CULT OF THE JACKAL

It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than any one else in the Jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way.
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

Look. Listen. Politics is a blood sport, and scattered throughout the Jungle, there are many bones and red patches rotting in the sand to prove it. There are tigers, wolves, hapless goats, and jackals, all vying for a prized place at the watering hole, and before the sun sets, each one will call his shot. For some, there will be roars of victory and for others, gnashing howls of defeat. Even in our home and native land, these cries are voluble and clamorous, but these days it is the jangling chatter of the jackal that pierces the foul air of election campaigning and sets my teeth on edge as I, like all the other brutes, head down to drink…

Yes, Jack Layton, it is your turn you Dish-licker—lest ye forget, many have heard the wind call their name, but few have been spared. Of all the creatures of the Jungle, none is more despised than the jackal, and even in that vain, ambitious space behind his beady eyes and in his own jittered, throbbing, excited little heart, the jackal knows this and cackles with dewanee—the madness—and runs hither and thither making mischief wherever he goes. For too long I have tried to make sense of, to articulate and thus let go of, my hatred for this man whom a CBC pundit once described as having a "cult leader’s smile," and have failed. Now, while the sun shines and the wind blows just so, and the watering hole is a distant necessity, I dream lazily and muse on the jackal, with the hopes of making this right.

So, let’s get to the nut of this once and for all. Jack Layton is a hopelessly grinning idiot, whose mustache most likely hides an ugly hare-lip and the latent ambitions of a school boy manically stroking his first blush of facial hair with a toothbrush. He reminds me of an account I once read of Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, the “hero” of the siege of Mafeking in the Boer War. In an excellent discourse on journalism during times of war (The First Casualty), Phillip Knightely describes officers from “those upper-middle-class English backgrounds where it is difficult to draw the line between eccentricity and psychosis.” In the field, Baden-Powell was known to “dress up as a circus ring-master in white-tie and tails, wield[ing] a whip nearly thirty feet long…through a megaphone shout[ing] orders to non-existent troops about non-existent attacks on the enemy lines…and constantly invit[ing] the [Boers] to surrender.” Using such unique talents in a world of make-believe, Baden-Powell hunkered down in a false 217 day siege, from which journalists came and went freely, crafting his heroic legacy. Perhaps there is some similarity in character to this utterly ineffective yet smugly vain ‘leader’ that annoys me about old smiling Jack. He is a hero in his own mind, strutting from crisis to crisis, prognosticating and diagnosing with a baffling sense of impunity that suggests severe and dissociative psychosis. Emboldened by his 30 odd seats gained in the last election, for the past two and a half years, Jack Layton has manufactured his own siege of Mafeking in the face of a minority government in Ottawa. He is here, there and everywhere issuing demands, ultimatums and decrees, snapping at the heels of the political tigers and declaring himself ready for the job of Prime Minister. In Afghanistan, Jack will save our soldiers; in Ontario, Jack will resuscitate the manufacturing industry; in the Arctic, Jack will stop the melting; in the hospitals, Jack will stanch the bleeding, and so on. Well Jack. You are not the prime minister and despite your eagerness, your salivating, and your sermonizing, you are not even close. You are swinging above your weight and every one knows this but you, as you jabber away in what can only be described as the deeply disturbing and confidence-addled state of someone marching to a song in his own head, utterly convinced that everyone around him can hear it too. Yes Jack, I know that you have forgotten that you were ever afraid of anyone, and like Tabaqui are rushing headlong at everyone, from Stephen Harper to the blood deprived Gilles Duceppe; but they, even the half-starved and bewildered Stephane Dion, are still tigers, and you are still a jackal.

It is a shame really, because some of the ideas in the NDP platform do not strike me as being all that bad or improbable. “Green collar” jobs for example, are necessary. Social equality, reasserting our sovereignty in the Arctic, restoring (Conservative cut) funding to the arts, and emphasizing the need for more family doctors and a more efficient health care system? Fine by me. But for all your fanciful names and clever rhetoric, these ideas are just as likely to come from the Liberals or even the Green Party, and these parties are more relevant to Canadians than you are. The Liberals and the Greens propose painful but demonstrably effective strategies for dealing with climate change; you dash and dart, from unions to environmentalists, fawning and bowing, never quite sure whose dish has the most scrapings. Our troops are in Afghanistan, and many understand the mission and have not forgotten the reasons why; but you, with a folly and madness in your eyes, run at the mouth about negotiating with the Taliban. Ugh.

Notwithstanding this, the NDP has been on the right side of many issues, at least in word, and in the past, I have wanted the NDP to succeed, only to be disappointed. And NDP leaders in the past, both provincial and federal, have given me the impression that despite their idealism, they understood the hunt and their places in it. There was a sense that they had a role to play, and if they played it just right, at the right moments, they could set the pace. But not you Jack. You have the madness, you are biting everything and everyone in your way, and you believe you are something that you are not—the head of the pack.

Check the polls, Jack. No one likes a loser, especially one that makes mischief safe in the knowledge that he will never, ever have the clout to lead. And that I think is why, I, who have voted for your party in the past, will be shifting my allegiance this time around—how and to whom, I am still not sure—mark my words, I will take my chances with the tigers, wolves, or maybe even the porcupines, but I won’t be going down to the watering hole with a Dish-licker trailing rags and bits of leather. That would be just plain embarrassing.