By E.B.
The article “Stephen Harper is Not Evil” (Iconoclast 20) caught my eye because it’s a perfect example of the “Liberal Complaint.” Michael Parenti identifies a scale of political activity pertaining to injustice:
Conservative Celebration (ex. the Alberta tar sands)
Liberal Complaint (it’s harming the environment)
Anything to the left of a Liberal Complaint (such as stopping structural profit in general) is seen as hysterical, controversial or a “conspiracy theory.”
Shaft celebrates the ability to criticize Harper or “those that behave wrongly”, yet he or she does not believe that a person is or should be identified as evil. What good is criticism if that is as far as it goes? A public forum for airing grief is not a solution to the problems created by people like Stephen Harper.
The writer’s logic states that although people do evil they are not evil. I see no problem with identifying a person who does evil as evil, as there is no excuse for repeatedly seizing power and controlling others for one’s own purposes. Shaft states that although Saddam Hussein did evil he was not evil.
It doesn’t matter much if we state that Harper does or is evil. What matters is that we are able to know he is doing things that are against the interest of the people who inhabit this land. He is for the world’s most destructive project, petroleum harvesting in Alberta’s Tar Sands. He has shut down parliament twice, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Do you think Stephen Harper went into politics to be a person who is “not entirely good or evil”? Stephen Harper fits the definition of evil as someone who causes harm.
The rich and powerful are using sophisticated means (Obama campaign) to keep us emotionally invested in the politics that serve their interests. Seeing the evil that someone represents or supports does not have to be the same thing as hating that person. As someone who prefers politicians to serve the interests of the people and the environment, logically I can identify that Harper is evil, as he seeks to do harm. This in turn makes people want him out of power as he is not serving their interests or doing good things. It’s not about hating Harper. He’s a businessman, serving his own interests; therefore he is an untrustworthy manipulator and needs to be taken out of office. What is important and relevant is knowing how the country is being run, how people and the environment are being treated.
I believe in knowing the enemy. I believe many people are actually good people and some, hopefully less, are bad or even evil. I don’t believe in making excuses. Harper has no excuse; he’s an adult doing damage to other people’s lives all over the globe (50 million spent on war per day). He also has no right to run the country and should be stopped. Until we as a group of Canadians and First Nations people see the truth and identify evil where is it, we won’t be doing much but complaining.
