Category: Politics

The new GOP

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Whether or not you live in the US, the political goings-on there garner a lot of screen time and column inches. I try to pay attention, but I’ve never felt as hopeless about it as I have the past year or so, and I’ve never felt as scared about it as when I saw Dan Gardner’s analysis of a recent Manhattan Institute survey.

His context-setting:

The Manhattan Institute is a conservative think tank which recently conducted a survey looking at ideas and attitudes within the Republican Party. But the central purpose of the survey was to distinguish between long-time Republicans and the many new entrants Donald Trump has attracted to the party — “new” whether because they are younger or because they come from demographics, like blacks or hispanics, which traditionally haven’t supported the GOP — and compare the two groups. The “traditional Republicans” were about 70% of the total, the “new entrants” 30%.

The results were released December 1st. […]

I find them genuinely shocking and don’t understand why they haven’t received greater attention. This is strong evidence that the Republican Party — which dominates power in the world’s richest and most powerful nation — is rapidly turning into something undeniably dangerous.

Gardner highlights the most jaw-dropping findings, quoting the Institute’s report itself, some of which I’ll repeat here:

  • Among the Current GOP under 50, a notable minority report that they themselves openly express racist (31%) or antisemitic (25%) views. Among those over 50 in the Current GOP, these figures drop to just 4% for each.
  • One in three New Entrants (32%) say they openly express racist views, compared with just 8% of Core Republicans.
  • Nearly four in ten in the Current GOP (37%) believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe. Younger men are especially likely to hold this view (54% of men under 50 vs. 39% of women under 50). Among men over 50, 41% agree, compared with 18% of women over 50.

In that first bullet, the Manhattan Institute — a conservative think-tank, it should be said — declared that “a notable minority” hold racist or antisemitic views, as if 31% and 25% respectively would somehow be comforting numbers.

Further takeaways on conspiracy theories which are somewhat less troubling than Holocaust denial, but troubling nonetheless:

  • 51% of Current GOP believe the 2020 election was “decided by fraudulent ballots or hacked voting machines”.
  • 41% of Current GOP think 9/11 was an inside job.
  • 33% of Current GOP think vaccines cause autism.

Finally, on the question of political violence:

  • 54% of New Entrant GOP agree with the statement that “In American Politics, the use of political violence is sometimes justified.”

Gardner’s synopsis is hard to argue with, but easy to find terrifying:

The trend line couldn’t be clearer: Donald Trump’s Republican Party is rapidly becoming the home of racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracists flirting with political violence.

I fear we cried wolf about fascism for so long that it’s easy to dismiss all the early warning signs now presenting themselves. If ICE wore brown shirts, this would be a lot easier.

Revisiting a prediction

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Nearly five months ago, when Chrystia Freeland suddenly resigned her cabinet post, I guessed that this was actually a bit of Liberal party strategy. I guessed a few things would happen:

  1. PM Justin Trudeau would resign in the coming weeks. Trudeau resigned twenty days after I wrote this (and exactly three weeks after Freeland’s announcement.)
  2. Chrystia Freeland would win the Liberal party nomination. I was wrong about this. Carney ran as well, and won handily on the first ballot. I forgot about misogyny.
  3. Mark Carney would run in Sean Fraser’s just-vacated riding. He didn’t; he’s running in Nepean. It was a bit silly for me to think he’d run in a NS riding anyway. I got caught up in my own conspiracy theory.
  4. Mark Carney would be appointed Finance Minister. See above: he aimed higher. As an aside, good luck to whoever gets to keep the Finance file (I assume Champagne has the job temporarily, but maybe I’m wrong) under a guy who’s managed two central banks.
  5. With the Trudeau boogeyman gone, the Conservative platform would founder and polls would swing in the Liberals’ favour. Uh, have they ever:
Source: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/

When I wrote that post in mid-December it seemed like a long shot that the Liberals might win the election, let alone take a majority of seats. But that now appears to be a real possibility.

I guess we’ll know in ~36 hours.

51st and 49th

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It’s been fewer than six weeks since Trump was inaugurated and I haven’t written about it. I wouldn’t even know where to start. By the time I formulate a thought on something awful — not even the constant stream of embarrassing or enraging “flood the zone with shit” stuff, but truly destructive policy or comments — another awful thing has happened. It’s not that I have any particular insight, but back in the Dubya days (now a quaint period by comparison) the horror was at least infrequent enough to articulate my outrage. Now? No chance.

Being Canadian has meant we can mostly just gawp at this from afar and fight the occasional tarriff war. And until a week or so ago I would have said all the rhetoric about Canada becoming the 51st state was just posturing and bluster ahead of trade negotiations. But what he’s doing with to Ukraine makes me worried. I think his recent assertion that Ukraine simply needs to cede the land Russia occupied by force to end the war, thereby rewarding Russia’s aggression, is a pretext for his own ambitions. He sees countries which have something he wants — Canada, Greenland, Panama — and may well decide to invade and just take part of it; if there’s international pushback that he actually cares about, he’ll simply point to the scenario he’s about to force with Russia/Ukraine and say, “See? It’s fine. I’m only doing that.”

