Yeah, you know.

Sometimes, when I a bit bored I read right wing political blogs, the kind where they talk amongst themselves because they figure no one is watching. I go to Free Dominion, for instance because it is Canadian and I read about it somewhere.

What always strikes me (hello raging piles of e-mail) is how angry they are. I mean, about everything. Same sex marriage? The existence of gay people. The suggestion that a Judge who basically says what he thinks the outcome of his commission will be should be removed. Immigration, education (all the ations and isms actually). Everything. Always.

Supposedly the left is angry and lashes out and is out of touch and out of the mainstream of most people's views etc etc and that is why it loses elections and will never win an election (Democrats in the US and NDP et al in Canada).

Yet the stuff I read on these sites is filled with hate and rage and venom. At everyone who doesn't think exactly like them. They'll turn on each other at the drop of a hat, over incrimentally different arguements. They want smaller government and less intrusion but they also want laws to illegalize abortion and gay marriage. Apparently they don't see a contridiction.

This all makes me think a couple of things. First, I grew up in a house where the Liberal Party of Canada was viewed with much of the same love you reserve for the welts caused by poison ivy. I have never voted Liberal in my life. I plan on dying without doing so (due diligence time: some of the things done by Chretien and Trudeau [war measures not being one] were good, as were some of the things done by Mulroney). I've voted for the NDP, the Bloc and the Conservatives. I bet I've spoiled my ballot intentionally at least once. My parents are rock ribbed PC stalwart, old school Red Torys to be sure, but life long supporters none the less. All of this to point out that I know a conservative when I see one and what I want to know is this: where the hell have they all gone? Sure I get that the neocon infection has spread everywhere but where are the smaller government, less spending arguments? Where are the fiscal conservatives who couldn't give a crap what you do in your bedroom, or at least aren't fixated on it (unless it costs the country money)? Instead of coming up with a positive statement about how they would do things better, with details and, oh I don't know, A FRICKIN PLAN, they are on about where you put your dick (because lesbians are almost always missing from these conversations... gay men apparently have a high "oooh icky" factor with these folks).

I look at Harper and his cobbled together coalition of exPC members, reasoned conservatives, right wing nutbars and people that are so beige as to be wallpaper and I wonder what Dief would have thought. Or why Mulroney came out and backed them (respect for him? GONE.) Or why anyone was surprised that Joe Clark suggested that anyone sane vote Liberal or NDP last federal election.

The really sad thing about all this hate, and the mediocre nature of the current Conservatives is that they get to blame their electoral defeats on liberals and the extreme left and not have to face the fact that they suck, as do most current leaders of the main parties.

Harper, Martin and Layton (to a lesser degree) all have the vision of a myopic mole. Duceppe (my MP) has vision, but part of it is about dismatling the country and the Bloc is a regional party and people are fixated on the whole sovereignty issue (Note to conservatives and soverigntists alike, my grand children will be cold and dead and there will be no separate Quebec, grow up and deal) so he has about as much chance of being PM as I have of taking off by flapping my arms really hard.

Mulroney, Trudeau, Diefenbaker all had a vision, a plan, an idea of what Canada was meant to be. Their images weren't always popular, they weren't polished to a fine sheen, they weren't polled to death or focus grouped or lawyered, they were raw and pure and true. I hated much of what Trudeau represented, Mulroney drove me fucking nuts (Dief died when I was very young) but you knew where they stood, and it wasn't based in hate and rage and disgust and religion. It was, in their honest belief, what was best for the whole country. All of it, even the bits that hated their guts. Trudeau was sure he was right about the War Measures act and the NEP, Mulroney the same about the GST, Meech etc etc and they could explain why. Nowadays we get bigotry, hate, "we're slightly less shit than the other guys" and policies that can barely get the party faithful worked up.

To say that it sucks is to barely scratch the surface.