"Decline and Fall"

I don't indulge in political commentary. Usually.

Why? Because honestly, at the sound of George W. Bush's or Stephen Harper's voice, I fling myself at the radio to shut it off. Because I can almost feel my blood pressure rising with every syllable. Do I disagree with every single policy of these leaders? No. Many of their policies, but not all.

What I loathe is their arrogance and/or duplicity. Their belief that it is their right to lie openly and then to be praised for their motives when they admit it - or their belief that, once elected, they can do as they damn well please and don't owe an explanation.

Front page of The Globe & Mail, Top Story:

"U.S. President George W. Bush admitted for the first time today that the CIA has been operating clandestine prisons....After his administration spent months refusing to confirm the existence of the widely criticized 'black sites.'...

and further along in the same piece...

"Critics are also leery of a section of the proposed law (new rules for military commissions) that would exempt civilian interrogators of terrorist prisoners from being being subject to the U.S. War Crimes Act for abuses they may commit."

Well. Can't live with the Geneva Convention and can't give the appearance of overlooking it? Hire a sadist. As long as the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, I always say.

And lest my American friends think I'm only pissed at their politicians, this was The Globe's political cartoon of the day...

Prime Minister Harper stands at his office window, hands clasped peacefully behind his back, gazing outside. A telephone/answering machine sits where it's been dumped, at the bottom of a fish tank, with its message playing in a cartoon bubble above the tank:
"Hello, you have reached the 'Stephen Harper, Public Feedback Hotline.' Your call is important to us..."

Good ol' Steve. Canned a progressive, desperately needed national daycare program, lowered the amount of basic tax exemption (after cutting a massive 1% off Goods & Services Tax), killed Kyoto Accord. Most memorable photo op? Harper shaking hands with his seven year old son, as he sees him off to school. What warmth. Eyes like Night of the Living Dead. His handlers keep him away from the media in droves.

The difference between GWB and Stephen Harper, as far as I can see, is that GWB is determined to appear as honest, upright and a defender of All That Is Right. Harper doesn't give a flying f-ck what any of us think of his policies. With the possible exception of George W. Bush. He's all buddy-buddy with Bush.

To quote Louise (in Thelma & Louise) - "You get what you settle for." But please, I'd like to know, where are the alternatives? A Canadian joke -
"What do you call the NDP once they are elected?Answer: Liberals."
You could revise it into American form, I expect.
What do you call the Democrats once they are elected? Republicans.

Turn it around any way you like.

There is something suspicious (to me) about people who aspire to political power. A handful may actually mean to do good. Then, of course, there's the question of who gets to decide the "good." Maybe one percent of those noble souls don't fall to wheeling and dealing corruptly once they get power. But that one percent is, apparently, dead.

I don't want to feel this jaded. I would love to step up to the voting booth, feeling like - at last, an honest man, an honest woman. At last, with this vote, I'm not settling.

But I don't expect it to happen soon.

And I keep coming back to a section of Alden Nowlan's poem, "Decline and Fall":

...How may of his
contemporaries knew
Caligula was insane,
or Nero, or Tiberius?
Their courtiers must
have known. Others
must have at least
suspected. But no doubt
there were many who
said, You know, I believe
the emperor is crazy,
said it without being
altogether convinced
of it as I'm saying
it even now.
The evidence is there
but the mind cannot
bring itself
wholly to believe in
a dynasty of mad men.

Other than that, folks, it's a beautiful day. The ducks have finally returned to the creek at Mac Run after the Digging For Sewers Episode that screwed the entire water system up. I note there is a second, newly dumped shopping cart resting in the shallows but the ducks don't seem to care.

It occurs to me that ducks are a superior species to humans. Not a George W. Duck amongst them. And Stephen Duck would never have reneged on commitment to the Kyoto Accord.