Hockey Riots, Hypocritical Citizens And the Criminal Leadership Equation

(This blog prints off to about a page and a half)

Wow! After a night of rioting, 12,000 citizens of Vancouver are recruited by Facebook to clean up the streets of Vancouver. Citizens weep as they clean up after goons. And, yes, those who break the law and destroy property or who assault citizens who try to stop them should be punished under the law. But when do the hypocritical citizens who weep about all of this start to put as much effort into cleaning up this image exposed via “hockey”?

Game in Boston. Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is vilified by some for spending thousands flying by a jet powered by taxpayers’ money to “the game”.

What is forgotten is this irony. The continuing criminalization of our Parliament comes from a 2006 event founded in the hockey city of Vancouver. That city’s elected Liberal, named David Emerson, is lured into the Conservative fold by Harper through the perks of a Ministerial position.

That is activity forbidden under the Criminal Code. In fact, I will dare to suggest that readers start to think about how this is all related, or they do indeed become weeping hypocrites.

I no longer watch hockey. I played sports, vigorously, when I was a teen and into my adult days. I know the effect of adrenaline during the state of competitive sport. But, in my day, my coaches sternly warned that sport was to be a physical outlet which did not allow violence. The sports I ended up playing, basketball and soccer, banned violence. In contrast to what we see today in even those “professional” sports, any hint of an intent to deliberately injure an opponent got the player immediately evicted and potentially excluded from the sport.

I played scrub hockey only, and badly, on the iconic farm pond. We played the game for the joy of skating and putting the puck between artificial goals. I do not remember a fight ever breaking out. However, I pulled my son out of hockey at the age of 15. This was because I saw hockey coaches who did not curtail the hormones of teen-aged boys. They did nothing to stop the fighting the moment it began. Instead, the popular notion of Don Cherry, that fighting was a necessary component of “policing the potential for greater violence” grew. Indeed, the practice continues of “professional” hockey teams hiring goons to “protect” their valuable players.

This is deliberate manipulation of our laws for the sake of hooligans. And, yes, I dare to call Don Cherry a hypocrite who promotes the violence on our streets through this stupidity. After all, the men in stripes on the ice are to police the game. If hockey were indeed a “sport”, the referees and the league itself would be tossing the recurring fighters and furtive cowards off the ice. They would be warning them, like the common citizens that they really are, that the deliberate or underhanded assault of another person, no matter the reason, will not be tolerated.

And that, as the law compels, when the life and safety of any citizen moves beyond the parameters of playing hard into deliberate violence, then even the player, and the coaches and managers, who entice it to appease the blood sport crowds, will end up in jail, charged under the Criminal Code.

The hypocrisy is in a citizenry that allows our media to sell us the precept that hockey defines Canada. The greater hypocrisy is in the fact that 12,000 people will turn out because Facebook tells them to clean up their streets from the violence that erupted. There will be great hue and cry about the anarchy that comes from hoodlums on the streets who glorify this criminal behaviour by “professionals” and mimic it on our streets.

There is too much silence as to why the image of a criminal Prime Minister, who sells himself via the image of being “one of us” because he likes hockey so much, remains on our big screens.

I do not watch hockey anymore. So, it is ironic that I wrote what now follows in quotes for my blog/previous email. I wrote these words even as the rioting was winding down on the streets of Vancouver where David Emerson once walked as an “elected official”. You, the reader, may want to think about the ramifications of this thought in light of all of the events that are rolling rapidly together as faith in our “leadership” disappears. I have modified the part in brackets from the original blog posting so that it fits into the theme of the cost to Vancouver because of “professional sport”:

“... It is ironic that 2008 is the year when the economy of America fell apart, and so did the world’s. This happened primarily because the citizenry no longer trusted the dishonesty in business and political leadership. This distrust continues with justifiable reason.

We need to rectify the problems in all parts of our democracies or we will be into dangerous and tenuous grounds. Untrustworthy governance leads to disillusionment. Disillusionment leads to dissent. Dissent not delivered credible change through credible structures leads to anarchy. We need to get the justifiable cynicism with our modern democratic structures dealt with. Now.

Will we do that or will we simply allow the simple math, that “(hockey violence costing a city millions, when spread among its residents costs the city’s citizens only cents each!)”, while forgetting the costly ramifications of allowing self-serving criminals to rule over us?...”.

When will 12,000 brave citizens appear to warn politicians and NHL hockey executives, and other “professional sports”, that criminal conduct will not be tolerated in “their game”? When will brave citizens band together to say that hockey is NOT Canada and that Don Cherry is no leader when it comes to “professional” players setting an example to the youth of our nation?
More ominously, when will one million citizens show up so that a Prime Minister, who tries to elevate his personae through a tax paid appearance at one of these “games”, is tossed out of our highest position of “leadership” in this nation?

We need to re-establish credibility in our own democratic game or we should not be surprised at the growing show of disrespect for “the law”. The first step to achieving this is through the removal of those who criminally abuse their elected positions.

Read at least three of the blogs below. And then visit http://TakeBackBackDemocray.ca next week to understand why we must do something about these criminals in our Parliaments if we expect respect to prevail on our streets.