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In ‘Lee,’ Kate Winslet’s new movie about the celebrated World War II photojournalist Lee Miller, the descent into the heart of darkness is slow, but it is always the destination.

The film starts with Miller and her young friends watching newsreel footage of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis marching triumphantly through the streets of Berlin. Miller and her friends shake their heads, disapproving, still unaware that the Nazis are marching towards them, too.

War begins. With her Rolleiflex camera, Miller goes on to document London’s Blitz, the fierce battle over Saint-Malo, the liberation of Paris. And then, with her photojournalist colleague David E. Sherman, Miller arrives at Buchenwald and Dachau, the concentration camps where tens of thousands of Jews, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, Freemasons, Communists, Catholic priests and Roma people were slaughtered. But mainly Jews.

You have perhaps seen the photos Miller took at Buchenwald in April 1945, just after it was liberated by Allied troops. They are famous photographs, now displayed in museums. In them, you see a block for medical experimentation, and other buildings set aside for executions and torture, and a crematorium. Miller described what she saw:

“The six hundred bodies stacked in the courtyard of the crematorium because they had run out of coal the last five days had been carted away until only a hundred were left; and the splotches of death had been washed from the wooden potato masher because the place had to be disinfected; and the bodies on the whipping stalls were dummies instead of almost dead men who could feel but not react.”

The movie about Lee Miller arrived around here in the same week that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a press conference to announce a tax holiday on pudding and fake Christmas trees. His smirking Minister of Finance hovering beside him, Trudeau was asked about the International Criminal Court’s issuance of arrest warrants against two Jews. His government would “abide” by the ICC warrants, he said.

“This is just who we are as Canadians,” he said.

Is it? Is that who we are now? Or is it the sort of moral abasement Lee Miller and her friends glimpsed in flickering newsreel footage about Nazis? Because it certainly feels like that.

The two Jews Trudeau agreed to arrest, in the unlikely event they ever alight on Canadian soil, are Israel’s Prime Minister and its former Minister of Defence. They had committed “war crimes,” the ICC declared in a release, which went then went on to say the details of the war crimes are “secret.”

It’s relevant that the details are being kept secret. Disclosing the facts, you see, would swiftly reveal the allegations to be as phony as one of Trudeau’s tax-exempt plastic Christmas trees.

The facts are these: Palestinians – some in uniform, some not – swept into Israel early on the morning of October 7, 2023, and commenced murdering, maming, raping and stealing thousands of Jews. On that day, you might say, it was “just who they are as Palestinians.”

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What I write sometimes makes people angry. Right and Left.

Here’s what I’ve noticed. It’s interesting.

I write about different stuff. Politics, music, culture, whatever. People react.

Sometimes I take a position that is notionally “progressive.” I’ll indicate support for trans kids, or taxing polluters, or vaccines.

Self-described “progressives” will react by saying nothing. “Conservatives,” meanwhile, will go apeshit and say I’m a communist, a pedophile, whatever.

But they will say those things to me directly. Right to me.

And sometimes I take a position that is notionally “conservative.” I’ll say I support capital punishment, or less taxation, or (these days) Israel.

Self-described conservatives will react by sending me messages about how delighted they are that I have joined their side, even though I haven’t joined any side. They always want to increase the size of their team. I think they always want validation.

The progressives are a different matter. When they read that “conservative” stuff, they again don’t contact me directly, almost ever.

Instead, they complain to my editors. They complain to my publishers. They complain to my clients.

They complain to whoever they think is my boss.

They do that to get me fired or disciplined or whatever. Mainly, they do it to get me canceled.

That’s the difference between conservatives and progressives, in my experience. The conservatives will get angry and abusive, but at least they do it to your face. The progressives get pious and indignant and vengeful, and they will try to get you shut down.

Both sides have assholes, in their own way. The critical difference is that, however: one side gets mad at you directly, and then forgets about it. The other side wants to end you, forever.

That’s how I look at the “woke” stuff. In definitional terms, being woke means opposing bigotry and injustice. I agree with opposing bigotry and injustice.

In practical terms, however, woke has come to mean: punish those who disagree with you. Make them bleed.

That’s what the Right and the Left have come to mean to me, at least insofar as my writing goes.

I don’t really give a shit about either extreme, but it’s certainly been interesting.

