The Unfair Elections Act and the Madness of Stephen Harper

I never can decide which famous story Harperland reminds me of the most.

The Emperor's New Clothes or Lord of the Flies.

Or answer the questions historians will ask.

Did he really think he could get away with it? Why were so many so silent for so long? Or fail to understand the nature of the monster?

But I'm glad to see that even Andrew Coyne now understands that maybe the Unfair Elections Act is just CRAZY. 

The most disturbing expression of this government’s relativism is what one might call its relativization of knowledge. That it could casually dismiss the unanimous expert opposition to the bill, without bothering to offer a rebuttal, shows contempt not just for those involved but for the whole concept of expertise. Experts can sometimes get it wrong, of course, even where they are agreed. But the insinuation here is that they are wrong because they are experts, of which their very unanimity is further proof. 

That way lies madness, as we saw in the long-form census “debate.” It takes us into a partisan Bizarro World, where the more indefensible the policy is, the more it must be correct — for the more universal the expert dissent it arouses, the more this is taken as evidence, not that the policy is crazy, but of a kind of academic class hatred of the Harper government. That’s one possible explanation, certainly. The other is that it’s crazy.

But if it is a Bizarro World, and that bill is crazy, where does he think that madness comes from?

Surely not from Pierre Poilievre? 

For he is just his master's pathetic little stooge.

Especially now that we know that the Unfair Elections Act is Stephen Harper's way of exacting revenge on Elections Canada. 



A product of the twisted mind of a man as vindictive as the first Harper, who I wrote about FIVE years ago but could never forget.

He had risen to the post of justice of the peace by the time a judicial inquiry found him guilty of, as one historian put it, "violent and oppressive measures" - vindictive to a point beyond all reason.

Because even back then it sounded so FAMILIAR.

A man who would go on to gut the census for no sane reason, and muzzle scientists.

Or burn books...



As casually as he would torch the planet.

A man his old collaborator Tom Flanagan describes like this in his new book.

“He can be suspicious, secretive, and vindictive, prone to sudden eruptions of white-hot rage over meaningless trivia, at other times falling into week-long depressions in which he is incapable of making decisions,” Mr. Flanagan writes. “I feared, as I still do, that he might some day bring himself down Nixon-style by pushing too hard against the network of rules constraining authority in a constitutional government.”

For think about it. What does all of that say about Stephen Harper's diseased mind, and the dark place to which he might lead us?

And why has it taken so long for for so many Canadians to understand that there is something terribly wrong with Stephen Harper. That the mad king has no clothes, and may be losing his marbles. 

Or understand the real nature of the monster.

Like Simon in Lord of the Flies does...



Before he is murdered for telling the truth, in a jungle full of degraded savages who don't want to hear it.

Like so many in this foul Harperland.

And is this enough to sound the warning about the threat to our democracy?



Because I'm not sure it is. Maybe a voice of reason can move some. And this is a start. 

But it's not nearly enough. It won't move those who still don't understand how the Unfair Elections Act could affect their lives.

It won't move the young because it's not visual enough. 

And it won't shake up this aging complacent country because it doesn't sufficiently illustrate the nature of the threat.

Or the evil madness of Stephen Harper...



Tomorrow if I have time I'll try to make a short video to show what I mean.

But tonight because I'm beat I'll leave you with this simple illustration.

Or we will do more to fight that foul Con regime, and defend our democracy.

And the Canada we want to live in...



And dream of a better future like I was doing today.

Or we will wake up one day in a very dark place...



In a country his madness destroyed.

And our living nightmare...



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