Stephen Harper The Brrrrrrrrrrittle Without The Peanuts

I've just had a look at a blog by our local Member of Parliament, who beat the Liberal incumbent last time around by 246 votes. This should have told him that the last Canadian election was a protest vote against a party that had been in power for a very long time and which was being racked by a scandal or three (note to self: find a government that has had no scandals -LOL. . . LMAO!!!) - but he chose to read it a different way. He took his election to mean that he had been elected for being himself - not bloody likely - and that as one of the Chosen, diligently blowing hard in Ottawa, he must let the people know it - time after time after time after time. . .yea, even unto eternity.

So he flooded local mailboxes with flyers purportedly outlining the government's work for which we should be grateful, but which were, in fact, political advertising.

Ordinarily one would say out, out, damned ad! and throw the thing into the recycle bin.

Except for the little matter of free franking privileges that are one of the often misused perks of our MPs. Boy! were they misused or what? In the first months we tossed at least a half dozen flyers, notably four in one week, but then we began to readdress them to the Prime Minister's Office, with choice comments for his perusal. As if . . .

. . . hmmmm. While it is highly unlikely that Stephen Harper reads every piece of mail coming to his office, he is known to micromanage his government's operation. As a matter of fact his most recent feat, calling an election more than a year before the new fixed date for elections - which he himself engineered via a bill that his minions voted for - amounted to the same pouty sour grapes of a five- or six-year-old saying "I'm taking my ball home" because the others weren't playing his way. Harper tried to blame it on the other parties, but fact remains that he claims he can't govern with the minority he had and so we must elect again. Wake up, Steve - there will be much egg on your face when another minority takes up the reins. But this is a digression - we sent the junk mail to the PMO, each and every time we got another advert.

Soon there was a small item in a local newspaper which took the local MP to task for abusing his free franking privileges - proof that we weren't the only ones ticked off by this petty criminal behaviour.

What? You think labelling it "petty criminal behaviour" is excessive? Not according to the Tory playbook. The party of Stephen Harper is one seeking to criminalize every transgression, no matter how minor, and to exact stiffer penalties so that the criminal is "justly" punished. So, yes, our local MP was stealing postage for flyers that had no relevance to any government work, but much to his ongoing self-advertisements.

What? You think this is a bit too rigid? There's the rub - the Prime Minister of Canada is himself too rigid, too inflexible, vastly unimaginative, and for one who has - at the very least - aligned himself with the religious right he has yet to pay a lot of attention to the teachings of one Jesus who counselled forgiving the transgressions of others as a way to be a better person.  

But then, the religious right is not about Christianity, it's about fire and brimstone and revenge and getting the God of Old to do their dirty work when someone irks them. (Even the MP in question adheres to the religious right.) And Harper simply won't bend, because he can't bend, because he lacks imagination and humanity.

This is not too harsh. Harper - like Duh-bya - is rigid to the point of brittleness. He may have a far better, more polished intellect than the leader of the free world, but he is not any more able to imagine other possibilities. (We think he might be this way because he had a bad experience at then-notoriously snobbish Richview Collegiate, teen years and high school being major factors in the formation of one's adult personality.) And this rigidity causes him to micromanage not just the government but also his campaign. This election is not about parties, it is all about HIM - Stephen Harper. Everywhere one looks there is Harper, heart and soul and corpus of the Conservative Party of Canada.


WOULD YOU TRUST THIS MAN?

We don't see anyone except Harper, cozying up to the fireplace, philosophizing and ruminating - and possibly chewing his cud once the camera moves away. He thinks, perhaps, that he is showing his softer, warmer side, his human side. But he is simply showing - again - that he has only one. He is a nearly two-dimensional being like those in Edwin Abbott's great book, Flatland (except that it might, in Harper's case, be subtitled A Non-Romance in One Dimension). And this assault of Harper-style "hominess", which makes one feel about as warm and fuzzy as a cobra might, is showing also that, emperor or not, he has no clothes. It highlights that Harper's machinations are trite and predictable, that he will get others to do his dirty work - insulting and mocking people for their ethnicity, moral values, unfortunate ingestion of a food-borne poison - even as the ads connect "Harper" with "warmth" and that he will jettison his subordinates if publicity threatens to swamp his boat.

Harper is unlikely to permit further mass mailings of pouf pieces, unless originated by himself. Our local MP - who resumed flooding our mailboxes with irrelevant bits of paper a short while later - should remember that. We don't have a lot of hope on that point as he strikes us as terribly naive and jejune. Perhaps he will be re-elected. But he still will serve at Harper's pleasure. Hm - "Harper" and "pleasure" in the same thought? not bloody likely.

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