If I had to come up with just one word to describe Stephen Harper's style of governance it would be "Sicilian." In fact, when you view his words and deeds in the context of a Mafia Don instead of a prime minister they make far more sense.
Like any top Mafioso, Stephen Harper's base instinct is to manipulate, corrupt. He corrupts people, he corrupts process and always to his immediate advantage.
He shrewdly corrupted the armed forces and the public service when he severed their connection to the Canadian people. He installed a cadre of political commissars to filter communications between these government agencies and the public. They decided what questions would be allowed from the public, what would be refused outright. They then crafted the responses to ensure they comported with government policy. This effectively transformed the government services, military and civilian, into partisan personal agencies of the prime minister. It was a coup and pretty much everyone settled down and went along with it.
Harper is a deceiver. As his BFF Tom Flanagan and others have pointed out, he achieves his ends by incrementalism. Instead of introducing policies he knows won't be tolerated by the public, he advances his goals a small bit at a time, knowing the public won't notice or be able to keep track. That is a corrupt practice.
Harper is a concealer. Despite his promises of accountability and transparency, Harper has governed behind bolted doors. More governance is done inside the PMO, safe from prying eyes, than in either the Commons or Senate.
Harper, like any powerful Don, is a ruthless authoritarian. To Harper, everyone is expendable and serves only to fulfill his directives. Those who fail are jettisoned, dispatched, thrown under a bus without hesitation or the slightest remorse. There's a powerful sociopathy in that.
Harper is supremely arrogant. As so many close to the man have said, Harper genuinely believes himself to be the smartest man in the room. That is probably his greatest weakness for it is the foundation of hubris. It is what is most likely to bring him down. Once you believe that everything you conceive is a stroke of brilliance, it's easy to become sloppy.
The Wright-Duffy-Harper scheme is rife with sloppiness and expedience. It carries the stench of hubris. It was madness to concoct a scheme that relied upon at least 13-individuals to carry out and yet expect it to remain concealed. That is madness laced with arrogance.
Cruel people tend to meet cruel ends. As they ascend to power they accumulate enemies and float atop a sea of sullen resentment. Mafia Dons rarely die peacefully in their sleep. When they come to be seen as vulnerable, a threat to the organization, they're usually taken out by their own.
When I hear his name, see his face, hear his voice I have to control a boiling rage that starts deep in my solar plexus and threatens to overwhelm.
ReplyDeleteIt helps if I envision him lying in a gutter with flat lightless eyes.
And every good modern mafia organization needs their thugs, aka bikers. Enter Rob & Doug Ford.
ReplyDelete. . . shithead.
ReplyDeleteBut the mafia don comparison is not fair. A good mafia don takes care of his people as long as they're loyal. A good mafia don has some interest in the welfare of the area he controls; he's not going to let any outside criminal take advantage of them. Harper betrays his own constantly, and he sells us down the river to the other mob bosses all the time. Calling him a crime boss is unfair to crime bosses.
Um, just in case it was unclear, "shithead" was my immediate word association when you say "Harper".
ReplyDeleteI read your headline and immediately thought of Nixon. Just as Tricky Dick once became synonymous with corruption at the highest levels, so too will Sleazy Steve Harper one day come to define corruption in Canadian politics.
ReplyDeletePLG, fret not. I've been called much worse by some really, really nice people.
ReplyDeleteElliott, there are definitely certain Nixonian elements to this. Constable Horton says Harper didn't know the "minutiae" of the transaction. Most mob bosses,when they order somebody whacked, don't know whether the guy is going to die by a knife in the back, a bullet to the head, or a bomb under the carseat.
Harper plainly knew (and approved) of the plan for the PMO to get a gift of money to Mike Duffy to clear his Senate tab. It's irrelevant whether he knew how much or where it was coming from. Harper approved the gift of money with strings attached. Wright would not have done the deal without Harper's approval. Harper ergo is the controlling figure in the bribery/extortion of Mike Duffy and the simultaneous corruption of the Senate. Harper is the primarily culpable party. It was his decision to go or no go.
Traitor.
ReplyDeleteIt has been the word that comes to mind more than any other, because he not only hates traditional Canadian values and such, he actively seeks to destroy them and remake this nation into something even most of his voters would not want to be seeing. So Traitor is the only word that works for me. All else about him flows from his treason to Canada, Canadians, and the principles of Canadian law.
I do not use this word lightly in conversation, nor do I use it lightly here and now. This is one of those words I refuse to cheapen the meaning of. This is not hyperbole, it is not rhetoric, it is my honest assessment of the man and the one word that for me best captures who/what he is of all possible single word descriptors.
sociopath.
ReplyDeleteHarper has cold evil eyes and no problems lying whatsoever. I see other politicians lie on camara and you can see they look caught out, embarassed or just plain unconvincing. Harper has that sociopaths ability to lie with ease. He really doesnt care about canadians and he really is only out for power.He also seems to have no loyalty for any one person in his group, he throws the low and the high under the bus with the same ease. Very disturbing!
"He shrewdly corrupted the armed forces and the public service when he severed their connection to the Canadian people. He installed a cadre of political commissars to filter communications between these government agencies and the public. They decided what questions would be allowed from the public, what would be refused outright. They then crafted the responses to ensure they comported with government policy. This effectively transformed the government services, military and civilian, into partisan personal agencies of the prime minister. It was a coup and pretty much everyone settled down and went along with it."
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more. All responses from the Harper government are filtered from the usually somewhat informational responses prepared by the public service to pieces of propaganda that boast about "our government's priorities and successes", successes in name only, just because the political commissars declared - insert topic - it so. No proof of any success though, just declarations. Allways, everywhere.
If you can't spin everything in this light, forget about promotions or any positive feedback from the top. For a person who doesn't like what this particular brand of government is doing, it's tough at work.