Canadian ClusterF@#k: Stephen Harper is a Scheming Dick

Thu Dec 18, 2008 at 05:13:32 PM PST

Don’t like the state of your Canadian government or lack thereof? Join the club. An unnecessary election in which millions were spent yet nothing (and I mean nothing) changed, followed by a gang war between a divisive, neo-Rovian, Bush-lite incumbent and a bunch of boring geeks and incompetent losers whom very nearly seized the leadership of the country at the end of it? And where are we now, precisely? How about and a month-and-a-half parliamentary shut-down during the biggest global economic crisis in history? What the Christ are these idiots doing, you ask yourself, if you’re even half awake, are we Canada or Tanzania for fuck’s sakes?

Up on stage at the Beggar, against your will and headed for certain doom in the form of an impromptu band with no setlist and an inexperienced and clearly drunken drummer. Beggar owner Doug was supposed to sing back-up, having orchestrated this mess but is now nowhere to be found, not the first time he’s pulled something like this on you, depraved bastard that he is. Something about it reminds you of the crazed state of politics in Canada’s national scene, which is what prompts you, after slugging back a huge tankard of Guinness to describe your brand new, completely inept band as ‘The Coalition of Musicians.’ Why not? There’s some resonance there.

The crowd responds to it, you can see them out there, every single one of them wanting to hear you sound off on this new, latest and greatest of Canadian clusterfucks, because they ‘re all thinking about it and wanting to talk about it. But how is your Calgarian audience going to react when you tell them that their hometown boy is responsible for the whole mess and probably something of a Fascist and has learned only the bad things from his good buddy and former college cheerleader George ‘Dubya’ Bush. The band (sans Doug, of course) kicks in with ‘Roadhouse Blues’ in the nick of time, before you have the chance to blurt the following:

Stephen Harper kicked a sick and stinking dog in the guts and got a well deserved bite in the arse for it. What is now undeniable is that it was a waste of goddamned time, just like the election he called was a waste of goddamned time, no matter who you like leading your country in January. At a time where it’s probably never been more important for everybody to be working together to shore Canada up against some truly dark and threatening times, Harper rolled the dice with politics and division, the worst of which was by threatening to eliminate public funding for political parties. Funding being cash, cash being the lifeblood of any political party and after an epic loss by the Liberals during a time of Recession, a more obvious and public curb-stomping would require actual bloodshed. Or maybe nooses.


"I Hate All These Guys, Why Should My Taxes Go to Them?"
On the surface, and just on the surface, eliminating public financing for political parties sounds like a hell of an idea. Let’s spend the money on schools and roads or, better yet, why not pass the savings onto the people so we can all buy ourselves what I’m guessing amounts to an extra 6-pack at the end of the year? It’s a compelling argument until you realize that the alternative to public financing is private financing, which, always and forever, creates a government owned lock, stock and barrel by Big Business. It’s not rocket science. Ask America.

Private funding amounts to whatever you, me or the Big Corporations are going to donate to a nation’s political parties. So if it’s you and me, maybe it’s a coupla bucks but it’s probably nothing because what in the hell would we invest in a political party for, when a 24 of beer gets you a positive feeling and immediate results right away? Time and time again I’ve voted for the can of beer and have absolutely never been disappointed with my decision. So if we’re not donating, well then you have to now stop and ask yourself: who is?

Big business invests the money and it’s not just a case of beer but millions and millions of cases of beer with the understanding that they now own the candidate and thus the country. And what happens next? Levees fail. Wars begin over the blood of dead dinosaurs, paid for by the Citizens and future generations of Citizens while making Big Business rich and richer. Meanwhile the earth speedily converts into an ashtray as Big Oil scrambles to create an unresolved debate where there is none, courtesy of Big Media, transforming what's supposed to be an informed citizenry into a society of distracted, terrified and probably sleeping lemmings. And gibbering chimps get elected. And we’d all hate for something like that to happen, right?

For Harper to begin cheerleading the privatization of political party funding means, necessarily, that he’s okay with your government being owned part and parcel by the Corporations. He’s under no illusions in this regard. The Right wing is traditionally the party of Big Business so there’s a very natural marriage going on there which is good for Big Business and good for the Conservative Party of Canada but bad for nearly everything and everybody else. I would have voted no confidence too. Twice if I could have. So there you have it.