It’s been two centuries since the war of 1812, and 150 years since any sizeable Canada-US conflict at all. The world’s longest undefended border has had a good run, but that run might be coming to an end.

Strategy?

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

I’m sure lots of other people are thinking this too, or have maybe said it already on news shows I haven’t watched. I’m writing it down just so I can look back on it in six months and see how right, or wrong, or cynical (or all of the above) I am.

Canadian Finance Minister and deputy PM Chrystia Freeland resigned suddenly yesterday, hours before a fall economic update. She uncharacteristically issued a public distancing of herself from PM Justin Trudeau. This has kicked off a whirlwind of analysis about how Trudeau will handle this crisis.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think it’s a crisis. Or, not a real one, anyway. I think it’s a planned crisis.

Months ago members of the Liberal caucus were asking Trudeau to step down as PM, a Biden-lite if you will. Then, suddenly, that noise seemed to fade. I suspect that Trudeau convinced a few core members of his cabinet to execute a plan. I posit that everyone in the Liberal leadership, including Trudeau, acknowledged he had to resign — he knows full well that national sentiment has largely turned against him. (To wit: you can go to any small town in Canada and see at least one pickup with a “Fuck Trudeau” sign hand-painted in its back window.) The Conservatives have also made attacking and mocking him personally a key plank of their platform, so I think the Liberals have a plan: to sacrifice Trudeau.

I believe the plan was to have Freeland create a mini-crisis (resigning hours before an economic announcement amidst Trump-induced trade panic) and publicly distance herself from Trudeau. If Trudeau steps down in the coming weeks or months, this positions Freeland as a mildly anti-Trudeau liberal when she (presumably) becomes the party leader and runs against PP. In the meantime, this mini-crisis presents the opportunity to move quickly and against convention, and $5 says Mark Carney finds himself parachuted into the Finance Minister role through some byelection or another. I guess they’d need another seat to suddenly open up but where would they get one of those OH WAIT.

So in this imagined scenario spilling from my ill-informed brain, the finance minister becomes someone even fiscal conservatives can get behind, and the Liberal party leader with name recognition and a history of standing up to Trump can campaign against the Conservatives — who have spent years campaigning by essentially calling Trudeau a poopyhead — with a plausible case that she doesn’t like Trudeau either.

Maybe I’m giving the Liberals too much credit for strategy, and the PM too much credit for selflessness. I’m probably wrong. But this is just what immediately popped into my head yesterday when I saw Freeland’s flex.

From worry, to frustration, to despair

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Yesterday was hard. It was hard to see the premier and other politicians elected to represent and protect Ontario’s citizens, presented the opportunity to finally — if far too late — do the right thing in the face of skyrocketing (but entirely predictable) COVID case numbers…and then bungle it so spectacularly. Instead of reinstating paid sick days, or any other protection of Ontario’s most vulnerable workers, Doug Ford chose to ignore science-based medical advice, and impose largely unhelpful restrictions on Ontarians. He denied them outdoor spaces, like playgrounds or campsites, even though the risk of outdoor transmission is very low and a generally-agreed-to-be-worthwhile risk given the physical and mental health benefits. He gave the police more power — likely unconstitutional power, mind you — to stop and question anyone they see on the street. Many municipal police forces have said they won’t use it, but if I were a Black person in this province, I would be very afraid indeed.

The Toronto Star’s front page today neatly sums up the frustration, shock, and rage at these latest moves. Not from people on the street, or on Twitter, but from medical and civil liberties experts.

Also yesterday, in an overtly political move, Ford declined an offer of Red Cross support from the federal government, saying “We do not have a capacity issue, we have a supply issue.” Both parts of that statement are false; on the same day his office issued that statement, Ford asked other provinces for help with capacity, equipment, and expertise. Meanwhile, vaccine doses go unused and appointments remain bafflingly difficult to book. Further: questions continue to swirl about why some postal codes were declared hotspots over others, when the data did not bear out such prioritization, and the aberrant data has some damning correlations to Tory minister ridings.

The province’s haphazard response a year ago could be blamed on confusion, the initial scramble of COVID panic and uncharted waters. Now, a year later, the premier and cabinet’s response can only be seen as inept and petty at best, dangerous and negligent at worst. Or, put another way:

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/1383052201329897474

To be clear, I feel all this frustration and rage out of empathy for my fellow Ontarians. I interact with this clusterfuck of an administration from the privileged vantage point of an affluent white man. I own my own house, with my own backyard, in a nice neighbourhood. I am not an essential worker, and I can work effectively from home 100% of the time. (Also, my employer provides paid sick days.) I have no kids climbing the walls, or other dependents. I have no pre-existing health conditions and, now that I’ve had COVID, I probably have some antibodies stored up. In the unlikely event that some cop stops me on my way to the pharmacy, my skin color will almost certainly keep anything bad from happening to me.

