So I was out last night...

...and missed the big french-language debate... but at the end of the evening, politics reared its ugly head nonetheless.

During this conversation, a friend of mine, a reasonably well-read, now retired small businessman... fessed up that he was pretty rattled at the idea of a Conservative Party majority. And it wasn't even the party as such... it seemed to be about Stephen Harper himself. Without any prompting, he began to rhyme off a litany of anticipated disasters that he felt... in the very near future... could be laid at the Prime Minister's feet.

And yes, that's right... it was all crystal ball stuff that had yet to happen.

When I asked him to give me an example of some scary thing Stephen Harper had actually already perpetrated on the Canadian public... he drew a complete and utter blank.

"I can't think of anything right at the moment", he replied.

Which is exactly what I've found with the people who are spouting these dark, anticipatory scenarios. If you actually bring them back to the moment by asking for an example... they invariably trail off into bewildered and sometimes hostile silence.

I've done the same thing about a half dozen times with other people I know... and let me tell you... it's an awkward, overlong sort of moment... when people are called upon to offer up specific examples of malfeasance. It's like, by asking the question, you've violated some unspoken, but universally acknowledged social directive.

Note please, that I say most... there are certainly a small percentage of folks out there, who don't get most of their political and indeed, life philosophies from 30 second sound bites on the six o'clock news.

It just seems to me that the evil Stephen Harper meme... is a lot like the ambiguous, overly loud bullshittin' you'll hear, if you concentrate on what guys are actually saying while they're sitting there in groups watching sports... only without the excuse of having hammered back nine beers, a couple bags of chips and that really weird jelly salad everybody's wife keeps way at the back of the fridge.

It's like some sort of bonding thing where it doesn't matter what's actually said, spilled or ingested... the most important thing is to throw in your alcohol-fuelled b.s. at the appropriate juncture in the rapid-fire social whip-round.

And nobody's supposed to be acting or thinking too critically... 'cos it's actually all about ritual and comraderie... and not the actual facts.

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