The events:

1. The Vancouver Canucks hockey team lost the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins in the seventh game of the final.
2. Some members of the crowd of people gathered in downtown Vancouver to watch the game engaged in violence and destruction of property afterwards.

The curious reactions (there were obviously many different reactions, but these are the ones that I find curious):

1. One person whose internet output I read uttered a vicious and vulgar condemnation of one particular member of the Canucks team. Another person said that the referees of the game allowed the Bruins’ style of skirting the edges of the permissible level of violence¹ in the sport to disrupt the Canucks’ “artistic” style of play and thus cost the team the final game.
2. The latter person also opined that the riots were the fault of the city government, who failed to provide enough police officers to quell the violence.

Both of these people are ministers of the Christian Church, one quite prominent on the national level.

I think the common element that I find deplorable about these reactions is that they utterly dehumanize the actors in question by depriving them of their status as independent moral agents with their own free will.

The first reaction is typical blameshifting to anyone other than one’s favourite, in a situation of cognitive dissonance where somone (in this case a sports team) whom you believe is the best at what they do is demonstrated to fail in this regard. The fault cannot be in the team as a whole, but must be either that of one renegade element, or else malevolent external forces.

The proof that this reaction in the case of the Canucks’ game is invalid is simple: the Canucks won three games of the series in the face of all the internal and external forces that were present in the 7th game, thus showing that it was entirely possible for them to win the series. The fact that they didn’t is simply a reflection of the fact that they failed to adapt their tactics or maintain their collective motivation: they didn’t play well enough to win. Last time I checked, a hockey game is not scored on “artistic merit”, but by putting pucks in the net. If you are so wedded to your style of play that you cannot change it when it obviously doesn’t work, then you don’t deserve to win.

To assign blame elsewhere actually does the Canucks a disservice. How does anyone become better at a given task? By first being worse. By honestly analyzing one’s failures and adapting one’s tactics appropriately. Claiming that the Canucks played as well as possible in this series is to deny them the chance to improve in the future.

The second reaction is, I think, similarly born of cognitive dissonance. Canucks fans/citizens of Vancouver obviously cannot be the type of people who would trash a downtown over a sporting event, so the fault must evidently lie in the government and the police.

This is far more serious than shifting the blame from your hockey team. It serves to completely deprive the rioters of their status as moral agents, and deprives them of both the opportunity and the responsibility to improve themselves. It’s analogous to saying a woman’s rape was inevitable because she didn’t wear the right clothes.

The blame for the riots rests entirely with those persons who chose of their own free will to commit violence, and no one else.

Saying “we need more police” is the answer of tyrants and oppressors. If you truly believe that state-sponsored violence is the best solution to private violence, then why not just go the whole way and use automatic weapons on the crowd instead of tear gas? I guarantee that this would quell the riot in a very short time, and act as a considerable deterrent to future rioters.

I think that the final and largest reaction to the riots is the correct one. Don’t deprive the rioters of their chance to improve themselves by ignoring their moral responsibility in favour of blaming the police. Don’t call on the government to “crack down” on public celebrations in the city. Rather, do as thousands of Vancouverites did yesterday. Show that you can get in the news by doing good and not evil. Go out and provide a praiseworthy counter-example by getting your own hands dirty cleaning up the streets, repairing the damage, and showing the world how to lose graciously, take personal responsibility, and show your support for your gallant defeated by acting nobly and building up, rather than tearing down, your community and society.

It also seems to me that the NDP will be a much better opposition than the Liberals, since their primary policies actually differ in substantial ways from the Conservatives’, and they’ll perhaps be less likely to oppose sensible positions simply because they’re the Tories’.

The thing that has most struck me is the sanctimonious tone of the Liberals’ and NDP’s rhetoric, especially in the soi-disant grass-roots internet media meme-mongering. Do you really expect me to believe that if Stephen Harper is a lying cheating scumbag polishing a pair of jackboots in his back room then Ignatieff and Layton are pure as the driven snow? I think it’s that kind of contempt for the common sense of the ordinary Canadian that has given Harper his majority.

