I'm only starting to appreciate how prescient I was in suggesting that almost every bit of Canadian Conservative dumbassitude can be interpreted through the lens of "They can only handle one thought at a time."
Consider the recent dustup here in Ontario, where Premier Dalton McGuinty is complaining that Ontario is getting short-changed by a proposal to add more seats in the House of Commons for some provinces:
The Conservative's Democratic Representation bill would give BC seven new MPs, Alberta five and Ontario 10 – 11 fewer than the province would get if it was being treated the same as the other fast-growing provinces, McGuinty said.
McGuinty's objection would seem to be fairly obvious -- the distribution of new seats is proportionally unfair. I'm not sure how difficult it is to understand that. But here comes the criminally stupid government House Leader
"It's a provision that's going to give them more seats, more new seats than any other province," Van Loan said Wednesday. "And what did [McGuinty] do? He complained about it.
Why, yes, Peter, it does give Ontario more seats, even more in an absolute number than any other province; no one is denying that. But it's apparently beyond Peter to understand that it's possible for that fact to be true, while the situation is still unfair to Ontario. Clearly, these are not two ideas that can co-exist in the mind of one Peter Van Loan but, at this point, is anyone surprised anymore?
The Conservative Party of Canada -- Their new slogan: "Um ... wha?"
THE ENTERTAINMENT POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS: Seriously, it occurs to me that you can take almost every frothing, sputtering example of neo-con outrage, and reword it as an exercise in identifying what two thoughts someone is incapable of holding simultaneously.
Like here (and, no, I'm not going to dignify that Blogging Tory dough-head with any more links):
In other words, "The Liberals were corrupt, therefore no one else can be similarly corrupt."
Oh, man ... this is going to save so much time.
2 comments:
You’ve definitely hit on something here. Not, I’m sad to say, an original observation, but nonetheless an entirely valid one that bears repeating. In general, most conservatives seem to lack the ability to “bifurcate” their thoughts. This has its upside of course in terms of providing an unequivocal definition and absolute clarity of sorts on certain issues — or at least the appearance of such. But the downside is that it tends to produce a one-dimensional, rather simplistic view of things. Hence, we get the apparent divide between the more “nuanced” views of “liberals” that encompass different perspectives, delve into shades of grey and venture into the uncharted waters of relativism and the more concrete, inerrant and inflexible apprehensions of “conservatives.”
No, no. Mulroney's completely different - Mulroney was personally corrupt, as opposed to the Liberals who simply allowed bureaucratic corruption.
Totally different, right?
Post a Comment