I’m not really certain as to how many people are increasingly identifying with issues relating to anger control management that I am having at the moment, but I’m fairly certain that doctors, although not yet diagnosing such sentiment as “HAC”, will eventually have to start using the ICDA code “312” to explain the near rage I am now regularly feeling every time I listen to Pierre Poilievre try to tear another strip off Justin Trudeau.
Regular readers of my column know that the “Hate Agenda” the Conservatives have been campaigning upon ever since Justin Trudeau was elected as the federal Liberal Party leader is merely an extension of the mindset of Stephen Harper, whose first reaction to JT was to portray him as weak, inexperienced, and – naturally enough—the “son” of that “other” Trudeau, Pierre, most famously noted out here in the fly-over province as the Prime Minister who “dared” to rationalize Canada’s energy policies in the best interests of national security.
Recently, the Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt wrote a column trying to explain why men, in particular, despise our PM. Not surprisingly, most of this negativity came from Alberta and Saskatchewan, where the columnist only alluded as to the real source of their anger, his “sex appeal” with women voters. This doesn’t surprise me in the least; I can remember the incident in his father’s term as PM where actress Barbara Streisand walked into the upper gallery of the Commons, and the moment she caught the eye of PET, pointed to her watch to indicate he was “late” for their date. It was seriously amusing, but for some reason male Conservative MP’s took offense with her appearance, calling it “inappropriate”.
These same political trolls have since used the stories underlying the father’s own public social life to denigrate the son. JT is supposed to “resemble” Fidel Castro (Margaret Trudeau allegedly had an affair with the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, so by extension she also must have “bedded” Mr. Castro, a close friend of the then PM’s), or that he had a sexual “liaison” with a 14-year old student while teaching “drama” in a private school (an allegedly “gay” pastime or the affectatious activity of Hollywood “celebrity nobodies”).
Unfortunately, sexually insecure men have a tendency to embrace such stupidities, even as women grow stronger in their political voice. By extension, then, JT is somehow then made to be portrayed as “responsible” for this increasing vigilance by women in standing up for their rights, and no longer willing to just “accept” of the male “natural right to govern in the majority”, much less impose upon the nation a more “liberal” immigration policy that threatens their “white” majority position as members of governing elites.
However, it’s this constant beating of the Conservative drum that portrays the Prime Minister as the “villain of choice” in these online social media postings that now weighs thin. The overwhelming application of revisionism to our political issues of the moment, particularly with regard to the recent “leaking” of confidential CSIS documentation suggesting that the Chinese government has been conducting an ominous campaign to “influence” the federal electoral process towards “voting Liberal” would have one believe that Conservatives are but the innocent victim of such foreign attempts at sabotage.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In 2012, following then PM “Chairman” (a title given to the PM by his own MP’s) Harper’s petroleum “deal” with Chinese business interests that saw their companies now having the right to sue governments for policies that might threaten their profitability, Chinese businessmen, particularly in Toronto ridings, flocked to be voted into positions in ten or more ridings previously held by Liberals.
As well, in 2010 the Harper government refused to allow PMO staff to testify before a complaint of “political interference” (i.e.: saying “no” to such a request) by a member of Cabinet, which Pierre Poilievre defended on the basis that such “testimony” would run counter to “300 years of Parliamentary practice and tradition.”
One wonders, of course, why “reasonable” Conservative MP’s would allow their personal reputations to be ravaged by the onslaught of propagandist nonsense that these Conservative PAC “bots” insist upon spewing to their audiences. For instance, our own MP, Randy Hoback, must surely now be embarrassed by how, in his electronic riding “Herald”, he basically portrayed Liberals as hiding behind trees in the forest, waiting for the farmer who must attend to the mutilated ewe now trying to give birth to the lamb her ram paramour begot within her before being devoured by coyotes, and for whom the farmer can no longer apply justice because that tree-hugging thief has now stolen his weapon of judicial application.
Still, as with having helped to defeat the Liberal’s “amendment” to gun ownership, the NDP has once again held the government to account by convincing the PM that his Chief of Staff Katie Telford should indeed testify on the Chinese “influencing crisis”. However, it shouldn’t take very long before another overly embellished “incident” will populate the banal offerings of Conservative PAC’s abusing Canadian electoral laws.
On Wednesday, Stephen Harper arose from his hiatus to tell a Conservative group in Ottawa that Mr. Poilievre shouldn’t let future political debates become “about him” but rather to “hold the government accountable for how it is running the country and making it wear its mismanagement, incompetence and corruption” – in other words, NOT tell voters how things should be different, and could be IF they were to form the next government, for fear of them waking up and actually beginning to think about their future.
