— Feature, Musings —02.19.2025 09:34 PM
My latest: in a dark time
As a starting proposition, I am grateful my parents are not alive to see any of this.
Babies and mothers abducted and murdered, for the sin of being Jewish, and much of the world shrugging. Monsters disguised as men, spraying schools and places of worship with bullets. Swastikas and symbols of death being paraded through places where ordinary people live, with impunity. Science being denied, democracy being denuded, ignorance being celebrated.
And, now, the most powerful man on Earth – in just one month – upending Western civilization, demonizing allies, and forming a Satanic alliance with the fascistic, genocidal Russian regime.
It is a cliché to say that we are living through history. But this? This? This feels like what my parents must have felt, observing the rise of Nazism and Hitler, and wondering if it was ever going to get better. Wondering if it could all be actually happening.
Now, as then, it is probably a waste of time to speculate about the motivations of madmen. Is Donald Trump mentally ill? Is he fashioning a dictatorship? Is Putin blackmailing him with some decade-old footage taken one night at the presidential suite at Moscow’s Ritz Carlton Hotel?
The same sorts of questions were asked about Hitler and his ilk, and no one had the answer. So, then – as now – politicians and pundits sought to defend the indefensible. All of us are familiar with the symptoms of that disease: asserting that Donald Trump is right on borders or fentanyl or dairy products or banking or military spending, or whatever lie he conjures up to justify his psychopathy. As long as he has the right ideology, these Vichy Canadians believe, Trump’s thuggery is justifiable.
Except it isn’t, not ever. Three years ago this week, Russia invaded Ukraine.
[To read more, subscribe here]
I confess I was horrified to read about Trump’s latest. The problem really is polarization: the American (and Canadian) left have so alienated even moderate ordinary voters that they had to swallow their misgivings and take a chance on the “other side”. One always hopes that it is the best that will come out in whoever ends up in the driver’s seat, and I at least am willing to accept that none are ever perfect. (I’ve often observed that top political office really needs a rare genius but is usually just filled by ordinary fallible human beings.) There was also some slight legitimacy in some of Trump’s claims, but now that he won he seems to have gone utterly off the rails. I’m an old cynic and as disgusted with much of the left’s moronic stupidity and dirty tactics as with Trump’s stupidity in his previous term. It wasn’t hard to see that much of what was leveled against him in his first term was manufactured smear tactics by the Democrats. But in all fairness, his own unfiltered tongue often made it worse. Hard to feel sorry for anyone whose brash style and lack of finesse just gives his unscrupulous opponents more ammunition. But now, with a much stronger mandate, he is showing his true colors. And it is astounding, frightening, and borderline insane. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” as a famous playwright once said.
Warren,
Der DumbassTM.
And that’s why we have to turn away Poilievre – he’s too close to Trump, his ideology, his style, his talking points and celebration of ignorance and foolishness – He is Canada’s Trump, and his entire term, should he win, will be influenced by the large swath of his base that’s consumed by Russian Propaganda, and Trumps ideology – we can do better than that.
Curious,
Seek therapy, please. You seem to be under a delusion that if you repeat a falsehood one hundred times à la Trump that it will somehow become true. You’re far more like Trump than Pierre could ever hope to be, if at all.
Fear – liberals have been selling that commodity since John Turner was vilifying free trade.
I am 100% in agreement – Trump is maniacal.
My recipe for defence is – politicians should largely shut the fuck up, get this liberal popularity contest concluded, call an election and hope like hell someone is given a strong mandate to outlast this current presidential term.
Stiffs like us should use forums like this one to intelligently put forward what we think could be useful, debate said ideas and try to sway our opponents with intelligent thought devoid of Dumbassed rhetoric.
I can’t get behind the Carney coronation BUT at this point let’s let the liberals finalize their decision. Then let’s have that election.
It’s going to be Carney or Pollievre, Bloc, green and dippers all have to accept that.
No other parties should be excluded from voting. But VOTERS have to get their heads out of their asses and vote for who they fell will be best for them. That means a Qubecker has to demand of his Bloc candidate why their vote will benefit them in the current context. Ontarians must demand of their city dwelling candidates answers to how they best represent CANADA as a whole. Albertans too must demand their politicians convince them that it’s not the brand it’s a vision.
If we had that kind of election and either Carney or Polievre get a majority mandate then we all need to respect it.
I am Not going to argue against the fear of nazification of North America through Washington.
