11.19.2014 08:17 AM

God Save Justin Trudeau: the fight

I haven’t seen the film, but Ashley Csanady (I love her name, it’s like a Pynchon character’s name) and she has a hilarious review of it, here.

Personally, I think the Trudeau-Brazeau match was really, really important.  Inspired by Csanady, here are my numbered reasons why:

  1. Boxing is what all sports are, stripped down to base elements. It is perfect because it doesn’t hide what it is.
  2. Boxing is used by writers all the time as a metaphor for other things, because it lends itself to that.  Here, Trudeau turned it into a metaphor for politics, and I don’t know if anyone has ever done that before.
  3. Politics, when stripped down to its base elements, is really a struggle of symbols.  Conservatives have always understood this, as I wrote in one of my books.  Trudeau, I think, is one of the first progressives to understand it.
  4. Everything about that fight was replete with symbolism: red versus blue, conservative versus progressive, new versus old, insider versus outsider, elected versus unelected, change versus more of the same, and so on.
  5. At great risk to himself, Trudeau used that charity boxing match to re-order the political zeitgeist.  Everything changed after that.

Me? I couldn’t even watch the fight, when it happened. I was at Sun News that day, where various on-air people were eagerly anticipating Trudeau’s demise. It was an utterly bizarre environment to be in, at that moment.

So, because I knew him and liked him, I wouldn’t watch it. If he failed, it would be like Stanfield’s fumbled football, or Dukakis’ tank, or whatever. It would be all over – and the last, great hope of the Liberal Party of Canada would be forever remembered for that loss.

But he won. He took the risk, and he won, and he changed the alchemy of Canadian politics forever.

I rather suspect he is getting ready to it again.

TheFight

17 Comments

  1. Peter says:

    and he changed the alchemy of Canadian politics forever

    Hmm, sounds like someone is fantacizing about attack ads to the theme song from Rocky. Sigh, If only Iggy had challenged the Puffster to a game of shuffleboard.

  2. Joe says:

    The Princess Patricias make fun of the Royal Canadian Regiment over the Riel Rebellion. It seems that General Mddleton led the RCRs out west to fight the Indians except they couldn’t find any Indians who wanted to fight so they hung a halfbreed.

    Looks like Justin couldn’t beat Harper so he beat up a senator. I wonder if anyone else notices that pugilism and politics are not the same thing.

    • Kevin T. says:

      Damn, my forehead hurts from having it hit the keyboard after reading this. If it was up to me, I would just give you a straw, so you wouldn’t have so far to grasp.

    • Tired of it All says:

      Sorry, you mean Harper refused to get in the ring? Clearly JT’s fault. Silly JT. He should have fought Harper instead, despite, you know, it not being an option. And isn’t he fighting him now? In the political ring. You know, politically? I have *so* much to learn.

  3. J. Smith says:

    Political Boxing

    Idi Amin, the Last King of Scotland, was a superb athlete. At 193cm (6′ 4′) and muscled like a hippo, Amin was the Ugandan light heavyweight boxing champion. Amin seized power in a military coup and declared himself president. Amin placed military tribunals above civil law and subjected even cabinet ministers to the same rigors of revolutionary justice. Uganda descended into a nightmare of extra-judicial killings, torture, ethnic cleansing, genocide. Amin expelled all Asians from the country. The polygamist Amin lived with his many wives in splendor fathering somewhere between 35-45 children.

    Psychiatrists have speculated Amin’s bizarre and erratic behavior was undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder – something that ran in his family – exacerbated by repeated blows to the head and perhaps in conjunction with long-term syphilis. His full self-bestowed title ultimately became: “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” After allying himself with Momar Gadhafi and proclaiming himself a new Hitler, Amin became unstable in the extreme; it was feared he would attempt to join the Commonwealth heads of government meeting and the government, “drew up elaborate contingency plans involving the anti-terrorist squad and police marksmen to detain Amin on his arrival in the UK and to eject him from the country.”

    In an interview with Peter Gzowski (CBC), Hunter S. Thompson said of Jimmy Carter: “I think he’s one of the three meanest men I’ve ever met. The other two were Muhammad Ali and Sonny Barger, the president of the Hell’s Angels. Those three men are a whole cut above everybody else I’ve ever run into in terms of sheer functional meanness.” Indeed, Carter, like a street smart street fighter, surrounded himself with other wolverines. During the Khmer Rouge genocide, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, acknowledged, “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot … Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.”

    The National Post online got full points for pushing the propaganda envelope: “‘I was a full-blown cokehead’: Mike Tyson reveals he was high during fights, used fake penis to fool testers” is placed only inches away from, “‘Bring it on, buddy’: Toronto council resembles a boxing ring as Ford comes under attack over drug use.” The parallels are there. Two massive, aggressive, raging, coke-fueled men terrorizing just about everyone in their respective orbits. Tyson’s legacy will sadly be footnoted by ear biting, drunken-backyard-crashing of BMWs and incarceration for rape. Ford has yet to be charged with anything. Unlike Tyson, Ford cannot point to a bleak ghetto childhood as the root cause. Society coddled him into l’enfant terrible.

