HAVE CANADIANS BECOME NEOCON LEMMINGS? OR ARE THEY JUST PLAYING POSSUM?

DOES THIS REPRESENT THE CANADIAN PEOPLE?

OR DOES THIS?

As I look at recent current polls the increasingly nagging question that keeps reverberating in my brain is, Has Harper already changed Canada in his almost four years of power?

There are many indications that perhaps he has. Canadians appear to have been sucked in by negative swiftboat tactics that destroy the reputations of good people. They have ignored Harper’s history as a far-right tub-thumper while he was head of the National Citizens Coalition, and that he had his nose so far up George W. Bush's ass he could see Tony Blair. Canadians seemed to pay little attention to Harper's fascistic attempted coup to destroy opposition parties by cutting off their funding last December, and they even seemed to fall for the canard that the evil was not the threat to democracy but the threat of a coalition.

Canadians gave Harper a pass during the last federal election when he tried to hoodwink the whole country into believing the big lie that there was little wrong with the economy. They seem to pooh-pooh his spending of gazillions of stimulus largesse only in Conservative ridings.

Neither do Canadians seem to recognize or care about Harper’s foreign policy gaffes and screwups that damage our international reputation and business relationships and put Canadian lives at risk. Canadians do not seem to have given a hoot about the confinement and torture of Islamic Canadian citizens abroad on trumped up charges brought by third world gestapoes, while Harper either does nothing, or worse yet, throws roadblocks in front of the efforts of those confined to extricate themselves.

Canadians seem to be ignoring or paying little heed to lies repeatedly fed to them by their government about Afghanistan – lies such as, that the allies are making headway, or that Karzai is an honest and decent man, or that we are bringing the Afghans the rule of law, or that we are making headway training Afghan police and soldiers. They have shown little concern for the Canadian lives lost and the cost to our national treasury in what most certainly is to become one of the West’s great lost causes.

Despite the Harper spear headed character assassinations, despite his government's dismal record in domestic and foreign policy or in protecting Canadian citizens abroad, and despite his government's lies and obfuscations, Canadians don’t seem to care. What the hell is going on? Has Harper already turned this country into a nation of sheeplike neocons like himself? Have we become a bunch of unthinking conservative lemmings?

Or are Canadians just playing possum? ‘Playing possum’ means to convincingly pretend you are dead so that others leave you alone. In boxing the definition is much more Machiavellian and lethal. It means pretending you were dead or asleep until your opponent gets careless and leaves an opening so you can deliver the knockout punch or move in for the kill. The famed middle-weight champ Jake La Motta (above, bloodied but unbowed) was good at playing possum. He won a lot of important fights that way.

Let us hope the Canadian people are just playing possum. Or perhaps just in the process of giving Harper enough rope as the saying goes for his lynching later on. Otherwise, this country is going to change, and not for the better.

MACCHIAVELLI GETS IT RIGHT: TURF HIM!

Niccolo Macchiavelli tells it like it is . . .

Turf him!

So, what is the opposition to do?

With Harper’s economic update now before the House of Commons, the opposition caught him red-handed plotting to do them in. He planned to create a one party state by killing off any effective democratic opposition in the government of Canada. He tried to destroy the opposition by depriving it of democracy’s life blood – money.

More significantly, he signaled his intention to impose his long held hard-right views on the nation. His first two steps in dealing with the economic crisis were to freeze the wages of civil servants and take away their right to strike for three years. There was no provision for any stimulus to get people working again or to save jobs.

The update also contained an overriding lie to the Canadian people that Canada would continue to run surpluses.

So now he is on the ropes. If the Grits, ND’s and Bloc get together and convince the Governor General they can govern in a coalition government, the Harper government is toast. In that event, it will be left to the Conservative Party to dispose of their leader’s remains. And dispose of them they will, if the Harper government falls.

Yesterday Harper caved on the party financing portion of the update. But is that enough to ward off a likely-to-succeed Commons defeat of the government and its replacement by a coalition of opposition parties?

The beauty of the situation to the insurrectionists is that they have a perfect overriding public interest issue to advance in convincing Canadians that bringing down the Harper government is the right thing to do. The policy presented by Harper in the update is not only dominated by a big lie, it is not in the least a stimulus to the economy to save and create jobs. The attack on the opposition parties very existence – grubby politics in the minds of many Canadians – does not even have to be mentioned.

So what should the opposition parties do?

They should do him in, that’s what they should do! If he did not destroy the opposition this time around, he is likely to try again through equally devious means. Time and again he has shown that when dealing with political foes or even friends who happen to be in his way, he acts with ruthlessness, meanness and poor judgment. His attempt to bankrupt the opposition parties to destroy parliamentary democracy in Canada is one of those instances.

Furthermore, he has always been ideologically driven by the ideas of people who are largely responsible for the current weakened state of the global economy. He is a deregulation, unrestricted markets, anti-labour, pro-big business, private medicine poster boy. As such, his government would likely prolong the coming of economic recovery rather than hasten it.

It is instructive to remember these words of Niccolo Macchiavelli in The Prince ( a work that no doubt Harper has committed to memory):

". . . men must either be cajoled or crushed; for they will revenge themselves for slight wrongs, while for grave ones they cannot. The injury therefore that you do to a man should be such that you need not fear his revenge."

In Harper's case cajolery won't work.

If the opposition does not take this golden opportunity to give him the boot, it will be a decision that it together with millions of Canadians are likely to regret – big time!