Osama, Obama and the Politically Correct

I think it’s finally happened.  We may have finally chased the White Rabbit of Ridiculous down the dark hole and are about to end up a shell-shocked Alice in some Bizarro-Wonderland.  I expect to see the Cheshire Cat any day now, and once he shows up, the Mad Hatter and the Red Queen won’t be far behind.  My infernal optimism for the future of our society has been shaken to the core.  Recent events are turning my girlish laughter into tears.

As everybody from Biloxi to Bangkok knows, Barack Obama turned loose his weapons of mild destruction the other day, and the result was a double-tap to the head of the President of the Evil Club — Osama Bin Laden.  I, for one, broke out the champagne and watched the cheering in the streets on TV.  However, it appears our celebrations were premature.  Nobody in the US military ran the operation, codename Geronimo, past the all-powerful Politically Correct police.  Apparently, using “Geronimo” as the codename for the operation is a direct insult to all Native Americans.   (I’m not making this up!)  Apache Tribal Chairperson Jeff Houser, of Fort Sill, Oklahoma, has sent a letter to the White House (displayed on their Tribal Website) to ask the President to apologize for juxtaposing Geronimo’s name with Osama Bin Laden’s.  According to the letter, Native American children “are facing the reality of having one of their most revered figures being connected to a terrorist and murderer…”   Houser continues: “Think about how they feel at this point.”  This is an interesting rhetorical question to a black president who grew up around a few stereotypes, himself.  The letter goes on to say that Native Americans in general — and Apaches in particular — find the codename “painful and offensive.”  Regardless of intent, the military use of Geronimo is yet another manifestation of the history of oppression Native Americans have suffered ever since Chris Columbus brought his tour group to the Americas, over 500 years ago.

I’m not one to downplay the raw deal Native Americans got during the great European migrations of the 18th and 19th centuries.  Nor am I one to try and talk history in an age as repressive as our own.  However, stretching the umbilical cord of injustice from the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona to a mansion in the suburbs of Islamabad, Pakistan is beyond reasonable.  We are about to go through the looking glass at warpspeed, so I think we should pause briefly and examine our trajectory.

At the risk of splitting hairs, it might be useful to note that Geronimo’s name wasn’t even Geronimo; it was Goyathlay or Goyahkla. (It’s impossible to render spoken Apache* into written English)  According to the story I was told many times, and partially confirmed historically, the name Geronimo was an Apache joke nickname given to Goyathlay after a Mexican he was busy killing, repeatedly invoked the name of Saint Jerome (in Spanish Jeronimo.)  Apache warriors thought it was hilarious that, in the middle of a life-and-death situation, someone would call on an imaginary spirit for mercy.  Later, Americans heard Goyathlay called this, didn’t know any better and figured that was the guy’s name.  It stuck — on both sides of the cultural divide.

Secondly, Geronimo himself was probably the greatest hit-and-run military tactician North America has ever produced (along with Cochise and Jeb Stuart.)  For thirty years, off and on, he challenged the might of both the United States and Mexico, simultaneously.  Although always vastly outnumbered, he outmanoeuvred and outfought every military force sent against him, and he was never actually beaten in battle.  His daring raids tied up entire armies in fruitless chases that covered the entire southwest, from Texas to Arizona and the northern Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, as well.  While I can’t speak for the guy personally I think Navy Seals dropping out of the sky in the middle of Pakistan, tapping the hammer on the Archduke of Evil, grabbing the body and getting out of there without a scratch, is just the kind of operation he would have loved.  By all reports, he was a feisty old fella up until the day he died and probably would have gone in with the Navy Seals, given half a chance.

Lastly, I don’t know anything about covert military operations, but I do read a lot.  Codenames are not chosen because they bear any relation to the objective — nor, by the way, are they chosen at random.  They are chosen because they are particularly distinct, usually have more than one syllable and avoid too many p’s, b’s and v’s.  All this is so they can’t be screwed up by excited young people in the heat of the moment.  “Geronimo” fulfills these criteria, and that’s it.  A few of the Navy boys may have made the big fist and yelled, “Hell, yeah!  Geronimo!” but considering they were about to be shot at I don’t think anybody should be too offended by that.  Frankly, I don’t think anybody should be offended, at all.

I’ve said all this to say we need to step back from the linguistic House of Horrors we are creating for ourselves.  The time and energy we spend being outraged verges on the ridiculous.  Any number of groups have gotten the shaft over the years, but witch hunting our language is not going to change that.  Certain words are always going to be offensive, I agree — especially when spoken in anger or hate.  But not all words carry that connotation in every circumstance.  We need to quit chasing hurt feelings and use that same energy to deal with real bigotry in our society.

