News & Blogs

TRUMP-PROOFING CANADA

On March 15, 2017   /   Blog, News, The Chairman's Corner  

March 2017

As I approach the two year anniversary of this blog, I now have a portfolio of pronouncements of sufficient volume and breadth to merit a critical revisiting.  Looking back at my rants, the one that caught my eye was the second piece that I did in August of 2015 titled “Good Things Come in Threes” that extolled the virtues of the Canadian three-party political landscape as a bulwark against Trump-style populism.

While the piece does give rise to a chuckle at my assertion that neither Trump nor Sanders were a real threat to gain their respective party’s nomination, it does identify a phenomenon of Canadian political discourse that is once again evident in the current races for the leadership of Canada’s two major non-governing parties.  In a three party system, the parties of the left and right are left at least somewhat obliged to remain anchored to the fundamental tenets of their purported ideology.  The right is pro-business and inclined to social conservatism; the left is the advocate for the working class and socially progressive.  The party of the centre is left to strike a balance between these competing but insidiously symbiotic political agendas.

Of course, this formulation does not always work perfectly.  The 2015 Canadian federal election saw the NDP lean right on fiscal policy, hoping to complete the occupation of the centre that had been initiated by the sainted Jack Layton.  This exposed their left flank to Justin Trudeau in the same manner that the old PC party exposed its right flank to Preston Manning’s Reform party in 1997 (the parties of the right and left are always vulnerable when hubris inspires them to lean too far to the centre).  But inevitably things return to their equilibrium state, and this is clearly evident in the current leadership races for both the Conservatives and the NDP.

The slate of candidates for the Conservatives predictably includes one candidate that openly courts the Xenophobic socially conservative arm of the Trump coalition, while the NDP leadership hopefuls uniformly embrace the anti-corporatist, anti-globalist economic strain of the Trump message.  Canadian xenophobes need not embrace anti-trade policy to find their voice, nor do anti-globalists need to embrace xenophobia to protect Canadian workers.  There is room on the Canadian ballot for both Bernie Sanders AND a party of the centre, and a ballot that has room for both of these political interest groups is not one that is accommodating to the Frankenstein’s monster that is Trump.

Many have raised the alarm that the Kevin O’Leary candidacy represents the introduction of Trump populism to Canada, but the equivalency is superficial.  The marketability of celebrity businessmen/reality stars as political leaders is definitely a troubling indication of where the political and social culture is heading in North America.  That being said, there is little likelihood that a Trump-style populist, even if so inclined, would find it as easy to straddle the disaffected on the right and centre-left in Canada as it proved to be in the US.

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FAKE NEWS, SENSATIONALISM, SATIRE AND FALSEHOODS: A PRIMER

On February 15, 2017   /   Blog, News, The Chairman's Corner  

February 2017

fakenewsThe Trump regime is under attack from “Fake News”.  White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer tells us so.  White House “Counsellor” Kellyanne Conway tells us so.  The holder of the most powerful office in the world tells us so.  But is it so, or is that Fake News?

The internet is a great source of Fake News.  It is also rife with actual facts.  I looked up the five most shared, reacted to and/or commented upon political Fake News stories on Facebook in 2016.  They were as follows:

  1. “Obama Signs Executive Order Banning the Pledge of Allegiance in Schools Nationwide”
  2. “Pope Francis Shocks the World, Endorses Donald Trump for President; Releases Statement”
  3. “Trump Offering Free One-Way Tickets to Africa & Mexico for Those Who Wanna Leave America”
  4. “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide”
  5. “RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE to Reunite And Release Anti Donald Trump Album

My take on those examples, and from my review of the rest of the top 50 Facebook-circulated 2016 Fake News pieces: Trump supporters take a backseat to no one in supporting the Fake News industry.  Fake News is a problem, but it is not a bigger problem for Donald Trump than others.

That is not to say that Donald Trump is not also the victim of other disorders of our modern media.  However ill-considered and ham-handedly executed, a temporary suspension of entry privileges to the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries is probably not fairly characterized as a “Muslim ban” any more than a 15-cm snowfall on a minus 6 Celsius January day in Toronto can be fairly described as (your choice here) “Snow-mageddon” and/or “an extreme cold emergency”, but that is how the media gets our attention these days.  And no one knows that better than The Donald himself: everything he speaks of is “bigly yuge”, except perhaps his hands.  He gives as good as he takes on this one as well.

