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Screw you, Richard Dawkins. Turns out there is a God.

OK. Maybe God had little do with it, but last night felt like a deliverance of sorts … from a prime minister’s low cunning and the diseased zealotry that pushed his party — and much of our national political discourse — straight into the gutter.

The sickening apex of Stephen Harper’s near-decade in power was the sad, ugly way he tried to extend it — with an 11-week election campaign defined by fear, hate, indifference, arrogance and a deeply corrosive cynicism about what Canada is and what Canadians want. Harper tried to convince us all to fear our own country, our own neighbours — to believe in a Canada where enemies lurk around every corner and behind every veil.

Written down like that, it still seems absurd. But it happened. Now, it’s over.

I’d like to think that, ultimately, most Canadians saw Harper for what he is: a scared, isolated little man — a nihilist — who tried to cling to power by making us doubt ourselves as a nation. We should be grateful, I suppose, for the wisdom of our fellow citizens who decided not only to “throw the bums out” — the typical sentiment motivating ‘change’ elections — but to reject, to erase, a particular way of doing politics. Canada needed a cleansing. Last night was, at least, a start.

As usual, many of the people paid to track and interpret the currents of Canadian public life were lagging well behind the wisdom of the electorate. Harper’s collaborators included a great many corporate media types who, once again, displayed just how breathtakingly stunned they can be about their own audience.

Just days before Canadians delivered a thrashing to Harper and the Conservative party, the usual suspects at the usual newspapers penned the usual editorials urging everyone to re-elect a man and party that even Benjamin Perrin, the Harper PMO’s former legal counsel, insisted had lost the moral authority to govern.

The Conservative party Stephen Harper built isn’t the only institution in need of some soul-searching. The witch is dead — but so is the dignity of an establishment press that told us to vote for the witch. The Conservative party Stephen Harper built isn’t the only institution in need of some soul-searching. The witch is dead — but so is the dignity of an establishment press that told us to vote for the witch.

The Globe and Mail editorial board offered what has to be the most bizarre endorsement in the history of Western party politics — supporting the re-election of the Conservative party … but not its leader.

As an argument, it was several notches below moronic. As a statement about the meaning of the Harper years, it was borderline sinister. By putting its editorial weight behind a party that resorted to the shabbiest identity politics in an effort to hold on to power, the Globe effectively endorsed those tactics — abandoning its moral authority to criticize any future political party that tries to use religion, race or national origin as a wedge issue. The Globe isn’t Canada’s “national newspaper” — it’s Canada’s national embarrassment.

And then there was the Postmedia chain. Editors at Postmedia newspapers right across the country capitulated on an edict from their publisher to print editorials endorsing the Conservatives. To my knowledge, not one of them (including Andrew Coyne, by the way) had the guts to refuse. It may be the publisher’s prerogative to demand an endorsement, but principled journalists always have the right to say no.

Again, Postmedia must answer to its readers. Like the Globe, Canada’s largest newspaper chain attempted to re-write — or ignore — the sordid history of a government that abandoned the unemployed, murdered women and indigenous peoples, and pitted Canadians against Canadians in the petty pursuit of power for its own sake.

That, in the final analysis, is what the corporate media does. It defends the interests of the few, not of the many. It serves the powerful and the rich, not the powerless and the poor. It’s all about the me, not the we. Those bright yellow Conservative wraparound ads the Postmedia papers ran — warning Canadians that a Liberal vote would “cost” them — merely managed to drive home the fact that the chain is utterly out of touch with the people it claims to serve.

In short, the Conservative party Harper built isn’t the only institution in need of some soul-searching. The witch is dead — but so is the dignity of an establishment press that told us to vote for the witch. Happily, millions of Canadians gave The Globe and Mail and Postmedia, its editors and proprietors, the middle finger.

It was a beautiful thing to see. For that, at least, we should all be prepared to give thanks to a higher power. Or not.

Andrew Mitrovica is a writer and journalism instructor. For much of his career, Andrew was an investigative reporter for a variety of news organizations and publications including the CBC’s fifth estate, CTV’s W5, CTV National News — where he was the network’s chief investigative producer — the Walrus magazine and the Globe and Mail, where he was a member of the newspaper’s investigative unit. During the course of his 23-year career, Andrew has won numerous national and international awards for his investigative work.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.