Back From The Brink

Is it just me, or does this whole Helena Guergis saga seem increasingly macabre? Every week seems to bring out some new sordid revelation that turns this narrative into some kind of neverending story. I’ve grown increasingly disturbed at what appears to be a pack mentality swirling around the junior cabinet minister. It’s almost as if we’ve reached the point where we can no longer avert our gaze, as most civilized people would normally do.In any story like this, things take a clear turn for the worse when we go from hearing of someone’s troubles to actually pursuing more discoveries in hopes that the person in question goes through even further shame.I’ll be honest here and state that I believe it’s time we backed off from the Helena Guergis story – not because of what we’re discovering about her but about what we’ve seen in ourselves.  Citizens, media, political parties (including her own) – we’ve all pursued her calamities to such a degree that we now seem kind of ghoulish.  I’m reminds of Albert Einstein’s sage observation: “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”It’s not as though our political state came from any position of strength or justness.  We’ve all played the game, at times to the detriment of those we are meant to be serving.  But we haven’t acted alone.  When the media itself pumps up the frenzy over a story like this, all in the supposed name of serious journalism, it substitutes fair-minded journalism for a kind of fanatical pursuit of the salacious.  Citizens, too, devour any kind of tidbit that adds to the junior minister’s despair.  It’s likely an independent observer would conclude that Canadians – politicians, media, citizens – are hardly living up to the kind of moral compassion they claim for themselves on the world’s stage.We don’t need to know more about this story; enough has been discovered and displayed to assist us in making sound conclusions. A decent, fair-minded country knows when to look away, to quietly deal with its umbrage in a quiet and respectful manner.  This is what we believe of ourselves as Canada, and we know it.  Except in the Guergis story we have shown that we left those characteristics of decency and respectfulness somewhere in the past.  We are witnessing a woman living her worst nightmare, brought on by herself surely, but made decidedly more horrific by our endless fascination with someone going down in flames.  It is at once the best of sensationalism and worst of human decency.Helena Guergis will face the judgment of her peers and the country, but she doesn’t merit the degree of humiliation she is experiencing at present.  By pushing her to the brink, we have ourselves come ever closer to it.  At a time when politicians, journalists and citizens are required more than ever to find a place of respectfulness and compromise for the sake of this country, our willingness to watch with eyes wide open the public disgrace of a struggling public servant and actually revel in it speaks volumes about us and the degree to which we have declined.Like it or not, she is a woman attempting to stand by her fallen husband.  She’s a public servant who yet comes to the House of Commons each day and attempts to act with whatever degree of decorum she can muster.  She has failed and she knows it.  It’s up to Stephen Harper to know how to deal with it.  But as long as we linger over her public humiliation, the more we add to our own shame.  This is no longer a story about Helena Guergis but about us. It’s time to pull back before we become something we will surely dislike – for her sake, and for ours.