A Really Nasty Alternate Universe

Who Are These People? And where did they come from?

I've been reading comment boards at the Globe and the Star again. I know I shouldn't do it. But I can't help myself. They depress me. They unsettle me. They destroy my carefully constructed view of my rational, pleasant world. But still I read them. Why?

For the same reason people watch horror movies or slow down to stare at car wrecks, I suppose. It's as if someone has torn a hole in the reality curtain to give me a peek at a really nasty alternate universe. Ninth circle of Hell stuff where people gnash their bloody teeth, shriek, scream and burn with fevered passions.

These are people who can toss off the most sullen, hateful sentiments with the nonchalence of a store clerk remarking on the weather. As if it's normal. And yet I have never heard anyone, anywhere, at any time, express such raw hatred out loud in real life. Like this poster, from today's Globe, "commenting" on U.S. President Obama:

Enough with the experiments.
Anyone heard of the other American icon?
Where is the Tiger?
When the going gets tough they all hide.
ObaMao played golf when the attack happened.
Pathetic Barry took 3 days to read a release to the press like he didn't give a sh!t.
The fraud is over.
The world laughs at Barry born in Kenya.
Dick Cheney for President.
The USA needs a real home born American today and not Barry from Kenya.

YES WE CAN'T.

Hello, Mr. Yes We Can't. This is your drycleaner calling. We have your nice white sheets ready for you, if you'd like to come pick them up. Sorry about sewing the eyeholes shut.

All right, the selection is a bit extreme, but it's not totally out of sync with a good portion of the commentary. And this is a reputable Canadian newspaper in a modern urban centre -- not some rabid little rag in the 18th century Deep South. Does Mr. Yes We Can't talk like this to his mother, his co-workers, his pals at the pub after a game of pick-up softball? Does he have a real life somewhere with a home, a family, a job, hobbies? Does he have children?

So who are these people? Do they disguise themselves as normal Canadian suburbanites by day, mingling with us at the malls and grocery stores? Or do they hide in dark basements, muttering to themselves? Are they the true face of Canada? Or a couple of Limbaugh wanna-be's holed up in a westcoast condo?

And why do I see so much of this stuff in the Globe and the Star, two Toronto-based liberal-ish publications, where the boards are dominated by screed-spewing ideologues? Why don't I find these reptiles slithering all over the New York Times or the Scotsman or the Guardian or the National Post or virtually any other reputable newspaper in the civilized world?

Maybe that's why I keep reading. To learn what, if anything, they are telling me about my world and the people I share it with. Scary thought. Let's hope they only seem to be so numerous.

Okay, My Friends. Wassup?

The climate change extravaganza in Copenhagen was one of the most perplexing shows ever mounted in the Earth's sorry history.

Somehow, amid the screaming and garment-renting, Canada emerged as the arch-villain of the piece. Apparently, we of the peaceable kingdom are the Bad Thing hellbent on destroying this shiny blue orb everyone loves so much. Against us are ranged the angelic forces of Good -- led by a demented Robert Mugabe, that scoflaw from Sudan who slaughters black babies, a bunch of rabblerousers from Latin America and a handful of self-appointed leaders from countries too small to name.

The whole thing is so improbable that even the slowest among us has to stop and ask, Wassup with this?

Are we to believe that in the midst of the world's daily hurly-burly -- the clamour of Calcutta, the thrumb of Hanover, the clatter of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, the whir of innumerable factories in China and the shriek of chainsaws in Indonesia -- modest little Canada is the Evil that will lead the world over the climate change cliff?

Come on! Pull the other one!

With Copenhagen, surely the idiotic campaign against Canada has scraped bottom. Do you people out there really believe that our seal hunters threaten the Earth's equilibrium? That our lumberjacks are pilaging the planet? Clearcutting every last pristine wilderness? That our mining companies are engaged in a conspiracy of genocide against indigenous people everywhere? That our own Aboriginal people are exterminating wild species willynilly with their marginal fur-trapping? Is this what goes on in your fevered European brains?

Ridiculous.

So what is up with this?

What's with the Canada-bashing by all these murky and unelected NGOs? And why are all those supposedly responsible European governments lending support to this drivel? Not to mention all that U.S. money flooding in to support those murky and unelected NGOs.

Interesting, eh what?

If anyone has any answers, please let Rupert know.

Searching for a Post-Left Left

Oh, how I hate to admit this. But the Left -- soul of my soul, heart of my heart -- has become the enemy of everything I value.

How did I misplace the good, old, unassuming Left that worked to get working people into their own modest homes and helped them send their kids to school? Whatever happened to the people who valued the working-class life and the decent, down-to-earth folks who wanted fair wages for a honest day's work? Norma Jean - where did hell did you go?

Now it's all fight climate change and save the caribou and preserve the Boreal and shutter the shit-belching factories and stop those dirty lumberjacks, miners, steelworkers from soiling my pristine wilderness backyard latte patio garden. And fuck off with your hopes for a stone quarry that could employ your sons and daughters at decent wages because it might spoil the view when I sea kayak on your pretty shores in some distant summer. Workers should renounce their carbon-spewing jobs and their animal-killing ways to take up the noble tasks of retail and hospitality -- so they can more perfectly serve the new-veau Left when it arrives for a week of getting in touch with its excellent wild-child self.

That's what the new Left is all about, isn't it? Auto workers are uppity illiterates who deserve to be put in their place. People who shop at Zeller's and Wal-Mart are white trash. Snowmobilers, ice-fishman, bowlers, moose hunters, bingo players, Legionnaires, union members, high-school graduates and community college drudges, people who get up every day to go to work -- all right-wing red-necks. And god, don't get me started on Oshawa and Hamilton and Sudbury. Arm-pit towns full of tedious, uneducated rubes. No nightlife. No creativity. No class.

Way to go, folks. You have achieved a Left that hates the working class. Is it any wonder that working people vote for Stephen Harper and Sarah Palin?

How do we get beyond this? Because get beyond it we must, if we don't want an endless horizon of Stephen Harpers and green-grocer fascists.

We could lose the pretentious superiority. We could stop channelling the late, lamented Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We could start to like real people again. We could stop kowtowing to fever-brained neo-anarchists with delusional agendas. Above all, the Left could to reconnect with its working-class base to become a viable political force again instead of an elitist echo of 18th century nobless oblige.

If the Left can't become the post-Left, and quickly, it will find itself on the wrong side of an emerging class war. Many exquisitely educated heads will roll.

And all that was, will be dust. And all that might be, will be lost.