Cullen and Cobb Mysteries 2-Book Bundle by David A. Poulsen

Author:David A. Poulsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2017-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

TWO

By nine the next morning I was at my desk — actually a table-desk I had picked up at an antique store. It had come from the Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon, sixties vintage. It was banged up and the centre drawer — the only drawer — opened only when it was in the mood. But it was the place I liked to be when I wanted to create/research/read Calvin and Hobbes.

The desk faced the picture window in my bachelor apartment. The view of Calgary was the biggest reason I’d rented the place a couple of years earlier. The view wasn’t as good as from the North Hill or Scotchman’s Hill, but it was better than average and required a significantly smaller investment than places with the view.

I tinkered with the volume on my CD player, finally satisfied that Martha Wainwright’s Come Home to Mama was at just the right level to be background for my foray into the life and times of Buckley-Rand Larmer.

I had decided to start with the obvious. Googling Larmer’s name netted me a few thousand references. Initially I thought I’d start with the biggest, most frequently accessed, and work my way down to the more obscure only if I needed to. I knew there would be lots of poorly spelled, badly punctuated, “Go get ’em Big Guy. You’re saving the free world from all those lefty wing nuts,” and on the other side, “Drop dead, you redneck asshat.”

I didn’t feel either of those would be particularly enlightening and figured I’d be able to ignore well over half the posts. But I changed my mind and spent the first few hours of my assignment sifting through the ultra-passionate, often semi-articulate rants, raves, and ramblings of extremists from both ends of the political spectrum.

I came to one unsettling conclusion. The amount of hate that each side harboured for the other was astonishing. It was clear that even the most appallingly inept candidates for political office were perfectly palatable to their followers as long as they kept the other side — the hated enemy — from taking a step forward. Even if that step was arguably in a direction that would benefit a large percentage of the electorate. Had it always been this way? Maybe, but it seemed to me that Larmer and others of his ilk had taken the desire to crush and eliminate all opposition and reasoned debate to a new level — a level that appeared to have as its goal the establishment of one, and only one, way of thinking.

I wasn’t surprised that the volume of right-wing rhetoric was several times greater than that on the other side — not unlike the overwhelming disparity between conservative and liberal talk-radio stations in the United States and (increasingly) in Canada. News-talk radio was almost synonymous with small-c conservative ideology.

And in the world of conservative politics Buckley-Rand Larmer was a big deal, often quoted, much admired, and the subject of countless interviews. He was also the author of dozens of articles and three books; PDFs poured forth his wisdom on countless websites and blogs.

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