by Klaus Rohrich
June 29, 2004
I believe that Margaret atwood is probably one of the 10 best fiction writers in the world today. Each time I read one of her books, I am in awe of her artistry. Having said this, I also think old Maggie is loopy as hell. In a recent article she penned for the National Post, ostensibly as Jack Rabinovitch’s ghost writer, there were a number of statements concerning Canadian politics that I found curious.
For instance, atwood quotes Rabinovitch as saying that if Canadian voters get angry at their government, they shouldn’t turf the government, but count to a million and chant "whoooo-saaahhh…" until they get over it and then go out and vote for the Liberals again. "any kind of a decision, you make it in anger, you’ll regret it later." Rabinovitch is quoted as saying.
Of course, that’s right if you’re talking about leaving your wife or quitting your job, but the voters have had plenty of time these past six weeks to calmly and rationally decide to toss the arrogant kleptomaniacs of Canada’s "natural ruling party" out on their ear.
atwood and Rabinovitch then speculate what Canada really is. They agree that it isn’t like a business, as a business is primarily concerned with returning a profit to the investors and everyone in Canada knows that profits are evil. Then they liken it unto a second-hand car, composed of many parts, or a garden where "this grows here, that grows there, but the same conditions aren’t right for everything."
These benign similes read well if you’re a teenaged dropout with a double digit IQ. Maybe they can also liken Canada to a landfill site, with an emphasis on the diversity of stuff that gets dumped into it each and every day. Or, how about a Cana-Mart with 3,851,809 square miles of aisles offering everything to everyone.
atwood then goes on to write about Steven Harper and his inflexibility. "He’s a my-way-or- the-highway kind of guy." She writes and points out that claiming Jack Layton and Paul Martin are in favour of child pornography was called "Bearing False Witness" in her Sunday school. She failed to note that the charges of Harper’s "Hidden agenda", his purported plans to build a firewall around alberta, etc. were also instances of "Bearing False Witness". But then, it seems in Maggie’s lexicon only conservatives are capable of "Bearing False Witness".
Her comments about Harper’s removal of the French language from air Canada were curious. Either atwood wasn’t listening to what Harper actually said on the subject or she was doing a little "Bearing of False Witness" herself. But that’s okay, because it’s common knowledge that Canada’s leftist intelligentsia is ideologically infallible.
She then muses whether Jack Layton might consider shaving off his mustache (bad idea) or if he would consider uniting the centre (apparently a good idea). If atwood (and Rabinovitch) really believe that Jack Layton is a centrist, then Chairman Mao must have been a "progressive" and Stalin was a "socialist". It betrays an interesting view of our country in that the political spectrum is totally polarized, with the "Left" and "Centre" at the same end of the spectrum and the "Right" diametrically opposite. So in effect, there is no political centre in Canada.
atwood also addresses some issues that are germane to the Liberals. For instance, she wonders whether Paul Martin will "fix the cumbersome gun registration law that has made a lot of duck hunters very grumpy."
If her understanding of the gun registry is that it’s making people "grumpy", then there isn’t much else we can say, except that maybe it’s true that the only reason it was passed was to fool ignorant women in Toronto (like Margaret atwood, perhaps?) into believing the government was taking action to keep people safe. My guess is that atwood doesn’t know that Canada already had one of the toughest gun control regimens in the free world prior to our blowing a billion dollars on the registry. Nor would she know that the registry has done absolutely nothing to lower the incidence of gun crimes in Canada, despite the "Bearing of False Witness" by the Liberals to the contrary.
She also wanted to ask Martin what he would do to keep sticky fingers out of the public cookie jar. Whose fingers did she mean and doesn’t the demeanour of her question trivialize the extent of criminal wrongdoing perpetrated by the Liberals? But, again, all this comes with the Liberal utopia, which atwood seems to inhabit. Need proof? In the very next sentence she goes on to talk about the Liberals’ achievement with respect to budget surpluses and debt reduction. Why doesn’t Paul Martin talk about that, she muses, or the fact that The Economist rates Canada as one of the most business-friendly countries in the world? Does atwood know that The Economist also wrote at great length about the "Israeli massacre of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians" at the Jenin refugee camp, a story that was later proven to be total and complete fiction?
It’s probably not the sort of thing that would interest the likes of atwood, given her worldview. This is the crux of what has kept Canada in the throes of bad government for so long.
It seems the ability of the Liberals to play to the prejudices and conceit of the electorate has finally run afoul of reality. But given the election results, it seems a lot of Canadians have lost their sense of smell.