Why I #denounceharper

If you don't respect the democratic process you are inviting your opponents to descend to your level and that race to the bottom leads to war. Humanity has achieved democracy several times only to see it eroded away by greed, stupidity, ideology and lazyness. The bulk of Canadians are simply better than Stephen Harper, but we've fallen asleep at the switch and allowed him to cheat, intimidate and steal his way to 24 Sussex. It needs to be proven, preferably, but resisted undeniably. If you stand idly by while the mechanisms of good government are dismantled in front of your face then you are complicit with Evil.

People who suffer from certainty - who lack the critical faculties or intelligence to accept, at least on a rational if not emotive level, that they are fallible - fall into the trap that the ends justify the means. Believing themselves to 'know better' any shortcut to power is justifiable.

And that's being charitable. The truly Evil are those who may well know they are fallible and simply not care. The truly Evil pursue power by any means necessary just because they want to. Not having met Stephen Harper I can't say for sure, but my guts lead me to the following narrative. Caveat time : narratives are usually bullshit - in biology they're called 'adaptive stories' stories of why things evolved, that while plausible, have not been subjected to rigorous testing and analysis. But this is the narrative I tell myself about Stephen Harper.

Stephen Harper was poorly loved and unpopular in high school. Needing to buttress himself against such negativity he had a lot to prove and so was born the need to transform the world as it was, to the world as it should be, a world in which Stephen would be valued and appreciated.

Correctly recognizing abuses of power, cronyism and poor thinking in the liberal government, he drafted policies and strategies with relatively broad appeal in the pursuit of political power. But, as the road proved long and difficult he began taking shortcuts, believing the ends justified the means.

Convinced his view of the world was the correct one, needing to win to buttress his self - esteem, he adopted and perfected every expedient political shortcut of Jean Chretien and many new ones besides, leaving the middle ground of reasonable political debate a no man's land of scorched and salted Earth.

Does the opposition need to descend to his level? Can reasonable Canadians take back the moral high ground and return to a functioning democratic system where policy disagreement and debate actually produces better governance rather than destructive hyper partisanship?

Yes. But it will require a lot of work. We need to accept that we are all fallible and that only by listening to opinions that disagree with are own are we likely to be able to compensate and correct for our blind spots. Canadians of all stripes need to recognize how and where the mechanisms of their democracy are being subverted and eroded and shout it out until everyone sees what is going on. And for me that starts with denouncing Harper. #denounceharper