The Fool Who Follows: A Lesson for the CPC

 

But the list raises uncomfortable questions for the Harper government about overall expense oversight in the military at a time when $2.1 billion has been slashed from the defence budget, and Conservatives are just getting back on their feet from the political drubbing of the Senate expense scandal.

 

I wouldn't quite say the CPC is back on its feet post Senate Scandal - it's not quite over yet, is it?

 

But that's besides the point.  The Tories have done their best to reshape Canadian politics into a game they think they can perpetually win - one that is aggressive, antagonistic, cynical and above all, costly.  They can raise more money, aren't afraid to hit below the belt, etc.; they win because they're winners, and everyone else is a loser.

 

It's not working out quite the way the boys in PMO had planned, is it?  The more successful the Party becomes, the more liberties they are taking with political tradition and conventional wisdom - moving away from their own values in pursuit of the win. 

 

The more they win, the more confident they become in their own superiority; it's not that they're intentionally taking greater liberties with ethical pursuits so much as they have started to believe that they are smart, everyone else is dumb.

 

Put it another way - losers commit sociology, winners build empires.

 

How far can you push the envelope before you feel the need to rewrite the rules in your favour?  How long can you maintain the fiction of holding the same values as even your base before the only way to stay in power is through more coercive means?  How far can you push those boundaries before someone knocks you down a peg?

 

Here's where the CPC can learn a lesson, although it means committing sociology.  In the complex, interwoven society we live in where information is becoming the modern-day sucrose, it's folly to think you can cynically bash an individual with the woes of the system and not expect to face some of your own blowback.

 

The solution is easy - instead of looking for ways to smear any and every opponent, stand for something.  Support all efforts that work in that direction, wherever they come from. 

 

And be forgiving of your neighbour - you may even want to really consider how you'd want them to treat you and respond in kind.

 

Altruism is selfishness that plans ahead.  Selfishness that doesn't think through content, context and consequences, on the other hand, looks a lot more like foolishness.