On our journey Stateside, we did Trump sightings. 

Whenever we’d see a Trump bumper sticker, or billboard, or T-shirt, we’d point it out to each other. “There’s another one,” we’d say. Then we’d lapse into silence. 

All along highway 90, we were reminded that we weren’t in Canada anymore. It was weird. 

And, unlike when we are in Canada – where it’s safe to call Donald Trump a racist and bigot and a white nationalist out loud – we kept our comments to ourselves. At the border crossing in Niagara Falls, in fact, our son implored us to say nothing about Trump. “They have microphones at the border,” he said, nervously, and we did what he asked.

So, as we got deeper into America, we continued to keep quiet about Donald Trump. As our son suggested, it’s hard to know which white person supports him, and which one doesn’t.  

Gallup, however, has now given us a useful field guide. As everyone expected, it tends to be older, whiter men. But the assumption everybody previously made about the core Trump vote – me included – is wrong. 

Before Massachusetts, I simply assumed – like everyone else – that Trump’s vote was rooted in economic insecurity and resentments. Until Massachusetts, I had bought into all of the Rust Belt theory: he was attracting the support of older white men in the primaries who believed they lost their manufacturing jobs to trade deals, technology and globalization. Until Massachusetts.

Massachusetts has one of the highest rates of post secondary education in the union, you see. And, in the primaries, Donald Trump won Massachusetts in a landslide.

Gallup has now released a massive study about all of this stuff. The poll makes clear that the number one preoccupation of the Trump vote isn’t the economy. It’s race.

“His supporters are less educated and more likely to work in blue collar occupations, but they earn relative high household incomes, and living in areas more exposed to trade or immigration does not increase Trump support. There is stronger evidence that racial isolation and less strictly economic measures of social status, namely health and intergenerational mobility, are robustly predictive of more favorable views toward Trump, and these factors predict support for him but not other Republican presidential candidates.”

Race, not economy. That’s why Trump called Mexicans rapists and murderers, and that’s why he called for a ban on Muslims, and that’s why he said blacks are the cause of crime. Race. He knew exactly what he was doing in the primaries. It worked. 

Being a Canadian, I of course thought that the election and re-election of a black man as president meant that the United States of America – where I lived for years, and which I love – meant the end of racism. I watched Jesse Jackson cry on Election Night in 2008 (I may have too), and I concluded that America had been reborn. 

Well, it hasn’t been, and Trump is irrefutable proof. 

So too his vote. They aren’t a media construct, either. They aren’t made up. They are real people, flesh and blood. And they feel have been left behind by trade, technology and the times. If we’re being honest with ourselves, they actually have been, haven’t they?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not making excuses. Donald Trump is of course a deranged, autocratic, racist piece of shit. He is the worst of the worst. That is the truth. 

But, as we headed South along the turnpike, this also is true: he has awoken a beast. And, after Trump loses in November, everyone will still have to contend with that beast roaming America, upending conventions and common wisdom. 

The beast is coming to Canada, too. Just watch. Rob Ford was just the beginning. 

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Like most Canadians, I see good in all of the Canadian political parties. I think they all occasionally have good ideas, and they all have some great people.

But they are all sort of the same, aren’t they? They often become indistinguishable when they win the privilege of power. In government, they really aren’t all that different. 

Bob Rae’s New Democrats (appropriately) imposed austerity measures when they ran things in Ontario, and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives (appropriately) spent like drunken sailors in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 global recession. And Justin Trudeau’s Liberals (belatedly, but correctly) decided they’d been wrong about ISIS, and have committed Canada to something Harper never, ever did – troops on the ground, in harm’s way.

In my reclining years, I seek clarity, however. I seek a real contrast. So, I’ve made a big decision. I’ve chosen a new political party. Next week, I formally announce it. But can you guess which one? Vote now, vote often!

[polldaddy poll=9500306]

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Three years ago! Wow.  Times flies when you’re super frigging old.

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Knew his wife, who was simply amazing, better. Him, not so much. 

Anyway. You know what I liked about him? Happened on one day. 

It was 2005, Spring. He’d been with The Boss early on, and then he abruptly wasn’t. He went over to Martin, when things were really bad. Some things you don’t forget. 

So, we ran into each other in front of Centre Block. Shook hands. Him: “I don’t like what you say about the Prime Minister.”

Me: “I don’t fucking like what you did to the real Prime Minister.”

