Still thinking about #piggate

[sabotabby]

If, a decade ago, you would have said to me, "the British Prime Minister will be publicly accused of having fucked a dead pig's head," I would assume this sentence would be followed up by, "and he resigned in a cloud of scandal the following day."

(Certainly, my favourite comedy of all time, once praised for its accuracy in depicting Whitehall politics, seems adorably quaint, with ministers being forced to resign over all sorts of lesser scandals that do not involve porcine fellatio. Though, in fairness, that was a Labour government, even if it was the worst possible Labour government, so maybe it is still accurate and it's just times that have changed.)

Then again, if you'd said, "the mayor of Toronto will have been proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have smoked crack, driven drunk, and beaten his wife, and he will not lose his job or even put much of a dent in his political career over this," I wouldn't have believed you either.

Or, "the Prime Minister of Canada can turn a blind eye to Senate expense scandals, trash the economy, impose such ridiculous policies that scientists and librarians rise up in protest, and shrug his shoulders at the tragic drowning death of a 3-year-old boy and still ride high in the polls," I'd have accused you of a cynicism even I don't possess.

And yet.

The way to deal with scandal, these days, is to just shrug your shoulders and say, "so?" It's like they've realized that they're not accountable—it doesn't matter how many people think they're scum. They don't need the majority of the populace on their side—just a very committed minority of bigots who vote. That's it. Whereas the left falls apart at the slightest verbal fumble. It's mindboggling.

Don't get me wrong; I still derive an immense amount of pleasure knowing that David Cameron's sausage slid between the mandibles of a dead pig. And I enjoy, perhaps even more, his cronies and supporters tripping over themselves excusing said behaviour as normal teenage shenanigans. I've even come, in these past few days, to enjoy Twitter, which was invented for situations like this.

But I bristle at impunity. I don't want to live in a world where someone gets away with doing a thing that, were an ordinary person to do it, that person would have to hide their face in shame for all eternity. It's chutzpah to say, "So?" and walk on, and yet I keep seeing it.

And it terrifies me, because we have an election coming up. And we have one guy who is okay with drowning children, and one guy who thinks it's okay for the government to spy on you, and one guy who pretends to have a conscience but doesn't really but is still less bad than the other two. I want to think people are not okay with the child-drowner saying, "Eh, so?" and winning a fucking majority, but one has never gone broke underestimating the bigotry, cowardice, and selfishness of the Canadian people. Or at least the fraction of the Canadian people who bother to vote.

Harper could fuck a pig and get away with it, I'm sure. I'd guess that he has but I don't know that robots are capable of such acts.

The ability to laugh in the face of power is strong, but not as strong as the ability of the powerful to shrug it off.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Based on a poll of my co-workers, who accurately predicted Ford, Stevie will win again.

[sabotabby]

It wouldn't surprise me. The best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity, the body politic is masochistic.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I have little doubt at this stage that the CPC will emerge from this election with the most seats. I still hope that it will be well short of a majority. And then the fun starts. I just can't see a Liberal/NDP coalition. Both leaders are as obsessed with Quebec as only Quebecers can be and they have hugely incompatible positions on that issue.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

The British and North Americans have a cultural bond of self loathing that makes us think we deserve pigfuckers for leaders. Nobody supports Donald Trump because they have faith in humanity.

Worse, and significantly less funny than pigfucking - another of David Cameron's initiation rituals was probably burning a fifty pound note in front of a homeless person while his pals chortled heartily. These people are monsters and we're so beaten that we think we deserve them.

[sabotabby]

It's true.

The homeless thing, I can believe he could get away with. I mean, Ralph Klein, when he was Premier of Alberta, once walked drunken into a homeless shelter and started screaming and abusing the people there. And he still got glowing obituaries when he died. People will forgive abuse of the poor because the Just World fallacy leads them to believe it could never happen to them.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It's a weird combination of ignorance, prejudice and selfishness. Rob Ford got elected and Doug maintained his support because people believed they wouldn't increase taxes and that was enough. Harper's continuing support in Ontario is in large part due to opposition to the new sex ed curriculum. Obviously that's not even a federal issue but see "ignorance" and recent polls suggest the CPC is taking votes in Quebec over the niqab issue. Those are not the only issues of course but when push comes to shove a third of the population think they are more important than a leader who is trying to drive a coach and horses through the constitution. Add to that the NDP was bound to implode eventually running on a Quebec Tory platform.

