Friday, February 24, 2012

"Smattering" of F-35

The Oxford English dictionary on my mac defines smattering as "a slight superficial knowledge of a language or subject" or "a small amount of something". Smattering is the description of the applause CBC describs Airshow Mackay receiving when he announced to a room full of military and connected people the mindless and enduring Conservative commitment to the F-35.

"We have been clear that we will operate within that budget," he said in a speech to the Conference of Defence Associations annual meeting. "And we will give our air men and women the best available aircraft, which I believe is the fifth-generation, F-35 Lightning II."
The comment elicited a smattering of applause.

No matter. The RCAF will be saddled for decades with whatever contraption constitutes the F-35 when this is done because none in its ranks stood up over the purchase. The Canadian Forces will continue to be politically partisanized because no one of import in its ranks will take action now against the process. Elections Canada will layout the case for election fraud, but it will stop there because their officials and the RCMP, like the brow-beat GG facing a proroguing prime minister, or Vancouver police looking at evidence of a monster, will be too timid, biased, or dismissive to take radical and entirely legitimate action.

In the great middle-class Canadian tradition of recent years, they will settle for a cowardly suburban mediocrity when action was called for. They won't rock the boat, they won't risk careers or promotions, lattes and iPhones. They won't do a goddamned thing. 

They will stand, smattering, and utterly fail to deliver in this leaderless society.


I hope I'm wrong and that there's enough integrity left within the system and its players to do the hard stuff.

1 comment:

Edstock said...

The thought occurs that as the robo-calling scandal develops, that,

if you live in one of those ridings, you might be able to sue Stevie et al for violation of your Constitutional rights. Canadians are not used to thinking like that.

For example, how many who visit this site have actually read the Constitution?