Not This Way
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day: After thirty years of middle-class stagnation, the forces of fiscal conservatism have proven that if you strangle people slowly enough they’ll think you’re giving them a hug.
So… Canada has elected what is likely the most fiscally conservative government it has seen in a century. A University of Calgary educated economist now enjoys the peculiar blend of absolute power and constitutional constraint that is the result of parliamentary democracy. Someone who believes that market value is ethical value (with the exception of corporate and agricultural welfare, of course) is now running the Canadian show.
The silver lining is that the NDP, a party that genuinely believes that markets are a means as opposed to an end, are now the official opposition. Given the resources the Conservatives poured into maligning the Liberals, they were able to slip through the negative advertising cracks and make gains across Canada. Even better, they have brought Quebec back into the national political fold.
Another consolation is that after years leading a Minority government, Stephen Harper seems to have developed a taste for power. He knows that he’s far further right than most of the swing voters who brought him to power, so he’ll be certain to move slowly… slowly enough to fool people into thinking he isn’t moving at all, at least when it comes to pervasive social issues. He’ll only fiddle with the Canada Health Act. He’ll be content to let the CBC wither on the vine, lest he be labelled the Man-who-killed-Hockey-Night-in-Canada. Everything he hates that the bulk of Canadians support, he’ll let wither on the vine.
But what about arts funding?
My guess is that this is one issue he’ll move quite quickly on, so that the furor, which will be as thin as it is loud, will be little more than a sour memory when he faces the electorate in four years time. Given all the time I’ve spent grousing about living in a country with an Official Literature, you might think I would be happy to see this happen. But I am, in fact, a staunch believer in government support for the arts, so long as checks and balances exist to prevent the kind ‘institution creep’ that bedevils so many public enterprises.
Even still, I can’t help but feel as though the arts community has brought this ‘Harpergeddon’ on itself: why should the Conservatives fund a special interest that is not only overtly antagonistic to them, but communicates in no way whatsoever to their political base? This is what happens when you spend too long speaking only to the likeminded: you cease to be relevant to anyone else.
Maybe, when Canadians finally wake up to the fact that economic growth at the expense of middle-class stagnation is not social progress, but rather a power-concentrating trend that has unravelled many a society over the ages, we’ll be able to start over, introduce an arts funding model that serves all Canadians, rather than the cookie-cutter few. Maybe, maybe not. I just hate that it had to happen this way.
Three Pound Brain 
An interesting read, but it makes me ache to read it.
Over here in New Zealand we are approaching the end of the first term of the 5th National administration, our particular brand of Neo-liberal and social conservatives.
Here, the Arts are being systemically and intentionally reduced. Public service television, funding for documentaries, funding for arts (painting, film, theatre) and teachers salaries both secondary and tertiary have been all been cut. The newspeak used to justify this was the euphemism that all these things that all these things are ‘nice to haves’. Being a non-confrontational phrase its been repeated often on most of the other slash-and-burn going on within the public sector. People seem to lap it up.
Meanwhile we’ve had unheard of levels of corporate welfare, bailouts of finance and insurance companies, ministers racking up big bills on air travel and accommodation. If it keeps up it will break out into open backslaps and under the table handjobs I guess.
I’ve been thinking now for a couple of years if there isn’t some sort of cyclical mechanism to this whole thing. When I went through Uni it seemed such a strange rarefied place. I don’t buy into that whole Ivory tower meme, I think its a copout to describe this in us-and-them terms. But there is something to be said about academia and especially the social sciences not doing enough to connect with the public at large. Its hard for a voting public to give a shit about your funding apocalypse if they feel looked down on all the time, especially if they have been looked down on, for what seems like so long too.
That last comment was aimed at my old lecturers, not you Scott, or anyone else for that matter.
So we can hope. I’m hoping he doesn’t drag out all the Reform Party social issues bullshit, like a re-opening of the gay marriage issue.
All the same, expect a lot of closed-door cave-ins to the US and US business sector.
Seem to be knocking the system, until it throws some silver linings out, in which case going back to supporting it (ah, gamblers goggles!). Then a bit of a ‘sad fact of the matter for everybody else is’ at the end with ‘I hate it that it had to happen that way’.
I hate that I had to say that!
😉
Though I’ll pay apparent consensus fallacy on someone seeing the market as an end itself? By crom! I tried to imagine that for a second and could only manage a second of it! Brrrrrr! Scary! I mean, with religion theres this big ass fantasy that some big powerful alpha male is gunna make things all right. And people can do good things. But a market as an end? I assumed religion required some sort of atleast semi sentient spirit attached?
Well at least in Switzerland you have can call a referendum on any law passed to get it repealed, all you nead is 100’000 signatures and you are set. Which just means that the politicians are always in stealth mode. Let me see, core inflation at 1%, thats not so bad we must be doing OK. Hang on did’nt the swiss health insurance companies up their rates by a an average of 20% last year, with another increace forseen for this year (Health insurance is compulsory here). Public transport 16% more expensive this year (a big deal for a country with the most comprehensive public transport net in the world). These are just some of the more eye catching inflationary figures. But you know, like as long as core inflation is only 1% then there’s no need to panic:-)) The middle class squeeze is an international afair.
