JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PRESTON MANNING IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Another pathetic secular sermon from Preston Manning.

The preacher has never quite been left behind by the manipulative, career politician, having blended into an unpleasant Right Wing identity with roots in Texas and the Midwest.

I recall a few years ago, as CBC Radio was quietly adjusting to unpleasant new realities in Ottawa determining its destiny, Manning received a brief show called “This I Believe.”

Each spot was introduced by Manning’s scratchy, whiny little voice and featured a notable Canadian giving a little lesson or sermon about something he or she believed.

It was pure dreck, annoyingly sentimental and at the same time virtually meaningless to anyone not sharing the person’s love for this or that often trivial notion.

Interestingly, the idea was lifted – lock, stock, barrel, and even the very words of the title – from the United States.

And that source, the United States, remains an enchanted one to Preston Manning, despite all of his protestations about Canada.

He is the self-appointed president of a self-created think tank, which just happens to be paid for by American oil money.

He is the man most responsible for Stephen Harper’s rise to destructive power, having selected him as a protégé many years ago.

And just like the American Right Wing they both so desperately admire, Manning wallows in a strange pool of vague religiosity, patriotic kitsch, and homespun notions which softens and disguises his relentless drive to push the people of Canada in a direction they really don’t want to go, towards American interests, American values, American special interests, and American hypocrisy.

Readers may enjoy:

http://chuckmancartoons.blogspot.ca/2009/09/canadas-harper-vision-thing-flag-over.html

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Exactly.

But that is because they are not accurately called Conservatives.

Harper’s party is a Northern affiliate of the Republican Right, which also is not in any way a genuine conservative party.

It is the party of the imperial establishment, full stop.

Whatever Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” wants, it gets.

Whatever measures represent traditional, responsible conservatism are irrelevant.
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“conservatives are actually on point — starve the beast.
they won’t admit to it, but that is their true calling.”

Wrong.

That is what they like to pretend they are doing.

In effect, they are spending irresponsible amounts of money on new matters.

How is the F-35, a gulag of new prisons, a pointless war in Afghanistan, and a host of other measures starving anything?
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“They? They great unwashed majority that does not agree with you? They?”

How do you know the majority?

And how do you know it is unwashed?

Are you Canada’s preeminent secret pollster?

Of course you are not.

Expressions like yours are simply a display of the same kind of ignorant arrogance we see from Harper regularly.

Or from the shabby likes of Newt Gingrich.
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Harper is just a far less garrulous and amusing version of Newt Gingrich, albeit wearing a red-and-white tuque instead of being wrapped in Old Glory.

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“How about ADSCAM, where did that money go…?”

Simply pathetic.

Harper’s thugs stand in contempt of Parliament, in violation of all principles of an open society, and now in violation of our election laws.

In sum, Harper has pissed on our democratic values.

The Adscam business involved a genuine effort to preserve the country’s integrity, an effort abused by a small number.

There’s no comparison – none.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOHN IBBITSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

John Ibbitson,

You really do have it entirely wrong.

I’m surprised at how much so. Perhaps it’s your American-wannabe inner-self seeking expression?

There is nothing new, and certainly nothing genuinely anti-status quo, about the goofy Tea Party.

Good Lord, Sarah Palin – George Bush with a sex change – was there, and they were applauding that total airhead as she waved her arms around like a Baptist tent preacher.

And surely, you understand that there is nothing new about Palin except the color of her hair.

In fact, the Tea Party is the same tiresome bunch we’ve heard from dozens of times before in the U.S.

It’s a re-run of a re-run of a re-run there: back to political basics and origins.

It’s almost a hobby amongst the U.S. Right Wing, every once in while, we get a bunch of them with a new set of slogans.

This latest group of clowns reminds me of Lamar Alexander working desperately towards the Republican nomination in 2000, by going around in a red lumberjack shirt and offering the profound suggestion of a part-time government.

