Waitin’ for the end of the world … Hear, O Ontario! Mr. Manning will be with you momentarily

Preston Manning readies himself before the mirror of his Seventh Floor office at the Prophetic Market Institute in Calgary, the Calgary skyline in the background obscured by a June rainstorm, one of those June rainstorms, as he ponders the frightening meaning of last Thursday’s Ontario election. Actual Alberta market fundamentalists and the names of their institutions may not appear exactly as illustrated or stated. Below: The real Mr. Manning and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

“Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts.”

– Jeremiah 2:19

You’ve done it now, O People of Ontario!

You have defied thy LORD, the Angry GOD of the Market! And there will be a price to pay. Oh woe! Oh woe unto thee!

Believe me not? Well, thee shall see! Just thou wait for it! Thy fear is not in the Market, and thou shall pay for that, dudes and dudettes, Big Time! This is no joke, saith the LORD of the Market and all His prophets.

The prophets of the Market have begun to speak. We have heard them, O Ontario, and we shall be hearing more from them. A lot more … I’m prophesying a bit myself here.

The Angry God of the Market, you see, wanted you to smite Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Liberal Party, for they had defied the will of the Almighty Market. They wanted you to LIFT UP thine eyes to the bills and Wise Up! They wanted you to raise up the Prophet Hudak, who set out for you the hard and narrow path of righteousness, and you did not!

They say: It would have been better to have suffered the loss of 100,000 jobs – every one of them held by an undeserving Grit-voting public service union member anyway – than the apocalypse you have now loosed upon the land for, count on it, there will be consequences!

But the prophets can take comfort, predicts Matt Gurney of the National Book of Pestilence, the Voice of the Prophetic Market Institute, otherwise known as the National Post. “In the big picture, who is premier or what party won the most seats wasn’t the real issue,” he revealed.

“This is the big issue: The province is out of money. The debt load is at the maximum. Credit-rating agencies are already watching keenly, and may have already downgraded the province, had they not feared being accused of meddling during the election campaign,” he wrote the day after the accursed election, which happened to be Friday the 13^th.

“The party’s over, in other words, and the reckoning is here. Premier Wynne, clearly, is not one who’d prefer to lead a slash-and-burn government. It doesn’t matter. That’s what she’s going to have to do, anyway.” (Apocalyptic emphasis added.)

He went on (and on, and on, as prophets tend to do, since knowing when to quit is not a typical prophetic virtue): “Because while Ms. Wynne may be the premier, it’s the ratings agencies that will set the agenda. She’s just a caretaker. The number geeks own Ontario now.”

The Word of the LORD. Thanks be to the Market. (Never mind if fiscal stimulus works, which it’s been known to do. Never mind that a modest tax rise is also a policy option.)

You get the idea. It doesn’t matter. The facts don’t matter. The Angry God of the Market is in charge now and you’re going to suffer for not being willing to suffer. You should have embraced Mr. Hudak. Then, at least you could have enjoyed your suffering, knowing it was the right thing to do.

And the prophets at the National Pestilence? They’re going to like it when you suffer … although only in a grim, loving, patriarchal way that truly wants something better for you … poverty and obedience for sure, and probably a little bit of chastity wouldn’t hurt you either.

Mr. Gurney was only the first down from the mountain to explain the coming reckoning.

Here comes Scott Stinson, writing yesterday in the Pestilence: “Fresh from a remarkable victory in which the Liberal leader demonized the Progressive Conservative plan to freeze public-sector wages and shrink the size of government, Ms. Wynne will in short order have to confront how she will live up to her own promises to balance the budget on schedule, ramping down spending with… no cuts.”

And say a big prophetic hello to John Ivison, who also saw the future yesterday, also in the Pestilence, and did not like how it looked one bit: If Ms. Wynne “can’t cut spending,” Mr. Ivison prophesied, “she is going to have to increase revenues and federal Conservatives are already speculating that an HST rise is on the way.”

A tax increase! God have mercy upon our souls! Bitter is the day! Your stroke is heavier than your groaning, Ontario!

And that’s just the start. The Seventh Trumpet is about to sound. The Prophet Preston will be down himself momentarily from the mountain, or, leastways, the Seventh Floor of the Manning Centre near Seventh Avenue S.W. in the Holy City of Calgary. Then you’ll really be in for it, Ontario!

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, Markets without end. Amen.

Thus endeth the lesson.