Defenders of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are describing the virulent hatred for their leader and their party that drove them from power as irrational. On the contrary it was and is utterly rational when somebody clearly hates you to hate them back.
I'm a trade unionist and proud of it so Stephen Harper hates me. I'm an environmentalist so Stephen Harper hates me. I have leveled strong criticisms against the behavior of the state of Israel so Stephen Harper hates me. I'm a leftist who believes in a strong social safety net so Stephen Harper hates me.
And he couldn't even pretend to hide that hatred. In small ways and large day after day for YEARS he and his government demonstrated scornful, contemptuous hatred in word and deed for me and millions of other Canadians. He rammed through legislation, violating long standing parliamentary custom in the process, to try to deliver a death blow to the union movement, he used revenue Canada as a personal goon squad to attack civil society groups that criticized him or his government going so far as to label environmentalists as terrorists and foreign funded saboteurs, on an almost daily basis he and his government made statements expressing utter contempt for any group or individual who stood in the way of the Stephen Harper agenda.
The core Conservative base is maybe 20% to 30% of Canadians, at one point or another Harper or one of the trained attack weasels of his cabinet expressed hatred and contempt through statements or legislative assaults against practically everyone else. He and his government made it quite clear on multiple occasions that Canadians were divided into two groups; Conservative supporters and enemies, and no one can doubt that Stephen Harper hated his enemies.
So we hated him back, what could possibly be more rational?
Saturday, October 24, 2015
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2 comments:
Exactly right -- we must never forget what he was like, and what he inspired the Conservative Party to be.
Implying that the majority of Canadians suffered from some sort of derangement (as in "Harper Derangement Syndrome") is perhaps the final stroke from a party that held so many citizens in contempt for nearly 10 years, Rusty. Harper's lack of respect for parliament, the environment and the law (and the Supreme Court!) was almost daily compounded by the scripted, frequently nonsensical talking points of spokespeople such as DelMastro, Calandra, Pollievre, Kenny, Baird and Alexander. Harper and his crew failed to understand that the price to pay for their long list of dishonourable conduct is the loss of the authority to govern. To suggest that Canadians developed an insane "hatred" of Harper is a facile explanation of the record of the CPC party!
(Memo to Manning Center: might want to develop some courses on moral and ethical behaviour in politics)
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