Saturday, October 17, 2015

The Bizarre, not so Bizarre, Globe endorsement. . .

Surely the most bizarre culmination of the ten years of Harper's political tenure was seen yesterday with the Globe and Mail's surreal endorsement of the Conservative Party with the addendum that Harper should resign as soon as he has been handed an election victory. One can only imagine that this is the method by with the world's elusive .001 percent of extremely wealthy, de facto rulers, pass messages to their corporate lapdog Stephen Harper, through the voice of Postmedia outlets. These ultra-rich don't pick up the phone and tell Harper to vacate their office, they make a public announcement to that effect through their staff.

Of course, this endorsement cum not endorsement is incredibly interesting because it actually demonstrates a deep-seeded fear among the largely hidden rich and powerful  over what Harper is doing to the effort to corporatize the world. He is giving the rightwing, corporate agenda a bad name and in so doing adding fuel to the growing fire and to the realization that the international neo-liberal effort is one that seeks to dictate a world economy that exists solely to serve the wealth accumulation of the very few. The Globe and Mail's endorsement is a blatant attempt at endorsing the neo-liberal agenda while distancing that agenda from the anti-democratic, anti-judicial, hate-filled politics of Harper. Of course, the so-called 1% understand that neo-liberalism is, by its very nature, anti-democratic, but they are also afraid that the realization of this fact by the masses (a realization that is being enhanced by Harper's personal, blatant political style) will threaten their national (not to say global) hegemony. The hegemony and legitimacy of the neo-liberal agenda rests, at least in part, on the illusion of support that the 'democratic' system provides. The startling, and ever expanding, inequality of our system can only exist if there is a perception that people have the right (at least theoretically) to reject it through some vaguely representative form of democracy. If if becomes too clear that the political leaders are actively trying to undermine that system of democratic participation, then the process of legitimation breaks down, the illusion is exposed, and the ballon is burst.

The Western Democracies have largely outgrown blatant fascism. The mass of people are not willing to endorse a return to the kind of capitalism that the European fascists of the 1930s were selling - one where the army was more or less an extension of a single political party, where people had no real right of privacy from the intrusive state, where the government could arrest people without charge, and imprison them or exile them at will, where blatant racism was a mechanism of the state, and where the government talked about representing the people but slowly crushed every vestige of those people's voice out of the system. Neo-Liberals would love this fascism to still be acceptable because it would make their job of world domination so much easier. But even the world corporate elite know this kind of blatant fascist agenda won't sell in Western democracies nowadays and that if their agenda becomes too clear  people are going to wise up and catch on. This is threat that Harper represents to the small elite and so they instructed their lapdog editors of their biggest Canadian newspaper to endorse their basic economic agenda of corporate control and wealth, but to jettison the leader of that effort whose overly angry, abrasive, abusive, and anti-democratic style threatens the very existence of that agenda by threatening to expose the real face behind the mask of contemporary capitalism.

Admittedly, many people are startlingly slow to catch on to the corporate, anti-democratic agenda that Harper so blatantly represents. Many people know so little about their own state and nation that they have no real idea what Harper has done through a fairly stealthy ten-year effort. They don't understand his voter suppression tactics, they don't know the way he has attempted to manipulate (or ignore) the judicial system, they don't seem to understand the degree to which he has gutted the environmental rules, they don't understand the implications of his voter frauds, they don't get the ways he has manipulated the House rules to hide the money path and hide legislation in omnibus bills - a path that led Harper's government to be the first in the history of the Commonwealth to be found in contempt of parliament. Many people don't get any of that. But the problem for the corporate elite is that enough people get it to expose the real face of the corporate agenda. And when enough people start making the connections, the efforts of radical groups such as the occupy movement will no longer seem so crazy and then the elite will face a real threat.

4 comments:

thwap said...

Same thing happened with bush II being followed by Obama. The bloom is off that rose though. People are still hurting and the yahoos among them are turning to something like Trump to fill the void.

Maybe harper was the corporate elite dipping their [our] toes in the waters of fascism.

"Too much?"

So they offer us Trudeau. Just like they gave the US-Americans Obama.

And, yes, Mulcair's centrism is par for the course.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Alan Grayson in the US represent a rising wave.

Jeremy Corbyn's rebellion against Blair-ites in the UK Labour Party is something else to behold.

Things are polarizing. That's for sure.

John B. said...

The editorial reminded me of Harper's recent "It's not about me" (anymore and all of a sudden) TV commercial.

Unknown said...

What a really astute observation Kirby. I never connected that the Neoliberal Corporate elite would want Harper gone, but what your saying makes sense. In other words if your going to bring in Neoliberalism do it with a smile and sell it as a pillar of freedom. The electorate knows nothing much about Neoliberalism, but they do know about hubris, malice and tyranny. These are not good traits for a PM wanting to transition the countries government from democracy to neoliberalism ,to have. So our saving grace in a way is that Harper is a miserable S.O.B.So much of a miserable S.O.B, that even his Neoliberal masters don't want him. I wonder if he has caught on?

e.a.f. said...

nice article!

when people are willing to abandon their regular parties to start voting strategically, the elite know they have a problem. time for them to try something else.

Harper has done so much damage to this country, a lot of people just don't keep track of it. As one person wrote, If harper and his agenda had come to the P.C. convention where Mulroney was elected leader, Harper would have been tossed out on his ear. Harper started by defunding women's groups. it was all down hill from there. Each step he took was measured and none were less than 6 months apart, so people made the adjustment. They kept adjusting and then there were so many groups he had attacked, there was no one left untouched, except for his base and those who believe the corporations know better. They are willing to accept serfdom.