The Wrecking Cousins

While Parliament is off this week, I'm away too, catching up on some overdue political reading. I've just finished Tom Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. If you haven't read it, do -- the parallels between the U.S. Conservative movement and some of the things we're seeing in Canada are unmistakeable. 

Over the next several days, I'll post some excerpts from the book and links to the parallels/facsimiles here. Some are so obvious not to need links, but I'll throw them in anyway. I'll start with a couple of Wrecking Crew snippets that leap right out to current topics in today's  Canadian headlines. 

This one, for instance, in which Frank talks about U.S. conservatives' distrust of the civil service,   identified as a sinister "permanent government." (Emphasis mine.) 

Career employees began to run up against politics in all sorts of unexpected places, with expert testimony by government officials altered by political staff, proposed regulations dismissed and senior scientists overruled by college dropouts who happened  to be loyal conservatives.

 Again, kind of obvious. Political staff altering expert testimony, senior scientists overruled. Never in  Canada, eh? And of course, we all remember Stephen Harper's words in the late days of the 2006 election campaign and subsequently (see last quote in that link) in which he voiced his distrust of a civil service that he seemed to see as an adversary. 

 

Or how about this one? 

The New Right's story began at the retail level. The operation is familiar by now to just about everyone who owns a mailbox: letters, mailed by the millions, written in tones of the highest outrage, soliciting donations for conservative causes. .... "The fund-raising letters of the New Right groups depict a world gone haywire, with liberal villains poised to destroy the American Way of Life," wrote the conservative author Alan Crawford in 1980. The emphasis was on shrillness, on prose that would 'make [people] angry' and 'stir up hostilities.' .... wingers believed they had found a way to get around the traditional mass media, which they despised as much then as they do now, and to reach out directly to like-minded people suffering liberalism in silent frustration across the land. 

If we need a Canadian example for this, we need only take a glance at today's National Newswatch, where we see this story, headlined: Tories demand money for impending election campaign in 'confidential' memo.

 

As I mentioned, The Wrecking Crew is littered with parallels and in the days to come, I'll list some more. Those two enough should prompt some reflection. 

 

Comments

[Nadine Lumley]

snip snip: Right-wing politicians have a default option for balancing budgets without increasing taxes. The recipe for fiscal success is simple: sell off public assets while reducing and privatizing public services. Just don't ask how many of those politicians apply the same logic to their personal finances.

In the short term, the quickest way to pay off your debts is to sell the house and work longer hours. Yet the long-term consequences -- in terms of shelter, financial security and a legacy for your children -- can be severe. Wise individuals plan for the future, taking on debt to acquire and develop property, improving themselves through training and education and maintaining their health through exercise and vacations.

Tragic consequences
Michael Byers, Vancouver Sun, September 8, 2007
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/reviews/tragic-consequences

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/the-book

The Meaning of "Austerity"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUmQbf1AyA8

[James]

Excellent post.

Others have drawn similar parallels:

http://canadasworld.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/what-reagans-epa-can-teach-about-the-rights-and-democracy-dispute/