On Bullying and Thuggish Behaviour In Canada's Politics

As a human being, I see Rob Ford as a tragic character.  The man is so obviously in over his head it's not even funny.  His closest advisors and family have enabled his proclivities for substance abuse, and I would go so far as to suggest that he may well be little more than the puppet on the throne rather than the master of his actions.

As a Canadian, I am appalled by the Fords and their behaviour in the last few weeks.  It is not that their behaviour is embarrassing to Canada - it is, but that is secondary to what I want to talk about here.  It is the way in which the Fords throw their weight around (literally and figuratively) in council.

One of the favourite "escape hatches" of the far right in this country when confronted with their own misdeeds is to try and accuse their critics of exactly the same failing.  We've seen it time and again with the CPC in the House of Commons.  How many times, when confronted with their own fiscal mismanagement have we heard the Harper government dredge up past scandals?  Countless.

In the case of the Fords, it's a more direct form of bullying.  When Rob Ford was confronted in council session about his drug use since being elected, Doug Ford turns around and accuses the councillor questioning his brother of using marijuana.

"Everyone in this chamber is coming across as holier than thou, lily white," Ford began before setting his sights on Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who earlier filed a motion demanding Ford take a leave and apologize for lying about smoking crack cocaine. 

"The question is: have you ever smoked marijuana?" Ford asked to surprise. 

Ford repeated the question several times, raising his voice. 

"It's a question. It's simple. A yes or a no, have you smoked marijuana?" he asked as fellow councillors called for a point of privilege and speaker Frances Nunziata attempted to calm things down. "The answer, I guess, is yes. The answer is yes, I guess." 

Ford then called on other councillors to stand up if they had tried smoking pot.
"The whole council will stand up. So don’t come across that you're holier than thou," he said.

There is a fundamental issue with this kind of "counter-attack" - it attempts to draw a false moral equivalence between actions.  Whether or not councillor Minnan-Wong had smoked pot is immaterial.  The question is no longer about whether Rob Ford has used crack cocaine, but rather the fact that he has lied to council and Toronto as a whole about it.

Then, in an interview on US network Fox News, Rob Ford continues the process of escalating threats against various members of council:

If that’s all they’ve got well you know what if you wanna get nasty we can get nasty, and I can start digging up dirt on every single one of those politicians down there but they don’t want to so you know what? And like we said if you wanna do drug testing I’ll do drug testing but when my brother asked the question to Council Member Wong(?) have you ever done marijuana or cocaine the whole council erupted and said you can’t say that you can’t say that? Why? They can say it to me. Why can’t the other Councillors answer those questions?

Notice the attempt to make the issue of Rob Ford's behaviour as mayor a "tit-for-tat" issue, as if there is no difference between individual councillors' roles and the position of Mayor.

Today, in a council meeting, we have the Fords throwing their literal weight around in council - knocking over one of their peers.

What is the problem here?  It is the insistence on the part of the Fords that nobody should ever dare question them or their politics.    Instead of confronting issues directly, these goons insist on trying to turn the issues around on their opponents and make their opponents "responsible" or somehow "equally bad".

This is ultimately very damaging to political discourse.  It is the approach of childish politicians who still haven't figured out that politics in a democracy is not about absolute power, or always getting "your way", but rather it is the art of compromise.  It is precisely this unwillingness to compromise that has doomed Harper's desire to reform the Senate to the wastebasket.

[Update 19/11/2013]
Article from CBC posted late yesterday:  Rob Ford Says He's Quit Drinking

Another aspect of this is the unwillingness to take responsibility for your actions, or to recognize the position that one is in as a public leader.

Consider the following from CBC's interview with Rob Ford:

Mansbridge asked Ford if he's been drunk while driving. Ford told Mansbridge he hasn't driven while drunk but may have driven after moderate drinking. 

"All of us have done this," said Ford. "Whoever has a licence. You've gone to a dinner party or a restaurant with your wife and had a glass of wine. Do you drive? Absolutely you drive. I've never been drunk and driven." 

