In political lingo, the concept of “disconnect” is all the rage these days. It means that there often is a lack of obvious connection between political perceptions and reality, opinion and action.
It works like this:
- United States president Bill Clinton is exposed as an untrustworthy liar after an affair which was the sexual equivalent of his great explanation that he smoked dope but never inhaled.
He did it, tried to conceal it, may have committed a crime by lying under oath about it and certainly committed the troubling secular sin of betraying his close friends by lying to them and undermining them even as they pleaded for and expected honesty.
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The American people say they are disgusted by his actions and yet his public approval ratings go up. Disconnect.
- Prime minister Jean ChrŽtien is exposed as a privileged, upper class golfer with a short public policy attention span and a tendency to want to trade and impress foreign leaders more than to respect human rights.
Yet Canadians, when polled, continue to see him as a representative of ordinary people, the little guy from Shawinigan that he was 30 years ago, before a lifetime of privilege, connection and power. His popularity remains strong, even if people question his record. Disconnect.
Last week, Parliament Hill was awash in disconnect as thousands of gun enthusiasts gathered to protest new gun-control regulations.
At issue, allegedly, was the Firearms Act, which will require all gun owners to hold a licence by Dec. 31, 2000, and all guns to be registered by Dec. 31, 2002.
Gun ownership would be legal but cost a little more, take a bit more bureaucracy and be known to authorities through a registry. The expense and bureaucracy of licensing automobiles comes to mind.
The debate about the details of the legislation centres on whether it is a costly and inconvenient piece of bureaucracy which will do nothing to reduce crime.
But on Parliament Hill, many of the speakers and many in the crowd seemed to be protesting another piece of legislation. Let’s call it the Firearms Confiscation Act.
Now, it’s true that no one actually waved this piece of odious legislation around to prove their point.
They didn’t have to. They just knew that Allan Rock, Anne McLellan and Jean ChrŽtien are the latest in a long line of dictators (Stalin, Hitler and Mao were just some of those identified on the signs) out to disarm their populations.
And rally organizer Al Dorans said disarmed Canadians would be defenceless in the face of wild animals, criminals and “rogue cops.”
Reform MP Jim Pankiw articulated the conspiracy theory well. “The intent of the Liberal government’s effort is to eliminate ownership of firearms by Canadians,” he said in a statement to gun owners. “Their desire is to create a slippery slope, a gradual process of firearms registration and subsequent confiscation.”
The proof? None, really, but the affirmative cheers of thousands of voices must mean it is true, or at least widely believed.
Disconnect.
