"Every woman adores a fascist," wrote Slyvia Plath some time ago, confirming what nice guys around the world had suspected all along.

Actually (and I sure-as-hell don't pretend to be an expert on what every woman wants), I'm not sure this is entirely true. Some women want nice guys. But a lot of nice guys don't want women who want nice guys. A lot of nice guys want the type of women who want fascists, and, as a result, strive to become fascists themselves.

Anyway, I believe that fascism creeps into personal relationships for the same reason it creeps into politics; it feeds off weakness while pretending to represent strength. Nations who choose (or end up with) fascist regimes are usually weak. They are generally poor and unstable, and ultimately afraid. Fascism, with its faux confidence and easy answers, reassures them.

People are the same. Men strive to become fascists ultimately because they are weak and insecure. Women are drawn to fascists for the same reason. Bullying looks at first like confidence and control. Single-minded belligerence looks at first like decisiveness. After a while it all just looks like pure, simple assholery.

There's something alluring about fascism. Look at the Nazis. They certainly appeared to be confident and decisive. They had swagger and even style (those S.S. uniforms were pretty sharp). But they proved unreliable and erratic, picking fights with other people, bullying and tormenting their own. The whole Nazi/Germany relationship became dissolute and miserable, eventually culmating in a kind of standoff-murder-suicide with the cops crashing through the door.

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s there was a surge of immigration from Hong Kong to Vancouver. Most of these immigrants were relatively wealthy, and were looking for a hedge in anticipation of the Chinese takeover of their British colony in 1997. Vancouver, Pacific rimmed and freshly exposed to the world in the Exposition of 1986, looked like a decent option, and much of the Hong Kong settlement took place in the city’s tonier neighbourhoods.

Now, most previous immigration to the city took place in less well-to-do areas, and resulted in the myriad of housing styles that you can see throughout places like East Vancouver. The boxy ‘Vancouver Special’ is essentially a modern version of the kind of lotline-hugging abode you can find in areas like Mount Pleasant. They’re built for big families. The purpose is not to get on the front of 'Achitectural Digest,' it’s to make sure you’ve got enough bedrooms for the kids. If it didn’t exactly match the house next door, well, chances are the house next door was not exactly a masterpiece anyway. And if the neighbourhood as a whole took on a bit of a dog’s breakfast look, so what? No one was living there for the address.

The same couldn’t be said for the city’s west side. The address was part of the property value and prestige. The city’s wealthier neighbourhoods had an elegant uniformity to them; the houses may have each had their unique features, but like hats at Ascot they fit a similar theme. This theme kept up the aura of exclusivity as well as the property value, and was maintained for the most part because people living in these areas, for the most part, came from the same backgrounds and thought the same way.

The Hong Kong wave had one thing in common with the locals in these communities; money. Aside from that, they had different ideas, and when these ideas began manifesting themselves in huge residences that ‘maxed out’ on allowable floor area, the locals decided to make some trips to City Hall. Residents’ associations were formed, politicians were lobbied, and the rules were changed.

Suddenly homebuilders in these neighbourhoods had to contend with a myriad of new zoning bylaws and 'design guidelines.' These measures essentially had the effect of ensuring that your average Jag-driving, high-rolling Hong Kong newcomer was kept from building the 20-bedroom, 10-bathroom palace of his dreams, and was pushed instead to create the kind of Tudoresque dwelling that you would expect to find Winnie-the-Pooh’s friend Christopher Robin living in.

But that was just the beginning. West side residents began noticing that the leafy canopies of their beloved urban forest were being depleted faster than the Amazon Rainforest. In keeping with the tenets of Feng Shui, many of the Hong Kong newcomers were simply ridding themselves of what they saw as nests of bad vibes, but that explanation didn’t cut it with the old school locals. Before you could say ‘Big Brother,’ residents of Vancouver no longer had the option of cutting a tree down on their own property. Now you needed a ‘Tree Removal Permit,’ which required you to plant a replacement tree, the nature of which would be selected from a list of approved species that you could get from your helpful local bureaucrat.

Ironically, while the Private Property Tree Bylaw was introduced during the tenure of Mayor Philip Owen, many of the restrictive design guidelines and zoning bylaws that kept the WASP in Shaughnessy were brought forth under the stewardship of that well-known big government hater and current Premier, Gordon Campbell. It seems that when most of the voter turnout comes from the nice parts of town, you do what’s needed to keep the folks there happy. If that means maintaining an army of zoning bureaucrats, so be it.

And how many of these voters will nod their heads when Gordon’s brother Michael lectures them in the pages of the 'Vancouver Sun' that we have too much government, that health care, for instance, requires more privatization? How many of them voted for Mr. Campbell as Premier because they believed him when he told them that excessive taxes served only to maintain unessary layers of government, and that excessive regulation was killing investment?

It seems too much government is when someone else receives its benefits, but there can’t be enough bureaucrats if their function is to keep your neighbourhood looking posh and exclusive.