Wednesday, October 15, 2014

stephen harper Surprises Me

I've long held that stephen harper is a psychopath. The only thing he really cares about is himself. (he doesn't know why.) I also happen to think he's a very shallow and superficial man. As a young man in Ontario, he was a Liberal. The callow youth then heads off to Calgary to study economics, and (wonder of wonders!) becomes a right-wing extremist.

It's no doubt that harper's mind has calcified and is therefore not going to be as easily molded as it was when he was a youngster. Were he to be immersed in the culture of some British Columbia hippy commune, he would become, first, a cranky contrarian, and then a sullen misanthrope. But harper, not being a profound thinker at all, is obviously insecure about his belief system. This explains his intense aversion to facts and alternative ideologies. he's dimly aware that the crusty shell of his brain offers only weak protection to the airy mists of half-formed, half-understood, half-baked theories that sail lightly about within the relative expanses there.

harper senses, in ways that animals sense, that something is wrong. Prolonged exposure to alternative views would eventually bring about a painful, disorienting mental crisis, as his defences cracked and his pitiful world view escaped and dissipated in the wind. Whatever he would become following this is unknown and therefore terrifying.

Here we have one of the primary reasons for harper's contempt for Parliament. It's fear. harper prefers to hide from parliamentary debate, blatantly lie when forced to say something, and hide behind empty platitudes and character assassination of his opponents in lieu of argument. Luckily for him, such mental
 vacuity is more than enough for his cretinous voting base.

I used to see harper speaking with signs around him saying how Canada had to be "strong" in the world. "Strong in our values, strong in this, strong in that." Meaningless twaddle. That's why I was genuinely surprised when reading this post at Montreal Simon's, to come across harper speaking about a subject with a degree of specificity that almost approached having genuine thoughts on the matter:
"This descent into nihilism... leads to silliness such as moral neutrality on the use of marijuana or harder drugs mixed with its random moral crusades on tobacco. It explains the lack of moral censure on personal foibles of all kinds, extenuating even criminal behaviour with moral outrage at bourgeois society, which is then tangentially blamed for deviant behaviour."
Stephen Harper  Report Magazine 2003
This is no doubt (as some commentators mention) a symptom of harper's deranged (if lightly held) fundamentalist beliefs. Having drunk the kool-aid at the University of Calgary's economics department, harper obviously wandered into a fundamentalist church at some point, and, being an impressionable lad with no original thoughts of his own, came to absorb a hazy interpretation of their deluded beliefs into his shallow person. As with all things, harper sort of believes this drivel, with all the intensity that a superficial narcissist is capable of believing in anything.

Aw hell! Just for shits n' giggles, let's dissect the entire quote from this mental and moral half-wit!
Conservatives need to reassess our understanding of the modern Left. It has moved beyond old socialistic morality or even moral relativism to something much darker. It has become a moral nihilism - the rejection of any tradition or convention of morality, a post-Marxism with deep resentments, even hatreds of the norms of free and democratic western civilization.

This descent into nihilism should not be surprising because moral relativism simply cannot be sustained as a guiding philosophy. It leads to silliness such as moral neutrality on the use of marijuana or harder drugs mixed with its random moral crusades on tobacco. It explains the lack of moral censure on personal foibles of all kinds, extenuating even criminal behaviour with moral outrage at bourgeois society, which is then tangentially blamed for deviant behaviour. On the moral standing of the person, it leads to views ranging from radical responsibility-free individualism, to tribalism in the form of group rights.
"The old socialistic morality ..."

What could Herr Harper have meant by that?

Presumably, the fool is trying to talk about the SOCIALIST morality of society providing everyone with food, shelter, an education, and dignity. Being an idiot, harper has embraced the idea that respecting the humanity of all humans is contemptible and doesn't require elaboration to be despised. Also, being an idiot, harper probably thinks that the right-wing meme that socialists were just jealous of the 19th Century rich for living lives of privilege and leisure, is true, while the fact that they gamboled while people starved to death within walking distance of them, as the self-deluded, self-satisfied, self-righteous, hypocrites that they were, entirely eludes him.

Do you see how much shit harper pours upon himself with only the first phrase in his stammering idiocy?

"or even moral relativism"

This is where a lot of right-wing simpletons attempt to cudgel "the left" and fail utterly. Whereas people on the left try to say that an entire people should not be dehumanized because of some objectionable beliefs, or, when a left-wing revolution is brought about by violence, right-wingers like harper masturbate themselves in their moral clarity. This moral clarity instantly dissolves when they are asked to condemn the torture and murder of (today at least) Arabs by Washington or Ottawa. Tell them that Sir John A. Macdonald was a drunken, murderous racist who starved hundreds, if not thousands of the First Nations to death, and they'll come up with excuses, especially that he was a product of his times. harper and his ilk are walking, talking parodies of moral relativism without even knowing it.

"It has become a moral nihilism - the rejection of any tradition or convention of morality, a post-Marxism with deep resentments, even hatreds of the norms of free and democratic western civilization."  

Being a plodding dullard, harper has (not surprisingly) gotten ahead of himself here. "Nihilism" means the rejection of any and all human morality as meaningless. It does NOT mean any philosophy that condemns any "tradition" that respects the right of wealthy people to own so many homes they haven't seen all the rooms in them, while at the same time it shrugs its shoulders at mass homelessness; Rejecting the bigoted "tradition" that love can only be shared between a man and a woman is NOT "moral nihilism."

"A post-Marxism"

If one were to ask the oafish stephen harper what he understands by the term "post-Marxism," one should be prepared for a rambling monologue approximating the half-remembered ravings of David Horowitz. Mackenzie-King attempting to rationalize his occultism would make more sense than whatever the boy from the mail-room at Imperial Oil could attempt.

"with deep resentments, even hatreds of the norms of free and democratic western civilization."

Please note; these words were uttered by the ONLY prime minister in the history of the Westminster-style system of parliaments to have been found guilty of contempt of Parliament. Those words were spoken by a man who stole a majority government via electoral fraud. As is true throughout history, when "conservatives" cannot win at the ballot-box, they have no qualms about taking power via fraud or even force. And their "moral relativism" helps them in their insanely hypocritical tirades against those who would likewise use force to expel them from their stolen offices.

harper has a deep-seated hatred of freedom and democracy. Again, this is due to his ever-present fear of having his half-understood certainties exposed for the crap that he's vaguely aware that they are. FEAR. That is the answer to all of the conscious policies of stephen harper. Fear of challenge. Fear of change. Fear of exposure. The policies of sniveling cowardice.

Ask harper to get down to brass-tacks about what it is about "western civilization" that he loves, and you'll find yourself in a miasma of disconnected inanities about capitalism, Winston Churchill, and traditional marriage. You'll soon become disgusted with this gibbering mediocrity before you and walk away. harper will take this opportunity to try to convince himself about his beliefs, and continue talking to himself, only to give up after a minute or two in confusion and disinterest.

Speaking of disinterest. I think I'll tackle the second paragraph of harper's strained attempts at intellectual clarity for tomorrow's post.

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