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Harper’s Battered Bunch, On The Other Hand, Could Use A Reality Check
By Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
Some of you may (or more likely may not) recall a last minute get-out-and-vote appeal I posted on NAL the day before the federal election where I made a brief reference to Pinky, a friend’s pet chiwawa my wife and I are dog sitting for a couple weeks.
I added a few words about Pinky because for reasons only a dog behaviorist may understand, she had this habit of making a sour face and sticking her tongue out at the mere mention of Stephen Harper’s name.
Before the election. Poor Pinky. She looked like she had come down with a bad case of Harper Derangement Syndrome.
It was a habit that carried right through to the morning of election day when a canvasser for the Harper Conservatives came to our door and Pinky flashed a disapproving tongue so many times the canvasser said she must be suffering from a canine version of something he called ‘Harper Derangement Syndrome’ – a condition diehard Harper say makes normally rational and intelligent people express a hatred for Harper that borderlines on pathological.
Naturally, the canvasser’s diagnosis, as partisan as it may have been, had my wife and I concerned enough to call our local animal hospital, only to find out that both vets were home that day due to a severe case of the same syndrome.
Then something amazing happened.
Late that same day, when the final results of the election were in and Harper appeared on the screen to make his concession speech, Pinky’s spirit changed from dark and sour to what our Canada’s prime minister-elect Justin Trudeau celebrated with the words “sunny ways.”
Pinky was dancing around the room as if we had just filled her bowl over the brim with her favourite doggie biscuits. It was enough to leave us saying; ‘What a difference an election can make, even in the life of a dog!’
The election results were in and Pinky couldn’t be happier
And now seriously folks, I am sharing this tale about Pinky with you not just to show how silly I can sometimes be, but to say a few words about how enormously disconnected Harper’s Conservatives and their hardcore supporters were – and still are- from the values and views and concerns of a majority of the rest of us living in this Canada of ours today.
In the days following an October 19th election that saw Trudeau’s Liberals win enough seats, including ones held by high-profile members of Harper’s cabinet like Joe Oliver and Chris Alexander, leading Conservatives are still coming on radio and television news programs and chalking up the party’s defeat to Canadians simply wanting a change, as if we woke up one morning and decided, without much thought, to toss aside all of our old clothes for new ones..
To make matters worse, there was “the liberal media” and other miscreants out there spreading this disease (the name of which may have been coined by the same backroom spin doctors who cooked up “barbaric cultural practices”) called “Harper Derangement Syndrome,” which the hard cores in Harper’s camp say caused Canadians from coast to coast to be overcome with a hatred for their leader that was groundless and ill-informed.
Never mind that many Canadians voted the way they did because care about protecting the environment and want to see their country address climate change, or that they want to see the aboriginal peoples we share this country with treated more justly, or that we care more about investing more in health care, education and modernizing the country’s fraying infrastructure than endless tax cuts for everyone up to and including the wealthiest one per cent who, by the way, are using loopholes Harper wouldn’t close to fly their money to offshore havens where they collectively avoid paying Revenue Canada an estimated $200 billion annually in taxes.
Trudeau’s Liberals sweep to victory as an agent of change
Never mind all the polls showing that a majority of Canadians could care less about the legalization of marijuana, as long as it is done properly, or about what people choose to wear for religious or cultural reasons, or about a person’s sexual orientation, or that Canada should be doing more to help refugees fleeing from war-torn Syria.
Why would Conservatives factor any of that into the reasons for their party’s defeat when it is so much easier to convince themselves it was mostly about Canadians wanting change for change’s or harboring some irrational dislike for Harper.
It all speaks to a culture of denial inside this Harper/Reform Party bastardization of what was the old Progressive Conservative Party of Canada that goes way beyond calling climate change a left-wing conspiracy or a joke.
It also re-affirms a longstanding lack of respect for Canadians’ intelligence and a contempt for anyone who challenged Harper’s agenda – a contempt that remains so baked in to the body of the party Harper had such iron control over that, even in defeat, its hard-core adherents can’t see past it to the possibility that Canadians wanted change for a long list of reasons that were well grounded in facts and reason.
As long as leading members of the party Harper built refuse to realize that, they will be wandering around the political wilderness they now find themselves in for many years to come.
(Just one brief postscript on Pinky. The day after the election, when our friend returned from her trip to pick Pinky up she said; ‘Wow, I haven’t seen Pinky acting this perky in a long time. What have you guys doing to cause that’. ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘All we did was go out and vote but that couldn’t have anything to do with it.’
Or could it. …
We didn’t bother telling her about ‘Harper Derangement Syndrome’ and how much better Pinky looked after the election results came in. She probably wouldn’t believe us anyway.)
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