Likely it was a custom-made lumberjack shirt since good old Lamar is a multi-millionaire. Of course, in one sense, old Lamar was only talking about formalizing the de facto reality: America does have a part-time government if you count the time spent soliciting money.

Were you aware that one of their speakers at the convention also called for the re-establishment of literacy tests for voting? It’s the old code phrase for eliminating black votes.

Anti-status quo? Yes, if you count going backward a century as being anti-status quo.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY TOM VELK IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

 

Tom Velk, this is a remarkably poorly informed piece.

First, you start with a straw-man argument.

The fact is no one on earth thinks the Tea Party represents rebels.

In fact, they are the same tiresome bunch we’ve heard from dozens of times before in the U.S.

Back to political basics and origins.

It’s a fad amongst the U.S. Right Wing, every once in while, we get a new bunch of them with slogans.

It’s been typical for them to use words or phrases like “manifesto” or “revolution” so that they grab attention and sound like something other than the retro-grade folks they are: Patriots with four-car garages.

The Tea Party will disappear within a year or two. It has nothing to offer. Good God, just consider they’re using the brainless Sarah Palin as a keynote speaker. Kind of says it all.

As for Jefferson, you seem unaware of the facts of his life. He said that the country needed some blood shed every twenty years or so to keep the Tree of Liberty nourished, and he wasn’t using poetic language. He supported the bloody French Revolution right through The Terror, leaving behind some pretty awful statements.

Jefferson actually shared qualities with Cambodia’s Pol Pot: he believed in the honest yeoman type and was against industrialization and opposed Hamilton’s sophistication in finances. He was repressive as in the revolt of Haiti and his horrible embargo of England and his Inspector Javert-like pursuit of Arron Burr.

Altogether a confusing and rather unpleasant man.

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“4. Describing America’s growth in the 19th century: “the giant did not grow by conquest (except of a figurative sort)” The War of 1812 was an attempt to do just that; The Mexican War? the forced death March of natives from Florida; the many ‘Indian Wars’ of conquest.”

Yes, indeed. Don’t forget the Spanish-American War intended to steal Cuba and other properties.

Then there’s the theft of Texas.

The theft of New Mexico and California.

The story of Hawaii is a very sad one. America stole the place after the British were gone and ignored the pleas of natives who even petitioned Congress and were completely ignored.

Don’t forget the many bloody uprisings in the “Empire of Liberty” stretching back to putting down the Whisky rebellion to the ghastly mass slaughters of blacks in the 1920s in Oklahoma and Florida and other places. Bodies by the hundreds dumped into mass graves and their property stolen.

Actually, America’s record, for those who know it, very much resembles Germany’s rise in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

Only the fact that the places America attacked and pillaged were thinly populated prevents its record from being one of deaths in the many millions like Germany’s.

Of course, its ruthlessness goes right up to the fire bombing and atomic bombing of Japan and its mass murder in Vietnam with perhaps 3 million victims left behind. And a million victims in Iraq.

It ain’t a pretty record.

I really think the editors of the Globe need to do a much better job in selecting the people they print. This piece is uninformed trash.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY GILL HORNBY IN THE TELEGRAPH

“The best books and songs and poems and plays do not get written, nor works of art crafted, because of state subsidy.”

This is an old and tired argument, especially popular in American right-wing circles.

It is superficially true if you imagine a kind of Monty Python post-office official doling out grants to struggling artists.

But reality is far more complex.

History gives us a much more sophisticated view about the creation of art and subsidy.

Without the patronage of the great dukes and cardinals (the government of the day), the Italian Renaissance would have been a far more sparse artistic period.

Great writers and composers in Britain and Germany benefited from the same kind of sources. Shakespeare had a lordly patron, and both Beethoven and Mozart benefited from patrons and trusts set up by admiring men of influence.

Even in America, we have evidence to the contrary of this proposition. The WPA during the great depression subsidized many artists, and in American cities you can still find some of the very handsome results in public monuments, buildings, and photographic collections.

Simplistic propositions, I’m afraid, always reveal simplistic minds.