This picture was taken in Kennebunkport, by the by. When the Unpresident takes over, this sort of gathering of Leftie foreigners will be outlawed. 

To commenters and regulars: Happy New Year revels, tonight. Don’t drink and drive, please. See you on the other side. 

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It wasn’t all bad. Daisy celebrated ten years with amazing clients and colleagues, I got a big new book deal, SFH was back with a new record on the way, the kids all achieved great things at school, everyone was healthy – and we got to work for a presidential candidate who was experienced, competent, decent, brave and principled. It was such an honour to volunteer for Hillary Clinton (who got three million more votes, by the way). 

But make no mistake: I believe the election of the Unpresident will affect everyone, and not for the good. Chaos, corruption, cruelty: all of those things (and war, and more) await us in 2017. It will be bad. It will be very bad. 

Since the first week of November, I have pinballed between horror and despair. And, for the first time in my life, I actually fear for the future that awaits my kids. That all may seem too pessimistic, but it’s what I truly feel. 

I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am. 

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Given the number of Ontario Liberal fundraising requests we’ve been getting in recent months – given the advantages of incumbency, and given the fact that the rule changes were developed by the Ontario Liberals themselves – this was just a shocker:

Money was supposed to be the one problem they didn’t have! 

Now, I stress: I am not involved with the OLP in any way, shape or form, but if I were asked for advice about what to do…I wouldn’t have an answer. These fundraising numbers, plus the poll numbers, seem insurmountable. 

Herle and Co. are telling everyone not to worry, I hear. But if I were them?

I’d worry. 

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As you may recall, a neo-Nazi rag started publishing in my neighbourhood. Canada Post distributed it. 

Our local councillor, Mary Margaret McMahon, said ignore it and it’ll go away.

It didn’t. It got bigger. It started reaching more people – hundreds of thousands. My wife and other citizens started organizing against the haters. 

The federal minister responsible, Judy Foote, got involved. She didn’t stick her head in the sand like McMahon, and she took tough action against the haters. It worked. 

When a leader opposes hate, as this New York Times story shows, it matters. It has an impact. But when a “leader” is indifferent to hate, they are complicit in it. 

Here’s an important bit from the story, quoting the Sourhern Poverty Law Centre:

Elected officials at the state and city level, as well as members of the community, can help fight hate and harassment by speaking out in support of immigrants and others who are vulnerable, she said. Law enforcement needs to take hate crimes seriously and investigate them aggressively.

Ms. Beirich said that because Mr. Trump’s campaign and election have brought such a jump in hate crimes, she felt he had a duty to denounce them much more vigorously than he has. George W. Bush’s address at a mosque six days after 9/11, in which he said, “Islam is peace,” had a big effect on anti-Muslim harassment. President-elect Trump needs to do more than make a few comments in interviews, she said. “What we need is real leadership on his part to tamp this down.”

Raising your voice against hate works. 

Silence doesn’t. 

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Does Richard Schonhofer – who may or may not live in Bindloss, Alta., and works at his brother Simon’s Majestic Ranch (you can’t make this stuff up) – have some, you know, some preoccupation with gay sex? 

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Trump made these statements six hours apart on the same day. 

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I hate to upset my progressive friends and all that, but here’s the truth about the “fake news” stuff that all of the media have been talking about since Unpresident Trump “won” by getting three million fewer votes than his sane, competent and qualified opponent last month:

Fake news isn’t news.  We’ve always had fake news.

There. I put it in a block quote so you’d notice it.

Political parties, and political campaigns – and those who are trying to influence the outcome in elections – have always propagated “false news.”  Falsehoods, spin, lies, bullshit: the false news, you will always have with you, to mangle Jesus’ aphorism.

So, George H. W. Bush lied with “read my lips.”  Bill Clinton lied with “sexual relations with that woman.”  George W. Bush lied with “weapons of mass destruction.” Brian Mulroney lied about free trade – “we’ll have none of it.”  Pierre Trudeau lied about wage and price controls – “zap, you’re frozen.”  And so on.  Those are just the ones off the top of my head.  There are plenty more.

