Stockholm Syndrome

Well, since today's Ottawa Stun's screaming front page compares Michael Ignatief to Chairman Mao for mentioning, ummm, flowers in last night's debate - 'cuz we all know only Alberta-tarsands-hatin' godless commies like flowers - it's time to bring the smaller, feistier, crazier counterpropaganda machine we know as Coyote News back outta mothballs. Excuse the smell.

It may also be time to point out that godless Chinese commies have invested in a multibillion-dollar gooey black glop of the tar sands themselves. I'm unsure of the implications for godless communism, neocon theology or the filthy strip mine formerly known as the northern half of Wild Rose Country (oops). But I imagine I'm the only one so confused. Everybody else seems sure of their facts, however specious. I also imagine I digress again. Excuse the smell.

Over at Knitnut today, Zoom is wondering how people can bring themselves to vote for Stephen Harper. She ain't the only one. Poll after poll since the election began has depicted conservative approval ratings floating airily above the rest, into something not far off majority territory. Harper's contempt for parliament and, really, anybody who isn't Stephen Harper, as well as numerous scandals; issues of, ummm, human resources in the backroom; and criminal and procedural slams, all seem to slide off his hunched, oily back like so much heavy crude...

I blame Stockholm Syndrome. Hence my whacked-out counterpoint to today's calculated Stun Mao inhibitor: five years ago, a neocon terrorist kidnapped this country and held it hostage. He and his terrorist crew began doing everything they could to degrade the country's existing reputation and institutions.

Initially, most citizens were appalled. But after five years of abusive, coercive brainwashing, the hostages started feeling sympathetic for that poor Mr. Harper. Everybody throwing up roadblocks in his way, every time he tried to do the least reasonable little thing. Read that last sentence any way ya want.

Even the pundits started to say "Look. He's changed. He's become so much more reasonable". Well, except for that pesky prorogation thing. And that pesky stonewalling thing. And that pesky information control thing. And those pesky "throw all the executive assistants under the bus when their ministers get caught with their mitts in either flagrante delicto, the cookie jar, the pork barrel, the office supplies, or the back door of the institute for lame statistical reasoning" things. Depending on the day.

Yeah, well. History has proved the pundits pretty much wrong about Brian Mulroney's wonderfulness, too.

Harper hasn't changed. He spent much of last evening's debate holding his usual face in a flabby rictus determined by his PR handlers to resemble, as closely as possible, Dopey the Dwarf. (Sorry, Fourth Dude. I know the Dopester is a relation...)

They determined that it made him look innocuous and reasonable. Zoom, whom I respect much more, determined that he actually looked scary. Good instinct, that. Keep Stockholm Syndrome in mind, and go with it...