Ford answered "no" when Mansbridge asked if the mayor did crack more than once during his time as mayor. Ford described his crack use as "an isolated incident" that happened more than a year ago. 

Ford said he was "probably pretty inebriated" when the video was shot of him doing crack cocaine."You know what happens when you get to a certain point, when you're very inebriated. You might remember this, you might not remember that. There's blackout period I think we've all gone through. Some people are perfect. I'm not."

This sounds like a teenager caught doing something particularly stupid and is being reprimanded by their parents.  "Oh, everybody else does it".  Sorry, Mr. Ford, but that doesn't cut it.  First of all, not everybody else does it, and just because "everybody else was doing it" doesn't mean you should do it.

"There's two types of people: poor people and rich people and I side with the poor people," said Ford. "I've been honest and I'm being punished for it." 

Ford has been "honest"???  You've got to be kidding me.  Apparently we're supposed to ignore the fact that when rumours of the first video turned up, he denied its existence entirely.  He and his brother went after the Chief of Police for mentioning that they had recovered that video, until a day or two later Rob Ford admitted to having smoked crack cocaine.  No, Mr. Ford, the issue is precisely that you have not been honest about this.

Further, Rob Ford is not being "punished" for this.  He has been the advocate for "tough on crime" - zero tolerance for drugs, alcohol and gangs, and yet that is precisely what he has been doing.  The "lock em and through away the key" justice that Ford has been advocating is not what he is being subjected to.

City Council has apparently decided that Rob Ford's antics of late are unacceptable in the man who is the public face of Toronto.  If that's the worst punishment that he's receiving, he should be thankful.

Lastly, Mr. Ford and his supporters should perhaps consider the "But everybody else does it" reasoning a bit - particularly in the context of what their respective parents would say.  Mine would rightly point out that "I had a choice not to follow the pack".
[/Update]

The Next Con$ Angle of Attack On Justin Trudeau

More or less as I had anticipated, after failing entirely to characterize Justin Trudeau as "in over his head", the Harper Conservatives are turning to their next line of attack.

This time, the angle is to go after Justin's father and his legacy, thereby "blackening" the Trudeau name.  The writer of the column on the National Post website is positively drooling over the content of the coming "blackened biography" - claiming that the biographies that have come before are all pandering to the "legend" of Pierre Trudeau.

Of course, that doesn't surprise me.  The "Law-and-Order-Except-For-Conservatives" Con$ have always despised things that Pierre Trudeau did - especially the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which severely limits the government's ability to attack its own citizens.

It will be a classic "guilt-by-association" attack.  I am sure that the Conservative attack ads for the next few months will contain little bits about various things that Pierre Trudeau did, and will try to imply that Justin will do the same things.  Whatever is in those ads will be spun and distorted beyond any recognizable version of reality.

Or they may just attack the elder (and deceased) Trudeau viciously and hope that it is enough to damage the Liberals both as a party and Justin Trudeau as a leader.

It is as predictable as it is childish, as mean-spirited as it is ludicrous.  Canadians are tired of the constant political character assassination of the Conservatives.  At long last they are finally awakening to the reality that Harper is nothing more than a schoolyard bully who will do anything he can dream up to maintain his grip on power.

Dehumanizing ...

Over at No Apologies, we find one of the usual suspects wringing their hands over how a gay teen's suicide is going to be "used against" christianists.

... If the storyline is correct, however, we must assume that Tyler killed himself out of shame over his lifestyle and behaviour. If this is the case, he will – courtesy of the media – be forever remembered as the gay kid who killed himself after a video of the embarrassing act became public. The victimization of Tyler Clementi and the Christian community has only begun. Tyler’s choice has been warped into a weapon and planted in the hands of those the media likes to tarnish with the sobriquet “homophobe”.

Yes, someone who commits suicide makes a choice. No question about it. But to claim that such a choice occurs in a vacuum is an attempt at dissociation - especially coming from the denizens of "No Apologies".

Here's why. GLBT youth suicides are more often than not a result of continuous harassment at the hands of others. Often their tormentors are other youth, but not always - it's not unusual for GLBT folk (youth and adult) to be harassed by adults as well.

