18 July 2003

Edible Missiles Continued

In the last few days I have been taken to task in varying degrees, both in person and on line, for my stance on the dispatch of edible missiles as a means of promoting positive political change. This is my response.

For those who have themselves been the victim of Edible Missiles I have nothing but sympathy. The attacks described to me appear to have been practical jokes perpetrated by deranged juvenile personalities with about the same level of common sense that God gave a sack of hammer handles.

However, I stand by what I have said, for I believe that the dispatch of Edible Missiles against prominent political figures is a good and logical means of promoting positive political change, and brother do we need some positive political change!

As near as I can tell King Ralph was pied because he’s Ralph and no other reason is really needed. That makes a certain amount of sense, from a certain point of view. The Government of Alberta is traditionally Ultra Conservative, and Ralph is the epitome of the Ultra Conservative. In fact the Conservative Party in Alberta is roughly equivalent to the separatist party in Quebec, with one important exception. I’ve heard tell that a number of Quebec separatists had pictures of Canada tattooed on their arses so that whenever they bent over Quebec would separate. Alberta Conservatives haven’t gone quite that far.

However, under the leadership of the intrepid King Ralph they have done some things and taken some stances that are painting this province in an unfortunate light when you consider some of the realities of the modern world. Their stance on Gay Marriage is one such issue. There are others.

But they’re not alone in that regard. Prime Minister Chrétien, herein referred to as Cretin, has done much the same thing on different issues. He himself was pied in the past. Personally I wouldn’t complain if he was pied again. God knows he deserves to be.

The problem with the whole thing, though, is that neither King Ralph nor Cretin is likely to learn from the experience. Why is that, you ask? It’s simple, really; No one has bothered to tell them why they’re being pied.

See, most politicians are idiot savants. They understand political machination well enough, and they understand how they can use it to forward their own ends, but in a society in which the government is supposed to represent the voice of the people most politicians could care less how their reforms and their machinations impact the people they’re representing. The only time they care is if they see an opportunity to benefit from their constituents displeasure.

Now the next argument is that we can easily identify these people and simply fail to elect them into office the next time around. That’s all well and good and even marginally effective in that you get rid of the occasional bad apple that way. The problem is that the people who are often elected to replace those bad apples are just as bad as the ones you voted out of office. It’s a vicious cycle.

So we find ourselves expressing displeasure with our political representatives and we need to get their attention while doing it. We can’t ply them with money because your average Joe Canadian or Joe American will never see in their entire life the amount of money a politician can make in a four or five year term. We don’t want to assassinate them because that leaves behind a body that you have to explain and puts you in a jail cell with a big burly man named Bubba whose going to make you his little puppy now.

The advantage of Edible Missiles lies in the fact that they are largely harmless. The only real wound suffered by the offending politician is to his or her pride. That makes it a potential educational tool, but the problem is no one is telling the politicians why they’re being pied. Nobody is bothering to explain the nature of the public’s displeasure to them. And your average politician isn’t going to bother to figure out why, he’s going to go back to looking for loopholes.

So not only should we continue to pie our politicians, we should also start telling them why they’re being pied.

King Ralph, you were pied because you’re Ralph, and no other reason is really needed. However, you could think of it as Alberta's revenge for chopping the hell out of essential services like Education and Health Care while voting yourself and your Members of Parliament regular raises every two years or so. We’d really like to thank you for rolling that money back into our economy, maybe using is to bolster the services you chopped to hell. Think of it as Alberta's way of saying Thank You.

Prime Minister Cretin, you got pied because your ham handed handling of just about every issue that has come down the pike since 9-11 has cost us dearly in our relations with one of our most important trading partners and given them and other nations an excuse to pay us back with the backlash from the Mad Cow scare. Thanks, Cretin. The people of Canada appreciate it.

And then there are the politicians who should be pied but haven’t.

Let’s start with the Mayor of Edmonton, Mr. Wild Bill Smith. This is the same man who announced publicly that the only reason Edmonton was going to be endorsing a Gay and Lesbian Awareness day was because it had come to his attention that he would be opening up the city to potential lawsuits if he didn’t. Well done, Bill! Way to endear yourself to a significant segment of the population of our provinces capital city. Perhaps if you ask real nice King Ralph will save you a spot in his cabinet if he gets reelected.

Then we have City Councilor Dar Hetherington, who should be pied just on general principal. That’s what you get for making up a story about why you were missing for all those days and then having it proven to be a lie. Take your reward and learn from the experience and maybe you can be salvaged and reformed into an effective public figure.

And on the American side we have President George W. Bush who, when called on the carpet by the people of the United States of America over the War in Iraq and the failure to locate Weapons of Mass Destruction, proved that Chronis Scapegoat Syndrome is alive and well by reporting that a good portion of the intelligence used to base the decision to go to war came from the British. But it was Darn Good Intelligence, the president says. Yeah, George, that’s why you’re being so quick to tell people that American Intelligence sources didn’t generate it, because the intelligence was so good that we still can’t find those weapons of mass destruction. Well done, George, no go stand against that wall with the rest of the targets.

And the worst part of it is that we revere these people. We revere them as great statesmen who sacrificed greatly to make the world a better place.

I’m not even going to go into that issue because I’ll start a rant if I do. Come to think of it, I’ve ranted enough already just by identifying people why should be pied and explaining to the ones who were pied why they were pied.

Enough ranting.

On the one hand the dispatch of Edible Missiles as a means for encouraging positive political change is a good thing, and beats assassination all hollow.

On the other hand anyone who actually deploys an edible missile against a human target is usually a juvenile and somewhat deranged personality who just plain needs to grow up.

On the Gripping Hand it’s only a matter of time before the Edible Missiles start getting as dangerous as the inedible missiles. My thinking is that if you have identified a potential target for an edible missile salvo, take advantage of it now because you might not be able to later.