Stephen Roney's Blog, page 75

Populism

 

What is the big deal about populism? We commonly hear the expression these days, and usually not as a compliment.

Populism means “a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people” (Merriam-Webster); “A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite” (American Heritage); “political program or movement that champions, or claims to champion, the common person, usually by favourable contrast with a real or perceived elite or establishment.” (Encyclopedia Britannica). Definitions seem pretty consistent: the interests of the people over those of the elite.

Donald Trump is a populist, in promising to “drain the swamp.” So is Pierre Poilievre, with his appeal to “the common sense of the common people.” So was Mike Pence, at the recent Republican candidates’ debate, in repeating the slogan “What we need is a government as good as the American people.” John Diefenbaker was a populist: “Everyone is against me except the people.” RFK Jr. is a populist. Jefferson was a populist. The NDP too used to at least claim to be populist, fighting for the “working man” against the “special interests.”

So what is wrong with that? This is simply democracy: the idea that there must be some check on the power of the elite. The opposite of populism would be autocracy, or aristocracy. I think we all rejected that in the American and French revolutions.

To be fair, however, Adolf Hitler was also a populist, appealing to the “volk” against the cosmopolitan elite, which he then identified with the Jews. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez, Robespierre were all nominally populists.

My conclusion: like any obvious good, populism will inevitably be hijacked to conceal evil. Just as the smartest way to hide if you are a thoroughly bad sort is under a cassock.

Buyer beware: consider such movements case by case. And be alert too that slanders will be spread about them by any elite.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Tax Poutine!

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Why the Suit? Why the Hair?

 

My daughter asks yesterday, “Why is Trump always wearing a suit?”

Because he understands branding. He is in character.

Trump the brandable character wears a distinctive costume, just as Santa Claus might, or Spiderman. This is memorable, and marketable. You can and people will pay now to put the name “Trump” on their hotel. Just as Santa sells snow globes, and Spiderman sells action figures.

The Trump costume is a blue business suit, usually a red tie, an orange complexion, and an improbable blonde combover. Paint those features on an Easter egg, or a stick man, and anyone will recognize  Trump.

Trump does not need the combover to hide baldness, as he demonstrated once to Jimmy Fallon. It is a costume, a put-on. He certainly does not need to paint his face orange.

It is, specifically, the costume of a clown: the face paint, the shocking hair. It is deliberately comic and absurd.

Taking on the character of a clown, a parody of the rich capitalist, allows Trump to speak as bluntly as he does: by common consent, clowns and jesters are permitted to speak truths that others cannot. This on the flimsy pretext that they are crazy or stupid, and so need not—in a phrase—be taken seriously. It gives those who need to pigeonhole a pigeonhole. This gives Trump his celebrated Teflon coating, of which he is well aware.

And Trump is a brilliant comedian. His rallies go on for hours, extempore, and people throng to them.

This also explains why he is hated.

Narcissists do not get humour. You might have noticed. Humour is offensive to them. Everything is life and death to them, and whatever you said is “not funny.” Or, in Biden’s favourite phrase, “not a joke.”

To them, a clown is simply a loose cannon, liable to spill the beans on them at any moment.

Narcissists are always aware, at some level, that they are living a lie and manipulating people. They are proud of it. They accordingly fear anything beyond their control, anything unpredictable. Like humour, which always depends on a reversal of expectations. 

Those who live with a narcissist know the experience of “walking on eggshells.” Conversation must keep to a narrow band of acceptable discourse or they become agitated; this is the essence and origin of the current “cancel culture.”

The very life of a narcissist tends to narrow down to familiar routine. They dislike moving. They dislike changing jobs. They fear anything unfamiliar: unfamiliar foods, unfamiliar music, new ideas, unfamiliar routines. They have a hard time breaking habits, and are prone to addictions. 

This narcissistic tendency produces the phenomenon, increasingly remarked upon, of the “NPC”—people who seem robotic and predictable in all their opinions and responses, as if programmed by computer. 

Trump, the loose cannon, the clown, is the opposite of that. His views have never been orthodox for a conservative. They are unpredictable issue by issue.

That is why they fear him.

And why to the rest of us, listening to him feels liberating.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

This Is Just to Say

 

One of the features of the Saint John Exhibition—formerly the Atlantic National Exhibition—which I attended yesterday, was an art competition featuring entries from across the region.

And the work of these amateurs was remarkably good—a few things worthy of hanging in a genuine art museum.

I have found the same from a Facebook page I follow, “Artists trying to make a living with their art.”

But what do we so often see in art museums? Drek. Sometimes literally. Things like a room filled with actual garbage.

One has to wonder why.

I credit it to the academicization of art. True art needs inspiration, and inspiration does not come on call, or with regular attendance at class.  Nor can one be educated into it. So something else must be substituted to fill those classroom seats; something must be taught.

What is taught must not require talent, let alone genius. It must also be counter-intuitive. You cannot teach what everyone already knows.

From the point of view of the professional artist, as well, it is best to find some trick that does not require actual inspiration or even fine craftsmanship--so that you can crank it out. Inspiration is a shaky foundation on which to build anything like a career. And spending too long on any one piece is going to hurt your income.

So stuff must be made up, which would appear to the average person to actually be bad art, to keep out the amateurs, and then those who do not appreciate it can be scorned as the philistines.

