Election Speculation

Okay, I know that as long as Stephen Harper seems to be saying "come on, bring us down, let's have an election now", Stéphane Dion is going to be reluctant to do anything to bring the government down.

Still.

It's making him look bad. They're both playing political games, trying to make the election happen when it will most benefit their party, but it's Dion who looks like he's basing everything on the polls. We all know that Harper's trying to force the Liberals to bring him down when he wants to be brought down, but he's also getting to implement his agenda, so he at least looks like he has principles. The Liberals, with their constant abstentions and Dion's weak explanation of what he would need to support the budget ("acceptable or at least not too harmful for the Canadian economy"), look like they're playing the worst kind of politics.

Maybe it's unrealistically idealist of me (probably), but I can't help but wish the Liberals (and, you know, everyone elected to public office) would just make a stand on the issues, and elections be damned.

Because I gotta say, the political games are not making anybody look like a future Prime Minister.

Some people deserve to die

"And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

(Thanks, Prof. Tolkein)

I hardly know where to start in my response to Lynne Cohen's article in the Citizen today, aptly titled "Some people deserve to die". I have rarely read an article I disagree with so thoroughly. So let me work my way through some of the highlights (or lowlights, if you prefer)

For 13 years, I have been a true crime buff, reading some 35 books a year -- most of them American -- on a variety of terrifying factual situations, from serial murder and child rape to greedy black widow killers and gang slayings. As a lawyer and journalist, I am fascinated by detective work and how the culprits end up paying for their misdeeds. There is nothing more satisfying after a gruesome murder and fair trial than to see the killer get the death penalty.

Let's start with this. Ms. Cohen is basing her argument in no small part on her desire for narrative closure in her true-crime novels. I would submit that ending a real live human life requires a little more justification than that it's narratively "satisfying".

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has come out so strongly in support of clemency for Smith, you'd think he was the guy's wife.

That's a nice little jibe, isn't it? Dion (and, by extension, anyone who thinks we shouldn't be endorsing the killing of Canadian citizens) is effeminate; real manly men (thump chest here) are in favour of killing people at every opportunity.

The only worthwhile argument against capital punishment is that irreversible mistakes can happen. This only means we have to be ultra careful applying it.

Uh-huh. Because that worked really well in the case of, say, Stephen Truscott -- didn't it?

To date, and to my knowledge, there has never been a proven case of mistaken death by execution in the U.S.

Forgive me if I'm skeptical.

Remember Clifford Olson? Remember what he did to those 11 children? Why go into the details when the ending is soul destroying?

It's possible that Ms. Cohen's view is skewed because she spends too much time reading true-crime novels, but cases like Olson's are very much the exception, not the rule. Someone like Olson or Pickton gets lots of media attention simply because their crimes are so unusual. We can't make policy based on these very exceptional cases.

Do you appreciate that Willy Pickton is only going to get the harshest sentence available in Canada? That would be 25 years in prison before he has the chance for parole. OK, there is a good chance he will be found to be a "dangerous offender" and have to spend the rest of life in prison. Is that justice?

Um, yes. It is. He's never going to be free again. He's never going to have the opportunity to hurt anyone else. What more do you want? What does capital punishment accomplish that life in prison and a dangerous offender designation doesn't? Other than Ms. Cohen's satisfaction, of course.

it makes us weak, offering a safe haven to murderers.

I'm not sure what Ms. Cohen is implying here. That murderers move to Canada to commit their crimes because they think they'll get off easier? That more Canadians commit murders than Americans? That's patently untrue. The deterrent effect of the death penalty has been repeatedly debunked, and Canada is one of the safest countries in the world, with a murder rate considerably lower than the United States whose penalties Ms. Cohen so admires. It seems to me we ought to be more concerned with results than with a perception of "weakness" on the part of a rather bloodthirsty columnist.

I've no doubt that Ms. Cohen would dismiss everything I'm saying here as the ramblings of a soft-hearted opponent of capital punishment who just doesn't understand the real world. The words "hug-a-thug" would probably be worked in there somehow. And by her standards, I supposed I am all of those things. I don't think we should be killing people to demonstrate the sanctity of human life. I don't think revenge is the proper purpose of the justice system. I don't think it's effective, and I don't think it's justified. If that makes me a wimp, so be it.

I couldn't have done it without her

In this article about the new movie Honeydipper, director John Sayles is quoted talking about one of the characters' motivations:

It's not the club Tyrone is afraid of losing, because his wife makes more money mopping floors. It's the fear of losing the idea that he's his own boss, he's not asking to shine your shoes and he's somebody in the community.

(Let me preface the following rant by saying that my problem here isn't really with Honeydipper or with Sayles -- I haven't seen the movie, or even heard all that much about it, and I don't have anything specific to hold against Sayles. But there's something in that quote that I see far too often in our culture, so it's set me off.)

Did you see what was completely skimmed over there?

his wife makes more money mopping floors

So here's the thing. This character can only be "somebody in the community," can only do something that makes him feel complete as a human being because his wife is doing menial labout to put food on the table. Tyrone, like so many men in culture both popular and highbrow, gets to go on a quest for self-actualization because there's a woman in the background worrying about base material reality.

What's really frustrating is that the work of the woman in question (whether wife, mother, or girlfriend-who-might-as-well-be-mother) is usually not appreciated. In fact, it's often used as an example of what a drag the woman is.

Think of High Fidelity, for example. The central conflict of the movie version is that our hero's lawyer girlfriend has become an adult, earning a living, making much more money that our record-store-owning hero. She's essentially accused of selling out. And even though the resolution is supposedly about our hero learning to grow up ... what does he do? He starts a creative endeavour and gets to DJ again. This is growing up? Is he going to be able to do that kind of thing for long if lawyer-girlfriend doesn't keep lending him money?

Practicality, concern for the future, realism -- these are all terrible things that cramp the style of men seeking their true, authentic selves. Just once, I'd like to see a man find his authentic self, and then turn around and say to the woman who's been keeping the bills paid, "okay, now I'm going to work at a soul-deadening job for a while so you can figure out who you really are".

Anyone know of any such examples?