It’s the hat.

The initial coverage of the Kentucky Catholic kid and the Indigenous veteran decidedly favoured the latter over the former.  A short video of the pair was everywhere, and the outrage was everywhere, too: the kid in the Make America Great Again hat had treated the Indian – that’s what Americans still call Indigenous people – with disrespect, or worse.  The fact that it involved fourteen and fifteen-year-olds didn’t matter.

Anyway.  A longer video has emerged, and I believe it tells a somewhat different story.  You can see it here.

The kid has defended himself, too, on the record.  That’s here. (A lawyer undoubtedly wrote it for him, and he was a rude little bastard but, still.)

I don’t know which narrative will end up dominating.  Like Charles Adler, Keith Baldrey (and other journalists I respect) have said, this mess doesn’t look as clear-cut to me, now.  It’s harder to assign blame. Which then raises a key question: why did so many – me included – immediately believe the kid was the bad guy?

Because of the hat, that’s why.

He’s a kid, and I don’t expect him to be as sophisticated about politics and culture as the readers of this web site are. But the kid’s parents?  And the D.C. field trip’s chaperons? And his teachers, at that private, all-boys, mostly-white private school in Kentucky?  They have no excuse.  None.

Letting hundreds of boys run around Washington wearing MAGA hats is profoundly, deeply stupid.  It’s making a political statement, and every one of them knows it.

In the past two years – because, yes, it has been two years since that white supremacist cheated his way into the White House with the assistance of the similarly-racist Russians – that hat has become as distinctive as a Klansman’s white robes or a neo-Nazi’s stiff-arm fascist salute.  It is much more than a hat, now.

Ask a neo-Nazi.  Ask a committed racist.  They’ll tell you: it means Make America White Again.

It’s the “again” that changes the meaning.  Studies have been written about it.  If Trump had said “Make America Great,” he would’ve sounded like any other politician.  It’s the addition of that final word – plus Trump’s personal history of racism, because other, decent Republicans have used the phrase, too – that suggests going back to an earlier time. When things were whiter.  When things were Christian.  When fathers ran America.

As one writer put it:

To what specific period of American greatness are you wanting us to return? When black folk suffered segregation after slavery? When women had no right to vote or control their own bodies? When gay brothers and lesbian sisters felt ceaseless hate? When we stole land from the Native Americans? When we sent Japanese families to internment camps? When America lynched Mexicans?

Perhaps the kid didn’t actually mean to intimidate that indigenous veteran. Perhaps the veteran was a bit wrong in his assessment of the situation. Perhaps the media got it wrong.

Perhaps, perhaps. About that hat, however, there can be no doubt anymore: it means something.

And what it means, now, is hate.

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And this is the part where I’m actually calm.

Justin Trudeau said he’d support indigenous leaders. 

He didn’t. 

Justin Trudeau said he’s a feminist. 

He isn’t. 

Justin Trudeau is a terrific actor, however. There he was, after his latest cabinet shuffle, and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He almost sounded offended. 

Demoting a competent, smart, inspiring indigenous woman like Jody Wilson-Raybould – as the Liberal leader had literally done, just minutes before inside Rideau Hall – wasn’t a demotion at all, he huffed. There can be no greater honour than working with Canada’s veterans, he insisted. 

And if some other Prime Minister had said it, it’d be partly true: it is an honour assisting the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces. But under Trudeau, it was a lie. Under him, Veteran’s Affairs has become a political landfill. Under him, veterans have been disregarded, disrespected, and litigated against in the courts. 

So, everyone recognized Trudeau’s claim for what it was, which was unadulterated bullshit. 

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So:

• A Liberal leader who demotes/disrespects competent, respected women who are indigenous or handled important indigenous files, likely because they threaten his celebrity.
• A Conservative leader who has a taxpayer-subsidized pension worth untold millions, hypocritically attacking an opponent for being privileged.
• A New Democrat leader who is clueless, witless and hopeless about just about everything.

And that’s just this week.

Meanwhile, the commentariat wonder why some of us are thinking about voting Green. Wonder no more, etc.

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The puzzle that is Jagmeet Singh: what are we to do with you, Jagmeet?

Andrew Coyne has a typically thoughtful piece in today’s National Post about the erstwhile New Democratic leader.  Mr. Coyne:

It is safe to say Singh has not proved quite the rock star New Democrats hoped when they elected him leader in October 2017. Undertaker would be closer to the mark. While the party trundles along at a little under 17 per cent in the polls, about its historic average, Singh himself is in single digits, slightly behind Elizabeth May as Canadians’ choice for prime minister.

Singh’s trajectory is a cautionary tale on the importance of experience in politics. With just six years in the Ontario legislature, Singh was barely ready for the job of provincial leader, still less the much sharper scrutiny to which federal leaders are subject. It has showed.

He appears frequently to be poorly briefed, on one memorable occasion having to ask a member of caucus, in full view of the cameras, what the party position was on a particular issue. He badly mishandled what should have been a softball question on where he stood on Sikh terrorism, and alienated many in the party with his knee-jerk expulsion of Saskatchewan MP Erin Weir for what appeared to be no worse a crime than standing too close to women at parties.

I write about him in next week’s Hill Times, too.  This what I say:

Jagmeet Singh is the worst federal party leader since Stockwell Day.  He has led his party to historic lows in public opinion. And his political instincts – as seen in his caucus relations, his policy stands, and his byzantine approach to securing seat in the House of Commons – are  non-existent.

So, we’re all agreed on one point: Jagmeet Singh has been a disaster.

Another point of agreement: the Conservatives tend to win when the NDP do better than they’re doing under Singh’s reign of error. Conversely, the Liberals tend to win when the NDP do what they’re doing now, which is dropping like a proverbial stone. That’s a Canadian political truism.

Anyway, those are the points of agreement.  Where I diverge with Professor Coyne is here: I divine no logic – none – in the way the parties are treating the Burnaby South by-election. Unlike the learned Coyne, I cannot observe the outlines of any brilliant strategy at work, here.  To wit:

• If the Liberals really thought Singh was a disaster, why have they taken so bloody long to call the by-election in Burnaby?  Why haven’t they extended the “leader’s courtesy,” like the Greens have, and pledge not to run someone against him?  Why not get him in the House, to further advertise his failings?
• If the Conservatives really wanted to help the New Democrats out, why are they even contesting the by-election? Why not make his life easier, instead of harder? Do they really think they’re in any way assisted by Singh being marked up – or defeated – in a nasty by-election contest, thereby throwing the Dippers into further leadership chaos in the 200-plus days remaining until the October election?  (Similarly, if the Cons think a new and better leader is warranted, who would that be? Why do they think that guy – Messrs. Cullen or Angus, I surmise – would do any better? I don’t.)
• If the New Democrats really wanted to get their act together, why the sweet Jesus did they let their leader even contest Burnaby, where they’re in third place – instead of Singh’s hometown of Brampton, which he easily won, and represented, for years?

None of it makes any sense to me.  It’s all stupid. Unlike Mr. Coyne, I can attribute no grand strategic vision to any of this.  It’s a shambles, for all the parties.  And it recalls the very first Kinsellian Political Rule™:

Never discount the possibility they did it because they’re just, you know, stupid.

 

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