The Armageddon Factor - Holy CRAP!

Thanks to Marci McDonald for blowing the lid off Harper's not so hidden agenda. It has only really been hidden thanks to the unwillingness of the media to look behind the curtain. Odd that a bunch of religious zealots who don't believe in evolution have a strategy of evolution by stealth.

The Armageddon Factor details the creeping influence of a number of far right-wing religious factions within the Harper government, like nutbar Faytene Kryskow. Presumably, having somewhat alienated fiscal conservatives with his $39.4 billion and counting deficit, he is now putting his energy into courting the religious right. You know, if I were Prime Minister, I'd be putting my time and energy into governing the country… but that's just me.

Some of the highlights (or lowlights) of the book can be found in the 2 interviews Marci gave to the CBC, on The Current and coverage on the National.

As soon as the story broke, the CRAP party scrambled into spin cycle. Step 1 was to accuse the CBC of engaging in a "faith war" as part of an "ongoing campaign against the Conservative Party" according to a memo to supporters.

Faith war?? How paranoid ARE these people? And do we get to have book burnings too?

"Perhaps Canada's tax-funded broadcaster needs a lesson in freedom of religion. Under the Charter of Rights, neither religious affiliation or lack of religious affiliation is grounds to deny participation in the democratic life of the country" says the memo.

Oh really?

Perhaps it's Canada's tax-funded Conservative Reform Alliance Party that needs the lesson.
Cuts to women's groups
Cuts to KAIROS
De-funding Toronto's gay pride parade
Cuts to science
Firings nuclear safety head Linda Keen for doing her job

Harper, the so-called "master strategist" doesn't seem to have a single original idea for how to run a country. Having ripped his mode of constantly being on the attack from the Karl Rove playbook, he is now attempting to copy the vitriolic religious divide that has made the US all but ungovernable.

Step 2 was to get the compliant part of the media, you know, the part that's not the "liberal elite", to expound in print and online. A sampling:

Paul Wells of Macleans magazine has trotted out the old "it can't happen here" argument that McDonald describes so well in the book itself. That's right, move along folks, nothing to see here.

Charles Lewis at the National Post accuses McDonald of the very intolerance she derides, creating a "we versus them" situation where "anyone who strays outside the narrow realm of proper Canadian debate is an enemy". This is simply a variation on the CRAP memo that says faith groups are being attacked in the book, when what is really being done is that they are being outed.

And that's bad because we are not supposed to know what they're up to. Remember this is supposed to be evolution by stealth.

Naomi Lakritz of the Calgary Herald calls it "shrill nonsense". Shades of the 1970s, when anything of a feminist nature was "shrill" or "brittle" or even "hysterical". Oh wait, she mentions hysteria in the very first sentence of the article. Good work Naomi - make sure you cover all the bases. Oh yeah, it also "reveal[s] her own biases -- the well-worn ones with which leftists unthinkingly fall into lockstep." Honey, I have news for you - lockstep is for fascists. Kinda like born-again nut-case Faytene Kryskow, who marvels at the ability of the Hitler Youth to mobilize and thinks it's a great model for the religious right. That's right folks, they're taking lessons from the Hitler Youth.

The "Tory" blogoshere is full of the usual BS. Marci McDonald is anti-Israel, a bigot, and oh yeah - did we mention anti-Israel? The reaction rather proves her point I think.

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