But shit, you think, maybe it won’t be so bad? "I’m playing bass" Doug assures you, "don’t worry about it." Bass plus back-up singer? We might just pull this thing off. Maybe we can bust out some 54-40. Or "Watch the World Die," by Everclear, that’d be cool. But it doesn’t feel like that’s what’s going to happen, not at all, and the hunted look of your compatriots around you don’t provide much assurance. What’s the penalty for dropping out at this phase, you wonder to yourself? Was it even possible? Doug’d have the room in an uproar. They’d hunt you down. No, skipping out on the deal is not an option. So you grin and bear it, you go up with what you got and you take your shot at it and you let the chips fall where they goddamned may. And you just don’t give a shit. As if to seal the deal you hear your name and not six seconds later a shooter coasts perfectly into your outstretched hand, a perfect slide from a girl with a pair of eyes a fella could get lost in forever. A quick salute and down the hatch. Fuck it.

Fat girls, Mopeds and the Bloc Quebecois
Harper’s defense against the dread Coalition can basically be summed up as follows: "The Separatists are coming!!! THE SEPARTISTS ARE COMING!!!" That’s a bit of an eyeroller coming from Harper, considering he’d arguably done more for the Separatist cause than any PM in history when he formerly recognized Quebec as a "Nation within Canada," depending, of course, how you choose to look at it.

Quebec, the French and Separatists aside, the Bloc Quebecois as a political organization can most aptly be described as a loose and dirty woman that everybody in town puts the screws to now and then and always piously deny to the high heavens later. Never the bridesmaid nor the bride, the Bloc Quebecois is the town pump and they get used and they get paid for it and they’re generally happy as a clam with the whole situation because they get to dress up real nice, enjoy a couple of nice meals and get all sorts of pretty gifts when all is said and done. So it has been, so it shall always be. Right now the Coalition is their sugar daddy but Harper himself, in spite of his feigned outrage at the current situation, brought this particularly ugly girl to the dance back in September of ‘04 when he was rattling the saber at the Martin government. And Dion, for his part, incoherently screamed at the outright danger, injustice and irresponsibility of banding with the Separatists. At least I think that’s what he was trying to say. And so it goes.

What’s Next?
For Harper? He will of course eliminate, for now, the incredibly dangerous notion of privatizing political funding, knowing as he now knows that his opponents, surprisingly enough, won’t actively allow him to murder them in cold blood. Beyond that, he’s basically got two choices: Push blood-and-guts political practices in the hopes of crushing his enemies and dividing the populace just enough to maintain a Rovian, 50% plus one majority victory the next time at the polls or stop rolling the partisan dice and actually lead the whole country through these, the darkest economic times in the history of the world. Maybe the ultimate question is whether a scheming dick can change his spots. Time will tell.

As for you and the so-called Coalition of Musicians, well, it’s going as well as could be expected, which is to say, not so well at all. You finally spot Doug over at the VLTs, ostensibly gambling but in actuality he’s helplessly laughing his ass off at the spectacle on stage. You flip the finger at him and, bastard that he is, he just points a finger atyou and continues laughing uncontrollably. "You’ll suffer, buddy!" you mouth at him, "you’ll rue." And he will. There’s a million ways to exact small revenge on your smart-ass buddy when he owns a bar.

In the mean time, though most sets are at least three songs long we cut it down to two during Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom County Blues,’ when your drummer slows his beat to a crawl for no reason whatsoever, beyond possibly not even knowing where he was. Christ, you think, is he blacking out? Does he need first aid? You and your coalition turn and look at him, wondering what the fuck it is he thinks he’s doing, but he’s chasing musical rabbits in his mind, oblivious to you, the band and even the audience. You slow down the lyrics and just wait for the whole awful thing to close but then, against all expectation, switch tacks and repeat a line from the song about rich folks and whiskey and cigars, only because you like singing the line and the Coalition of Musicians is already as awful as they can be. At this phase, why not repeat a stanza or two? Reverse style points. See how these things happen? Set finished, you thank our audience for not throwing even one beer bottle at you and beat a hasty retreat to the bar.