Watching the lunacy unfold in the United States, courtesy of a group of certifiable people known as “birthers” (or, increasingly, also Republicans and Tea Partiers), it’s relatively easy for Canadians to feel superior to their southern neighbours. But derangement of the birther kind, sadly, isn’t limited to those who wrap themselves in stars and stripes.
NDP deputy leader Thomas Mulcair is a Canadian “birther”. That is, he would be one if he were a conservative and went about his political business in the States. His comments, and subsequent backpedalling, that the Americans don’t have pictures of Osama bin Laden’s body, implying that bin Laden may not have been killed at all, clearly fall into the tinfoil-hatted category.
Mr. Mulcair has a reputation for being short-tempered and arrogant as well as for having anger management issues (a look at his neck reveals, though, that his problems could be related to a thyroid condition, so the proper medication might help). Whenever he’s on a TV panel of “pundits”, he can never just let remarks go; he always must respond to anything he considers false or a slight, even if it means shouting over the program’s host. He also believes that he’s always right, which, together with his other personal shortcomings, disqualifies him from public office. Some of the new, young and green MPs elected under the NDP banner will probably be better suited for the job, because they are more likely to still have retained a healthy dose of humility.
Newspaper columnist Heather Mallick is another one on the (far) left that not only wears a tinfoil hat but also has gone the extra mile by having tinfoil woven into her hair. For all anyone knows, she might actually have tinfoil implants in her brain too. How else can one explain her firmly-held belief, after seeing Stephen Harper in office for five years, that he is a goose-stepping Nazi who’s hellbent on establishing American supremacy over Canada? Mr. Harper has made his share of mistakes, and there are various issues with his style of governance, but he’s a proud Canadian patriot who’d never do anything to destroy his country.
The list of nutters in Canada seems to be growing in the wake of Mr. Harper’s majority win on May 2. Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, for example, tells us of a woman she knows who honestly believes that Mr. Harper is as bad as Hitler. Those same types of conspiracists in Ontario, as Ms. Wente explains, also believe that Albertans hate the French, never travel to Europe, or would never read The Atlantic. Amazing stuff, and a surefire sign that the quality of the drinking water over there must be improved pronto.
But being a deranged mental case does not automatically place you in the left-wing column. Similar “birther” symptoms can be found at the opposite end of the political spectrum as well. Christie Blatchford, another newspaper columnist, isn’t prepared to give the NDP opposition the benefit of the doubt (although, truth be told, Mr. Mulcair’s spanner in the works isn’t helping much with improving the party’s reputation), while Licia Corbella of the Calgary Herald perpetuates the myth that the NDP is still a socialist (read: communist) party, rather than the social-democratic party that it is. Equating social democracy with socialism (or communism) is about as loopy as it is to liken Mr. Harper to fascists or Nazi parties (regardless of the fact that both of those ideologies are in fact left-wing ideologies and not at all part of conservative or right-of-centre thinking).
On the bright side, though, most Canadians will happily venture on, go about their daily lives and live just as they did before the election. Most of them won’t lose any sleep over their “fascist” prime minister or “socialist/communist” opposition. And that’s as it should be.