2002-02-10
The Politics of Sadism
I was surprised when early in their new mandate the Liberals cancelled a little known program called 'BC Sharing', only partly government funded, whereby grocery shoppers could buy a coupon for a $2 donation to their local food bank. Given the miniscule cost to government and huge potential unrecoverable losses to food banks, (a projected $75,000 per year in one Vancouver suburb), such a move seemed very perplexing on the face of it.
It was only much later that a pattern began to emerge. First food bank dependents (although the program was quietly, if perhaps temporarily restored), then bus passes for impoverished seniors (again at a miniscule or even negative saving to government), the talking book program for the blind (once saved from a partial NDP cutback by an outraged Gordon Campbell), the institution of a $2 below minimum wage 'training program' for entry-level workers (mostly students), while spending on the Priemier's office expanded seven-fold, deputy ministers were given massive salary increases and potential bonuses while one of the latter, John Tegenfeldt was awarded a 'golden handshake' worth $300,000 after only five months work.
Then, after a solemn undertaking to respect signed contracts, Premier Campbell, admitting his lie, decided to tear up those he doesn't like pertaining to health and education, while refusing to fund two-thirds of a settlement his government imposed on teachers, which will result in serious cutbacks over and above those caused by his original freeze on funding, a de facto reduction in itself.
Huge reductions in funding for the ministry of Families and Children will put vulnerable children at further serious risk of harm, a fact the government acknowledged by exploring ways to persuade the public to accept those increased risks.
Huge cuts and punitive measures are coming to a welfare system that is hardly generous to begin with. It appears that a private American company called ' Accenture' will be invited to take over administration of the system with its object to eliminate and disqualify as many individuals and families as possible from the system. The company has considerable Canadian experience in Harris' Ontario, where they were accused of serious mismanagement and of making unconcionable profits off the misery of those they targeted. (They were allowed to keep a large percentage of the welfare money of disqualified persons and families.)The Ontario Auditor General had scathing comments regarding the ethics and practices of ' Accenture', while the company maintains it did a great job.
So what is going on? The largest Cabinet in BC history is overseeing the largest per capita cuts in BC or Canadian experience (during a time of recession), and there is no end in sight. Today medicare premiums are increased a whopping 50%. Tomorrow potentially life saving programs are withdrawn from Vancouver's poorest schools. Forget about earthquake upgrading for our schools. Maternity wards are closing. Emergency wards are closing. Entire hospitals are closing, and thousands of health-care workers will be laid off. University and college tuition fees are about to double. Economic growth projections are not bright, and provincial tax revenues will erode. And yet the government insists that in spite of all this British Columbians will be better served than ever! Less is more! Down is up! Smaller is bigger!
The Liberal Government took it as a fait accompli that the NDP left the books in a terrible mess, and it was a shock for them to discover that for once this was not the case. In order for their 'mandate' to be justified, there had to be a large provincial deficit, one over and above that created by their cynical and ill-advised tax cut, a rather predictable and transparent gift to the already well-to-do.
So now, in spite of professional audits according to generally accepted accounting principles, we are suddenly facing an instant deficit that seems to be growing in inverse proportion to the government's own credibility. 'Three billion! No, maybe four billion! Five! No, wait!
I suggest that there's something else going on here, a peculiar and perfidious phenomenon of the far American Right, one that has roots equally in the likes of Trickle-Down Voo-Doo Reaganomics and intolerant Born-Again Christianity. It's called the Politics of Sadism, and it thrives on division and denial, on the villification of segments of society for the gratification of another. It is no-mercy Reality Therapy for the poor, or for unions, or for Natives or whatever other part of society government chooses to target, always in the guise of shared 'tough medecine' .(How much of a purely symbolic sacrifice did the Liberals belatedly, reluctantly impose upon themselves?) This is politics at its most vile, and betrays itself by its very mean-ness, cruelty, and almost sociopathic indifference to its victims.
'Don't let anybody-don't let anybody- tell you there's not enough money for public education in British Columbia. There's enough money, and it will be dedicated to our kids in this province.' -Gordon Campbell, April 28, 2000
'Last spring the people of British Columbia elected our government on the basis of four fundamental committments: we would restore sound financial management to the province, we would protect funding for public health care, we would protect funding for public education, and we would respect the taxpayer.'- Gordon Campbell, January 17, 2002
'I don't believe in ripping up agreements. I am not tearing up any agreements.'- Gordon Campbell, November, 2000
'We have to squash labor like a bug.'- Rod Love, economic advisor to Gordon Campbell, formerly chief advisor to Stockwell Day
'The right word for this response is sadism... It's the dominant politcal style of the right. First they create anxiety by stoking a sense of danger, then they turn it into pleasure by inflicting punishment on those deemed dangerous, deviant, or merely unworthy. The right rises on this cycle of resentment and gratification."- Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, December 8, 1999.
'The tendency is to the Right. The life and death question for the Left is: Can the transformation of the corporate state into a neo-fascistic one be prevented'- Herbert Marcuse
