Sheriff Stephen can’t skate, but he does know how to cull a herd.
After his big win, the Sheriff sat on a fence post and mused about the future and the past.
“Our people have been waiting for this for a very long time,” he offered. “And I, for one, am not going to disappoint them. Oh, by the way, I got a call from Fredrich Hayek to congratulate me last night.”
I though Hayek was dead, I interjected.
“Spiritual leaders never die,” said the Sheriff. “But back to our people. From the earliest days with Preston, they’ve been waiting for this day. Of course, they’ll get the scrapping of the gun registry on Day One. That’s a given. As for the CBC, I’m still making up my mind. We either bleed that sucker until it falls to its knees, or put it on the auction block right away. You do realize that the second option is more humane, but the death of a thousand cuts will achieve the same result.”
“And that brings me to the cull. Some people actually think that now that I am where I need to be I’ll grow soft. I didn’t come all this way because I am made of sugar candy.”
I cocked my head and looked inquiringly at him.
“Hard is a good word in my lexicon,” he said as though in answer to my wordless question. “Hard is nature’s way. Nature cannot afford to take prisoners. Soft is the way of the wasteful fool.”
“Do you realize,” he continued, shifting uneasily on the post “that one of the fastest growing demographics in our country is families worth more than a million dollars each? There are now well over a million such families in this land. And if we stay the course, there will be more than two million families worth over a million by 2020.”
“Those people are this nation’s beauty rose. And the beauty rose does not flower if runty little plants get in the way.”
“Taxing those families in our rose garden,” he said indignantly “would be a violation. And to what end----to fund the soft, the failed, and the dead-enders, to encourage their progeny. The climb up the mountain of virtue is a hard one.” He shifted uncomfortably again, as though he was making that climb right before my eyes.
“The cull starts now,” he proclaimed. “The new prisons are going up. The jets will soon be on our runways. Those who work for us will be the first to be culled. Frozen salaries, a freeze on hiring. It’s got to be done. Do you really think I’m going to tax those million dollar families one nickel more to pay those who need to be culled?”
He looked at me disgustedly.
“And you don’t seriously think Jack will stop me,” he said. “Jack can quack, quack and quack some more. Quack Jack!”
“The cull will make this a better country. You do realize that Robin Hood was a communist don’t you? All right, a crypto Communist, a little ahead of that guy in Highgate cemetery. The Sheriff of Nottingham has always gotten a bad press from the Liberal media. But who built England? The liberal poseur with the longbow who took money from the hard working rich to give to good-for-nothings, just so he could shag Maid Marion? What people have a hard time realizing is that by taking a little bit from each poor person and giving the sum of all those little bits to the rich we push civilization forward. We leave monuments behind and we set a pathway for those who come after. The Sheriff of Nottingham is the true hero of the human drama. A slightly fatter peasant does not a world make. But set the wealthy up on a hill and the world will beat a path to our door.”
He climbed down from the fence post and jiggled his legs for a minute.
“I better start the cull today,” he said. “Now that Osama’s dead the price of oil is falling. I’ve got to convince the Americans to go on buying our ethical oil. Not a moment to lose.”
“That reminds me, I’ve got to return Rob’s call,” he shouted back, striding off “He wants to talk to me about the Ontario election this fall and Hudak. He said something about ‘Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.’ A real egg-head that Rob.”
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4 comments:
It's funny, but had Stephen Harper been put up against real economic heavyweights (brain-wise, I mean), he would have been one of the culled weaklings.
As Joseph Stiglitz - he of the Nobel Prize in economics as opposed to Harper as self-proclaimed "trained" economist - said in a recent Vanity Fair article, Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%, "The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says [Joseph Stiglitz], but 'their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.'"
If Harper and his fellow Hayekians don't have genuine empathy for their fellow humans (I'm using the term loosely for the Cons), they could at least try a little enlightened self-interest.
Self-interest they have by the barrel but enlightenment never reached them. They simply go from one Dark Age to the next.
Prof. James:
The CBC will survive because pulling the plug on it means the end of Radio Canada. And with a PQ victory likely, Harper won't irritate Quebecers. But Harper will continue what Paul Martin started and hollow out the federal government.
There is talk of a ministry of religion. There, right wingers of all kinds will gather to hatch plans to attack gay and women's right, divorce rights and anything the Lord didn't create in 6 days.
The Dark Age is upon us.
…and the Sheriff deputizes the Preacher, who replaces the horse thief on the Wanted posters with a honky-tonk girl who looked like she coulda, mighta been in the family way a few weeks ago, the Saloon-keeper gets an EAP grant to turn his establishment into a Superjail, and the new Judge speculates in the Daily Tumbleweed that the wedding at Cana was really a parable about how God smiles on taking the basics of life from the poor and transforming them into the indulgences of the rich.
One thing that movies or series can make the difference it is when a character is thinking about its life.
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