MayDay 2011: Is Stephen Harper A Zombie or Vampire?

This is the most vital question vexing all Canadians as we approach Election Day on May 2.

Is Stephen Harper a Zombie or is he a Vampire?

(OK … maybe just some).

Let’s consider the two possibilities.

The Case for Zombie

Zombies are defined as fictional undead monster or a person in an entranced state believed to be controlled by a bokor or wizard.

Here’s more from Wikipedia:

Zombie fiction … usually describes a breakdown of civilization occurring when most of the population become flesh-eating zombies – a zombie apocalypse. The monsters are usually hungry for human flesh, often specifically brains. Sometimes they are victims of a fictional pandemic illness causing the dead to reanimate or the living to behave this way, but often no cause is given in the story

One might think Stephen Harper is a zombie given the monotonous repetition of the ‘stable economy’, ‘lower taxes’, ‘must give corporate giveaways’, ‘fear the coalition’ memes that he constantly repeats, but the reality is that this is because the Conservatives don’t actually have a platform.  They use catch phrases like ‘tough on crime’ because it’s good marketing, not because it will translate to millions of Canadian captives ripe for the picking (of brains) in newly minted prison cells.

We typically see zombies roaming the streets in a post-apocalypse seeking food (brains).  The G20 summit might be a close second to this environment, but Stephen Harper was nowhere to be seen.

One might argue that Stephen Harper is under the influence of a number of ‘wizards’, including Lockheed-Martin lobbyists, Charles McVety, Tom Flanagan or others, but he still seems to exert some level of control over his own thoughts.

When you think of the potential cause for the state of delirium that he seems to be under, one might argue that he is a victim of his own massive inoculation program a few years back sponsored by Glaxo-Smith Kline, where Canadian taxpayers paid hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine to cure a seemingly fake virus (H1N1) that was all the rage with the media at the time.  This vaccine could have gone awry and disturbed whatever valuable chemical balance might have remained in the man’s system.

Finally, one could make a very convincing argument that he would love nothing more than chowing down on Michael Ignatieff’s big juicy, Harvard-trained brains.  Unfortunately, Michael Ignatieff has also exhibited zombie-like threats with his ‘Rise up’ performance.  Was he too trying to tap into the armies of undead to bring his party back to life?

I sit in the ‘no’ side of whether or not Stephen Harper is a zombie mainly because zombies were born out of post-modern opposition to ‘going along with the masses’.  Symbolically, they represent consumers and out-of-control followers that have no mind of their own, but Stephen Harper does seem to possess a light of awareness.

The Case for Vampire

Is Stephen Harper a vampire?  Let’s explore the idea.

Vampires are defined loosely as follows:

mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person.

… Bram Stoker’s Dracula drew on earlier mythologies of werewolves and similar legendary demons and “was to voice the anxieties of an age”, and the “fears of late Victorian patriarchy“.

More importantly, they possess a number of traits that are sure indicators of vampirism:

• Revulsion to garlic.  Has anyone seen Steve eat a shawarma?  Those things are LOADED with garlic!
• Revulsion to day time / light.  I’ve seen him on the campaign trail, but I haven’t seen him outdoors recently.
• Paleness of skin.  Well, that would be a clincher if we knew the other items were true.
• Immortality.  We know that Stephen Harper was raised in Toronto before moving to Calgary and we’ve never seen any pictures of him when he was a child.  Where did he live before Toronto and why was he never a child?  Interesting …

But let’s think seriously about this.

It’s very unlikely that Stephen Harper is a vampire.

Vampires are the anti-thesis of religious bodies and were manifestations brought to life in the 1800s by Bram Stoker as the ultimate anti-religious doctrine and as a backlash to the religious hysteria that was controlling the Victorian Age.

But hold on a second!  I’m going to loop back on this part of the debate.

There’s nothing more profound than the proverbial ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’.  Perhaps Stephen Harper is only pretending to be a religious zealot pretending to be a stand-up normal citizen so that he can convert legions of willing (and blood-filled) Christians because they may have arteries filled with the purest and meekest of blood.

His aversion to actually addressing topics of extreme religious nature including abortion and state-funded colleges for friends may also give us clues as to his ultimate design.

Unfortunately, this may not ring true, as many of the folk who frequent places like Tim Horton’s to load up on carbs, lard and coffee are also potentially poisoning their pure and unadulterated bodies.  Pure is not the first word that comes to mind, although ‘tasty’ might.

I’ll suggest ‘maybe’ for vampire and will change my opinion when I see him chow into a big garlic sandwich.

Something Else?

So else could Stephen Harper be if he’s not a Vampire or Zombie?

Perhaps he’s some hideous hybrid of the two or something worse that might have evolved from a Tar Sands tailing pond disaster that spewed from the north and found its way down into the riding of Calgary West?  Does the Bow Valley River even mingle with the Assiniboine, one of the most polluted rivers in the world thanks to the Tar Sands?

We also know that Stephen Harper (or at least his writers) is a huge fan of the Emperor from the Star Wars series:

Perhaps we’ve all been mislead by the Dark Side of the Force (in other words, political polls, the media and so-called pundits) and Stephen Harper wants to rule Canada like Emperor Palpatine.  It would explain a lot, but the biggest question is ‘why’?  Canada represents about 0.5% of the world’s population, so surely this would be seen as folly?  It’s like running the minnow farm in an ocean filled with sharks.  Ambition of this kind could only be folly.  Sheer folly.
Perhaps he’s just a pawn in the game, like Darth Vader:

We all know that the Emperor manipulated Anikin / Darth Vader into believing that his big shiny Death Star would earn him a few planets and sleeping rights with Ewoks.  Maybe this explains Steve’s fetish with kittens?

Time will tell, voters.  Time will tell.

There are many mysteries that we really don’t want to solve on May 2.

If Stephen Harper gets his true majority on May 2, we’ll quickly discover the real Stephen Harper.

(Let’s not, OK?)