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Above: example of when a politician should’ve shut up.

The sounds of silence.

It’s not just the name of an old Simon and Garfunkel song. It’s a way to achieve political success, too.

Two anecdotes, from two sides of the political divide.

Several eons ago, this writer was a speechwriter for Jean Chrétien. It was kind of like being the Maytag Repairman, to be honest. Jean Chrétien doesn’t ever need any help in crafting a political tub-thumper. He’s pretty good at that all on his own.

One day, however, our opponents were saying all kinds of nasty things about the then-Liberal leader. The subject matter doesn’t matter. What mattered was Chrétien’s abject refusal to say anything back. Why, Boss, I asked him.

“We don’t have to be in the damn paper every day, young man,” he said. “People don’t like it. They want to hear from us when it’s important. But not all the time. Silence is good.”

Another anecdote, from the other side of the aisle.

Not as long ago, my good friend John Walsh was the president of the Conservative Party. As such, he’d periodically meet with the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.

Two times, he did, and Harper held up a newspaper and pointed at a column by – this is the best part of the anecdote, in my opinion – Yours Truly. Both columns talked about how the then-presidents of the Liberal Party of Canada, who shall remain nameless, were in the media way, way too much.

“See what Kinsella said?” Harper asked John Walsh. “He said nobody can name the president of the Conservative Party, and that’s how we know how good at your job you are.”

Harper agreed. Too much media? Bad. Silence? Good.

Brian Mulroney? In the paper all the time, with Meech Lake, Charlottetown Accord, big meetings with big wheels, blah blah blah. His party got reduced to two seats.

Justin Trudeau? This week, the irrepressible David Akin added up all of the stuff Trudeau and his minions have been announcing. The result was shocking, if not sickening: “In August alone, Liberal MPs made 4,545 new spending commitments worth $12.8 billion.”

And, after all of those announcements and all of the resulting news coverage, has Justin Trudeau abruptly gotten a lot more popular? Nope.

In fact, some pollsters are telling this writer that all that ink hasn’t helped Trudeau much at all. Indeed, they say, there’s evidence to suggest the precise opposite is happening.

Another example.

Just over a year ago, the Ontario PCs roared back into power, and commenced holding special sittings of the legislature, energetically passing umpteen laws and getting in the media a lot. A lot, a lot.

Did it boost their popularity? Um, no. Their popularity went South, fast.

So, Premier Doug Ford hired a brilliant ex-newsman to be his Chief of Staff, and reminded his ministers of that old adage – speak when you have something to say, folks. Not when you have to say something.

Doug Ford thereafter stepped into the political equivalent of the witness protection program, and invited his ministers to join him. Result? Morale is way up, controversies are way down.

Just watch: Ford’s numbers are going to start inching up as a result, too. And so will Andrew Scheer’s – because Andrew Scheer benefits when Doug Ford isn’t in the news all the time. (Justin Trudeau, not so much.)

The moral of this cautionary tale is this: in all of those 4,545 new spending commitments Justin Trudeau made in a single month – out of all of that extraordinary $12.8 billion in spending – can you remember a single damn thing that was announced?

The sounds of silence, folks: it’s more than a nice song.

It’s a way of staying out of political trouble, too.

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By Mike Sloan, Special to Postmedia Network

“You have cancer.”

Every year, thousands of Canadians hear this from their doctors. It’s frightening, confusing, and outright scary. In February, it was my turn.

A myriad of options were offered. We can radiate this. We can do chemotherapy. All, in the hope of extending my life.

We live in a world where many cancers are highly treatable, and the hope for recovery is high. We are, and should be, thankful for the many great advances in cancer treatment.

However, despite our best hopes, some cancers are simply not well understood or treatable. This was my revelation. A few months after I lost my voice, I was diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer. It’s a rare cancer that afflicts as few as one or two people in a million. My prognosis was grim from the start.

A surgeon and two oncologists suggested chemotherapy and radiation in the hope it may slow the cancer down. But that was merely a hope. No guarantees. I opted out, because I couldn’t make sense of being sick from the treatment in what was likely to be my last summer.

The summer is almost over now, and my cancer is closing in. I’m having more difficulty breathing and swallowing. It feels like there is a huge, growing, hunk of mucous in my throat that I can’t clear. I’d been told to expect this. The cancer is tightening its grip on my esophagus. Eventually, it will simply close and I won’t be able to swallow. Or, breathe.

I knew, going in, this would be the outcome.

Last week, the doctor told me I had, possibly, 6-10 more weeks to live. I accepted it. I’ve been expecting this. I still look and feel relatively healthy and it’s almost hard to believe this is happening. But, I’m entirely aware this is going to kill me.

I don’t have a fear of dying. I can handle that. But, the notion of choking or struggling to breathe really horrifies me. I don’t want to choke to death.

