Sooey Says

KinsellaOnTheWhysOfHarper'sNextWin

At a time when unsupervised twenty-four-years-olds in red suspenders (to borrow the characterization of another Everyman, Jean Chretien) have been wreaking havoc on the global economy - at a time when men with beards and living in caves have the means and the inclination to bring the civilized world to its knees - the Everyman has many attractions. It's not that he's a conservative or a liberal, necessarily: it's just that, when things are going to crap, people don't go looking for flamboyant visionaries to lead them out of the darkness. They go looking for guys with a flashlight.

The above is fascinating to me because it clearly shows how successfully the powers that be have sold the electorate a bill of goods. The 24 year olds wreaking havoc are the same people who vote for guys like Stephen Harper - who benefit because he is Prime Minister, the men in caves have hardly wrought the devastation that the men in suits have (and I refer to the response to 9/11) and things weren't going to crap until Republicans and New Conservatives came to power, but they sure as hell are going to crap now. Things are worse, not better. And the disenfranchised are just as disenfranchised as ever.

I hate to think how things will look after four more years of reactionary ideologically-driven government - which the New Conservative government of Stephen Harper most certainly is.

Indeed, thanks to the impressive job done by all those political backroom boys in concert with their corporate media hack buddies in convincing, first Americans, then Canadians, that the paragraph quoted above is in any way a representation of reality - which it isn't - the Republicans, and now the New Conservatives have all the power their "I'm alright, Jack" (except they aren't) supporters have ever craved to continue to wreak havoc on the rest of us.

The crisis was created, the fearmongering worked, and now, if you're in any way politically and socially progressive, the times are scary.