I am only saying IF THAT IS HAPPENING we are as fucked as Poland, Czechoslovakia and more recently Ukraine is. Simply we don’t have a leadership that knows the people are behind them.
I also respect those being called Vichy Canadians and much worse. I say that they are entitled to their opinion. For Christ’s sake we are the most tolerant society on earth, surely we can be civil with ourselves if we all being sincere. Surely we can save the political insults for the sake of some internal nation building. There is arguably a time and a place for that stuff.
We are a great nation that is stronger together.
The nation is so lacking in confidence it chooses booing our neighbour’s anthem, winning a hockey game and throwing a national hockey hero under the bus as we take cabs to the airport with the trophy. Newsflash hockey might be the 5th most popular pro sport in the USA and that’s not likely to inflict a lot of hurt. (We can chuckle that A Canadian invented basketball, that the first recorded baseball game was played in southern Ontario AND that the oldest professional football team is playing in the CFL)
I was around for Paul Henderson. It feels like that a bit. BUT those 1972 warriors had a strong neighbour supporting them. We also booed them shamefully in Vancouver remember Phil Esposito pleading for our support?
So if a hockey win is our best response re-read comments about some weak European opposition to fascism.
I like that someone is actually advocating civil debate and courtesy even to opponents. I do have one small point to add: lose the F bombs. Please. And here’s why: firstly, full disclosure, when I’m down in my study fighting with Microsoft’s latest obscenity of an operating system the air turns bluer than the planet Neptune, and even sailors would think things are getting crude. But the problem these days, politically, is that we get so ramped up into a rage that all rational thinking — and any constructive debate it might engender — gets irretrievably lost. I used to read some celebrity interview where the cussing was overflowing and say to my wife how disappointed I was. “Why?” she’d ask. “You’re always swearing your head off”. To which I replied, “Yes, I know I’m an uncouth peasant, but really, in reading the opinions of one of our world’s elite I was hoping to see a standard I can try and live up to, not one that I myself am already living down to.”
And that is truly the problem, not only with us ordinary mortals getting ready to go to the polls, but with our current crop of leaders too. They know what a nice dog whistle some over the top smear is and they blow it till their lungs burst, trying to attract the lowest but widest common denominator in the electorate. For myself, when I see yet another picture of Mr Trudeau’s narcissistic mug in the paper, it’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull. But then I calm myself when I remember it took a lot of voters to put him there. Some of them were in my own family, and while I think they were fooled I certainly can’t disrespect them. Hey, news flash: I myself have probably been led astray more than once. Shame on leaders like Mr Trudeau for pandering, yet his perception is accurate that that’s the way to win these days. And yes, politics was never all that clean in the first place. What’s new is social media, and it ramps up the hate and the echo chamber on steroids.
And always, the excuse of the politician is “my cause is just, and the end justifies the means”. Yet that is always our first step down the road to Hell. Time to stand up for integrity, and it starts by toning down the rhetoric. Lengthy reasoned arguments don’t do very well on social media these days, sad to say, but we need contributors to stand up for balance and courtesy more than ever…. and I guess this was just my own poor attempt to stand up for it. Thanks to all who care and got involved, even if I sometimes disagree with you.
Why am I writing in this particular forum? Answer: because I’m getting tired of risking being a borderline Vichy Canadian. Wayne Gretzky is a hockey player. Period. I didn’t expect him to be a political genius. He was transplanted into the US involuntarily, if I recall (when Alberta oil revenue and Peter Pocklington ran out of money) and he made the best of it. I have no illusions he was ever necessarily all that likeable, but I can appreciate how easy it would be for a celebrity athlete to fall into the social trap of a president who is rapidly turning into an awkward association. My take on it is “Get over it people. He’s just a hockey player, who’s probably not too happy being forced to take sides anyway. We’ve got bigger things to get excited about.” As for Keir Starmer, that’s quite another take. Under-performing though he’s been (putting it politely) don’t we have Mssrs Trudeau and company to thank in a large measure for strained overseas relations right now?
But apparently if one sees layers of complexity in politics and is not foaming at the mouth enough over Donald Trump he or she is a spineless sellout. And here I thought the adults in the room knew that in any game, however serious, be it American poker or Russian chess, keeping your cool and keeping your cards close to your vest is a better strategy that just swaggering into the room looking for a brawl.
An excellent columnist I often read once said “If everyone’s a Nazi then no one’s a Nazi”. And he knew whereof he spoke: while our country’s rabid left — currently calling for Gretzky’s head — was calling our previous Prime Minister back then (and anyone else who even dared question hard left politics) a “Nazi”, that columnist had faced real right wing extremists in his day, enjoying a welcome of loaded guns and short trigger happy tempers in some communities.
