Quote from: "Obvious Li"I agree with most of what this old socialist warhorse says.....except he's talking about the wrong side......it's amazing how far these old commies will go to convince themselves the last 50 years of Canada spiraling down the shitter isn't on them.  It's a good read in the art of miss-direction.



Is it relevant that this 15-year old was terribly wounded in that same battle? Or that he was both physically and psychologically tortured since? That he's been locked up, away from the world, for 10 years? That his government betrayed him and denied him his rights? That the one psychiatrist most hostile to him harbours strong anti-Muslim views? That many more experts of various kinds have found Khadr to be a sympathetic human being?



I suppose the wording of my questions give me away. Yes, on every count, I find the evidence largely to favour Khadr. But I also know that Canada's Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, as well as a swarm of Sun Media sages, consider him a menace and a traitor, guilty on all counts. This is more than a disagreement. This reflects completely different world views that simply cannot be reconciled.



Now take Rob Ford – please. In the beginning, many Torontonians were sure it was impossible that this unprepossessing man could ever be elected their mayor. When he won in a landslide, the spotlight has focused on his cornucopia of bizarre antics, failures and self-inflicted scandals. Many feel humiliated that this man is seen as the reflection of Toronto. Yet his re-election is by no means impossible. The latest poll shows that even now a mind-boggling 77 per cent of his 2010 voters are still satisfied with the job he's doing. He remains to them a populist hero, a perception completely unfathomable to opponents. There is no conceivable bridge between these two groups of Torontonians.



As with Omar Khadr, there's something larger going on here. There's an irreconcilable clash of cultures. There are two diametrically opposite ways of seeing the world constituting a profound conflict of values. So not only do the two sides disparage each other, they can't begin to understand each other.



It's a good bet that Rob Ford enthusiasts and Omar Khadr antagonists are mostly the same people and that both are part of Stephen Harper's original and most reliable base. This 30 per cent – although not necessarily the support he has received beyond them, especially in the last election – disproportionately opposes abortion, gay marriage and gun control and denies global warming and evolution. Many, paradoxically, belong to the 99 per cent. As in the U.S. and Europe, culture often trumps class. They resent more successful peers rather than the 1 per cent.



These are the new conservatives, threatened by a world where the only certainty is constant dizzying change. They find less and less in common with other Canadians who in turn find them baffling, strangers in a strange land. The two groups can barely connect with each other. This is not the Canada we once knew and no one knows how to deal with it.