationhood, it's political messaging.

Yup. As I said, it's too bad that nobody in our own slavish mediocre media bothers to point this out. So the brutalization of Canada continues.

Everyone ignores this warning:

As MIT lecturer Peter M Senge wrote, when past meanings are continually imposed on present situations, "yesterday's meaning becomes today's dogma, often losing much of its original meaningfulness in the process. When this happens collectively, societies become governed by shadows, hollowed out myths from the past applied as inviolate truths for the present."

Great Nerd Leader stickhandles his way to another majority.

Because progressives are divided.

And we get the country we deserve...