Two wrongs make it all right
Forget the great Canadian novel Two Solitudes, wherein the premise was that Canada was divided along linguistic lines. Outmoded/Passée. Instead, spend some time reading through the daily comment file on the CBC news website. We have divided into two camps, (one of them a fishing camp) and the Shakespearian paraphrase is “Harperism: To be or not to be”.
Consider the case of the great Canadian fly fisherman. Off for a few brewskies with the boys in the woods of the Rock. Suddenly, a satellite call reminding our intrepid cast (off) that there’s an important announcement to be made in the other wilderness (Ontario). The helicopter will swing by and hoist him aboard, as part of a training mission. A happy alignment of the stars that a Comorant has the exact site of the fishing camp in the GPS.
That’s one version. Another version (the one from the boss) is that… wait, why bother repeating the lie. It doesn’t make it turn true in the retelling. The simple version of the story is that the Minister of Defense used his power to save a few minutes of travel time. The cost torpedoes be damned. When a political announcement just has to be made, retasking a rescue team to rescue that special someone is right (conservative right).
The story won’t go much further. We have signed on for a full tour of duty (four more years), and this will be one more anecdote for the Bowderlized History of Harper’s Canada. And among the comments (for this story) on the CBC website, you will be reminded (over and over and over again) that previous governments have done MUCH MUCH WORSE STUFF. As if capitalization makes two wrongs into a right (is that the conservative right, a moral right, or just what the rest of use owe as allegiance).
