Repressive Tactics Smack of History

Of course the so-called budget bill, stuffed to the gills with non-budgetary items as such, has multiple political purposes, but one of them is clearly to limit dissenting voices within parliament itself and to usurp parliamentary power and transfer it to cabinet - as can be seen, for example, in the new environmental regulation proposals. This is a significant undermining of parliamentary democratic legislative procedure, but equally disturbing are two other recent repressive tactics that smack of other repressive regimes witnessed in history.

Can there be any doubt that both the proposed further criminalization of wearing a mask at a lawful assembly and the aggressive CRA assaults on legitimate charities are unequivocally designed in essence to stifle dissent?  This is obvious even to the mainstream media for a change. But perhaps what is most perplexing  is what seems to be the utter complicity of a significant number of ordinary Canadians who have indicated in recent polls that they support such a repressive, undemocratic regime. Maybe, just maybe,  I shouldn't remain baffled for too long,  however, for that implicit consent, that complicity, also smacks of history where both the indifferent and the complcit get swept up in illusionary power.

And today in the news, James Moore's outspoken appeal to the public to decry the Ottawa Educational Sex Exhibit is nothing more than another instance of an attempt to repress that which the Harper Regime finds ideologically objectionable, this time the target being a form of free speech and educational art by way of censorious intimidation. And yet we'll all roll over if not bend down.  It seems we continue to lack the collective moral outrage to do anything substantive about our oppressive condition. I hear the sound of much weeping across the nation from those defeatist positions.

See, too, my earlier post: Are Canadians resigned to the current repressive methods of the Harper Regime?