One might want to begin by asking just where youth get the idea that it's acceptable to be abusive of GLBT people in the first place? Much less how they justify carrying such behaviours forward into their adult lives.

The short answer is that there is a very vocal, if marginal, population that is vehemently opposed to GLBT people having any rights at all in society. Whether you look at postings on No Apologies, Lifesite News, One News Now or the frothing insanity of Peter LaBarbera's Americans For Truth Against Homosexuality (AKA "AFTAH"), there are lots of sources spewing a constant message that GLBT people don't deserve to be equals in society.

The messages themselves are nothing new - it's the usual moralizing drivel derived from a flawed understanding of scripture; accusation of mental or physical illness, licentiousness and so on.

However, when these messages are out in the public sphere for all to see, it doesn't exactly take a lot to understand that youth pick up on the underlying themes and act out on them. Youth, in general, will tend to act out in a much more visceral manner than adults will for a variety of reasons.

Combine this with the fact that teenagers will generally torment the hell out of anyone who is different - visibly or behaviourally, and you have an unsurprising reality that GLBT people end up on the receiving end of some pretty vicious bullying.

Whether we are talking about the events around Tyler Clementi's suicide, Chloe Lacey, Stacy Lee or Angie Zapata it doesn't matter. All of these cases have their roots in a constant message that being GLBT is "wrong", and therefore these people are disposable.

So, where does this leave the hard-line christianists that continue to perpetuate a hostile message in society? With a shared responsibility. Individually, none of them can be held directly responsible in these situations. However, they have an indirect responsibility because it is their teachings which contribute to the atmosphere that allows for bullying and violence to be done to GLBT people in the first place.

Borrowing from a propaganda tactic that the Nazis perfected in the lead-up to WWII, the language used is designed to render an entire population of people as "the Other" - removing from them any vestiges of being human. Replacing individual humanity with a shared "evilness" makes it very easy to justify mistreating individuals.

GLBT people have an immense struggle to come to terms with themselves simply because their sexual and gender identities fall outside the normative status that the majority fall into naturally. When we combine this with a social environment where harassment is encouraged (sometimes tacitly, sometimes explicitly), it is no real surprise that some give up hope entirely and take their own lives.

While we cannot hold the christianists wholly responsible in these tragedies, like the bystander in a beating who cheers on the thugs, they hold a certain degree of culpability. Theirs is the repeated message of hostility and dehumanization aimed at GLBT people, and the implications and impact of those messages cannot be overlooked.

Note: I use the term "christianist" not as a broad reference to all who profess to be Christian, but as an explicit reference to those whose persistent distortion and misrepresentation of others is used as a political argument for denying legitimate rights, freedoms and protections in law for people.

Harper On The Concept of Head of State

Apparently, Harper doesn't understand ... or doesn't want to admit ... that our head of state isn't him.

The charismatic Ms. Jean and the command-and-control Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, have been locked in tense matters of interpretation of her duty before. Last December, the PM asked her to shut Parliament and head off a coalition's attempts to topple him.

Now, they've had a public dispute over whether the Governor-General is Canada's head of state – or something like it. Mr. Harper has in a sense styled himself as defender of the Queen's title, against what some monarchists call a creeping campaign to elevate the viceroy at the expense of the sovereign.

In a speech Monday, Ms. Jean referred to herself as Canada's “head of state,” prompting complaints from monarchists that the Queen's representative was usurping the monarch's title. Mr. Harper, through spokesman Dimitri Soudas, said the Queen is Canada's head of state, and the Governor-General her representative in Canada.

It may seem to be more about splitting hairs than anything else, but this is one more example of Harper attempting to get his way by bullying people when he can't get his way.

I'm pretty sure that what went on last fall when Harper prorogued parliament to avoid a confidence vote he was all but guaranteed to lose had more to do with Harper threatening the GG's role or validity in some way, and this little spat gives us a little more insight into the discussion.

