A large portion of the Canadian Right doesn’t care a lick about Canada.
Okay, I didn’t really just learn this because I’ve always known it. Still, it was a little shocking to see the numbers. A poll asked respondents if they thought Canada becoming part of the US was a good idea. It turns out that 21 percent of Conservative supporters and 25 percent of People’s Party supporters are in favour of joining the US. I’m pretty positive this cohort also overlaps very closely with the people who obnoxiously parade the flag around (remember the Freedumb Convoy?) and spout bullshit about how much more patriotic they are than the rest of us. I’ve tried to explain that they are simply extremely selfish hypocrites who only use the flag as a weapon. Here is your proof.
This poll comes as Trump has continually been talking about making Canada the “51st state.” Most people think he is joking, or just threatening us as part of trade negotiations. My response would be that Trump is a deranged narcissist, so there is in fact no way to be certain about what he will or won’t do. It’s unlikely he himself knows what he will do from one day to the next. So we should stop pretending the Americans are our special BFFs and start defending our own interests, and we should definitely stop acting like everything will be okay just because it has been okay for a long time. The world is more unstable than it has been at any time since 1945. If we value this country - and I certainly do - we need to think harder about what we are willing to do for it. I will have more to say about this in a future post.
Politicians are just like boxers - they won’t quit until they completely embarrass themselves.
We saw this with Joe Biden, and now we are seeing it with Justin Trudeau, who has been in charge of Canada for more than 9 years. When you’ve been in office that long, you’ve pretty much pissed off everyone at some point. Trudeau’s support has slipped in every election, which is exactly what you’d expect. His approval rating sits at 26 percent, which is abysmal. But he apparently refuses to see the handwriting on the wall. He just fired his Finance Minister and seems to think grovelling before Trump is the way to handle his tariff threats. I don’t think most Canadians agree with his strategy; if you know anything about Trump, you know that he’s a sadist who loves torturing people he perceives as weak, and our PM is playing right into his hands.
Barring some sort of Conservative scandal, Trudeau has zero chance of winning the next election. In fact, his presence may result in the Liberals suffering a truly devastating loss in 2025. If he really cared about the party and the country, he would step aside and let someone else take over. (I prefer Mark Carney as the next Liberal leader.) I don’t think that person would win the upcoming election, but at least they would have a much better chance of holding onto some seats and building support for the future. Unfortunately, it looks like Trudeau is stubbornly determined to go down in flames.
We are seeing one break in the left-right orthodoxy.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is a mentally vacant opportunist who will glam onto anything that keeps his name in the news. But if you were to look at the new Health and Human Services Secretary's MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) platform, I’m pretty sure almost everyone will find something they agree with. In a nutshell, Kennedy is against junk food, factory farms, health care profiteering, and the over-reliance on pharmaceuticals. Of course, Kennedy is also a Covid denier, an anti-vax conspiracy loon and has spread falsehoods about fluoride and raw milk.
Health care is a huge issue in both Canada and the US. Here in Canada, we are going to find ourselves paying more and more out of pocket for health care, because our public system simply cannot keep up. This does not mean we should adopt a private setup like the US; their system is a hellscape of greed, corruption, tragedy and unfairness. The CEO of United Health, the largest health insurer, was murdered on December 4, and tons of people actually celebrated. This is not a sign that things are working well.
Polls in the US show that people across the political spectrum are angry and disillusioned with the health care system. The results back this up: despite spending far more per capita, the US has much worse health outcomes than Canada and Europe. Right now, neither party has really tried to address this issue. The Democrats have Obamacare, which has definitely helped but is more of a bandaid than a real fix. The GOP still pukes out nonsense about free markets while bending over to help Big Pharma grow profits. The wild card is Trump, who might see an opportunity to glorify himself and actually let Kennedy implement some of his agenda. Unfortunately, it’s likely to be the stupid anti-vax and fluoride part, not the actual good ideas. But there is a clear opportunity here for the right and the left to come together to fix a problem that is only getting worse.
The worldwide shift to the right is real and likely to last for a long time.
There is pretty strong evidence that the world’s democracies are moving to the right. Election results in Europe, Asia, South and North America are all showing a substantial shift towards the right, specifically extremist right-wing populism. Something is clearly happening, and the left seems to be completely in denial about it. You can chalk it up to misinformation and blame Putin and Musk, which is definitely partly true, but that is nowhere near the whole story.
Think back over the last 30 years; how much have things changed? The short answer is a ton, and this has created a lot of anxiety and misery in our societies. I would sum up the rightward shift as “I need to look out for me, so screw everybody else.” Fear begets more fear, and scared people cling to what they can, which means that race and class identities suddenly come back to the forefront. Frightened people look after their own immediate interests, not caring about others or the distant future. None of this is a recipe for success for Liberalism. When the only common thread running through our society is hedonistic consumption, the surprise is that the left gets any votes at all.
The bad news is that the far-right is, as always, swimming against reality, and so it will make a shambles out of everything it touches. The good news is that even disinformation won’t hide their failures forever. At some point, people realize they’ve been fooled. The question is how long this takes and how large and painful the resultant mess will be. I’m not optimistic, but neither am I a fortune teller. If there is one truism about politics, it’s that it is unpredictable.
Comments