Angry in the Great White North

The fallout from the Elizabeth May post-election analysis continues.  First, John Ogilvie gave us a view of the controversy that the analysis -- which put the blame for any election disappointments squarely on the Green Party and allocated no responsibility to Elizabeth May herself -- had kicked off within the Green Party.

And now we have a former Green Party executive, Dan Baril, provide us with his own interpretation.

If anything, it goes even farther than the others in portraying Elizabeth May in the worst possible light.

On the matter of honesty, Elizabeth May insists that the Green Party had no plan.  Put aside the matter that as leader, that would have been he responsibility to craft a plan (and have one crafted), Dan Baril insists there was a plan.  He wrote it, she ignored it, and he resigned.  You can read the details on his post, but in a nutshell, it had four major points:

1. Immediately start work on winning London-Centre, where in the by-election, the Green Party scored an impressive second place finish.
2. Grab Garth Turner while he was an independent before he went over to the Liberals.
3. Don't run a full slate of candidates, but identify a handful of winnable ridings and focus resources there.
4. No goofy deals with Stephane Dion that confused the party membership and party supporters.

When it came to this plan, Elizabeth May did the exact opposite, but she insisted there was no plan in the first place.  Dan Baril takes her to task over this:

To say that plan, that discussion, and that strategy never existed and then after-the-fact complain about flying by the seat of ones stressed-out and spread-thin pants shows dishonesty and an accountability to no one.

Dishonesty?  Is that the same as calling someone a liar?

A liar?  Maybe.  But then using astrology to select the riding to run in is suggestive of a...creative....grasp on truth:

It was not the Green Party or mesmerized inexperienced minds on Council who insisted upon waiting until "Mercury was no longer retrograde" before deciding that, wait for it, Central Nova was a better idea over say London. Beyond a reliance on stellar constellations, scientific polling data was also never able to replicate the mysterious premonition Elizabeth May claimed she experienced whereupon Peter McKay would go down to defeat.

Mercury in retrograde?  Huh what?  Retrograde motion is the apparent reverse motion of a planet in the sky due to the relative motions of the Earth and the planet in question as they overtake each other.

I suppose it means the same in astrology, but I'm not sure.

Here's the thing.  The Green Party is all about the environment and science, right?  I mean, global warming (or climate change, or whatever) is based on a scientific consensus, blah, blah, blah.  It isn't true, of course, but that's how the Greens sell it.  It's science, so there's no debating it, or so they say.

But astrological signs used as a means to do election planning?  And isn't Elizabeth May planning to become an Anglican minister?  I'm pretty sure Anglicans and Catholics share the same attitude about astrology, that being that it is an irrational belief system that is inconsistent with the faith:

All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to ‘unveil’ the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

Using pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo to gain power over other human beings.  Interesting.  Are we talking about astrology, or the theory of global warming?

Does Elizabeth May know the difference?  Does she care?

Is her belief in climate change just another attempt to us something people don't understand (and that is fundamentally nonsense anyway) to get into a position of power and influence?

Maybe we ought to think hard about Dan Baril's comment about Elizabeth May's honesty.