In fact I too know a bit about real Nazis and invasions, but not from living it, I am lucky to say. Both my parents lived through and served in the second world war. They raised us with some old fashioned wisdom: “war is always wrong but sometimes good people have to stand up”, “two wrongs don’t make a right”, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and other by now passe ideals. And they instilled in us kids a nuanced and more realistic understanding of the war and racism and human failings. I learned that what Germany did to the Jews was an abominable stain on humanity, but Germans per se are not evil people, just a country seduced in a dark period by the darkest side of collective insanity. And England, with its caste system, (the country of my Dad’s birth in the “low class”) stood up bravely, yes; but there were plenty of right wing eugenicists there and also a lot of institutionalized incompetence. He saw so much of the latter in his time as a navigator in the war that he was amazed the allies actually won.
So nothing is really so new. When the lecturing pontificating “woke” tell me they have discovered social injustice, I think “Welcome to the political movements of my youth”. And when they tell me I should be ashamed of our civilization, all they really are is annoying, arrogant, and foolish. News flash: Yes, many of us old Caucasians know there is much wrong with humanity. Now what is anyone going to do about it? Insulting flawed but constructive past leaders and whole large segments of the nation isn’t going to fix anything. We need builders, not wrecking crews. We need calm voices of reason, not more insults.
I read four worthwhile columns in the Sun this weekend: one by Mr Kinsella, one by Joe Warmington, one by John Snobelen, and one by Conrad Black. All four of them (sorry to admit, all senior years white male heterosexuals) have wide ranging and diverse life experiences and education. What was remarkable was that each had a very different take, and yet all of them were in a sense “right”. That’s the trouble with politics. It’s complicated.
In that vein, I’m no fan of the CBC. It is indeed a bloated, heavily biased, inefficient, entitled, over-funded, self preservation obsessed money pit (which I myself have seen first hand behind the scenes). But that doesn’t mean there is no talent there. On the contrary, for anyone who really wants to toss around insults like “Nazi” and milder ones like “Vichy” I strongly recommend CBC’s multi-part documentary “The Rise of the Nazis”. It’s about as close as our modern generations can come to being there in World War Two. It’s scholarly, balanced, insightful, and also… frightening.
And fascinating: in just six short months Hitler managed to dismantle German democracy. At one point it came down to a single vote to dissolve the Nazi dominated government in its infancy. That vote was deliberately forestalled by the speaker of the house (ie. their equivalent official) refusing to recognize the bearer of the presidential order. Sound familiar? Where is OUR parliament just now at this critical time?
And no, I am not calling Mr Trudeau a Nazi. My point is that political trickery and smears are equal opportunity tactics and as much alive and well today as they were in 1939. So be careful about calling any of us Vichy Canadians when we say that “yes drug trafficking and a porous border is a problem”, and “yes, woke DEI has largely turned into authoritarian left wing oppression”, and “yes we should meet our NATO commitments”, and “yes, a weak shiftless president (eg Biden) is bad news for everyone”. I at least also said Mr Trump is a loose cannon on steroids, shooting his allies AND himself in the foot because he still thinks leadership is a Manhattan real estate deal or an episode of The Apprentice.
And I think only some real economic and political intelligence and maturity on our part can counter Mr Trump’s brand of partial insanity. Comparisons of Mr Poilievre to Trump are as ridiculous as comparing Mr Trump to Hitler. And again, no, I am NOT defending Mr Trump’s moral character. It’s just that, after really getting educated about Hitler, it’s clear to me that Mr Trump is neither young enough, nor politically smart enough, nor at the right time and place to pull off Hitler’s level of abomination. Nor does he really have Hitler’s rabid degree of internalized racism and sexual paranoia… which last by the way is not to say he wouldn’t try to play on the sympathies of some deluded souls in his voter base who DO harbour such hatreds. With Trump, any Republican vote is a good vote . .. just like our own esteemed (still not quite gone) Prime Minister who thinks that votes from radical anti-Semites are equally or more important to court than the smaller Jewish demographic.
And there it is. Complexity, complexity, complexity. And a moral quagmire. This human nature stuff is too hard for me. I’m goin’ back to something simpler and more comforting, like quantum mechanics. At least the sub-atomic particles really don’t care who is white, who is Black, and who sleeps with who.