He laughed, and so did I. Small talk. We parted ways, smiling. 

Always remember that. He was the only one of them who had the balls to take me on, to my face. I liked that. Didn’t leak stuff anonymously, like some of those little bastards in the Martin Blip PMO. 

Anyway. RIP and safe travels, Belanger. You weren’t perfect, like all of us, but you did good when you were here. 

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Ever curious about what Warren does late at night, when he can’t sleep? Well, he leaves his genius supermodel wife to the heart-shaped water bed, slips out, fires up some Google in the North Wing, sips at some port, and asks himself stuff like: “I wonder what Anita Pallenberg is up to these days?”

So, here, an absolutely classic yarn by the late Chet Flippo about that time the Strolling Bones came to Toronto and genially upended Canadian politics. I was a skinny, pale teenage punk rocker in Calgary when I first read this epic, and I loathed everyone in Flippo’s story, for their corporate cock rock excess and solipsism. But I simply loved Flippo’s writing. 

Oh, Anita is still alive. Go figure. 

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Evidence here.

Reason why, here. You’re welcome, world. 

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Here’s FiveThirtyEight’s model that aggregates more than 500 polls.

What you see, there, isn’t the proverbial snapshot.  It’s a trend line.  And, for the racist, extremist, nationalist Republican nominee, the trend line is all downward.  As things stand now, he is going to lose: as of today, in fact, projections show Hillary Clinton already has the electoral college votes needed to win the presidency.

So, if you were a GOP strategist trying still to elect Trump – or, more plausibly, to save “down ticket” Republican candidates – what do you do?

• Try and convince Trump to stop saying stupid things: Won’t work.  Has been tried many times, but he continues to self-immolate.
• Run a paid campaign against your own party’s nominee: Some desperate folks are already doing this, as seen here.  This, too, is unlikely to work.  Voters will simply say (as they did with the Martin-era Liberal Party): “If they can’t manage their own affairs, how can they be trusted to manage the affairs of the nation?”
• Disavow Trump, run letter campaigns against him, etc. See above.  It may make you feel better in the morning – but you still are going to be out of work, on that morning after Election Night.  Per Stein, a Republican is a Republican is a Republican.  Voters can’t ever be counted on to make fine distinctions when staring at a ballot.
• Pray for an October Surprise.  This, I have felt for some time, is all that Trump has left, but no one should doubt the impact an October Surprise can have.  Terror attacks typically work in Trump’s favour, and buttress his narrative that the world is a scary place and America needs a scarier guy in charge. It worked for W. in 2004, after all.

At this very moment, Donald Trump’s two biggest fans – Vladimir Putin and ISIS – are busily concocting an October Surprise.  In in the latter case, it will almost certainly be one with a big body count; in the former case, it will be something concocted by Putin’s hacker army.

I hope I’m wrong, of course.  But, based on the numbers, October Surprise is really all that Trump has left.

 

 

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Does this disgust you?

It should. It’s an Ohio man who filmed himself killing a black bear in Alberta – with a spear with a camera mounted on it. He’s a narcissistic, loathsome bodybuilder type who used bait in a barrel to attract the bear.  After he speared it, the animal was left for a day to die. You can reach him by email to tell him what you think about what he did: bowmarfitness@gmail.com.  Also here.

The Albertans who helped him kill the bear run a business promoting the killing of bears.  You can reach them here.

The Alberta government apparently plans to outlaw this killing, and is considering charges against these scumbags.  In the meantime, feel free to drop them a line and tell them what you think.

If enough interest develops, we can perhaps put together a boycott of the companies who help sponsor this kind of insanity: the Nisku Inn, Under Armour, Nikon and others.

 

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Dear Green Party leader Elizabeth May:

You seem like a good person. You seem to be honest. You are the kind of thoughtful person we need in public life.

So, you should quit.

Now, that may sound a little contradictory. That (on the one hand) you are good, honest and thoughtful, but that (on the other) you should resign the leadership of the Green Party of Canada. But it isn’t contradictory at all.

Because the problem isn’t you. The problem is the lunatics, bigots and conspiracy theorists who now make up your party. The problem is that they are pulling you down. And they are ensuring that the Green Party will never be anything more than what it presently is.

Which is – without you – nothing.

After your party’s latest move – a suicide note it called a “policy” – you told the Ottawa media you are taking a period of reflection. You told the assembled reporters that you need to decide if you should continue as leader of the Green Party.

