Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Polievre and intellectual honesty. . . . .

My own dear MP Pierre Poilievre was on the radio today accusing the opposition of intellectual dishonesty!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, I know, that in itself could be a blogpost because the idea of Mr. Poilievre accusing anyone of intellectual dishonesty is so dripping with narrative irony that one hardly need say more to raise a good laugh and a good cry from one's readers. But then he quickly went on to refer to the opposition parties as the "coalition parties." That's right! Without even a hint or irony in his voice he just called them the "coalition parties." When Kathleen Petty called him on it, he just said "well, whatever you want to call them." 

This is Karl Rove politics in action! Some US, or American style advisor has obviously told the Con-men to throw that little tidbit in to the conversation whenever possible for that (not-s0-subtle) psychological effect of keeping the idea in the back of people's mind that there are secret deals happening in the background all the time with the opposition parties. Now, this won't work with me because I have no problem with coalition politics since they foster compromises and promote better understanding. And the only reason that this negative angle works on other is that some people are fool enough to be sucked into the idea that coalitions are somehow undemocratic. 

But since Mr. Poilievre has set the precedent here it would be quite amusing to see the other parties follow it. Since we all know that the Con-men were against gay marriage and we recently found out that they have taken equal rights for gay and lesbian people out of the Citizenship manual, from now on when ever an opposition politician is referring to Government they should call them "the prejudice party." They have to make sure to say this as though it is their actual name, not as though they are making a political statement. 

And since there is not actual coalition and Mr. Poilievre's statement therefore is actually a lie, we could just call the Conservative Party anything, couldn't we? In news conferences the opposition could refer to them as the "racist party" or the "or the anti-democratic party." Oh, wait, those are both actually true so it would still make the opposition more 'intellectually honest' than the Con-men. 

No comments: