Happy New Years

Well, Happy New Years, which so far looks to be exactly like 2008. York University has been provincially ordered back to work, so 45000 students lost an entire semester's worth of money and time and education, and all.. for... nothing. Because nothing was resolved, nothing was changed. In Ottawa, the coalition falls apart and Harper returns to unchallenged government. Unemployment has risen to 12.1 percent, but a small headline today noted that the payment of bonus will proceed uninhibited. That's one of the same overspending madness that brought us here in the first place. And for all his talk of change, for all his talk of a new order, Obama still let that vile, intolerant Rick Warren officiate at his inauguration. So hurray for change. Hooray for this brave new world of sameness, identical in all ways to the year before.

And the thing is, it's all our fault. Because Canadians couldn't be bothered to understand their own electoral process. It takes no effort to find information these days, it's the God-Damned Information AGE. A few quick jabs at the keyboard will find you tonnes of information on how the government works. History gives us coalitions. But we feared it, because we only listened to our elected officials, who acted so contradictory and foolish that no wonder we felt afraid. Politicians can feel this. They can feel the undercurrents of society, and they act on it. A good person does what is right. A good politician does what he can to stay aloft. Michelle Jean had a change to act as the Constitution and precedent empowers her to do, but she crumpled under the weight of "doing what the public wanted", which was act as a figure head and do only as the Prime Minister wants. Poor Dion was forced out, because of the grudges of his own people, not for any lack of competence, and in strides the pompous Ignatieff. Ignatieff doesn't want a coalition, it's not his idea, the credit doesn't go to him. So he chooses to dissolve it, to satisfy the cowards of his own party who don't want to upset the status quo AT ANY COST. The cost, of course, is Stephen Harper reigns again unchallenged.

I don't believe Stephen Harper is evil. He is not some mindless robot, or spawn of Satan, or twisted monster that some have described him to be. To do that, we would do the exact same thing we did with the Bush presidency, where we only looked at the caricature, the parody, and we ignored the true threat of the man time and time again, because we called him a puppet and a fool. A clown. And so the dancing, prancing fool of a piper led the children out of Hamlin and down into the river, where they followed him laughing at his idiocy, and the water came over their heads and they drowned. To accept the hyperbole of Harper is to deeply, deeply underestimate the man. No, Harper is something far worse. He is simply a man who is utterly, unequivocally wrong. He is firm, unbending in his mental convictions, no matter how he bends to placate the public. Harper is simply wrong, and he is leading us into this new era of status quo.

So, Happy New Year, here at the end of January. Onwards and around.