Where he is inordinately plagued is in the area of satire.  No politician has been the subject of such unrelenting and scathing satire as Donald Trump.  It is true that Saturday Night Live has mocked every Presidential candidate that has run and President that has taken office during its 40+ year run, but never so consistently and savagely, and never without some tangible undercurrent of affection.  And the same is true of every other late night satirical news show.

It is easy to say (as Trump and his supporters do) that this is simply a reflection of the media’s liberal bias, but George W. Bush was almost certainly a more categorical right wing President than Donald Trump and even he received a more measured reception.  Perhaps the root of this unrelenting satirical pillaging lies in the nature of the Trump Administration itself.  Satire is a tool through which one expresses frustration with individuals and/or ideas with which one disagrees by knowingly and openly exaggerating those aspects with which one takes issue.  Donald Trump is simple and narcissistic, but nowhere near as simple and narcissistic as Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him on SNL.  Through satire, opponents can tell Trump how they make them feel without pretending that that is the complete truth of what he is.

Trump takes a different approach.  Faced with a society that feels to him like one in which law and order has broken down, he reports to the American public that the per capita national murder rate is at a 47-year high.  Faced with uneasiness about the undisputed legitimacy of a Presidency that was not supported by a majority of the voters, he reports on 3-5 million illegal votes (that presumably all went against him).  Channeling xenophobic fears, he cautions Americans about unreported terrorist attacks all over the world, while his “Counsellor” makes three references to three news outlets over four days to the “Bowling Green massacre” as a domestic example of one such under-reported event.

None of these reports can be supported by any facts.  Given the resources available to the President and his staff, their assertion is at best gross negligence and more likely the deliberate circulation of falsehoods.  Unlike satire, these expressions of the feeling of Donald Trump and his supporters are dressed up as fact, not openly acknowledged as play.  They are not an outlet for frustration; they are a demonstration of and an excuse for ignorance.

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THE OBAMA LEGACY

On January 13, 2017   /   Blog, News, The Chairman's Corner  

January 2017

President Barack Obama walks from Marine One as he arrive on the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, Feb. 7, 2014, in Washington, as he returns from Michigan. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama walks from Marine One as he arrive on the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, Feb. 7, 2014, in Washington, as he returns from Michigan. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

With five days left in Barack Obama’s Presidency, everyone, including the President himself, is offering their view of what the legacy of his administration says about a man of whom so many expected so much.  But it is also true that the polarized views of that legacy say a lot about the state of a nation of which the world expects better.

By far the most reviled aspect of the Obama legacy is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, derisively termed “Obamacare”.  At its root, the intention and effect of Obamacare was straightforward: to provide primary care to the 15 -20 million Americans who did not have access to health benefits by virtue of unemployment or disqualifying pre-existing conditions.  To Canadians that have four generations of experience with socialized medicine, this is a no-brainer.  That it would result in increased costs for all users of the health care system can hardly come as a shock to anyone.  Unemployment is highly correlated with poverty, poverty is highly correlated with poorer general health and people with pre-existing conditions….have pre-existing conditions.  Adding two higher risk groups to the ranks of the insured will raise the costs of primary care.  That the US managed to have the highest per capita health care costs in the world despite this systematic exclusion from primary care of its most vulnerable citizens only highlights the moral bankruptcy of the healthcare system that Obamacare sought to reform.  The willingness of the opponents of the President and Obamacare to ignore this moral question is both notable and disappointing.

Contrast this with Obama’s foreign policy.  While it is clearly the aspect for which he is unrelentingly mocked, the most notable diversion from historical precedence of Obama’s foreign policy was not his arguable isolationism and reluctance to bring American power to bear in global hot spots.  That tradition has deep roots.  Even the many actively interventionist post-WWII administrations that preceded Obama’s consistently met strong domestic opposition.  The innovation that Obama introduced to American foreign adventures was a technological one.  The use of drone technology to effect extra-judicial killing of American and foreign nationals, often with material civilian “collateral damage”, was open and rampant.  That is not to say that its use was not popularly accepted and justified for its expedience.  Indeed, no one questioned the moral justification of the breach of Pakistani sovereignty that was instrumental to the attempted arrest and ultimate execution of Osama Bin Laden.  But the general willingness of Obama supporters to ignore that there is an ambiguity to this practice that just might cede the moral high ground claimed over the terrorists at whom they are directed is, again, both notable and disappointing.

In the context of the popular assessments of these aspects of the legacy of the outgoing administration, it is hard to be surprised that Barack Obama is to be followed by a President without any discernible compass other than an exasperatingly vague promise to ‘Make America Great Again”.  Not surprising; just disappointing.

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