This of course goes double in the United States.
In fact there was only one strategy the right wing’s propagandists, organizers and billionaire financiers could now follow – sheer, unmitigated chutzpah. Instead of acknowledging a whit of responsibility, they would do the opposite, preposterous as it seems: Blame government, taxes and unions, and distract attention from the filthy rich. This quite explicit strategy has been working for several decades; why not try it again? After all, shamelessness is the signal characteristic of those who survive and prosper in this life. Sure government regulations and bailouts saved us all from an even greater crash. Sure unions in the public sector helped their members maintain a barely modest level of middle class comfort and security, the precarious embodiment of the North American dream of upward social mobility. So attack both government and unions, what else?
Of course this makes no sense of any kind, except that it’s working like a charm. It’s elected many right-wing politicians, some so far off the conventional ideological continuum they’re in a parallel universe of their own insanity. Thus the United States in the mid-term elections and the surrealistic contest for Republican presidential candidate. Thus a know-nothing union-baiting mayor in Toronto. Thus a Harper government, enabled by working class and middle class ethnic voters in Southern Ontario who somehow trusted him but distrusted a larger role for government.
Thus the sustained attacks across the United States, and now Canada, on public service employees who have been lucky enough to have unions to keep them from a life just above permanent financial anxiety. It shows the worst of human behavior and the failure of reason. Instead of solidarity with those lucky enough to hang on and with little responsibility for society’s ills, frightened, insecure people have turned mean and vindictive towards those just marginally luckier than themselves, instead of turning against those who are in fact responsible for it all. These people are or should be natural NDP sympathizers, not conservatives. In that light, it was remarkably principled of the new NDP caucus to launch their filibuster last week on behalf of labour rights, widely considered fundamental human rights by those with decreasing influence.
For decades the goals of American conservatives, including the highly politicized corporate sector, have been transparent enough: Reduce corporate taxes and taxes on the rich. Reduce all government regulations that impinge on corporate profits. Destroy trade unions. Earlier this year the ultra-reactionary billionaire Koch brothers held a meeting of allies in Palm Springs, California, to plot “strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.” They have had extraordinary success, under both Republicans and Democrats, in achieving all three, as Corporate Canada and its political allies have enviously observed.
But there have been major regressions in Canada as well. Tax breaks for un-needy corporations continue apace. Private-sector unions have become a tiny minority in both countries. In the public sector, where unions had some clout left, it’s under ferocious attack across the United States and now suddenly in Canada (and in Greece and Britain and Botswana too, for that matter). All we need is a Tim Hudak victory in Ontario, and with his pals Mr. Harper and Mr. Ford, watch the attacks accelerate. Who will save us from this awful plague?
