Punk vs. Trump

— 01.25.2017 10:00 AM

Only one punk combo staked out the moral high ground more than a year ago, when no one was taking this racist, sexist, fascist seriously!




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Comment about comments in the Alternative Facts era

— 01.25.2017 08:48 AM

I welcome comments here, but within limits.

One additional thing that I will not permit is the use of this space to promote racism and hatred.  Thus, this, to “Fred from BC.”

Fred:

Comments are welcome, but I will not allow this space to be used to advocate for a ban on Muslims. Go elsewhere, if you want to spew that kind of bullshit.

Warren

Just as the New York Times is now (correctly) describing the Unpresident as a liar in news story headlines, I will not allow my web site to become a repository for hate and obvious bullshit.

Understood?


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This week’s column: the USA, RIP

— 01.24.2017 08:56 AM

Countries die. Nations fade away.

They do, they do. Great nations – however great they may be – are not eternal.

Pierre Trudeau certainly thought so, some thirty years ago. Appearing before the Senate to condemn the Meech Lake Accord in the Spring of 1988, Trudeau said: “If the people of Canada want this Accord, and that is not beyond the realm of possibility, then let that be part of the Constitution. I, for one, will be convinced that the Canada we know and love will be gone forever. But, then, Thucydides wrote that Themistocles’ greatness lay in the fact that he realized Athens was not immortal. I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper.”

T.S. Eliot, Thucydides, Themistocles and realpolitik, all in three pithy sentences. Those of us who are old enough can recall watching him on that cold March day, simply in awe that one man could say such a thing – that Canada could die! How could a country like this one disappear? Was Trudeau right?

As with many things, he was. In the intervening years, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Yugoslavia, the U.S.S.R have all slipped beneath history’s waves, supplanted by something else entirely. Replaced – in the cases of the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslovia – with something where monstrous and horrific things have happened. It could happen to Canada, too.

It was not arrogant for Pierre Trudeau to say what he said. It is arrogant, instead, to insist that a nation – which is mostly just the shared hopes and dreams and values of a people, a body of laws, and some squiggles on a map – is incapable of dying. Nations, like the people who constitute them, die.

The United States of America, for example.

Ascertaining the moment of America’s demise, as a forensic scientist might do, is subjective. It is in the eye of the one doing the autopsy. And, in this case, America died in degrees.

JFK. His brother. Dr. King. Watergate. The Depression. Civil war. Slavery. Lynchings. Internment camps. McCarthyism. Iraq. Enola Gay. Vietnam. 9/11. All of these, and too many more, were grievous wounds. They deeply weakened the only democratic superpower, but they did not fully kill it.

For this writer – who lived in the United States, went to school there, and can still even recite the Declaration of Independence – two less-historical moments come to mind. One was in the late Sixties, when my family was living in Texas, and my best friend was an Hispanic boy, David.

David and I did everything together, but he mysteriously did not go to my school, David G. Burnet Elementary. I asked my mother why. She had no answer, so she asked the Stevensons, the Texas family who had taken this group of newcomer Canadians under their wing. Wasn’t the day coming, my Mom asked, when David and Warren would be allowed to go to school together?

Mrs. Stevenson, the sweetest and most generous person you could ever hope to meet, looked at my mother and said: “On that day, I will go down to the school with my gun.”

The other moment came much later, in 1993, when I was holed up in a cabin in Lake Placid, New York, trying to finish up my book about racism in Canada and the U.S., Web of Hate. In the evening, to get a break, we went into town for a burger and beer at a place on Main Street. Mid-way through our meal, a guy walked in with a T-shirt with a swastika and the words WHITE POWER on the front of it. What was remarkable wasn’t him, or his shirt: it was how he was greeted by the people there, like an old friend. “In Canada,” I said to my partner, “you don’t see that, so much. Here, they don’t care.”

The United States died – the United States was killed – on December 14, 2012. On that day in Newtown, Connecticut, a 20-year-old man – carrying a gun that was legal for him to possess – gunned down 20 children between the ages of six and seven years old. He also killed six adult staff members, but it is those tiny victims we remember most.

And what was the response to that act of evil by the United States of America, the nation that likes to claim it is the greatest on Earth? What did it change, what did it do? Nothing. It defeated any and all attempts to prevent Sandy Hook from happening again.

It was then, right then, that the United States of America died. When you can let 20 six and seven-year-olds be murdered, and do nothing to prevent it from happening ever again, you cease to be a country. You cease to be a people worthy of the name.

The United States didn’t die when Donald Trump was sworn in as President. In a nation where savageries like Sandy Hook could happen, over and over again, Donald Trump is not an aberration.

He is its logical conclusion.


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O’Laughable

— 01.24.2017 08:49 AM

I’m sorry, but this is awesome:

Kevin O’Leary is the far-and-away front-runner for the Conservative leadership as the Opposition party gains slightly on the Liberals in overall voter preference, according to a new poll.

O’Leary, the celebrity businessman who entered the Tory leadership race last week after months of signalling a potential campaign, is the top choice to lead the party for 27 per cent of poll respondents. The survey found he had more than twice the support of runner-up Maxime Bernier, the Quebec MP and former minister who scored 11 per cent.

Here’s why:

• Conservatives grew in only one province in 2015 – Quebec – but they prefer a guy who doesn’t speak a word of French

• Conservatives prefer a far-Right reality TV show moron at the precise moment that far-Right reality TV show morons are spurring protests around the globe involving millions

• Conservatives prefer a Boston resident who, like that other Boston resident they spent untold millions to demonize, is “just visiting”

If they had any intelligence, they’d pick Raitt, Chong or a Bernier.

They don’t have any intelligence. They’re O’Losers.


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Should the CPC use Harper for fundraising?

— 01.23.2017 01:20 PM

If it works, sure. A snippet from this week’s Hill Times:

Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella said Mr. Harper has always been a “polarizing candidate,” and, as a result, has the dual affect of mobilizing and motivating both Conservatives and Liberals.

“The Conservatives are using him in fundraising because he’s popular with their vote, and Liberals are using him in their fundraising because he’s unpopular with theirs,”said Mr. Kinsella.

Mr. Kinsella said he used to help draft fundraising letters while working for Mr. Chrétien, and while they’re filled with lots of sentence fragments, all caps, underlines, and bolding,“the main thing is who’s signing it.”

“These letters really work if they’re coming from the right person,”he said.

“The good news for [Conservatives] is [Mr. Harper’s] still willing to help out. The bad news for them is he’s gone. Whoever follows him, I don’t see any one of the candidates with the skills or the ability that Harper obviously had.”


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