Paltry Offerings - Part 3

As the Ontario election campaign continues on with inane promises, I continue to rely on the cartoonists to present the real picture.

One of Doug Ford's early friends:

Willful And Egregious Ignorance

                                       
I suppose that all political campaigns, to one extent or another, require some willful ignorance or selective memory. If they didn't, how could so many voters support so many obviously unsuitable candidates?

I started thinking about this topic recently as I read about the rise of J.D. Vance, who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, a book I very much enjoyed and whose author I respected for both his depiction of his family and culture and his triumph over his humble beginnings through hard work and education.

That respect, I see now, was gravely misplaced.

The winner of the recent Ohio Republican primary, Vance displayed such a depth of moral vacuity and abdication of integrity that even I, a seasoned cynic, found breathtaking. And it was all in the service of getting the nod from disgraced former president Donald Trump, a man Vance once repudiated. even comparing him to Hitler, but now embraces.

Edward Keenan writes:

In 2016, Vance rose to fame on the strength of his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which detailed the troubles of his family and, through them, those of Red State rural America. At the time, he was unequivocal, saying Trump was selling snake oil to people desperate for solutions to real problems.

“Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it,” Vance wrote in The Atlantic shortly after his book’s publication.

Well, if you can’t beat him, join him: in this race, Vance was the most enthusiastic peddler of what appeared to be exactly the same snake oil. He said the nation needed a “de-woke-ification program,” suggested Trump should defy Supreme Court rulings, and tweeted, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” He accused President Joe Biden of flooding the “heartland” with fentanyl to “kill a bunch of MAGA voters,” and ran ads saying if the media calls you racist and says you hate Mexicans, Vance was your guy. He drew endorsements from the QAnon-leaning wing of Republicans in Congress, and campaigned with Donald Trump Jr. at his side. He talked up the Trump border wall — a concept he once explicitly mocked — as a cure for what ailed Ohio. (If you don’t have a map handy, Ohio lies on the northern U.S. border, more than 2,100 kilometres from where that Trump wall was being built.)

Vance doubled down on his newfound allegiance by surrounding himself with other Trump sycophants, as Lloyd Green writes:

In the run-up to the primary, Vance hung out with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Pressed on Greene’s recent attendance at a white nationalist conference, Vance offered his full-throated support. She is “my friend and did nothing wrong”, he declared. Being “in” with the Republican party’s extremes helps more than it hurts.

We are judged by the company we keep, and in addition to the aforementioned Gaetz and Taylor Greene, he is bankrolled by Paypal founder and Trump fawner Peter Thiel.

Thiel donated at least $13.5m to a Super Pac that had Vance’s back. Thiel also served as a conduit to Trump world.

In 2009, the German-born Thiel questioned the wisdom of expanding the right to vote to women and minorities. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron,” he wrote.

I started this post by wondering about voter behaviour and their capacity to embrace willful ignorance. It would be simple enough to explain Vance's support by attributing it to the fanaticism that seems to follow Trump like a bad odour. But is that a sufficient explanation for supporting a candidate who displays none of the qualities we would hope for in a high-office aspirant? To endorse someone whose venal grasping for office should be obvious to all, whose ultimate allegiance is only to power and its acquisition, surely requires not only ignorance but massive forgetfulness.

Of course, I could be wrong. The older I get, the more I realize how little I really understand about our species.

 

Paltry Offerings - Part 2

 Continuing with yesterday's theme:

H/t Theo Moudakis

Paltry Offerings

 

I can't remember a time when I have been less inspired about an election. Here in Ontario, where we go to the polls on June 2, we have Conservative Doug Ford leading in the polls, counting on a credulous and forgetful electorate. Then we have the seatless Liberal leader, Lex Luther lookalike David Del Duca, promising a buck-a-ride, inexplicably unembarrassed by how it recalls Doug's preposterous buck-a-beer promise in the last election. Such policy vacuity, he assumes, will go unnoticed by the electorate. Then there is Andrea Horwath, so heedless as to how her NDP leadership hubris has hobbled the party for too long now. 

I refuse to lump Green leader Mike Shriner into this morass; his policies may be sound, but his party has no chance of  making a difference.

One anticipates a post-election reckoning by those who care about their parties' futures.

Meanwhile, since I have nothing but my contempt to offer, I am posting some editorial cartoons that bespeak the sad state of affairs in this province.

H/t De Adder

H/t Moudakis

H/t Graeme MacKay

H/t MacKay

A Transparent Document

 I won't waste too many words commenting on the release of the Ford government's campaign document budget yesterday. A transparent and cynical document that attests to the Tory belief that there are many stupid people who cast ballots, it has something for everyone except the poor and the dispossessed (after all, they don't vote, do they?).

One doesn't have to be particularly politically astute to understand that the 'budget' is simply a massive election bribe, but those who seek further proof need look no further than Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy's own response to reporters' questions:

Bethlenfalvy, whose budget will not pass the house before the writ period begins Wednesday, repeatedly refused to say whether the Tories would reintroduce the same fiscal blueprint if re-elected.

“The people of Ontario will vote on this budget and it will be up to them if they want to pass this,” he said, declining to answer simple yes-or-no questions from reporters about tabling it again in the summer.

Perhaps the Ford government's perfidy is best reflected in this, from Theo Moudakis:

 

Let the games begin.

Election Augeries

The ancients, when they wanted to know the future, often examined the entrails of birds. It was believed such dissections could augur both good and bad fortune. In a famous scene in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, for example, the priests advised against their master going to the Capitol on the Ides of March because the bird that was sacrificed appeared to be without a heart, never a good sign. The rest, as they say, is history (and literature).

We have long abandoned such arcane and primitive rites, only to replace them with polls. As the date for Ontario's election draws near, expect renewed interest in polls to divine the political future of the contending parties. Indeed, today's Star bruits its election tracker called The Signal, from Vox Pop Labs. Without going into the details, which you can read about by clicking on the link, it claims to be more accurate than most, and has thus far done some early polling, each, of course, a snapshot of what people were thinking on any particular day.

If you are a supporter of Doug Ford and his Conservatives, you will be happy. If you are an Andrea Horvath or Steven Del Duca enthusiast, not so much. Were the election to be held today, the poll shows the Conservatives picking up 71 seats, the Liberals 28, and the NDP a mere 24, down from the 40 elected last time.

If the results turn out to be in any way accurate, one hopes that Andrea Horwath, who the party should have jettisoned a long time ago, sees the writing (or the picture) on the wall.

H/t Theo Moudakis

Theatre Of The Absurd

I'm feeling too burnt out these days to put thoughts to words, my ever-constant cynicism about people and politics reaching new levels. Therefore, allow me to post some editorial cartoons that help to capture the absurdity of what we call politics and life.

H/t Michael de Adder

H/t Graeme MacKay

H/t Patrick Corrigan

H/t Theo Moudakis