An eye-opening experience.

If I might step back from the current smackdown for just a few minutes, I'd like to wax philosophical for just a bit about what's happened over the last couple of days, and how I'm suddenly seeing the Canadian blogosphere in a whole new light.

As long-time readers will know, since I started this blog, my focus has been primarily on things American, and that's been for a couple of reasons. First, I lived in the U.S. for seven years until somewhat recently and, while I was there, I got immersed in the culture and politics, so it was kind of natural to stay on that topic, even after I moved back to Canada. You go with what you know.

Also, to be honest, there was a bit of selfishness in my blog topics -- I happen to enjoy holding conservative idiocy up to scorn and derision and, if there's anywhere in the world you can find incomparable right-wing idiocy, it's the U.S. In a sense, then, I was just being lazy -- it's not like you even have to work at slapping around American wankers, given their mind-numbing stupidity.

I did realize that, as a Canadian, I should focus far more on local issues but, truth be told, there were a lot of other folks already doing that at least as well as I could and, feeling just a little smug and sanctimonious, I always thought that there was no way I could find comparable stupidity or dishonesty this side of the border. I'm quite serious about that -- I always thought that, even if Canada's wankers and I had ideological differences, they were at least remotely human and capable of some level of intellectual discourse.

I was wrong.

I admit it, I was just flat-out wrong, and it took this latest shouting match to make me realize that. I always thought that I could do the most good by taking the fight to where the stupidity was most concentrated and that was down south. Obviously, I had no idea what was happening up here, where it's suddenly clear that Canada's right-wing wankers are just as wretchedly dishonest, ignorant and evil as their American counterparts.

You might think I'm being facetious here. Far from it. I really did assume that Canada was, in some way, a more courteous place, where even those who had ideological differences could still engage in civil discourse, and where I could reserve my snark for those, and only those, who set themselves apart and so thoroughly deserved it.

Silly me. Given this latest war of words, and the fact that (as far as I can tell) not a single Blogging Tory has stepped forward to defend the notion of honesty or integrity, I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that the whole pack of them are a bunch of lying swine. If they think that's an overly harsh judgment, then any one of them certainly has the right to convince me otherwise.

Mr. Bill Strong has already demonstrated his complete lack of integrity. And his Blogging Tory colleagues have demonstrated theirs by their silent complicity in his lies. And I don't plan on making the mistake of giving Canada's wankers the benefit of the doubt. Ever again.