The Mind of Stephen Harper

Ever since his near-death experience, politically speaking, Mr. Harper has been somewhat more humble. No longer the ûber-fûhrer, he became very accommodating by tailoring his budget to suit the opposition, thus abandoning his prior convictions and saving his job. No more dirty tricks, no more character assassination, all was sweetness and light. Until yesterday.

The occasion was his tabling of anti-gang legislation following the rash of brazen shootings in Toronto and Vancouver that killed a number of people. His solution: harsher sentencing. This is nonsense. It has been demonstrated and proven time and time again that stiffer prison sentences do not serve as a deterrent. Criminals don't expect to be caught, so the sentence means nothing. Criminologists think the idea is foolish, and would focus on the root causes of crime such as poverty and hopelessness.

Speaking to the issue, Harper inferred there would be opposition, and here is where his true colours re-emerged. He expects the opposition to "parrot" critics of his measures who are "soft on crime". Oh my, oh my! Soft on crime, soft on terror, soft on communism - haven't we heard it all so many times? All these soft pussycats, what a horrible world it would be if we left it to them! And the obvious conclusion is that if the opposition "parrots" these poor souls, then they're unable to think for themselves. What a slithery ass is our Stevie.

I've been trying to understand the current economic woes, but I'm not succeeding very well. Every second or third day, we hear of central banks cutting interest rates. We hear of governments putting out stimulus packages. We hear of tax cuts, adjustments in monetary and fiscal policy.
We hear of infrastructure spending, the "shovel-ready" type being preferable. On and on, but none of it buoys up the markets. Presidents and treasury secretaries, prime ministers and finance ministers, central bank presidents are all twisting in the wind. A mutual fund manager appears on the Business News Network and is congratulated for only losing 20% of his portfolio whereas the overall market lost 30% or more. He "beat the market"! We need more of these financial icons; they do their best after all.

One day last week the U.S. secretary of the treasury was introduced with great fanfare to outline the administration's recovery program. As soon as it appeared, early in his speech, that he was speaking in general terms and had no specific proposals, the financial markets headed south and have been going down ever since. Confidence, we are told, is the key to recovery, but there seems to be no thread of it anywhere.

When, and if, we have a recovery, two or three or more years from now, (the time frame depending on which "expert" you choose to believe) we will be told that it was "obvious" what we should have done differently. How myopic we were! If only, if only.

Will the historians of the 2070's and 2080's look back on the "economic cataclysm" of the first 20 years of the century and declare that the Great Depression of the 1930's was a picnic by comparison? Will they speak of food riots, crime waves, rebellions, government repression with heads being busted, neo-Marxist and neo-Nazi ascendancy? One can let one's imagination run wild.

I've just read an article which claims that people with high IQs are not always rational, usually because they're not inclined to think things out. Case in point: George W. Bush. His IQ is above average at 120, judging from his college admission tests. The writer goes on to speak of Bush's "serene indifference to the intersection of reality and bedrock belief". Wow!! Doesn't that say it all?