Against charity, against dynasties

[sabotabby]

 Hot take: Caroline Mulroney is worse than her father. Given that I grew up in the 80s, that's saying a lot. But she is really and truly the scum of the earth—perhaps, if it is possible, an ambulatory slime mold worse than Drug Fraud himself.

Case in point: The Ford government has cut or frozen funding to rape crisis centres, the Child Advocate's Office, the College of Midwives, and the free childcare spaces for toddlers that the Liberals promised. It cancelled minimum wage increases, the basic income pilot project, and has proposed cancelling rent control. All of these cuts—and the many more that are no doubt to come—attack the threadbare structures that support low-income women. It is, in fact, a war against women* and in particular makes the lives of poor women attempting to escape domestic abuse even more of a living hell than it already is.

Caroline Mulroney, as Attorney General, has the power to stand up to Ford. She could even vote against him! Imagine that. She could compel the so-called adults in the room to act in response to a premier who is out of control, who governs by tweet, who appoints his cronies to plush positions at the expense of citizens of this province. She could come to the aid of the very women his policies are laser-guided to attack.

Instead, she sends little cosmetics boxes to women in shelters and pats herself on the back for being a do-gooder.

It is less insulting to do nothing at all then to pretend that these tiny, pathetic acts of charity do anything but make Caroline Mulroney feel better about herself, even as she no doubt looks in the mirror every morning and hears, in the back of her tiny, tiny brain, her smothered conscience croaking out the truth of her mendacity. She and her government are condemning women to misery and death, she is not only complicit but an active participant in doing so, and no amount of lipstick will disguise the blood on her hands.

Related: A proposal to ban the children of politicians from entering politics themselves. Sure, we lose Mike Layton, but we save ourselves the formation of a new inbred, spineless monarchy.


* It's a war against everyone but the rich, but women are hit particularly hard.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

This rant is glorious and true.

[sabotabby]

Thanks! I am super angry.

[robin_iamar]

When you put it that way... (as someone who almost had hopes for Mulroney winning the PC leadership INSTEAD of Doug), I'm terrified for vulnerable people living in this province.

[sabotabby]

Me too. I'm terrified for myself but at least I've been saving up for this eventuality. Most people—not just the most vulnerable, but everyone but the upper middle class and up— are going to be shit-screwed.

[notasupervillain]

Sometimes the pettiness of Evil surprises me. Even when I think I've lost my capacity for surprise.

When I first heard the argument that charity exists in opposition to justice I felt it was counterintuitive at best, but it checks out.

[sabotabby]

It took me awhile. I can recommend an awesome book on it, if you're interested. It may be Relevant To Your Interests.

[notasupervillain]

I learned the idea from listening to podcasts interviewing an author on his book about it. I'm curious if it's the same author! Anand?

[sabotabby]

It is! Anand Giridharadas, who seems to be the main person writing on this sort of thing right now. Though I came across the phenomenon experientially, through working with Free the Children and puzzling out the economics. But he came along and really solidified the concept.

[notasupervillain]

I hadn't encountered it before, and as someone who would like to consider herself a Good Person who gives to the Right Kinds Of Charity, I found it rather distressing. But also difficult to refute.

[sabotabby]

I don't think there's a moral problem with giving to charity. I do (vetted ones, like MSF, though I'm more likely to give to organizations that are not registered charities). There's a moral problem with running one, especially when one is profiting from the same forces that the charity is mitigating, and a worse one on a policy level where charity is pushed as a substitute for structural and institutional change.

[notasupervillain]

There is a problem, or at least a concern, with using charity to assuage my guilt at profiting from an oppressive system. But hey, what else* can I do?

*Okay lots of things but they're so inconvenient.

[sabotabby]

In that way, we're all complicit. But the problem is that our social safety nets are increasingly dependent on charity for funding, not that given that case, people help keep those charities afloat.

[notasupervillain]

Agreed.

[rdi]

"Winners Take All"? I just put it on hold at TPL

[sabotabby]

Yeah. It's really good.

[cloudsinvenice]

If only such a ban could be introduced here and then applied retroactively. It would have saved us from Ian Paisley Jr...

And that's so horrifyingly comprehensive. When a government makes those decisions they are wiping out the prospects of a generation and I don't believe that they don't know it.

[sabotabby]

A guillotine could still save you from Ian Paisley Jr...

They know it; they're counting on being too old/too dead for it to matter, and their kids being sufficiently rich to avoid the worst of it.

[cloudsinvenice]

I wish I could earnestly want that, it'd be so much simpler, but if the history of this place has taught us anything, it's that you never get just one death...

[dewline]

If I paranoically suggested that someone got to Mulroney in some way...?

[sabotabby]

I think she was always an opportunist bootlicker. It's not like she's ever shown a good side.