I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. For those of you who do not, this post might still interest you. Almost everywhere within the Anglosphere, government is dominated by dishonest, bullying opportunists.
Everywhere, there is no accident about how they get into public office. Everywhere, they are as obvious as [insert expletive of choice]. Everywhere, it is almost impossible for anyone to do anything about them unless they are so incompetent as to trip over themselves, or if they run afoul of people even more corrupt and powerful.
The growing trend, as the Atlanticist empire crumbles, is for more people to notice the corruption, and for the carpet baggers to get even dumber. We still do not have enough of the public coming around to the realization that this corruption is not an anomaly in the system, it is the system. It is only obvious to people because it is breaking down.
This is common all over Canada, no matter which party is in office in which province. But we are a little slow catching onto this in Canada, compared to the United States and United Kingdom. It is hard to determine if we are really any less corrupt than these polities.
There are similar problems in Australia. Even New Zealand, considered by Canadian clucks who think government reform is all about voting reform, to be paradise on earth because it has a proportional voting system, has its problems. There may be less corruption there, or better organized and hidden.
English people invented capitalism and so they invented this type of oligarchic government to facilitate it. Everywhere English speaking people went in the world, similar institutions were set up. Even native colonies like India or South Africa modelled their government on them.
The point of this representative system is for there to be just enough democracy in it to prevent any oligarchic faction from damaging the system through their greed. Basic systems were off limits. The dominant factions which were better at actually running things got the greatest benefits from exploiting the population.
The democracy never really extended to the public. Participation has always been for people with time and money. These are what Marxist theorists call “The Bourgeoisie”.
There are not many real democracies in the world. There are countries with corruption too far out of control for government to even function. Most countries have found systems for keeping corruption under control and allowing basic government functions to work.
Yet really well functioning government is rare in the world. Most polities are still oligarchic or autocratic, and not democratic in form or substance. This is because the Atlanticist hegemony which has ruled the world until recently does not tolerate real democracy or honest government.
Capitalism wants weak government which facilitates their control. That is, which can keep certain basic systems running but which cannot interfere with their own organizations. These organizations must set the direction and have the final say.
This is how it has worked all over the western world under the Atlantic hegemony. It has worked this way in Canada, including in Ontario, since the earliest times. The colonial administrators set it up this way.
People discussing the early history of Ontario are aware of the rule of the Family Compact and the “Orange” Mason Lodges. There is no reason to think this system has gone away. With no revolution occurring since these times, such systems would only have become more entrenched and sophisticated, or fossilized.
With the rise of neoliberalism, and now its breakdown, the system we have in Ontario is out far of date. Not just the public system, but the private one as well. Thus, the systems are falling apart, and corruption becoming obvious, sloppy, and too destructive.
Doug Ford is becoming a visible symbol of this breakdown. He has been the Ontario lead in a nation wide effort by right wing provincial governments to destroy public health care. He is also in the lead in the destruction of two other ‘publics’ which oligarchs really hate; public education and public transit.
It is not just that a public health system sits on top of one of the most lucrative possible profit streams. Oligarchs are oligarchs; they are offended when part of the human herd are kept alive unnecessarily after they are no longer useful. The unfit, meaning unproductive, should die off.
Neoliberalism has been trying for forty years to reverse mass education. Education to create three dimensional people instead of a ‘work force’ is anathema. The recent strategy has been to encourage private schools and let the public system collapse from defunding.
The elite hostility to public transit is about more than insuring profits to automobile and petroleum producers. The Toronto elite wants a ‘subways only’ strategy to insure that the ‘work force’ can get downtown and to some other key areas without obstructing the elite’s cars. They do not want ‘cross town’ routes which let the lower classes move around too easily, and may compete with car traffic for resources and space.
Rob Ford and his family are perfect specimens of the lowest grade of the oligarchic class in Canada. They are most in fear of losing their limited wealth and so are the most aggressive about getting more. These are also the most viciously anti public.
There is plenty of information available about the character of the Ford family. Most of them seem to have some connections to criminal networks. Their incompetence and misfeasance in public office is known well enough.
