Canada Sucks

Ok, not Canada itself, in fact I rather like the country and hope to live there some day. What sucks is the Prime Minister of the country, Stephen Harper. This man is like if Darth Sideous was reborn, but instead of wanting power to kill and crush as he pleases, he just wants it to rub himself furiously on the Canadian flag and no one can say it's gross.

As of today, parliament is suspended, propaganda ads are blasting all over demonizing the now crippled opposition to his minority rule. If I said this about some third world country you'd think the Taliban held power there or something, but no, this is freedom. Let me break the events down, because it seems no one else in America gives a crap.

Stephen Harper's Conservative party held power in the Oct. 14 election with 127 seats in Parliament and increased their total to 143, still short of the 155 needed to control the legislative agenda. The government needs support of at least one other party to pass legislation. For a while he just grumbled and whined like any politician would. Then apparently he got bored and watched the Star Wars prequels because one day he just went nuts with power. He started by giving his rival party, the Liberal Party, a giant 'screw you' to show how big his political genitals are. He introduced repealing legislation which gave money to political parties based on the number of seats they owned. So on the surface, it looked like he was hurting his own party more, but the difference is the Conservatives are wealthy and the Liberals are 300 million in debt and would have been crippled.

Of course, the Liberals were not, as he thought, run by mentally handicapped children and when they heard of this they fought tooth and nail to block it, they even talked to Quebecois' leadership, which is a pretty big sacrifice to make. Why? Because the Bloc party's platform revolves around 'hey, let us break off. Come on. Please?' and that's it. Alright, to normal people this means the Liberals are just uniting ALL other parties no matter how stupid to fight against oppressive measures. Not to Harper though, Harper is not a normal man you see. He may have been once, but he has become twisted by the dark side now, and inside sources say he's getting a nice black robe custom tailored for his next phase. To him this was a goldmine, he and his Conservatives did what you'd expect a cartoon villain to do, they screamed "SEPARATISTS" as loud as they can for as long as they can. They are still screaming that. You see, to them this means that the Liberals and all other parties want to fracture Canada and ruin it, they are enemies of freedom. This would be a stupid, but somewhat valid, point to make if Harper's party hadn't also worked with the Blocs when they needed their votes. As Nixon said, it's not illegal when the President (or Prime Minister) does it.

And I will tell you, this display of jingoism and nationalistic zealotry would make any good old American Republican tear up with pride. Harper and his goons locked up in their office and loudly sang 'Oh Canada' all night, only stopping to send someone out to spew more garbage about how the opposition are in a coup or some trash. Now, normally this would just be a bafflingly silly thing to do that I would go 'haha' over and ignore. That changed when today Harper came into Parliament and simply said 'ok this is done, go home'. Ok fine he technically enacted a normally figurehead position to call Parliament into suspension, even though legally this can only be done under dire times, dire as in 'holy crap we elected a bunch of people who shoot at me every day and try to take my power by force' not dire as in "But IIIIIIIIIIIIIII want the power mommy!" So that's what happened, he invented a false coup to justify a coup of his own.

Why did he do this? Because of what happened on Monday. This is how it began, this band of 'separatists' formed on Monday to oust Harper out of his minority rule. They were upset by Harper's brand of politics, so they formed a coalition party that would have had more seats than the Conservatives. On Monday, they were going to hold what's called a confidence motion, if defeated, the government has lost the confidence of the majority of the house and a new government must be formed. Which they had the coalition set up to take power. Now, this is all totally legal, it's politics in Canada, and a mature leader would have grumbled and groused but let democracy take it's course. Not Harper though, Harper seems above the law, above the process, and above Canada.

Why do no Americans care about this? Is this how willfully ignorant we are? We focus more on celebrities and watching blank screens waiting to hear about a bailout then we do on our neighbors' struggle to keep the very tenets of their democracy alive? Well, apparently we'll liberate the hell out of middle easterners to get them our democracy, but when democracy is dieing above us we ignore it. We let ourselves make it to be nothing because we don't take Canada seriously, and because of that their politics must be jokes too. Or maybe it's something else. Maybe we don't want to admit that Democracy can fail. Maybe we see this, but refuse to register it, simply because it calls our ideals into question. A man like Harper is destroying Democracy by turning it in on itself and we ignore it, because then we'd have to admit 'yes, maybe it isn't perfect'. So on behalf of all my silent American friends, who care more about Ron Howard's views on politics, on on who Brittany is dating now, or any other pathetic thing we can focus on rather then the real world, let me greet any Canadians reading this blog, Hail Emperor Harper.