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Observing the braying, spit-flecked mob outside the doors to Toronto’s Park Hyatt Hotel on Monday night – replete with signs (falsely) accusing Israel of genocide, and hinting (clearly) at a desired genocide of their own – it almost seemed redundant to ask: what did the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas swarm hope to accomplish?

It’s a relevant question, too: like, what the Hell? Are you actually against books, pro-Hamas cabal? Have you, at long last, reached that low, that nadir?

Because that’s all that the tony affair at the Park Hyatt was about, folks: books. Canadian books, in particular.

The occasion was the awarding of the Giller, which is one of the biggest such prizes for writing in the world, with $100,000 going to the winner. It’s been going for years, now, and was started by the much-admired Jack Rabinovitch, a business guy who loved books. He named the prize after his wife and true love, Doris Giller, who had been editor at the books section of the Toronto Star. After Jack passed away in 2017, his daughter Elana Rabinovitch took up the mantle.

The finalists this year were from across Canada. There was Eric Chacour from Quebec, who wrote ‘I Know About You.’ There was Anne Fleming from Victoria, with ‘Curiosities.’ There was Guelph’s Deepa Rajagopalan, who was there for ‘Peacocks of Instagram.’ There was Conor Kerr, who is an Alberta guy and even wore his cowboy hat all night, picked for his book ‘Prairie Edge.’ And there was the winner, the soft-spoken and thoughtful Anne Michaels from Toronto, who wrote ‘Held.’

It was a nice event. Everyone there – former Toronto mayor John Tory, Canadian U.N. Ambassador Bob Rae, and a metric ton of folks sporting Order of Canada pins on their lapels – wanted to celebrate books generally, and Canadian books in particular. Who could be against that?

Well, the Hamas fetishists could be, and are. Last year, just a few days after Israel commenced its just and rational war against Hamas for slaughtering 1,200 Jews and non-Jews, some creeps disrupted the Giller ceremony. They jumped up on stage with signs that falsely accused the main sponsor, Scotiabank, of “funding genocide.” Screamed one: “We will not be silent anymore.”

Well, at this year’s gala, they were. There was more security present than at a typical Prime Ministerial speech, and everything went off without a hitch. No Hamasniks made it inside to cause trouble. Credit Elana Rabinovitch for that.

People at this year’s event – where Scotiabank’s name was absent – were clearly relieved. Some great books got promoted, and Canadian writing got celebrated. It was, as noted, nice.

But the question still nags: How can the ones who profess to be for Palestine be against books?

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The people are always right, John Turner said.

It was the evening of September 4, 1984 when he said that. Turner’s Liberal Party had just been crushed by Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives. On that occasion, so long ago, it felt like Turner was right. The people had spoken.

These days, we’re not so sure. These days, it’s pretty hard to believe that “the people are always right.”

In the United States, for instance, the people chose Donald Trump. It was a free and fair election, and Democrats have respected the outcome. The didn’t convene secret meetings of fake electors, they didn’t allege the election had been stolen, they didn’t instigate a riot at the Capitol.

But, in the days since the election, America and the world – and many within Trump’s own Republican Party – have been shocked by Trump’s selections for his cabinet.

There is Robert Kennedy, Jr., who famously opposes vaccines and says he has a worm in his brain (those two things may be related). Trump wants to put Kennedy in charge of healthcare for millions of Americans – which has many experts predicting a return of measles, polio and other preventable disease diseases.

There is Tulsi Gabbard, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of Syria’s genocidal regime, and has been credibly accused of being a Russian asset. Trump wants her to be America’s top intelligence official.

There is Matt Gaetz, who has been investigated for sex with a minor, illegal drug use and accepting improper gifts. Trump wants him to be America’s Attorney General.

There is Pete Hegseth, who has never had a military command role, and who has said he hasn’t washed his hands in a decade, because germs aren’t real. Trump wants him to run America’s military.

There is Elon Musk, the billionaire who has been secretly meeting with Iranian officials – which, as the New York Times has reported, has delighted the ayatollahs in Iran, who have called it “positive” and “good news.” Trump has brought Musk in for all kinds of meetings, without ensuring first that the X elf lord has a security clearance.

Up here, of course, we have a Prime Minister who has worn racist black face many times, who has never been cleared of groping a female reporter, and who has been found culpable in multiple corruption scandals. And who claims to be (a) anti-racist, (b) feminist, and (c) leading a responsible and ethical government.

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