It’s a reach, perhaps, to connect mad David Icke’s obsessive stalking of our remarkably forbearing reptilian overlords with my recent departure from the NDP in a huff of smoke. But bear with me. I’m rather taken with the notion of shapeshifting at the moment, and so long as we stay in the realm of the metaphorical, we’re free and clear of madness ourselves. Aren’t we?
Camping out here in the political wilderness, with a surprising amount of company, is like waking from a dream. Yes, I’ve finally taken the red pill. The food isn’t all that great, and the blasted landscape leaves much to be desired, but the possibilities are endless. Or is that just another dream?
I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with the Orange Team for many years. It’s been the only game in town, the only party, warts and all, for a practical man or woman of the Left. There one could discern at least the outline of socialist principles, like gorillas in the mist. But we all know what happened to them.
Perhaps “game” is the operative word. I don’t want a party for the sake of a party. I’m a goal-oriented sort of person. Just showing up and putting on an orange jersey isn’t enough. Where’s the net? In fact, where’s the damn ball, come to think of it? And why are there three teams on the field, all heading in the same general direction?
This past few days, Tom Mulcair has expressed admiration for Tony Blair, who is just as crazy as David Icke in his own way. This, right after Andrea Horwath’s dismal performance in Ontario, where the Liberals outflanked her on the Left. New Brunswick NDP leader Domenic Cardy then went one better, booting an NDP candidate for liking a Facebook page that suggested Blair might be a war criminal.
Welcome to the Third Way. I thought we’d put a stake through its foul heart with the departure of Alexa McDonough. It seems to involve mimicking the other guys to the point of running bloody foreign wars on a fuel of taxes and lies, and launching attacks on the weak and the poor at home. Holding up the likes of that unmitigated scoundrel Blair as a model is like (Godwin alert!) praising you-know-who for being a vegetarian.
But the somnambulists who form the core of any party just blindly followed the shapeshifting lizards. Orange! No, wait, red! Surely not blue? Stirring uncomfortably in your sleep by now? Just keep walking.
Party politics? Just a less-bloody Game of Thrones. Sure, we all want our made-in-Canada version of Joffrey gone. But at bottom it’s still all about power, for its own sake, with ideological differences, such as they are, mere disposable window-dressing. The system has no space for real alternatives. I’ve always known this, but I’ve played anyway. “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them,” said some guy with a beard, even angrier than Tom Mulcair. Now, as a wag on Twitter put it, it’s the new Mouseland: “I have an idea! Let’s talk like a cat and capture the centrist vote!”
And so, like the old pensioner in a haunting pre-Icke science-fiction piece about ruling reptiles, I woke up fully. But so what? And now what?
