This Postmedia item has had me in a lather all day. It’s not just that they’re whipping up the faithful against the people I work for. That always bothers me but it’s ah… not new to me.
No, it’s just all the language of hate, fear and resentment that they’re employing against plain old every day working folk. In the article, former Stephen Harper running buddy Gerry Nicholls has Tory fundraisers basically trying to turn folks against their neighbours as if they were black-clad AK-47 wielding ninja narco gangsters.
Somehow some people who do their jobs, pay their taxes, buy stuff in stores, watch hockey, maybe have a few beers on Saturday, take their kids to soccer are somehow ‘the enemy’.
And so here’s the governing party offering to make 10,000 people lose their jobs so that they can coax more money out of their donor base by “taking advantage of the prejudice that’s already there.”
Exactly how is causing all that misery and anxiety supposed to improve the lives of “small-c conservatives across Canada, but especially in the interior of British Columbia, southern Alberta and southwestern Ontario”?
I can imagine the follow-up fundraising letter: “Sure, your life is messed up, but we just messed up a bunch of other people’s lives so go ahead and feel better.”
The journalist makes clear Nicholls is no longer talking for the government, but you can see Nicholls’ words in the Harper government’s deeds: their constant use of the term “union bosses,” their zeal for legislating an end to all negotiations, their still slightly bashful attempt to put unions under trusteeship etc etc.
Crazy-making, I tell you.
Seven paragraphs and only one factual error and one extremely misleading statement. Not bad. Don’t let facts get in the way of a tantrum.