For The Harper-Hating Half Wits and Nutbars

TeddyBallgame

Time Out
Mar 30, 2012
522
0
16
Rex Murphy: Vilifying Stephen Harper

Dec 8, 2012 12:01 AM ET

There’s something about Stephen. His opponents have many names for him — the majority of which are, alas, neither flattering nor meant to be.

He is a taciturn schemer, a theocrat mole, loose at the top of the Canadian political system, determined to bend Canada to his grim and twisted design, to curb the liberties of Canadians, to push us and our country back into some fevered neocon darkness. Politically, he is **** Cheney’s illegitimate son. George W. Bush’s half-brother. He’s a lackey of the rich, and enemy of all that is good and Canadian. He’s in the pocket of big oil. He hates baby seals.

My, how the spine chills when some people talk and write about Harper.

Then there are the many “faces” his enemies attribute to him, among them Conspiracy Harper, Vendetta Harper, Christianist-Harper — hope of the hard line, Doomsday-waiting Evangelicals, Secret-Agenda Harper, Tool of Israel Harper, Anti-Democracy Harper, with perhaps a little space for Secret Alberta-Separatist Harper. The caricatures belong more to the old style of detective novel when the villains, projections of untethered fantasy, were eerie amalgams of malice, supernal powers, outlandish ambitions and utterly unbelievable. Harper as Fu Manchu, as it were.

Hating, mistrusting or dismissing Harper is not a transient phenomenon. A poll as recent as this week, seven years after Mr. Harper took office (during which he has not, contra naturum, transformed Canada into a gulag or prison house for the poor, artists, liberals, greens or whomever he sees as his opponents) reveal a majority of Canadians think he still has that famous but, by definition, unseen hidden agenda. Even though he is Prime Minister and has a majority, many still believe he keeps that damn agenda up his sleeve. Query: What’s the point of a hidden agenda that stays hidden? Will it still be hidden when he leaves office? If so, what was or is its point?

I do admit that the poll surprised me. A full 75% of sentient voters from the big parties thought him (I’m paraphrasing) untrustworthy. The fervour to believe ill of the Prime Minister is, however, even stronger amongst the naturists, the Earth-worshipping Greens. A whopping 97 % of them do not trust him, and believe that the “hidden agenda” — perhaps like the lost city of Atlantis, or fabled Shangri-La is “real.” Greens are fundamentalist anti-Harperites. That 97% represents not a trend; it’s a fixation.

It’s not just the “hidden-agenda” cliché, though. It’s the man himself. Go on comment boards, Twitter, read the pundits, listen to conversations on the street and you’ll soon see that the pure bile directed at Mr. Harper, the contempt for the man himself, is shocking and remarkable. They mock his build, his clothes, his relationship with his children (the handshake off to school) his hair, his — well, his very being. How wonderful it is that so many believe they are infinitely his superior — after all, they have the best tables at Twitter Café, and he’s only the prime minister.

In sum, the tenure and even the physical presence of Stephen Harper, for very many otherwise temperate people, is remarkable for the virulence of the opposition and personal antipathy he inspires. It’s not just the politics or the policies. It’s him — the person.

It is not abnormal for politicians to be disliked. Nixon was disliked, and his personality — pinched, reclusive, sullen and curiously self-pitying — fed that dislike. Pierre Trudeau, worshipped by some, conjured savage opposition and distaste from his opponents, but Trudeau the man sometimes earned kudos even for those who despised his policies. Brian Mulroney had the strange knack of inspiring those who didn’t know him to really dislike him, and those who did know him — despite his political errors and that unfortunate bag of cash — to see him as even warm, loyal and charming.

With Stephen Harper the emotions he elicits — especially the extreme ones of contempt and near-hatred, have to be a projection of his enemies, far more than an assessment of Harper’s character or policies.

For, step back a little, make a little space, and you will see that in his personal and domestic conduct, Harper is almost stereotypically Canadian. He’s a mild, unobnoxious, hockey-mad fellow. He doesn’t boast.He shuns the spotlight he could be commanding every day. He keeps his privacy and doesn’t insist, like many public figures, in conducting a soap opera around his position or his family. He’d be the ideal neighbour — he wouldn’t just drop in, too reserved for that (which is great), but I’m sure he’d lend a shovel when needed. Probably even help dig out your car if you were stuck, and take your thanks with a self-conscious smile and reassurance that it was no trouble.