Canadians are tired of the self-righteous wrangling over trumped-up rhetoric, and have handed Harper a mandate to finally get things done, Layton the responsibility to provide real opposition on issues rather than partisanism, and Ignatieff a huge slapdown.

And good on Elizabeth May, who at this writing looks to win her seat.

UPDATE: An example of sanctimonious partisanism and not: the NDP supporters booed when Jack Layton congratulated Stephen Harper. The Conservative supporters cheered when Stephen Harper congratulated Jack Layton.

What kind of fucking morons stand there and throw debris and spare change into a baby whale’s airway? Or let their kids do same? Ooh, let’s make a wish!

How would you like a few loonies shoved down your own throats, you retards?

I sincerely hope there’s some good security camera footage that will put them away for good and all.

My office is right under the approach path to runway 26L, so I see CF-18 Hornet fighter jets

CF-18

and CH-146 Griffin helicopters

CH-146

flying around several times a day.

Rumor has it that two Halifax-class frigates

HMCS Vancouver

will be anchored offshore to provide extra air defense.

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help. Oh, and that little thing called the Law? In yer dreams, pal.

And shame on the Globe and Mail for using the term “vigilante” and omitting any mention of the concept of the citizen’s arrest!

He had withheld his favour from the past three Winter Olympics, so Canadians should feel especially εὐδαιμονίαι.

This is great news in the fight against the wholly corrupt Canadian “Human Rights” commissions.

I read with more than a little dismay that the federal privacy commissioner has dismissed a complaint that the Canadian Human Rights Commision hijacked a private citizen’s internet connection to post racist material on a white-supremacist website, citing “a lack of evidence”.

The evidence in question was not in doubt. It consists of sworn testimony in a hearing on March 25, 2008, by Alain Monfette of Bell Canada (pp. 5645-5646 of the transcript here).

Why would the privacy commissioner ignore such sworn testimony, and allow a federal agency to invade the privacy of a citizen of Canada, especially for the purpose of posting racist material on the internet?

In addition, the privacy commissioner has the gall to say, “This Office cautions individuals to take appropriate measures to properly secure their Internet connections to avoid any unauthorized uses of their personal information.”

This is like saying “Be careful to build a fence around your yard, lest the police drive across your lawn.”

Will the Conservative Party step up to preserve the rights of Canadians to not only the privacy of their own property, but to the rights of free speech and association that have been repeatedly violated by the federal and provincial “human rights” commissions?

Note that Warren Kinsella of recent infamy has long been a supporter of the “human rights” commissions. Birds of a feather…

As someone who grew up in a third-world dictatorship, it saddens me that those who have a duty to preserve the freedoms that make Canada and Canadian society a beacon for people from around the globe are failing that duty, and ignoring clear violations of the rights of ordinary citizens. I hope that you and the Conservative Party will be working to rectify the situation.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Sincerely,

– Gordon Tisher

However, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, ironically a churchgoing Albertan, recently told the press that “everyone has had some concerns” about the commissions which have been for too long trampling on the Charter rights of Canadians to free speech.

Vigna [an employee of the CHRC who is under investigation by the Law Society of Upper Canada for disrupting a trial by claiming he was not in a serene state of mind] has been sending a private investigator to my parents’ house again and again, demanding to see me. My parents, who are far more polite than I am, keep telling Vigna’s hired tough guy that I don’t live there anymore. I did when I was a teenager. But that was in 1990.

The last time Vigna’s hired muscle came to my parents’ house, he refused to leave. My parents said he had a Bluetooth phone device in his ear, and seemed to be taking instructions from someone — Vigna himself? — who told him not to go until he had found me. In the end, Vigna’s enforcer must have lost his serenity, too, because he threw some papers down at my parents feet, and stormed off.

Classy.