I feel your pain. Left-minded (or even not-so-right-minded!) Australians thought they had escaped the craziness that was the conservativism of the Howard years back in 2007, but four years later we are staring down the barrel the potential of an even more conservative leader; one that seems to be creeping towards power despite his complete and utter insanity.
Living in Calgary and having two conservative-voting parents, I got the party propaganda first hand. Amusingly, I’m currently attending the University of Calgary, as well. This blog’s helped me get a different perspective on things, not just on the election but on my education as well (which, fittingly enough, is English “Literature”).
What was interesting was that my parents are both convinced that if the NDP had gotten elected, they’d have, and I quote, “crucified” this province via going after the Oil Sands (though precisely what this meant still eludes me). Can’t say I’m rightly sure either way, though both of them lived through the NEP, and describe it in terms akin to a Hollywood apocalypse film, so either they’re right on the money or completely paranoid.
Personally, I was kind of alienated by the whole process. At the risk of sounding somewhat sycophantic, you summarized my sentiment on the matter exactly: Markets as a means, not an end. You’d think the notion of serving all people through these things wouldn’t be that hard to grasp, but then I likely oversimplify. I’m certainly no economics major, and I admit I am entirely skeptical of every party in Canada (save the Rhinos, who at least were honest they were a joke!), so I have little to add to the general debate.
Ah well. I was wondering what your thoughts were on the election, and I got a good chuckle out of your wit as I usually do. Always a pleasure reading your thoughts, Mr. Bakker. Your writing, too. Gotta get back to reading The Judging Eye; I work at a bookstore, and The White-Luck Warrior sits on the shelves and mocks me for not having started it yet.
Hey! Sorry to bother you and write a non-related comment (sorry if I wrote something stupid with my drunken comment last week).
I just got A Judging Eye in the mail! YESS! About to start reading it when I finished A Feast for Crows. Very much looking forward to it!
By the way, I LOVED the way Book 1 of Series 2 ended, which Cleric showing up! IDK why, but I LIKE HIM, dude! He is uber uber cool!
Neway. Take care and have a great week!
PS – Who the heck cares about Canadian politics? LOL. j/k! I’m a huge US politics fan, but I am ignorant as an ox when it comes to Canadian politics. Unfortunately, Americentrism is a very rampant disease in the states.
By the way, the reason I sound like a 12-year-old is because I have Asperger’s Syndrome. I’m actually quite intelligent, but when I get very excited about something (or drunk, for that matter), my mind turns into that of a giggling teenager. Start arguing with me about the US republicans’ outrageous desire to privatize medicare, however, and you’ll see my intellectual claws spring up faster than a … (sighs; I’m horrible with metaphors).
:-).
Take care! Really looking forward to your book! And please hurry up with releasing the next one!!!
http://mutualist.org/id4.html
Scott, if you are not familiar with Kevin Carson’s incredibly lucid vivisections of so-called capitalism and its fawning government co-dependents, you owe yourself this jaw-dropping read.
Cheers.
That kind of made me sick in reading it, given the exactitude of detailing of the treatment. Kind of like reading a transcript of a torture session, but over a much larger time period.
But I’d quibble with one basis of the arguement – at one point he tries to say that if someones been on some land since time immemorial, by any moral standard it’s their property. Again we hit ‘morals’ – and indeed, why isn’t the kings moral agenda to take those lands via martial force and keep the poor, poor, just as valid a morality? All that comes down to is my morality is better than your morality. Personally I’m biased towards the people on the land having a stake there, but that doesn’t make an arguement – it simply supports the idea of following a morality regardless, which is exactly what the king was doing as well (even if he was pulling that morality out of his ass as he goes…or indeed, what the heck am I saying, is there any other method it’s derived from?). I think in that instance, he obliquely supports the oppressesion he speaks about.
Callan, buddy, always enjoy your comments. So, lemme get this straight. Let’s say I tie you up & eat your baby alive while you watch. That’s just another “morality” question, right? My opinion versus yours, eh? Yours, I respectfully submit, is the Ultimate slave mentality. Our overlords must be squirting themselves sticky just to think a philosophical position like yours could take hold in the serving class.
I missed a corker of a reply, way back in 2011!
Mine certainly isn’t yet another overlord mentality, that’s for sure. Can you say the same? Or just another ‘anarchist’ who doesn’t actually resent authority, just resents that it’s someone else who is in authority?
Yeah yeah, I know no one will hear this.
Congrats on Light, Time, and Gravity on Amazon, Bakker. I know many readers don’t appreciate Amazon’s dates but I figure this at least signals the beginning of the inevitable book release.
Can’t wait. Hope all is well.
Off topic post…
I happened across Ursula Le Guin’s review of China Mieville’s newest work on the Guardian’s website ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/08/embassytown-china-mieville-review ).
One short paragraph in her review jumped out at me and made me really excited about this novel.
“There are men right now who have never learned how to talk to women. How will we talk to somebody really different – aliens? The Ariekei of Embassytown are immensely unlike us. The problem of communication, the nature of language and of spoken truth, is the novel’s core.”
Posting this because I thought other regular readers of this blog might be interested in both the novel, which I started reading and is typically Mieville (which, to my mind, is a good thing), and Le Guin’s review.