The Liberals are losing in Quebec. It's not clear who is winning or even if anyone is winning but the Liberals are losing.
That means it's time for someone to scream "raaaaacist!". It's an odd trick as the Liberal parties (federal and provincial) in Canada are all pretty darned white (also pretty darned male, not that there is anything wrong with that).
Because I know a lot of card-carrying Liberals, I've been getting it all my life. Quebec nationalism they tell me incessantly is racist and draws on deep right wing roots from the 1930s. It's a mark of their deep cognitive dissonance on the subject that they can do this right after finishing angry rants about "the Jews" and Israel.
I hadn't seen much of the tactic this election. It has gotten a little hard to pull off ever since the whole thing blew up in the Liberals faces last time around. Recent revelations that Pierre Trudeau had a past of right wing sympathies himself that he kept secret while, on no actual evidence, hypocritically accusing others of having secret right wing sympathies in their pasts didn't help either. Finally, the excesses of human rights laws recently exposed here has tended to make people suspect that there is at least as much political gaming as there is genuine concern for others behind the racism and other human rights accusations.
But losing has a way of throwing people back on old tactics that worked in the past. A friend of mine tried it a while ago on Facebook. He's a pretty active Liberal so I'm guessing that's a sign that when Liberals outside Quebec get together to weep about what is happening in that province they blame the "raaaacists" on the other side.
They haven't had many takers. The media just aren't responding this time. That's telling because you are officially allowed to hate Quebec nationalism in Canada. You can say anything you want about these people—even things that normally would get you run out of polite society for actually being hateful, as opposed to the political tactic of accusing someone of being "hateful".
There is a painful irony in that by the way. Anyone who has spent any time outside of Quebec will no that the angry talk about "the nationalists" in Quebec tends to spill over and get thrown at all Quebecois after the second beer. And little wonder, the nature of the attacks is to apply long-held hatreds of French Quebec to one little segment of the population.
So why do the Liberals do this? And by extension, why do the Democrats south of the border apply the same tactic?
Well, that in a sense is backwards. The Liberals learned the trick from the Democrats. Both parties kept using it because it worked. It's lately stopped working on this side of the border. (The US side is an interesting question. If I were a Democrat, I'd be very worried about the way Obama's "likeability" ratings remain high while his approval ratings are poor. To me that suggests that US voters are getting better at separating race from issues about performance. That could translate into a jarring defeat come November 6.)
I think the thing to keep in mind, here, is that both these parties are brokerage parties. Brokerage parties, of necessity, have to keep fueling animosity between the segments of society that they claim to broker between. If there is no tension or distrust, there is no reason to have a broker.
To put it another way, there is point where the broker becomes an obstacle to progress. I think we have reached that point.
That means it's time for someone to scream "raaaaacist!". It's an odd trick as the Liberal parties (federal and provincial) in Canada are all pretty darned white (also pretty darned male, not that there is anything wrong with that).
Because I know a lot of card-carrying Liberals, I've been getting it all my life. Quebec nationalism they tell me incessantly is racist and draws on deep right wing roots from the 1930s. It's a mark of their deep cognitive dissonance on the subject that they can do this right after finishing angry rants about "the Jews" and Israel.
I hadn't seen much of the tactic this election. It has gotten a little hard to pull off ever since the whole thing blew up in the Liberals faces last time around. Recent revelations that Pierre Trudeau had a past of right wing sympathies himself that he kept secret while, on no actual evidence, hypocritically accusing others of having secret right wing sympathies in their pasts didn't help either. Finally, the excesses of human rights laws recently exposed here has tended to make people suspect that there is at least as much political gaming as there is genuine concern for others behind the racism and other human rights accusations.
But losing has a way of throwing people back on old tactics that worked in the past. A friend of mine tried it a while ago on Facebook. He's a pretty active Liberal so I'm guessing that's a sign that when Liberals outside Quebec get together to weep about what is happening in that province they blame the "raaaacists" on the other side.
They haven't had many takers. The media just aren't responding this time. That's telling because you are officially allowed to hate Quebec nationalism in Canada. You can say anything you want about these people—even things that normally would get you run out of polite society for actually being hateful, as opposed to the political tactic of accusing someone of being "hateful".
There is a painful irony in that by the way. Anyone who has spent any time outside of Quebec will no that the angry talk about "the nationalists" in Quebec tends to spill over and get thrown at all Quebecois after the second beer. And little wonder, the nature of the attacks is to apply long-held hatreds of French Quebec to one little segment of the population.
So why do the Liberals do this? And by extension, why do the Democrats south of the border apply the same tactic?
Well, that in a sense is backwards. The Liberals learned the trick from the Democrats. Both parties kept using it because it worked. It's lately stopped working on this side of the border. (The US side is an interesting question. If I were a Democrat, I'd be very worried about the way Obama's "likeability" ratings remain high while his approval ratings are poor. To me that suggests that US voters are getting better at separating race from issues about performance. That could translate into a jarring defeat come November 6.)
I think the thing to keep in mind, here, is that both these parties are brokerage parties. Brokerage parties, of necessity, have to keep fueling animosity between the segments of society that they claim to broker between. If there is no tension or distrust, there is no reason to have a broker.
To put it another way, there is point where the broker becomes an obstacle to progress. I think we have reached that point.
No comments:
Post a Comment