So if I feel all this, and I’m in quite possibly the most privileged state possible for an Ontarian, imagine how a front-line worker living in a poor or racialized neighbourhood feels. Imagine living at Jane & Finch, where you’re 9x more likely to be hospitalized but 4x less likely to be vaccinated than someone living in wealthy Moor Park (source) and FAR more likely to be targeted by police for the colour of your skin. Imagine the terror, and helplessness, felt by the most vulnerable Ontarians, as this doctor eloquently describes.

Of course, everyone I know with a brain in their head and a shred of empathy is already sickened by this, and feels something must be done. Unfortunately, both brains and empathy seem to be in short supply at Queen’s Park. Our outmatched premier has unnecessarily consigned hundreds of Ontarians to death at the hands of this virus, deaths which could have been avoided but for his incompetence and indifference.

.:.

In Macleans yesterday, Justin Ling got at why this is happening not just in Ontario, but effectively everywhere west of New Brunswick:

Scaremongering about outdoor transmission, and instituting curfews is a feat of social engineering. This an effort to ignore the data, withhold information, and twist the facts to scare us.

The conspiracy-minded will see that as an exercise in population control: Politicians getting their jollies off by playing dictator. 

The reality is more mundane—governments are doing this because they are frozen with indecision. Actually acknowledging the reality of the data means acknowledging this catastrophe was caused by governments’ idiotic reopening plans: Plans that were warned against by public officials at the time. Doing that means taking action that will hurt employment numbers, which could hurt our politicians fragile egos. Confronting this data and science also means admitting that all of our advice about washing your hands and not touching your face has been useless. And accepting that reality means provinces requiring sick leave, so people can go home if they’re ill.

Governments are loath to do any of that. They would rather shower us in meaningless pablum about how we, as citizens, need to do our part. The implication, of course, is that we are to blame for this crisis. That it’s us wayward youth who are driving this pandemic. Our lack of personal responsibility means they have to ground us to our rooms. Stay home, for god’s sake!

If our politicians stop blaming us for outbreaks, we may start blaming them.

Begone, 45

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I should have more to say about the US election. I just don’t have it in me. And, truth be told, ever since I read this Atlantic article (published pre-election) about how Trump might try to gin up enough trouble to keep himself in power, I’m probably more nervous about his seemingly-clumsy protests and machinations than most.

I am just gonna leave this here though:

Portapique: an independent panel isn’t good enough [UPDATE: a public inquiry will proceed.]

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After three months, there will finally be an investigation into the April mass shooting which started in Portapique, NS. Unfortunately, it likely won’t go far enough.

Despite the specific requests of victims and victims’ families, it will be an independent panel and not a public inquiry. The panel will have no ability to compel testimony, and will lack the transparency of an inquiry.

Paul Wells has been echoing the societal frustration well in Macleans all along, and summed it up after the panel announcement.

We might as well give it a name, this odd feeling of having been heard, understood—and ignored—by government.

It’s a familiar enough sensation, after all. It’s not that the lines of communication have broken down. It’s not that the message isn’t getting through. It’s not even that governments are inert or inactive. On the contrary, they’re whirlwinds of action. They’re just doing… something else… besides what circumstances warrant and populations demand.

This odd feeling is all I have after Mark Furey, Nova Scotia’s justice minister, and Bill Blair, the federal minister of public safety, announced the end of three months of confusion about how governments would respond to the April mass murder around Portapique, N.S. They’re convening a review. It’s like a public inquiry, only toothless and secretive.

…

Before the ministers’ announcement, I asked Dalhousie University law professor Archibald Kaiser for some comment on the delay in announcing any sort of inquiry. Kaiser sent me a long, thoughtful essay. “Instead of reassuring the public, the behaviour of governments has been opaque, tardy, uncertain, avoidant and condescending,” he wrote. “It is hard to make sense of why there have been so many bungles and missed opportunities in the aftermath of Canada’s worst mass killing.”

Paul Wells, Macleans, July 2020

The news of the government’s decision was met with protests this past weekend. Despite the CVs of the appointed panel, I fear their output will be met with disappointment. And the families and loved ones will be left to deal with the questions and doubts.

UPDATE: bowing to public pressure, the federal government has announced a public inquiry.

A book is not fast enough

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I recently finished reading Naomi Klein’s new book No Is Not Enough (site | amazon | globe and mail | guardian), which she rushed out in response to Trump’s insanity. The funny thing is how hilariously out of date it already is. It came out in early June, and even forgetting about the lead time required to write, edit, print, and distribute the book, that release date predates a bunch of failed healthcare reform attempts, the Jeff Comey hearings, emails showing Trump’s son met with Russian officials ahead of the election, the Anthony Scaramucci saga, a Twitter escalation with a now-nuclear North Korea, Trump barring transgender individuals from service in the military (without telling the military), the firing of White House chief of staff Reince Preibus, and a refusal to condemn neo-Nazi rallies in Virginia. It’s been two months and she could probably write a second volume.

I fear the physical publishing business simply won’t be able to keep up with the sheer volume of the man’s idiocy. Best of luck to all the authors + editors out there.