Trudeau's luck may have changed

 We all know that Justin Trudeau has gone past his due date, after three terms as Prime Minister.  There’s a rising visceral hate-on for the guy which, in my opinion, is undeserved.  We’ve all heard the anti-Trudeau rage, but what is it based on, other than fatigue? 

We have a “Prime Minister in waiting”, Pierre Poilievre, a very effective leader of the opposition, who is crushing Trudeau in the polls.  Poilievre is really good at tossing out slogans that rhyme:  “axe the tax”, etc.,  but not so good at envisioning anything better, as far as an actual set of responsible policies.  For a  long time now, it looked as if the Trudeau Liberals were headed for decisive defeat in the next election. Now things have become a lot less certain, and the reason is the post-election whirlwind south of the border.

I think that the election of Donald Trump has done more to unify Canada than anything in our collective memories since the Second World War.  His proposed tariffs could wreak real havoc.   And once Trump dropped his tariff bombshell, all of a sudden the Trudeau hate fest seemed kind of passe. We got to see a bunch of provincial premiers make fools of themselves by telegraphing their desperation to cave to any and all of Trump’s cockamaimie demands. It was truly pathetic! And in the face of Trump’s destructive flailing, Poilievre, the one-trick pony, reacted by  doubling down on his harsh criticisms of the Prime Minister. 

 Trudeau was decisive. He  quickly convened a summit of the Premiers. Within the week he had called Trump and flown to Mara Lago for a face-to-face with the Whirlwind himself.

 

  Reminds me of a story in the Bible; it’s in the Old Testament; something about a guy with bad luck whose luck changes when he insists on having it out with a whirlwind.  

Trump doesn’t actually become president for another month.  But when he does he will sow nothing but chaos.  If Trudeau is smart, he will do his utmost to put off the election as long as possible,(my suggestion - a full year after the American election.) We don’t need a divisive election campaign when we are faced with a devastating threat to our economy from an external foe. 

In a year Trudeau will seem like an island of stability compared to the gathering storm down south.  But as for Poilievre, I bet that his “attack-dog” imitation of Trump will not go down well. And, as they say: those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.

The Storm the Day After

 There’s been a series of gales in Prince Rupert that began the day after the American Election.  The first Morning after, I was taking my wife up to catch the bus to Terrace at 8:00 up on  summit hill, and she almost got blown over by the gusts. The wind and rain were vicious and relentless. I stayed inside as much as I could and watched the waves of hard rain and the branches of the big spruce lash back and forth in the heavy gusts.  

It’s wonderful to be cozy and warm indoors and know that you are safe even in the midst of a storm.  Some people are not so lucky though.  Like the people in the Caribbean  and the American South who get struck by hurricanes.  When your house is in the path of a hurricane the immense power of the wind can turn it into a deadly foe as the house goes from a means of protection to a lethal barrage of exploding timber in a split second.

Maybe you can see where I’m going here.  We can feel safe and secure here in Canada as Americans do their destructive thing. But the United States is the biggest economy in the world. For that reason alone the effects of this foreign election will be destructive around the globe, but especially in Canada because the U.S. is our biggest trading partner. 

 

Democratic elections are always going to be divisive to some degree; the American Presidential election, because so much is at stake, is decidedly so.  Less than a month ago we had a very close provincial election, and the NDP scraped back to power, with the Conservatives breathing down their necks.  And we wait for the coming Federal election which we all know will occur sometime next year.  Elections can be divisive, but as Canadians we have faith that whoever gets into power will be reasonably competent at governing or else they will be voted out of office in four years or less.  That used to be the case in the U.S. but it isn’t anymore. With Donald Trump we are looking at a world of chaos for who knows how long.  It’s great to live in a safe, prosperous country like Canada, but we should never take it for granted.  Sometimes a big wind comes from the south and it is strong enough to uproot everything.

"Share the Anxiety!"