[sabotabby]

This country sickens me. The good secularists in Quebec are willing to give up their civil rights for the power to tell women what to wear, and the good Muslims of Thorncliffe Park are willing to give up their religious freedoms to fuck over the gays. Meanwhile the mythical hardworking Canadian taxpayer is okay with his tax dollars being embezzled by Conservative Senators as long as no one gets a welfare increase.

We deserve the government we get. Fuck.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I'm really not sure that the niqab issue has anything to do with secularism. I don't see an upsurge in demand for banning clerical collars or kippahs.

Thorncliffe Park worries me. Toronto has been fairly good historically at avoiding ghettoization. At the worst "ghettoes" have lasted maybe a generation or two. TP looks fairly entrenched.

[sabotabby]

It's not real secularism. It's Islamophobia, disguised as secularism; the same brand as Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher. Completely irrational, pervasive, and religious in nature.

Thorncliffe Park is worrisome and also fascinating. I don't actually think it will last that long, though whether it will be because the people there become gradually more integrated with mainstream Toronto culture or because Harper rounds the Muslims up into camps, I have no idea. I think transit is a factor—I was there during the summer, and it's quite isolated, but transit is also a factor in Malvern, and Malvern isn't like that.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

TP is very odd. I understand that transit is a big issue there though it's hard to see why when it's surrounded by arterial routes and so central. Much less densely populated neighbourhoods have better transit. The Bridle Path has better transit and I think I was the last person ever to use a bus to get there and that was months ago. I could understand ghettoization in Rexdale or Malvern but at Eglinton and Don Mills?

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

I think a lot has to do with the way the media either amplify or downplay things. With the left, the smallest thing will be used (by most of the mainstream media) that these people are not fit for government, incompetent, deceitful, out of touch, can't be trusted, etc. etc., while with the Tories even major things will be ignored, brushed off, laughed off as a minor pecadillo a long time ago, and so on.

In the 1990s the UK Tories did suffer massively from various sex scandals (which were contrasted with their "Back to Basics" rhetoric), corruption on the part of individual MPs, and the like. But that was after Rupert Murdoch had already decided to ditch them.

But yeah, a lot is about entrenched class privileges that allow Cameron's pig-fucking to be dismissed as teenage hi-jinx, and even as you say, what is expected of our superiors as they prepare for their natural role ruling over us.

And lack of compassion is certainly not considered a scandal by that crucial fraction amongst those who vote, rather a sign of good hard-headed common sense.

[sabotabby]

Very true. We were surprised over here that it was the Daily Fail that broke #piggate, until it was explained to us that Cameron had softened somewhat on immigration.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

The other big thing is that Cameron is very clear that he wants Britain to stay in the EU, albeit with renegotiation - but it seems very unlikely that, however little he gets from his EU 'partners', he would campaign for a vote to leave. Rather, he would spin whatever bones the other EU leaders did throw him as a great victory.

So, encouraging an anti-politics "They're all a bunch of corrupt pig-fuckers" attitude, and generally lowering Cameron's credibility, must increase the chance of a vote to leave.

I'm not sure how much Cameron's softened on immigration - he's agreed to take a small number of Syrian refugees as a one-off, but in general terms the government is still doing thoroughly awful things, and I'm not aware of any general softening.

[sabotabby]

Ah, I hadn't thought about the EU thing. Interesting.

With immigration, there was some big thing that pissed off the loony right. The Not All Tories troll brought it up. I forget what it was, specifically.

[disastrid.livejournal.com]

I regularly refer to David Cameron as "that pigfucker David Cameron" so imagine my surprise when I saw the news that morning.

[sabotabby]

Right? I think I've referred to him as such too.