Oops!  Forget it!   I just heard the military has changed the name to Operation Neptune Spear.  I’m off to find Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

*I’ve used “Apache” instead of “Chiricahua” because it is more familiar to everyone.

Left Wing Reaction to the Canadian Election

I can’t figure it out.  The NDP just scored a gigantic victory in yesterday’s election.  They went from a minor, anti-everything coalition of the disaffected to a bold, new national force in Canadian politics.  They gathered votes from just about everybody who wants to change the way we do business in this country.  They more than doubled their best election results to date and nearly tripled their parliamentary power.  They increased their popularity from a paltry 18.2% to 30.6% — which means nearly one in every three Canadian voters now supports the NDP.  And that’s not all.  Of overwhelming significance, Jacques, Le Tueur de Geants (Jack, the Giant Killer) did what no politician has been able to do for twenty years.  He separated the Sovereignistas in Quebec from the allure of separatism and convinced huge numbers of Quebecois to join in a federalist dream.  Not bad for a guy with a bum hip and a failing memory!  Yet, in the middle of it all, even before Mansbridge could choke out “C-C-Conservative majority,” the Internet was bulging with I Hate Harper tirades.  Did I miss an e-mail or something?  Is this the way one is supposed to celebrate the greatest night in the history of “progressive” politics?

In less than twelve hours, the anti-conservative forces in Canada went from bright-eyed political activists, working flat out for change, to a pack of snarling Harper-haters, spitting sour grapes.  Of course, hating Harper has been a leisure activity in Canada ever since he kicked Stockwell Day to the curb in 2002, but election night was way over the top.  It started with Mansbridge saying something like, Stephen Harper’s most cherished dream was to destroy the Liberals, and it just soared into the stratosphere from there.  There were the usual George Bush and Adolf Hitler comparisons, of course, but then it just got bizarre.  Harper was going to outlaw abortion, gay marriage and bright colours.  Harper was going to change all the hospitals into pay-per-view clinics.  He’s going to steal everybody’s Old Age pension cheques and buy fighter jets with the money.  He was going to shoot the homeless, abolish daycare and burn the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in front of cowering orphans and weeping widows.  As the night went along, Hell itself couldn’t hold half Harper’s nastiness and even Satan was sending the children out of the room.  Most of it was unprintable.

The last time anything like this happened was when the Republicans in America finally realized that Palin was an idiot and Obama was actually going to be President.  The venom was unbelievable.   Did that just happen here?  Are the “progressives” in this country taking a page out of the Republican playbook and starting down the yellow brick road to some kind of Canadian Cappuccino version of Tea Party Crazy?  Is there a left wing Canadian Glenn Beck waiting to emerge?  Do we even know where Harper was born?  Hold it!  Let’s just stop for a second and take a deep breath.

First of all, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government isn’t worth the name.  If you don’t believe me, take a look at what Blogging Tory Adrian MacNair has to say about it — here.  Harper and his crew are probably further left politically than “progressive” poster child, Barack Obama.   Hyperbole doesn’t work when you don’t know what you’re talking about.  Secondly, we didn’t just elect Louis XIV for God’s sake!  Despite CBC’s continuous assurance that the people of Canada have handed Stephen Harper “absolute power” he’s only the Prime Minister.  Nothing gets done in this country without the bureaucrats and the special interest groups taking their cut, so I wouldn’t worry about anything called rapid change.  Thirdly, last time I looked, Jack Layton was the only guy who didn’t campaign with a handful of mud.  He kinda wanted to talk about the issues during the election.  I would think the party faithful would follow his example and demonstrate that much-vaunted “progressive” tolerance we’ve all been hearing about, ad nauseum.

And finally, you lost.  It’s that simple.  You can yip all you want about shadowy corporate conspirators subverting the will of the people — or media bias — or abolishing reforming the electoral system.  Hell, you can even say Harper is a Manchurian Candidate born in Kenya if you want to, but that doesn’t change the facts.  More people wanted a Conservative government than wanted an NDP one.  Even though 60% of the voters didn’t vote Conservative, using those numbers, 70% didn’t vote NDP: case closed.  If the “progressive” message is so alluring, Jack Layton is now a Prime Minister in waiting, and he’s got four years to prove he can do a better job.  Get after it!

The vast majority of people in this country want to change the way we do things politically, and many of them demonstrated that by voting NDP.  Let’s leave the venom and the rhetoric alone, calmly sit down, compare blueberries and oranges, and see which Canadians want.   Then all we have to do is figure out how to pay the bills and learn to live with the result — without resorting to American-style nutsy.

