I was going to write about something serious beeswax like Greece or something but I just got another begging email from an NDP mailing list to which I do not ever recall having subscribed (I am not a party member). Suffice it to say, I receive several of these frankly embarrassing insults to epistolary literature a week. I haven’t unsubscribed, because it’s sort of like electronic rubbernecking for me.
These letters are usually attributed to some kind of high profile functionary, like a well-known MP, but they are written as though they came from the keyboard of a pimply PR intern (which doubtless they were). They have these terrible middle-school-assembly skit quality, you know, the kind written by the student’s council to suck up to the principal or something, often literally including some contrived email conversation between “Tom” and “Anne” or something like that. The latest is this on-going drama over who gets to spend an afternoon watching hockey with “Tom”, because all real Canadians like hockey, and NDPers are real Canadians and not pinko commie traitors to the American flag and dream, right right, yes, I know you are, yes.
Does anyone give money based on this sort of dreck? From my perspective, every time one of these lands in my mailbox, the NDP owes me more money! In the palace of my mind, the NDP is about to go bankrupt from this kind of thing. They should show some imaginary fiscal responsibility and just stop or pay up.
What would pass the admittedly high bar that would get me to give money to a mainstream electoral organization? At the very least, real, genuine, courageous intellectual engagement with the world, from the very names that are purporting to represent me. Must Canada sink as far as Greece before we can have a Yanis Varoufakis of our own? As the Doomsman of the Valar, I am at least a little sorry to inform you that the answer is probably yes.