Thankfully, I have the choice of medical assistance in death. Barring some other possible event, that is how I choose to die.

Some people, in good faith, say, “don’t give up on hope.” But, hope isn’t a plan or a solution. Hope can’t guarantee I won’t struggle to breathe at the end.

I’m extremely grateful for the time I’ve had, knowing what was coming. Although I’m dying, the months between diagnosis and death have been incredibly rewarding, positive, and beautiful. I’ve never felt more connected to people, or more cared about in my life. At end of life, it’s a wonderful way to leave the world.

Deciding on treatment options for any disease should always be left in the hands of the patient. If you’re told “you have cancer,” do your research, talk to your doctors and make your own decision. It’s your life. Do what’s right for you.

Above all, use your time to reconnect with those who’ve meant much to you. Say what you want to say. End of life should be without regrets.

Enjoy your time while you have it.

Mike Sloan has shared his cancer story with the world on Twitter, the same way he shared his wry observations on life before he was diagnosed with terminal illness. Despite the prognosis, his sense of humour hasn’t flagged. Nor, has his brutal honesty about life as he faces his final days.

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PORTLAND, MAINE – The woman shrugs. 

She doesn’t mention Donald Trump’s latest outrage – that he’s “the chosen one.” She doesn’t even utter his name. 

She says she thinks she’s going to vote Democrat. Then she frowns a bit. “But I like Collins.”

She’s referring to Maine Senator Susan Collins, a Republican. Collins is the bane of every Democrat’s existence. She’s the one, more than any other Senator, who got Brett Kavanaugh onto the US Supreme Court. 

She’s the one who generally supports all of Trump’s nominees. She’s the one who claims to be a moderate Republican – and then votes for Trump’s agenda.  

The woman at the door of the bungalow on Hale Street has indicated she’s a Democrat. But she’s ready to vote – again – for a Republican. Susan Collins. 

It wouldn’t be a big deal, but it happens again and again. As my daughter and I move from door to door in this older Portland neighbourhood, volunteering for the Democratic Party, we see it a lot: shrugs. 

Down the street, Thomas, a man in his sixties, says he’ll vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress. Then he shrugs, too. “And maybe Collins for Senate,” he says. 

What we encounter on Hale Street isn’t unique. It isn’t an aberration. Maine Democrats have encountered it so often, an entire section of the script we’ve been given deals with Democrats who are ready to vote Republican. 

Right about now, Trump fans shouldn’t start breaking out the bubbly. It’s not that Americans have grown to love the guy. Polls clearly show they don’t, and in battleground states he won in 2016, too. 

But there’s resignation, now. There’s familiarity. There’s…shrugs. 

The day after my daughter and I knocked on dozens of doors for the Dems, a gifted New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, wrote about exactly what we experienced. “Donald Trump has worn us all out,” read the headline atop his column. 

Wrote Bruni: “[Voters have] binged on Trump and now they’re overstuffed with Trump, and if Democratic candidates are smart, they’ll not dwell on his mess and madness, because voters have taken his measure and made their judgments, and what many of them want is release from the incessant drumbeat of that infernal syllable: Trump, Trump, Trump.”

And it’s true. As this writer said to someone down here, after reading Bruni’s words: “Do you get outraged about Trump anymore? Does he shock you anymore? Do you just change the channel, or flip the page, and move on to the next thing?”

Many of us do, on both sides of the border, I suspect. We simply have become used to Trump’s incendiary tweets, and his politics of division. He doesn’t shock us anymore. We shake our heads, or we shrug, and we move on. 

That creates opportunity for the Democrats, Bruni opined, because he thinks Americans are sick of all the drama and the craziness, and they want stability and civility. 

On Hale Street – and, in fact, on every other street we canvassed in Portland – we saw precious little evidence of that hopeful theory. Why we saw, instead, is that everyday Americans simply aren’t as exercised about Donald Trump as they used to be. 

And that’s translating into expressions of support – from Democrats! – for one of Trump’s enablers, Susan Collins. And that’s opportunity, maybe, for Trump and the GOP. 

Peter Jones, a retired man stands at his front door, and gives us hope. And a warning. 

“I pay attention,” he says to us, finger wagging. “Two things. Point out Trump’s faults, sure. But tell us what you’re going to do, too!”

Have Democrats done that, nearly enough? Have they described the America they want to create? 

Down on Hale Street, not really. 

And not across America, either. 

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Well this is just downright adorable.

— Red Sox (@RedSox) August 31, 2019

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The bar isn’t much to look at. 

It’s on the tougher side of downtown, in a place where you cross the street when you see a couple guys coming your way. 

There’s a big marquee out front, announcing its name, and a pair of weathered wooden doors that are open to all, but not all dare step inside. 

