DATELINE: PUTTING ON
MY POINTY SHOES – I did it. I said ‘enough’ today. I am not going to sit
noisily on the sidelines, yelling and preaching from my armchair while letting
others do the work. It’s time.
In the last few weeks,
I have thought about my father, his brothers, his uncles, all of whom were
prepared to, and did, put their lives on the line to allow me the right to vote
in determining the direction my country takes. It was at huge expense for some
of them, and their friends, brothers in arms, colleagues, but democracy and the
right to make a little X on a piece of paper was absolutely important enough
for them to want to give their all. It’s not really about love of country; it’s
love of family and hope for a future. That’s what a soldier is – our vessel of
hope. They deserve our respect and gratitude at the very least, so I can no
longer sit idly back and listen to the reports and investigations into voter
fraud committed by our current government in not one, but two, elections and
again watch as they then impede the investigation progress more.
In the past few weeks,
I have thought about journalists and news reporting, watching stories from
North Korea and Syria, Iran and China, and yes, those from the United States.
We see the two extremes in both, one where the only news is what the government
allows to be news, spun to their advantage, the other where the only news is
corporate driven, allowing the same partisan diatribes that are based on
commercial spin, one where the only news is what the corporations want you to
know because it progresses their agenda. We have seen what happens in the
fallout. Canada has never fallen into that quagmire. The standards of the press
should be sacred, not bought and paid for. Without freedom of the press – free from
both corporate AND political influence – democracy dies. Stephen Harper made
early steps to muzzle the press. Now he is taking steps to control it, spin it,
use it to his own purposes, and in fact has created a bully pulpit unlike any
ever seen in this country before. At this point, news is no longer news, and he
is no longer the leader of a democratic country; he has now taken another huge
step towards dictatorship, and the people of Canada be damned.
Our parliamentary
system is long-rooted in tradition... for a reason. It is meant to provide
balance in judgment, consideration for all sides of a position, an opportunity
to provide informed guidance and principles for our country. That is achieved
through debate and dialogue – not the creation of pork-barrel bills filled with
a multitude of little laws that have nothing to do with a budget but that
cannot be debated or discussed. In true American style, this is done to pass
bills that even the Prime Minister knows should not be passed because of their
detriment to the public and the nation, but they cater to the needs of the 1%. Stephen
Harper doesn’t need, or want, debate or discussion though. As so eloquently by
from one of his puppets, ‘you’re either with us or against us’ and they make
sure you know that. There is no balance in Parliament. There is, however,
Contempt of Parliament, a historical first, and one that he again was able to
sweep under the carpet through the abuse of procedure and authority.
The litany of
offences... criminal, moral and ethical... is growing daily. I have other blogs
that include detailed lists of years of criminal mismanagement by this current
government. How does one ‘misplace’ $3.1Billion dollars so well that the
Auditor General can’t find it? I suppose there are explanations that are
plausible. The problem is that Stephen Harper and his band of thugs and bullies
have lied so many times, always for the sole purpose of maintaining power, that
whatever explanation he offers, if he deigns to offer any at all, will not be
credible. Usually, his tact is to deride anyone for questioning him, refusing
to give an account. As long as it helps corporate Canada, he feels justified,
and presents it as him ‘curing’ our economy. (Actually, Mr. Harper, had it not
been for Paul Martin and his financial foresight, we would have been destroyed
in the last recession. You don’t get to take ANY credit for the shape of our
financial structure, and we’re all pretty well intelligent enough to know
that.) Apparently Mr. Harper’s definition of his repeatedly promised transparency
and honesty in leadership doesn’t come from the same dictionary the rest of us
use.
Fascism, however, is
defined as ‘a system of extreme right-wing and/or authoritarian views’ in the
Oxford Dictionary. Wikipedia further describes it as being ‘hostile to liberal democracy, socialism,
and communism, fascist movements share certain common features, including the
veneration of the state, a devotion to a strong leader, and an emphasis on ultranationalism,
ethnocentrism, and militarism.’ It was this that my father, uncles and their
uncles fought. It was to keep this sort of government off our shores that 45,000
Canadian men sacrificed their lives in Dieppe, Normandy, Arezzo and many more
battles of World War II. It was to stop fascism from spreading that another
54,000 men were wounded. These men were prepared to walk through the gates of
hell on earth to protect the principles of democracy in Canada. Perhaps the question
we should be asking is ‘why, then, are we prepared to sit back and watch it eat
us up from within?’
Today I am going
to put on the pointiest shoes I can find. I am not doing it because of ‘patriotism,’
but out of respect for the sacrifices of my family before me, and for the
future of my children. I am doing because I am a daughter, a niece, a mother...
a member of many communities, all of home have suffered and will suffer more
under this current regime. I will not be an army of one. I don’t need to be. In
the meltdown of the government of the day over the last few weeks (yes, it was
a Harper meltdown of Chernobyl proportions), hope has emerged. I am not putting
on pompoms, intending to crown a king, or claim that Justin Trudeau is the
savior of us all, but he is an option, a viable, hopeful option that the ideals
we were raised with, that the Canada we knew as a humble, loving, supporting, thoughtful,
democratic bastion to the world might still be in our grasp, and you’re damned
right I can get on that train. Why are you NOT putting on some pointy shoes and
joining me?
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