    Justin Trudeau likes to box: “it’s the best feeling in the world to measure yourself against an opponent and test yourself because your fortune, your intelligence, your beauty, none of that fucking matters.” People tuned in to watch him beat the tar out of Aboriginal senator Patrick Brazeau – the rather dubious propaganda motif of the socialist superman triumphing over the Indian in a sort of Rocky-meets-Black Robe narrative. Now that JT has publically admitted to smoking grass, is he too a drug-fueled pugilist? Has he been tested for drugs? Should there be some kind of procedure to check for fake genitalia? These are strange issues for strange times.

    The Quebec-produced film God Save Justin Trudeau seems Aminesque with its combination of boxing and the usurpation of the symbolic executive to appeal to les Nègres blancs d’Amérique. Indeed, the Liberal leadership contest had all the verisimilitude of professional wrestling. (This was Lee Atwater’s favorite political metaphor.) When Findley and Garneau introduced real questions, they were quickly forced to public self-denunciation.Trudeau purged the Liberal Senate (who lamely tried to regroup as “senate liberals”.) He signs autographs on the plane with “Just watch me!” alluding to the only time martial law has been declared in peacetime. The non-open “open” nomination process apparently depends entirely on byzantine ingratiation rituals. Trudeau purged two of his MPs, 6% of his seats; no one knows exactly why although dark rumors circulate; other MPs privately muse: “will we be next?” Salami tactics. Everyone is walking on eggshells.

    The Trudeauites came under fire for opining at a Liberal lady’s night that: “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China, uhh, because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around… having a dictatorship where you can do whatever you wanted, that I find quite interesting.” Let a hundred bourgeoisie bloom. The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of active measure among the chattering classes. French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir wrote: “most Chinese intellectuals, like ours, are of bourgeois origin. Time spent in factories and villages is recommended; these stays are not obligatory as certain journalists have falsely insinuated” (in fact, millions were forcibly sent for “re-education through labor” in the countryside.) Beauvoir’s 501-page pro-Maoist propaganda book, the Long March, goes on, “one cannot but marvel at the Chinese government’s prudence: it has obtained the bourgeoisie’s vital collaboration – and at scant cost – and it has maneuvered with enough skill to expropriate the bourgeoisie gradually and without resorting to force.” Salami tactics.

    Reader’s Digest, April 2013, “The Emptiest Vessel Wins,” features a well-photo shopped image of Justin Trudeau, “The Second Coming of Trudeau” – the obvious allusion being the Second Coming of Christ. The article states: “Team Trudeau have bet everything on their man’s charisma. If you’re a skeptic, they’re utterly certain seeing him in person will make you a believer…” (not to be confused with a Belieber.) The article concludes that, “In politics, you underestimate the empty vessel at your own peril.” Key-in “second coming” into an adequate periodical database for cross-referencing and it will also return: “New African July 2013 (ISSN 0142-9345/”Published on Behalf of the Ministry of Information”), the title in large point bold, ‘The Second Coming’ beside a full cover of a smiling Robert Mugabe in blue pinstripes – released three months after the Reader’s Digest – evidently, Robert Mugabe is copying Team Trudeau’s propaganda initiatives. The theme of the magazine is “We Had To Indigenise!” and is expressed by constantly alluding to the Apocalyptic: e.g. Robert Gabriel Mugabe, is being persecuted by Archbishops Desmond Tutu and John Sentamu under the heading, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Heady stuff.

    Amin’s power withered over time. Reports of him keeping severed heads in the freezer emerged. He was obviously insane. Despite military assistance from Libya’s Momar Gadhafi, Amin fled into exile, first to Libya and then settling in Saudi Arabia. The Last King of Scotland died. Carter and Co. labor on. A well-ripened Brzezinski was featured in Alexandre Trudeau’s the New Great Game – a virulent anti-Western-British-American-Israeli musing – produced in association with Press-TV, the propaganda organ of the theocratic Iranian state. Mugabe has positioned his wife – colloquially known as the “First Lady of Shopping” for her six-figure shopping sprees – as his successor. Mugabe’s North Korean trained “5 Brigade” stand readied to liquidate dissent and protect the Dear Leader. Time is the revelator. What will become of Canada’s god-king and l’ancien regime remains to be seen as that small nation descends into political boxing and a personality cult of the most virulent order.

    • Kevin T. says:

      Anybody read this? The extreme length makes it appear like another Con rant about Trudeau to hide the fear of his inevitably kicking Con ass next year, am I right?

      • smelter rat says:

        All I heard was blah, blah blah, so can’t help you 😉

        • Just Askin' says:

          Ask your buddy Scotian how many people actually read his rants.

          • smelter rat says:

            Scotian can fart more sense than anything you’ve ever posted.

          • Scotian says:

            Just Askin’:

            As many people as choose to, why thank you for asking. Thanks for the drive by smear. Incidentally, given the amount of comments I get on the material I’ve written it would appear more than a few people choose to read what I write, including it appears yourself, so it was a rather weak drive by smear at that.

            See, I can do short as well, it is especially easy when addressing something with as little substance as I just did. Thanks for providing me the example to do so with.

          • smelter rat says:

            Heh. Cons can dish it out, but they sure can’t take it.

        • Kevin T. says:

          Damn, thanks anyway. I guess I’ll just have to gut this one out and totally ignore it.

    • Nic Coivert says:

      I think Nixon and Kissenger fostered the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot

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