No liquor licence. Envelopes stuffed with bills, handed over to the cops, are all that keep it open. 

Whenever there’s a raid, the bar’s owners will sometimes get tipped off. Not always, but sometimes. The raids happen, ostensibly, because people gather there – people who dare not speak their name out loud. 

Their sin? Dancing. The city doesn’t want them to dance together. 

In the early morning hours of June 28, the cops raid the place again. There are uniformed officers outside, and some plainclothes officers inside, posing as patrons. 

The cops go after one of the women in the bar, a regular. They push her and strike her. She gets mad and pushes back. They assault her some more. 

A crowd has gathered out on the sidewalk, watching what the cops are doing to the woman. A cop brings his baton down on her head and she starts to bleed, a lot. 

She’s mad, but not just at the cops, who are punching and kicking the bar’s patrons. As she’s being pushed into the back of a police van, the woman yells at the crowd: “Why don’t you guys do something?”

And they do. Just like that, just like a light being switched on, they do. Remembering, perhaps, all the years of bullying and beatings and actual murders, they erupt. They hit back. 

By the end, they’ve trapped the cops inside the bar. And, later on, it’ll take dozens more cops to rescue them. 

The bar isn’t in your town, but it could be. The raid, or something like it, doesn’t really happen in your town anymore – but it used to. 

And the kind of people who would go there? They’re found in your town. Lots of them. 

The bar really existed. Stonewall’s, in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Anyone could go there to dance and have a drink, but only one of kind person generally did so. 

Homosexuals. Gays, lesbians. The ones who – in those days, and in these days, too – weren’t allowed to dance together. Or come together. Or even, you know, be. 

The ones who would be denied jobs, or hotel rooms, because of the way they were. The ones who would be often beaten and sometimes killed for being who they were. 

Their uprising that June night – that’s what that lesbian who the cops were beating called it, an uprising and not a riot – would later bear the name of the bar: Stonewall. Every year, bit by bit, in cities and towns all over, there would be a commemoration of what happened at Stonewall’s bar that night. Remembering. 

In time, the remembrances bore another name. A name that described what they were really about. 

Pride. Pride in being, at long last, in being who they are. Being how God made them. 

Now, I don’t know Andrew Scheer all that well. He’s a family man, he goes to church. If he stayed that way, nobody would really care what he thinks about the various Pride events that happen across Canada every Summer. He’d just be another guy. 

But he’s not just another guy. He’s not a nobody. He’s the leader of the Conservative Party, and he’s running to be Prime Minister. 

When you’re a Prime Minister, you don’t get to pick and choose which Canadians you represent. You represent all of us, or you represent none of us. 

So, I ask Andrew Scheer: are you going to be one of the guys on the sidewalk, watching and not doing anything about what you see? Or, are you going to step forward, and say: “I support you. I will help you. I will protect you. You are no better or no worse than me.”

That’s what the Pride stuff is about, really: equality. Support. Humanity. 

Get off the damn sidewalk, Andrew. 

People are starting to notice. 

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Look what I got from Dundurn Press when in Boston yesterday for the Red Sox game: the new cover design to the last instalment in the X Gang series, Age of Unreason!

If you’re interested in reading the books published so far – Recipe for Hate and New Dark Ages – they’re here!

And here’s what people have said about the series, below. Hope you can check ’em out!

• Quill and Quire: “Kinsella skillfully blends convincing depictions of both the punk scene and the racist underground with the hoary trope of a band of kids setting out to solve a mystery. The novel is a suspenseful page-turner that also gives considerable food for thought, anchored in realistically drawn characters and an eye for significant detail.”

• Publisher’s Weekly: “Adult author Kinsella (Fight the Right) sets this riveting murder mystery in Portland, Maine, in the late 1970s…Tension starts high and stays there in this unflinching page-turner, which offers a fascinating glimpse into the early punk scene and a moving testament to the power of friendship.”

• Globe and Mail: “Portrayals of rebellious and non-conforming teens can feel reductive or contrived but Kinsella nails it without any stereotyping or embellishment. Though this authenticity will have big teen appeal, the novel is also part police procedural, part detailed history on the emergence of punk and part gritty murder mystery, all elements that skew more adult. Classification aside, it’s absorbing, jarring and raw.”

• Toronto Star: “Warren Kinsella is known mostly as a political operative and pundit, but he also has estimable punk-rock credentials (as punk historian and as bass player in SFH, which bills itself as Canada’s best-loved geriatric punk band). This YA novel is loosely based on real-life events, and concerns the murder of two teenagers in 1979 in Portland, Ore., then the epicentre of the punk scene. It will be of interest to anyone interested in punk culture — not just the music, but the fanzines, art and writing of the period.”

• Booklist: “Kinsella’s book explodes off the page from the start…a dark and engrossing tale of punk-rock heroes fighting for justice.”

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