Some People Never Learn

 

A Distorted Reality

I will readily admit to holding a long-time smugness about Canada and its citizens; a deep feeling of superiority seemed inevitable when comparing us with the United States, a country that has been unravelling before our eyes for a long, long time.

Unfortunately, some Canadians' response to the pandemic, and the truck convoy's illegal occupation of Ottawa, went a long way toward humbling my hubris. We are not as special as I thought we were.

That fact was much on full display last week when the aspirants for the Conservative Party's leadership had their first debate. Bruce Arthur writes about how the participants spoke of the convoy:

The truckers were heroes. The truckers were misrepresented. The CBC is Pravda, or worse.

 And perhaps worst of all, there was a brief competition over who was more loyal to the convoy. It was like watching two fans of the same band argue over who went to the earliest concerts and bought the first albums, before the band made it big. First, former Ontario MPP Roman Baber seemed to argue that public health restrictions were an attack on democracy and freedom, which taken to its logical policy conclusion would have meant a lot of Canadians dying in hospital parking lots. Then came the squabble.

The squabble was over who showed the most fealty to the insurrectionists' notion of freedom:

“Well, I did stand up for freedom during the pandemic from the very beginning,” said MP and leadership favourite Pierre Poilievre.

“That’s not true. You were not one of the loudest voices, Mr. Poilievre,” said MP Leslyn Lewis, who later took a reference from fellow leadership candidate Scott Aitchison about conspiracy theories to be a statement about her. “You did not even speak up until it was convenient for you. You did not even go to the trucker protests, you actually went and you took a picture in your neighbourhood at a local stop.”

“That’s not true,” said Poilievre. “I was there at the trucker protests. I was on the street. I was supporting those who are fighting for their freedoms.”

The implications of such stout defences are chilling.

And despite their previous support of the movement, even before it hit Ottawa, it was striking to see that the Conservative party could consider support of a lawless insurrection a purity test of sorts. Yes, Jean Charest called the convoy an illegal occupation — and was booed, as part of a rough ride — and the absent Patrick Brown has previously stated he didn’t support it. And Aitchison, too, appears to be an actual adult.

We all know, as Bruce Arthur writes, that the convoy consisted of an array of unsavoury elements, ranging from racists to homophobes to conspiracy theorists and anarchists, all fueled by 'dark money,' a Trumpian dream writ large.

And even if you remove all that and examine the ostensible motivations for the convoy as Poilievre describes them, it is a fundamental rejection of public health measures by a man who also rejected the very idea of government-delivered financial supports. 

 This is where the Conservative party appears to be going, unless someone can derail Poilievre. There was no talk of the nearly 40,000 Canadians who have died of COVID, which is just short of how many Canadians died in the Second World War. There was barely talk of the human toll of the virus at all. There was just a party whose dominant wing traffics in right-wing buzzwords and reflexive rejection of public health as a measure of partisan affiliation.

I am old enough to remember a time when there was no stigma attached to being a supporter of the Progressive Conservative Party. Those days are long gone, and that party, of course, no longer exists, either in name or spirit. 

All of us are the poorer for it.

 

 

 

 

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.