 

“Share the anxiety,” I always say. Whatever one is anxious about, it often feels better to talk to people you know. Just talking helps put  a different perspective on your worries, just the act of sharing can make one reconsider whether things are really going to be that bad.  So I’m doing that, I’m sharing my anxiety about the upcoming election.  But I’m not referring to the BC election, nor the upcoming Federal election that we all know is coming next year. No, I’m not anxious about the state of democracy in Canada, (yet)…

 What keeps me up at night is the fact that the most powerful nation in the world is no longer a stable democracy and this coming November could set the scene for even more political chaos.  I have faith in Canadian politics.  I’ll be OK if my party doesn’t win.  But I have lost faith in American politics.  When a person who is an amoral compulsive liar and a psychopath is one major party’s Presidential candidate, and he has, according to the polls, a fifty fifty chance of winning in November, it scares the living daylights out of me.  Here’s a guy who every day sounds more and more like Adolf Hitler, and fifty percent of America is OK with it.  We’ve seen enough of Trump from his first presidency to know he won’t be any friend of Canada’s.  And this time he’s running on a campaign of retribution against his enemies and starting a trade war with the rest of the world.  He says he wants to be a dictator on day one, and that, “one really violent day”, where the police could do whatever they want, would be just the thing.  This year, the U.S. Supreme Court granted him virtual immunity if he so happens to get elected again.  What could possibly go wrong? It seems to me that the entire world is on a knife’s edge, that things could be OK, or they could go terribly wrong, depending on who gets elected in this very close American election. It is not a pleasant thought. And so I share my anxiety.

"One Really Violent Day"

 “If you had one really violent day....one rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out and it will end immediately, you know? It will end immediately.”  - Donald Trump, Erie Pennsylvania, Sept. 29, 2024.

 Fascism happens in stages:  first of all you spread lies, lies that many people would like to believe, lies about the particular low status group that you know many fear and hate.  It used to be about “the Jews”, but they are a high status group now, so the hatred has moved on to other groups, refugees, immigrants, Haitians…. If you have media that will support the spread of lies, such as:  Fox News, One America, Breitbart, etc.,  then you can normalize them, which in turn, solidifies a very strong connection between fascist provocateurs, like Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and Alex Jones, and their mass audience, amplifying their ability to produce  and sustain mass rage and resentment. 

 You can begin the process of normalizing violence through the spreading of malicious lies, while making a point of both glorifying guns and violence; which then incites an increase in violent crimes and mass murders; and this trend works wonders to increase the levels of fear and polarization. You can then innocently point to “lone wolves” the mentally ill, and “bad guys with guns” and, of course, “illegal immigrants” for all the mayhem you were encouraging yourself.

 But there still is another stage after this where the destruction of the moral system undergoes a tipping point.  Let’s call this: the point of “breaking glass”.  In the United States, January 6, 2021 was an attempt to “break the glass” which didn’t quite succeed in reaching that tipping point.  So we need to go back in time a little further to see the prime example of this.  We can see it in the historical occurrence of “Kristallnacht” - the night of broken glass. 

On the night of November 9, 1938, all over Germany, Jewish businesses and places of worship were ransacked and destroyed by people from Nazi organizations dressed in civilian clothes. Buildings were destroyed with sledgehammers and Synagogues were burned to the ground.  All the while this was happening Nazi authorities stood by and did nothing.   The name “Kristallnacht”  is a spin on the fact that the streets were filled with the shards of glass from countless windows of Jewish establishments. This was Hitler’s way of "getting the word out" in 1938, and it led directly to the concentration camps and the Holocaust.

If ever there was a single answer to fascism - it would be “common morality”.  Fascists are insecure impatient guys who want power for nefarious ends.  They know that common morality is a big impediment to getting their way.  And how do you jettison something so basic as morality? The answer is that you do it in stages, as can be seen from historical examples. 

First get people used to politicians lying. Next create a fake emergency like a ‘stolen election’ so you have an excuse to “break the glass”. Breaking the glass is a tipping point  in the evolution of a fascist movement. By breaking the glass you now normalize the destruction of morality, because people standing in the way of wrongdoing are all that stands in the way of instituting fascism. People don’t normally put up with arson, vandalism,  bullying, thuggery, and other forms of public violence, but what if the government is behind it, as the Nazi’s were in 1938?  Once the government is all in on the violence there are no other choices, and the net of authoritarianism closes in on everyone.

 The fascist method is that in an emergency, whether real or faked, you break the glass.  This is a very powerful message and it leads to “Final Solutions”.  Just “one really violent day....” - but when you break the glass and destroy the moral order it's no longer just a test - there will be no going back. You will end up as the Nazis did, and destroy your own civilization in a total war.