Canadian Election: It’s Finally Over

Congratulations, Canada!  You’ve almost made it.  In a couple of hours, one of the doziest elections in our history will be over.  The signs will come down, the pollsters will put away their pencils and the politicians will crawl back into hibernation.  Tonight, Canadian Survivor gets one more 2-hour TV finale (just so we can actually see who gets voted off the public payroll) and that’s it – it’s over.  And, with any luck at all, Canadian politics will irrevocably change.  Thank God! 

As I said in the beginning, Decision 2011 — or whatever journalists are calling it this week — has nothing to do with the people of Canada.  This was a political election, pure and simple:  engineered by our politicians and for the exclusive use of our politicians.  This wasn’t an unnecessary election, per se, it just didn’t have anything to do with us.  Our politicians have been wandering around the banks of the Ottawa River, trying to figure things out, for quite some time.  For years now, nobody on Parliament Hill really knew where they stood in the political spectrum, and they needed to get re-aligned.  They solved the problem in typical Canadian fashion.  They held an election among the three opposition parties and today we’ll find out who won.  In that sense, I suppose, there is some drama, but we’re not getting very much bang for our buck, considering the money we spent.

Here’s what just happened; it gets complicated, so stick with me.  Ever since Stephane Dion got the chop for incompetence in 2008, the Liberals haven’t been quite sure how far left of centre they want their centre-left party to be.  Michael Ignatieff is about as close to a Red Tory as you can get without the name; whereas, Bob Rae and Ujjal Dosanjh both ran genuine socialist horde NDP provincial governments.  There’s so much political schizophrenia going around on Bay Street these days, it’s a wonder the whole party isn’t in therapy.

Meanwhile, in another part of the political forest, the NDP have been creeping to the right.  Jack Layton has introduced Thomas Mulchair, a former provincial Liberal, as deputy leader.  This move overshadowed Libby Davies, who is about to retire anyway and take her brand of left-coast-bad-girl politics with her.  Layton sees an opportunity to move the NDP from wacky wannabes into the sunlight as a reasonable left of centre alternative in Canadian politics.  This is especially feasible since the environment is no longer on the agenda and the Greens, now lost in the wilderness, aren’t chewing on his left wing anymore.  Jack set his laptop on “Find: Replace,” retooled his speeches to read “middle class” (instead of “working class”) called it change (a la Barack Obama) and plunged right into the fray.  Ignatieff, too proud to battle a “fringe” party like the NDP, set his sights on Harper’s Conservatives, blissfully unaware (until it was too late) that, without Quebec and the West, the Liberals have become not much more than an urban “fringe” party themselves.  Two political objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, so the war was on.

All this would have been a minor skirmish, except Gilles Duceppe, probably the most competent politician of this generation, decided to take the month off.  He showed up briefly during the French language debate to scold Harper and rhetorically slap Jack Layton, but in general, he wasn’t there.  Duceppe is tired and wants to finish off his career back in La Belle Province.  He will get a good chance to govern as leader of the Parti Quebecois, when Charest’s Liberals collapse and he wants to take it.  Besides, he thought that the Bloc had little or nothing to fear until the old Rene Levesque-inspired sovereignistas start to die out in a decade or so.  Anyway, pension secured, Gilles went to bed early most nights and slept late.

And what about the guy who seems to be forgotten in all this hoopla — Stephen Harper?  After his five years in power, even the CBC couldn’t make the perennial favourite “secret agenda” label stick to him.  Harper’s diehard opponents still think he’s the living tool of Satan, however — just waiting for a majority so he can destroy Health Care, evict widows, stomp on kittens and sell us out to his American masters.  (Barack Obama?)   The truth, of course, is Stephen Harper isn’t the bogeyman any more than Joe Clark or Bob Stanfield were before him.  Conservative politics aren’t the manifestation of evil on earth, and most people can’t tell the difference between the day before yesterday and 2004, when Paul Martin was running the show.  Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is steady, and Conservative support might not be majority material, but it is deep and it is solid.  Besides, now that Danny Williams isn’t around to poison the well in the Maritimes, and if Harper can storm Fortress Toronto, he might just get a majority.  Regardless, tomorrow morning he will form the government.

That’s it: six weeks later; no big ideas exchanged; no national vision debated.  We can only hope that the politicians have finally sorted themselves out — because if they haven’t, and there’re any loose ends dangling about, we’ll all be back at it, in a year or two.