MR. HARPER'S ANGST

The great philosophical question used to be ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Today, the real question is: ‘Why is there nothing rather than something?’
Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime

…and as he looked and saw her well known pleasant smile, he felt death come again. This time there was no rush. It was a puff, as of a wind that makes a candle flicker and the flame go tall…So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear.
Ernest Hemmingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Look. Listen. Many things have gone wrong these days passed and many deserve their fate, while others are still suckling the optimism of bewilderment, not yet sure that the raw and intemperate days of doom are indeed theirs. Perhaps I fall into both categories, first for betting that the Dallas Cowboys would cover a 5.5 point spread in Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals, and second for putting good money on the 4-1 Carolina Panthers to cover the 1.5 point spread against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Carolina left me shaking my head, but I will admit that putting my money on a team with a career low life corner back (Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones) and a mentally ill wide receiver (Terrell Owens) who, in last week’s post-game press conference, very nearly simultaneously broke into tears and hallelujahs as he declared himself God’s instrument of football, was a terminally dumb maneuver that cost me an otherwise flawless bet. In either case, my losses are cheap and insignificant in the face of the other losers out on the heath, howling in the winter winds. But for others, recent days have been days of a greater nothingness, and while I am playing for fun, they are in it for keeps, and one suspects that there will be much less cracking of bones and much more licking of wounds and gnashing of teeth around some fires in the long days to come.

Yes. Stephen Harper has watched his ‘brilliant tactics’ fail as the economy slides and Canadians peel off in the polls like blisters in the sun. He and he alone—for this is a man who prides himself on his iron grasp and penultimate control of his party and (as he once imagined) this country—bears the blame. What must have seemed like such a clever opportunity to finally grasp the ring of majority power that he so cravenly desired has turned into a nightmare of existential proportion. Yes indeed Mr. Harper, after tomorrow, you may have so much less of something that it can and will only seem like nothing to you, as you chew on the cinders of another minority government and the secret knowledge that you are your ilk are not really wanted around here. Let’s be clear. Since the day he called this doomed election, Harper has lost credibility by bending his own fixed election rules; cutting off his feet in Quebec; pissing off artists; presiding over cautious estimates for the cost of the war in Afghanistan that have ballooned to somewhere at or above $18 billion; watching the economy falter while telling people to buy stocks and not to worry; and even losing much of the senior citizen vote. And it gets worse: the numbers in the polls have fallen substantially to as little as a 5 point lead over the Liberals, and if any of the citizens backing the Jackal or Elizabeth May get nervous come voting time, this could shrink considerably more.

How did what seemed like something, so catastrophically become so much nothing? Well, Mr. Harper, though claiming to be a historian of hockey (which I doubt, but more of that later), also admits to not being interested in studying history or philosophy, which explains a lot. See. An interest in history and the leaders of the past, along with the fundamental curiosity and the desire to understand that is rooted in philosophy would have been of great help to Mr. Harper, for he would have the ability to step down from his economist’s, moralizing throne and understand that he is attempting to govern people, not numbers or sheep, and these people have interests beyond the scope of what he has determined to be important. And this is his undoing. Undoubtedly he has crafted a plan, but it is inflexible and resolutely determined: there can be no change with Mr. Harper, because, as any conservative at heart, he does not believe in change. Now, putting aside history and philosophy for a moment, even if he were simply a student of Canada’s game, possibly he would see the folly of his ways through basic, analogous thought: to wit, hockey, like politics, is a game of fluidity. When played at its most beautiful and highest levels, it is one of the most unpredictable, fast changing, and artistic of sports. For the set pieces of football, soccer, and basketball, and the rigidity of the baseball diamond are largely absent from hockey. Positional play and strategy are second to the speed and creativity of the 12 players on the ice—and this demands the ability to change, just as real, breathing constituents at the heart of any election demand change.

But I suspect that Mr. Harper has other things on his mind beside hockey. He is the emperor in a dying campaign—one which, on those heady late summer days, seemed so promising—perhaps still unable to hear the winds of death or the majority of people in Canada whispering his fate. And oh! how the idea of anything less than a majority government must freeze and gall his thin blood as he broods over what must be a gnawing and bitter, deeply personal question: Why is there nothing, rather than something?