I’ll soon be publishing my impressions of what is ahead when John Horgan forms Government, supported by 41 NDP MLAs and 3 MLAs from the BC Green Party. I’ve been reading blog commentaries and social media as well as paying attention to the corporate media’s reporting and nonreporting of news.

First, although I’ve been critical in the past of some CKNW efforts, the radio station’s work has been mostly commendable as it reported provincial politics. Jon McComb and his morning crew reminded us of how good newstalk radio can be. Diversity, balance and focused inquiry are hallmarks of McComb’s show.

A favourite blog site for many is RossK’s The Gazetteer. RossK is a busy medical research scientist who also enriches his life performing music. Perhaps above all, he is a humanist.

Scotty on Denman, an informed and articulate regular on social media sites, left a comment at The Gazetteer that I repeat here for emphasis. Follow the link above and read other worthwhile comments.

Once, long ago, one of BC’s political Gordons resurrected the Liberal Party of BC with a leaders’ debate quip about partisan squabbling between longtime arch rivals of the left and right. Before long, another Gordon usurped the middle-of-the-road experiment, turned it sharply more to the right than the even late Socreds and, curdling the professed least partisan party into the most by using the same smear tactics on its original Gordon as he would eventually on the NDP premier, the new Gordo came a hair’s breath of victory by blaming the socialists for public enterprises in fact created by the Socreds, and promising to privatize them. Blaming campaign advisors for his first embittering defeat, he promised next time he’d be more himself. Sure enough, next time he promised NOT to sell publicly owned BC Rail and finally won, soon after breaking the promise and selling BCR after cooking its books to show some kind of rationale other than pure neo-right ideology. And of course to hide the lie.

Thus began 16 years of neo-rightism to privatize the public enterprise legacies of Socred and NDP governments over the previous five decades. And as Gordo learned when he was still in short pants, it was best done by stealth. The enduring BC Liberal calling card is embossed with chauvinistic partisanship, neo-right ideology and ethical perfidy. With crony colluders cooperating it was easy to one-up opposition, ridicule objectors, and buy votes. Good, caring and pacific people were dismissed as losers—and for a time they were.

Our only counter (MSM entirely bought and disqualified) seemed to protest, sometimes the howls of outrage transgressing even the bounds of acceptable partisanship. Never mind who has a right to be sore or who couldn’t be blamed for fighting fire with even more fire, what was always needed were level heads and consistent voices that don’t confuse partisanship for what’s proper, but never give up—all without losing their ethical grip. For this we have to thank bloggers like Ross and Norm whose work has been the best antidote to perverse BC Liberal stealth while enduring—I’m sure we don’t know how much—enmity and intemperance, not to mention unhelpful armchair punditry.

Thank you, Ross, for all you’ve done.