I don’t think most of those politicians thought they were in the false news business when they uttered those whoppers.  They probably hoped those things were true, or they believed those things were kind of true.  Spin is “hopeful persuasion,” Clinton guy George Stephanopoulos once said, and I always liked that characterization.  It reflects what I have observed with many political folks: they believe in subjective truth, not objective truth.  And they don’t actually believe there are any objective truths.

Let me give you a real life example, because I’m all about real.

I was near Union Station in my truck, waiting for my beautiful, amazing daughter to come home for Christmas. I was thumbing through Twitter, killing time.

I came across a tweet by the Unpresident, Donald Trump, in which he said: “We did it! We secured Nickelback for the inauguration.  Very pleased, a great American band.”

I laughed out loud.  Trump is an idiot, but this was idiotic even for him.  Nickelback are Canadian! Ha!

There weren’t any of Trump’s telltale spelling mistakes in the tweet – “unpresidented” being my all-time favourite – but it featured that little blue Twitter check mark, indicating it was real.  And the Twitter handle was authentic, too.  Sitting there in my truck, squinting  in the dark, it look real enough to me.

So I tweeted this:

They’re Canadians, you witless moron. But if you want ’em, you can keep ’em. #uspoli #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/eurayBvtas

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) December 21, 2016

People must’ve thought that was funny, because they retweeted it, and favourited it, about a zillion times in the succeeding days. Twitter itself said there have been about 180,000 “impressions” about the tweet (meaning, I’m told, a human being saw it) and nearly 2,000 retweets and twice as many likes or favourites or whatever. So, a lot.

I was pretty focussed on my daughter, you see, and not so much Twitter.  But, later on, when I again looked down on the screen, someone had tweeted back to me, saying the uneven spacing suggested to them that it was fake. So I looked at the tweet again and saw that they were right: the line spacing was off. Some mischief-maker had Photoshopped the thing and sucked in a ton of folks, me included.

And then I got to thinking. So it’s fake: so what?

Some other people – mainly Trump-lovers – starting objecting to the fake tweet. They wanted me to delete it, and tell everyone it was fake.  They started citing Snopes and stuff like that.  They were going bananas.

So I thought some more.

No, I thought, I’m not going to. Donald Trump is a lying sack of shit. He “won” the presidency on a mountain of lies. Lying was all he was any good at, in fact.  He is the Liar in Chief.

So, on Twitter, I started pushing back. Fake news for a fake president, I said to one.  True is false, I said to another, with Orwellian gusto.  Snopes lies, I told one or two, in the hope that their puny craniums would implode.  Embrace the new era, I tweeted to one woman, and stop clinging to the quaint notion that there is any truth left to be had.

The knuckle-draggers were going apeshit about all of this, naturally, and I always enjoy that. I love poking a stick between the bars of the conservative cage. But, in the midst of all the Twitter twaddle, I thought a useful point was being made, as well.

Namely, if the Right are going to tell lies about us, and get away with it, well – what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I always say.  Let’s bombard them with false news, too.  Let’s make them suffocate in it.  Let’s destroy them with it.

If you are progressive, you will be possibly horrified by this, because you are a good person and you observe boundaries.  And, as a fellow progressive, I say to you: I endeavoured to be a good person, too. I tried to stay inside the lines, too.  And what did that get us, precisely?  It got us Donald Trump.

Hopeful persuasion, Stephanopoulos called it.  I like that.  Let’s persuade voters with what we hope to be true, but not what has been proven to be true, beyond a reasonable doubt.  Let’s just make it true on, say, a balance of probabilities.

If that standard is good enough for a civil court, it’s good enough for me.

Truth.

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At Mass with my youngest son, my Mom, my cousin and her brood. Many others are missing, but they’re all going to Hell. 

Merry Christmas to those of you who believe in Christmas. And all the best to those of you who don’t. 

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.@realDonaldTrump says he wants a new nuclear arms race, a Muslim registry, a total abortion ban. I believe:

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) December 24, 2016

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This one:

BREAKING: Trump to #morningjoe on the nukes tweet: 'Let it be an arms race' https://t.co/X9FMNtgKPK

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 23, 2016

There will be some schadenfreude, of course, as the slack-jawed fools who voted for Trump realize what they have wrought. But, by then, the missiles should be arcing overhead, and the church pews will all be full, too late. 

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