I Love Stephen Harper?

Prime Minister for Canada

Last week I met Stephen Harper in what I think was a café, chatted with him over a drink and discovered that, despite my negative preconceptions about him and his government’s hateful and reactionary policies, he wasn’t such a bad guy after all. In fact, he was a lovely man I’d be proud to call “friend.”

And then I woke up.

I woke up in a panic, feeling guilty and violated, as if Stephen Harper himself had taken a gigantic messy shit in my brain while I’d been sleeping. What does this mean? I asked myself. Why did I have a pro-Harper dream? Was I dying? Was this the first stage of dementia, or God’s way of nudging me toward suicide? There was no way to be sure. I even looked up “Stephen Harper” in my dreamer’s dictionary but the entry contained nothing but that funny picture of him holding a cat and looking like a serial killer. It didn't bode well.

I spent the week considering what the dream meant, all the while noting that my opinion of Harper in waking life remained unchanged. Still, the question lingered: why did I have a sympathetic dream about a man I despise? After careful consideration, I believe that my dream can be explained in one of three ways:

1) I am the victim of a top secret, insidious “dream-hacking” plot by which a tiny Dream Harper was implanted into my slumbering brain by the Conservative Party of Canada to get votes. As I lay there utterly defenseless, Dream Harper got to work sabotaging my subconscious mind, rewiring my synapses and tricking me into thinking I admired the Prime Minister and his magnificent collection of sweaters. The only way to prevent getting a Dream Harper is to plug all your orifices with ammonia-soaked rags.

2) I secretly want to have sex with Stephen Harper. It sounds crazy—but is it? Freud said that dreams are manifestations of our deepest desires and anxieties, often relating to repressed childhood memories or obsessions. Hmmm. I don’t think I was obsessed with screwing Stephen Harper when I was a boy, but that was a long time ago… and I did wake up with a boner. Yikes!

3) My subconscious mind is a fuckface. Perhaps my brain is rebelling against me and I’ve begun the slow, painful process of turning into an extreme right-wing hothead. Before you know it I’ll be forcing children to sing the national anthem at gunpoint and using tar sands oil as lubrication for when I masturbate to portraits of the Queen.

I may never know the exact reason why Stephen Harper used my brain as a nocturnal toilet, but it’d better not happen again. And if it does, I’ll stab myself in the brain with the knife I keep under my pillow and Stephen Harper will go to jail for attempted murder. Right?

It’s your move, Stephen.