So why is it that people are not content just to disagree with him, to label him simply wrong or misguided but must revile him? Why is there such fervour of suspicion about “the agenda” and so much invective and worse directed at him? I don’t know.

I do know the response is unbalanced and disproportionate, and hurts his enemies more than him.

They make Mr. Harper, in their own white-hot minds, bigger and more scary than he is or could be.


National Post
 

tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
11,548
0
36
DearRex Murphy; No one likes a sellout (re; baglicker)

Many former followers of Rex became dismayde at his turnabout. He was critized some years ago for being too progressive on his CBC show and did this strange turnaround dissing all his former values. He was very peed at not getting a Senate position from the Libs and the when Mike Duffy got one for slurping up to the CONServatives, well he realized the error of his ways. .............
 

CDNBear

Custom Troll
Sep 24, 2006
43,839
207
63
Ontario
DearRex Murphy; No one likes a sellout (re; baglicker)

Many former followers of Rex became dismayde at his turnabout. He was critized some years ago for being too progressive on his CBC show and did this strange turnaround dissing all his former values. He was very peed at not getting a Senate position from the Libs and the when Mike Duffy got one for slurping up to the CONServatives, well he realized the error of his ways. .............
Wow, all that and he's still right?

Cool.
 

captain morgan

Hall of Fame Member
Mar 28, 2009
28,429
146
63
A Mouse Once Bit My Sister
Wow, all that and he's still right?

Cool.

I especially like the observation that he is too progressive for the CBC.

I guess that the ole Ministry of Truth doesn't appreciate dissent among its ranks

He was critized some years ago for being too progressive on his CBC show and did this strange turnaround dissing all his former values.
 

Locutus

Adorable Deplorable
Jun 18, 2007
32,230
45
48
65
Seems to create a disturbance in the force Rex does. Never mind Steve. :lol:
 

CDNBear

Custom Troll
Sep 24, 2006
43,839
207
63
Ontario
And the Trudeau hating half wits and nut bars differ how?
If only they employed the same vitriolic nonsense as those who hate Harper.

Even these very pages have been graced with nonsense like the Nazi's would be preferable to Harper.

Let me know when Trudeau 1 or 2 gets that kind of nutter response.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
108,893
11,177
113
Low Earth Orbit
If only they employed the same vitriolic nonsense as those who hate Harper.

Even these very pages have been graced with nonsense like the Nazi's would be preferable to Harper.

Let me know when Trudeau 1 or 2 gets that kind of nutter response.

No problem....

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who left office with his popularity at record lows, now accuses late rival Pierre Trudeau of being a bungling coward who failed to oppose the Nazis.

The attack was savage even by the standards of Mulroney, a man well known for his strong language and dislike of Trudeau.

Mulroney, the 68-year-old Conservative who ruled Canada from 1984 to 1993, made the comments in a memoir due out next Monday as well as a television interview due to be shown on Sunday. The Ottawa Sun newspaper published extracts on Thursday.

Trudeau, a Liberal, who was prime minister for a total of 15 years between 1968 and 1984, is best known for his colorful personal life and for a wide number of social and constitutional reforms.

Although by no means everyone supported or even liked him, polls show Trudeau is regarded as one of Canada's most important prime ministers. He died in 2000.

Mulroney noted that Trudeau had not volunteered to fight during World War Two and said he had also made speeches in which he minimized the Nazi threat.

"This is man who questioned the Allies when the Jews were being sacrificed and when the great extermination program was on, he was marching around (Montreal) on the other side of the issue," Mulroney told CTV.

He said that while Trudeau had been entitled to decide not to go to war, "(that) doesn't qualify him for any position of moral leadership in our society."

Mulroney wrote that Trudeau was "opposed to enlightened policies designed to wipe out the curse of Nazism."

Mulroney has long complained that Canadians do not give him enough credit for his achievements, which include the creation of a North American free trade zone.

Trudeau's sons declined to comment on the attack. Liberal leader Stephane Dion said he regretted the remarks and questioned whether they were designed to sell books.
 