What Harper doesn't recognize is that while the Queen is our titular head of state, her powers are fundamentally delegated to the Governor General - making the GG our effective head of state. In theory, a dispute involving the GG could be appealed to the Queen although I wonder if the Queen would simply send back a "sort it out yourselves" response - especially since Canada repatriated its constitution in 1980.

Canada's Constitution doesn't define a “head of state,” but invests executive power in the Queen; in 1947, King George VI delegated most of the monarch's duties in Canada to the governor-general in letters patent. Most legal experts believe that makes the Queen is head of state, but some constitutional experts like the University of Toronto's Peter Russell believe the evolution of the governor-general's role means its not improper for a Governor-General to use the phrase, too.

Coming from a man who doesn't delegate much of anything to his cabinet ministers, it's no surprise that Harper does not understand the delegation of powers from the Queen to the Governor General. It's a sad statement about just how sadly stunted Harper must be that he seems to seek out conflict.

Generalize Much, Steve?

If you have any awareness of the arts world, you will know just how badly Harper mischaracterized the arts community yesterday:

the Conservative Leader draped himself in populism and said he sided with regular folks who aren't troubled that his policies rile fat-cat artists or people “in ivory towers.”

Mr. Harper would not, however, repeat in French his criticisms of artists, for outrage at his party's culture platform is most outspoken in Quebec.

It's the kind of generalizations Harper makes that show us his thinking is extremely limited. His world is all black and white. The arts world - which is so often about 'the show' - is far from wealthy. Artists are ordinary Canadians. Look around your community, and how many volunteer theatre companies run on shoestring budgets - barely able to pay any staff salaries for the routine business of keeping things going.

How many people sitting in offices or working at Starbucks are writers, sculptors or other forms of artist who haven't come anywhere near 'the big time'?

The rest of us are in one form or another consumers of the output of the arts. Whether you attend a play or two a year, or you are a passionate devotee of literature.

The problem with Harper's recent cuts to the arts is not their scale, but rather the way in which he has gone about it. Rather than putting it forward as part of the government's budget, and making it part of the larger financial discussion for the government. Instead, Harper did the changes under the rules of Order In Council, a tool primarily intended to enable Her Majesty's Government to continue the day to day operations of government while Parliament is not sitting.

The issue is this - like Ralph Klein in Alberta, Harper is doing as much as he thinks he can get away with outside of the open forum of Parliament. When he does have to use Parliamentary process, Harper tries to make everything a confidence motion, and further abuses both the concepts of democracy and parliamentary politics.

Exaggerating Bullying ... Or Minimizing Its Reality

Some genius in the UK figures that bullying is "normal" behaviour among children.

To a degree, he has a point. There are stages in life where children are learning social rules and interactions, and we would expect a certain amount of cruelty in those interactions.

If that were all that bullying was, it would not be the problem that it is today.

Most people can deal with one or two harshly worded interactions with others and shrug it off. But those are not by any means "bullying" in their own right. Bullying is more appropriately described as a pattern of hostile behaviour, often focused on an individual. It is often over a protracted period of time, and will involve a mixture of verbal abuse, threats and physical abuse. No one incident constitutes bullying, but when there is a pattern, there is a price.

I had my share of experiences with bullying while I was growing up, and I've witnessed it in the workplace as an adult. It has an undeniable price for its victims. Self esteem is the first thing to be diminished (not surprising when some two bit thug is busy denigrating you to your face day after day), people will disengage from a situation they are forced to contend with regularly, and eventually a form of hopelessness sets in.

Getting out of the situation is the first and most important thing to do - the pattern has to be broken.

The timing of this article is interesting to me - a friend of mine recently discovered that their son was being regularly harassed at school. Previously an "A" student in key subjects, the child had stopped handing in assignments and was now doing poorly on tests. Fortunately for this child, teachers noticed the change and investigated what was happening and took steps to remediate the situation. A similar situation a few years earlier had resulted in the school denying that there was a bullying problem. (I've heard that before)

What is the line between schoolyard taunting and bullying? It's hard to say - everybody has different tolerances. If you can establish a pattern, and the target of that pattern is showing signs of changed behaviour, then action should be taken.