Shorter Travers: Harperism=Bonapartism

Travers' excellent column is basically a primer on Bonapartism, as I suppose he couldn't expect his readership to get the reference. He's right, that's where we are, with Harper's bad faith manipulation of our institutions, particularly our electoral system - Harper's elections (real & threatened) based on strength of his plurality, within our system, do the same work as Louis Napoleon's plebiscites & conservative base. It took a combination of external (Franco-Prussian War) and internal (progressive coalition) circumstances to stop LN. I hope the second condition is sufficient in Canada, although Afghanistan could prove to fulfill the first.