TeddyBallgame

Time Out
Mar 30, 2012
522
0
16
Fail.

Please reread your quote.

Not to mention Trudeau Sr's penchant for dawning his brown Shirt regalia and riding his bike along the Rideau.

- CB ... Yes, Mulroney was merely describing accurately PET's disreputable conduct during WWII and in libel cases and in life truth is always a sufficient defence.

- The rest of the context of Mulroney's remark is that it was included in his marvellous hand written autobiography and it was written as a response and a counter attack to PET's vitriolic criticisms of Mulroney including that Brian was a traitor to Canada for initiating and championing the Meech Lake Accord.

- Brian was merely pointing out who the real traitor to Canada was when it counted most in the 1940s against Hitler. At that time, Trudeau enjoyed riding around Montreal on his motorcycle wearing a German army helmut and attending and speaking at local rallies organized by nazi sympathizers and others opposed to fighting in WWII.

- Mind you, telling the truth about most of Trudeau's record probably sounds like hate speech to the nutty left-lib zealots who still ignore all economic and fiscal and other evidence in ranking him as a great PM.

- Given the left-lib tilt of our media especially during PET's time and the more liberal leanings of the voters then, he actually got off rather lightly for his dreadful, destructive policies whereas Harper gets, as Murphy suggests, unwarrantedly harsh, hateful treatment even though his record on things that count such as economic growth and fiscal management is head and shoulders above PET's dismal performance. Interestingly, not even prominent Liberals (ignorant nutters and zealots yes but not prominent Liberals) are delusional or hypocritical enough to attempt in public to extoll Trudeau's economic and fiscal record.

- The Watergate Tapes reveal that Nixon put it best once when he remarked to Halderman "that axxhole Trudeau is really something else".
 

wulfie68

Council Member
Mar 29, 2009
2,014
24
38
Calgary, AB
And the Trudeau hating half wits and nut bars differ how?

Trudeau and Harper should be judged on their respective records and actions. Trudeau was the man who called out troops in Quebec and imposed martial law. Trudeau was the one who actually flipped off Canadians who protested against his policies. Trudeau was the one who embarked on a campaign of economic warfare against a specific region, violating the constitutional distribution of provincial and federal jurisdictions.

Harper hasn't done anything on those lines, to this point. The worst we can say is he has let his party run attack add campaigns against opponents... not something new in politics or unique to the Conservatives (bogus "sekrit ajenduh" campaign, anyone?).

Disagree with his policy stance, all you like; believe he is wrong in how he approaches issues, but why is there a need to attack the man himself.
 

JLM

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 27, 2008
75,301
547
113
Vernon, B.C.
Disagree with his policy stance, all you like; believe he is wrong in how he approaches issues, but why is there a need to attack the man himself.

As I think was proven by most of the electorate in May 2011. Who do we have right now that would be a better replacement? Don't get me wrong, he is still only the best of all the evils!-:)
 

darkbeaver

the universe is electric
Jan 26, 2006
41,035
201
63
RR1 Distopia 666 Discordia
What we have is clearly a natural dislike very much akin to the aversion one has for dog****. The same is true for Rex the news reader. It is well understood in this country and indeed the west in general that you cannot stray far from the internationalist playbook and expect to run let alone win an election. Rex has a tacky little show on the radio where he does the apologist thing for that same internationalist disease.
 

Cliffy

Standing Member
Nov 19, 2008
44,850
192
63
Nakusp, BC
Trudeau and Harper should be judged on their respective records and actions. Trudeau was the man who called out troops in Quebec and imposed martial law. Trudeau was the one who actually flipped off Canadians who protested against his policies. Trudeau was the one who embarked on a campaign of economic warfare against a specific region, violating the constitutional distribution of provincial and federal jurisdictions.

Harper hasn't done anything on those lines, to this point. The worst we can say is he has let his party run attack add campaigns against opponents... not something new in politics or unique to the Conservatives (bogus "sekrit ajenduh" campaign, anyone?).

Disagree with his policy stance, all you like; believe he is wrong in how he approaches issues, but why is there a need to attack the man himself.
So, I'm guessing here, but it sounds like it is OK to piss on a dead man's grave but not on a live one.