You shouldn’t.

Firstly, and most seriously, there is an argument to be made that your party is anti-Semitic. That’s a serious allegation, and we don’t make it lightly. But it’s pretty accurate.

A few days ago, at your biennial convention in Ottawa, your party voted to support the use of divestment, boycott and sanctions – known by its antiseptic acronym, as BDS – against Israelis. BDS is what its name implies – a tool to hammer Israeli citizens with boycotts and divestment and sanctions, and effectively starve them into submission. To punish them at a personal level for the alleged omissions of their government.

The resolution said: “BE IT RESOLVED that the GPC supports the use of divestment, boycott and sanctions (“BDS”) that are targeted to those sectors of Israel’s economy and society which profit from the ongoing occupation of the [occupied territories]…”

Anticipating what would happen next, your fellow party members added this: “BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the GPC opposes all efforts to prohibit, punish or otherwise deter expressions of support for BDS.”

Sadly, the Green Party’s BDS motion was one of two foreign-policy statements that targeted the Jewish state at your convention. The other one called on the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund. (For planting trees. We are not making this up, as much as we wish we were.)

Anyway. Some facts are in order about BDS – which might more appropriately be described as bully, deceive and smear.

That’s because BDS is, as you are aware, essentially racist. Its leadership, in the main, do not support Israel’s right to exist – or even the idea of Israel. The movement’s founder, Omar Barghouti, has denied that Israelis are a people – or even that they have any collective rights as a people.

As such, he has accused average Israelis of “massacres” and “ethnic cleansing” – things that are the most serious of crimes, as you know, practiced by the likes of the Nazis and ISIS.

Barghouti couches his opposition to Israel’s existence in exquisitely benign terms. But, as the New York Daily News editorialized after publishing one of his many open columns, Barghouti is tremendously “skilled as a propagandist,” and also one who “piles falsehood upon falsehood to present Israel as relentlessly oppressing the Palestinians in violation of human decency, and to hold Israel exclusively responsible for the ills afflicting them.”

And that is the problem, Ms. May. BDS holds only average Israeli to a higher standard – a standard that is not observed by any of the anti-democratic states that surround it. A standard that no other country in the world, in fact, is being asked to observe in the same way.

Another problem is this: the Green Party’s BDS position – and BDS generally – seeks to replace dialogue and debate with punishment.

When implemented, it hurts average Israeli citizens – and the Palestinians who work with them in Israel, because many Palestinians do. The factories in the disputed territories? They overwhelmingly employ Palestinians, as you know.

The main pro-Jewish lobby group in Canada was rightly appalled by your party’s resolutions. While that organization effectively became an extension for the propaganda of the former Conservative government, it got one thing right. It said that BDS “seeks to censor and blacklist Israelis, [and is] fundamentally discriminatory and utterly at odds with Canadian values.” Because it targets average Israelis. Average folks.

Proof of this is found, regrettably, in the words of your most senior people. Your party’s justice critic, for instance, effectively called for Israelis to be punished. Previously, he had called Israelis terrorists (when they aren’t) and expressed affection for Hamas (who are).

This mindset is revealed in that last part of the Green Party’s now-infamous resolution – the part that condemns any Green Party who has the temerity to oppose the BDS resolution. Namely, you.

That, you see, is the main problem with the Green Party’s BDS stunt, Ms. May. Internationally, no one particularly cares a whit what a minuscule Canadian political party – a party with a single, solitary seat in the House of Commons – has to say. You lack the means to defeat governments or change policy in any meaningful way. You don’t matter so much, legislatively.

What matters is this: the Green Party resolution – particularly that last part – is aimed at you, not Israel. Your fellow Greens knew you vehemently opposed the resolution, but they added that last bit to say that they don’t really support you in return. Oppose us, they said, and you are no longer part of us.

That’s the problem with BDS, too. It seeks to win through division and punishment. It seeks to drive average people apart, when they are the ones needed to create a peaceful and just Middle East.

The Green Party doesn’t like the Jewish state, Ms. May. And, now, it’s apparent they don’t like you much, either.

You are a good and decent person. A thoughtful person.

Your party, officially, is not.

Time to leave them to their resentments and their seething hatreds. Time to quit, and join with those who want to bring people together, not drive them apart.

Sincerely,

Etc.

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