It starts with the father, a member of provincial parliament under Mike Harris. Brother Rob was a disaster and embarrassment as mayor of Toronto, was ridiculed as a crack addict, but for some reason could not be removed from office.
Doug’s involvement with drug trafficking in his younger days has been well documented. As executor of his brothers will, he stole from the estate and was sued by the widow. It is clear there is much more to be found out about the Fords, but there is surprisingly little effort made to dig it out.
None of the Fords have any higher education. They are likely incapable of it. Yet they have been widely quoted as stating that they are ‘born to lead’.
There is no evident reason for them to have developed so much influence in Toronto politics. The “Ford Nation” personality cult built up around such mediocre and contemptible people is hard to understand unless you understand how the globalist elite work in recent times. They recruit flawed people who identify with elitism, who want power but could not gain it on their own, who can be covertly manipulated, and can be quickly brought down once they become a liability.
Ford has been using his office to enrich himself and settle scores with his enemies. He has become much more open and aggressive about this since winning reelection last year. But he has now finally started to come up against real resistance.
After all he and his brother have done, what is now tripping him up is the transfer of land, owned by ‘connected people’, out of the ‘green belt’ land reserve, so it can be ‘developed’. It is the kind of graft which corrupt governments carry out constantly, but usually without it noticed. Ford’s clumsiness set off alarm bells.
Ford is insolently defiant, and says only that he will have his staff investigated. People ask rhetorically if he things Ontarians are really that stupid. The answer is, yes, most really are that stupid, or he would not be Premier.
Ford may succeed in brassing this one out, and moving on to the next scandal. Or, this may bring him down. Either way, it is likely that everyone forgets about the green belt investors, who then move on with their plans.
People are starting to demand that Ford resign. There is less tut-tutting going on about how Ford is, after all, the ‘elected’ premier. There are even some calls for him to be thrown out.
The question is, if Ford is removed, who replaces him? Any other conservative member of parliament is likely to be nearly as crooked as Ford. He or she will be unlikely to stand up to the corrupt establishments of Toronto and Ontario.
An election could be called, giving us a chance to have a leader from another party. The liberals, when in office, have been as corrupt as conservatives, but more sophisticated in their methods. The Ontario New Democrats, of course, would be incapable of governing.
The next option would be to start a new political party. To be able to do anything about corruption and misgovernment, it would have to be committed to an overhaul of existing institutions. To do this it would need the impetus to be able to take on the entrenched oligarchy.
Such a party would have to based on a powerful social movement of the kind which does not exist presently. This would require formidable organizing talents not presently in evidence. These are the developments which would have to arise soon if a catastrophic breakdown is to be avoided, in Ontario and most other parts of the western world.
Thus, we have presently no solution for Ford’s kind of destructiveness within the political system. Massive pressure would have to be exerted from outside the system, by an organized, motivated, and unified public. It would have to be willing to do what it takes to force out governments which do not comply with its will.
Once again, organizing capacity would be required which does not seem to exist at present. More than this, the sophistication is not there to develop a popular program which such a movement could enforce on whatever party is in government. It is doubtful if the resilience is there to be able to deal with police and security methods to “3D” such a movement. (Deflect, Disrupt, Destroy.)
Thus, it may be questionable that Ford will last out his second term. However, we will be dealing with corrupt and incompetent mugs in office for some time. As well, critical public services will continue to be dismantled.
When I write something about political theory, I like to link it back to what I have written previously. This points back to one of my ‘salient’ posts, ones I keep and refer back to, about the nature of democracy. We do not have democracy, and this is what a real democracy would be like.
I have been reluctant to talk much about what has to be done to get us to a real democracy. Recently I notice that discussion of an actual revolution against the present order in the west is moving into the Overton window. I am also more sure of my present blogging platforms and their guarantees of safety from what I do not call ‘censorship’, but ‘political policing’.
So in future blogs I will get into the mechanics of how to achieve real change, so there will be no more Fords in our future. I have already done some of this in my fiction writings; in a very entertaining way, of course.