The philistines with fat wallets will buy it if told to, because it makes them look sensitive and bohemian and not the philistines they are.

Hence all this conceptual nonsense. Hence the only good art left will be folk art and popular art. The art of amateurs.

It is the same in poetry. I recall a book fair at which I overheard one well-dressed woman pick up and read to another William Carlos Williams’ poem “This Is Just to Say”:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Ending with “Isn’t it marvellous?”

And her acquaintance was obliged to assent or lose face by admitting she saw nothing in it.

Anyone without talent can write like this, but it conforms to and illustrates an academic theory. By appreciating it, you show you know what “imagism” wants in a poem: essentially, just an image, of something perfectly ordinary and mundane, with no comment or obvious symbolism.

It is anti-art, which is most often these days the point.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Over the Back Fence

 

My neighbour was by the day before yesterday to help me with my back door. We had not met before; I have just moved into the neighbourhood. A propos of nothing, he volunteered his disdain for Justin Trudeau. It seemed to be something he needed to get off his chest.

He claimed this used to be a solidly Liberal neighbourhood. He himself used to be a Chretien Liberal. Now everybody on the street but one Acadian family is behind Pierre Poilievre.

So much for that nonsense about the need for Tories to “move to the centre.” Never take advice from your political adversaries. Become the centre.

Why did my neighbour feel so strongly? The general sense was that Trudeau was robbing from the poor and giving to the rich—the same sentiment we hear in Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.” The endless carbon taxes were making everything more expensive, and doing nothing for the environment. Inflation and the cost of housing was crushing the poor. The proposed new restrictions on guns were ignorant and oppressive; the government was out of touch with rural life. They would do nothing for gun crime, since the criminals get their guns from the States. The government’s treatment of the Freedom Convoy was intolerable. It could not be allowed to stand. We should not be funding the CBC: everyone now watches YouTube instead. And everyone should get a VPN to bypass government censorship. He also planned to be in the “Million Man March” on September 20 to protest gender ideology in the schools.

And he stressed that Trudeau was incompetent, a failed drama teacher who did not understand economics.

This tracks pretty well with Pierre Poilievre’s attacks on the government: either Poilievre is reading the public mood well, or he is shaping the public mood. Probably both, like the brilliant rhetorician he is.

There is, I think, all over the developed world, a growing sense that the people and their governing elites are not on the same side. This is a pre-revolutionary atmosphere.

We are fortunate in Canada that we seem now to have an adequate electoral channel for this discontent: Poilievre. The polls show the Tories in majority government territory, and climbing. They may fail us once in power; then the situation darkens. 

But the present situation is more difficult in the US, the UK, France, not to mention China or Russia. There things seem more likely to reach the point of full social collapse.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Green Shoots Grow from the Manure

The world is in a mess. From whence comes our salvation?

To be fair, the world was in a mess when I was young: the Cold War, the fears of nuclear annihilation, the segregation in the US South; the assassinations of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and many others; the mailbox bombs, the plane hijackings. Perhaps the world is always in a mess. Perhaps it has only been in a mess since 1914. But it is at best a crushing disappointment that we have not made it better.

Normally in the course of history, as Ibn Khaldun observed long ago, a culture that is spent is replaced by a younger, more vital one emerging from the desert.

Now there are no more deserts left.

From whence comes our salvation?

The BRICS are making a play to replace “Western” dominance with a new coalition. I cannot see it working. The nations involved have nothing philosophically in common; they stand for nothing together, but perhaps raw power. The name of their organization is only the acronym formed of their names. Two of them, India and China, have recently been shooting at one another. So have two of the proposed new members, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Most of them look politically and economically unstable, apt to collapse at any moment: Russia, China, Iran, South Africa, proposed new member Argentina. Together they control a lot of oil, but oil is not the lever it was until recently. Its importance is likely to further decline thanks to fracking, improvements in nuclear, and campaigns against carbon.

It all looks more like a rear-guard action than the future.

And so, from whence comes our salvation?

It must come from green shoots within the democracies, I suppose. From some class of people now in the metaphoric desert, from voices crying in the wilderness.

From, for example, the nomadic truckers, living in their trucks or vans. From the despised “hillbillies,” like J.D. Vance and Oliver Anthony. From the Bible-thumpers. From the salesmen, the despised hucksters, like Trump.

Not, however, from the officially designated “disadvantaged.” Anyone officially designated such is given special benefits, and so is advantaged. They are also taught to be passive and lose initiative. It will be from the folks that the “good” people shun for supposedly moral reasons: those ritually and without evidence accused by those in power of racism, homophobia, misogyny, fascism, poisoning the wells, raping our women, and so on—the usual slurs.

These are the ones Jesus called to himself in the Beatitudes.

The stone that is rejected will become the cornerstone of the temple.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Telegraph Sends a Man to Darkest Canada

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Getting Schooled on Residential Schools

 

Egerton Ryerson statue once standing in front of Ryerson University

Friend Euripides sends this New York Post piece to me from Korea. Word of the failure to find any evidence of the Canadian genocide is getting out.

I see the slogan in the video on Egerton Ryerson’s statue: “No child forgotten, no child left behind.”

Here in Saint John, I go into the Dollar Store, I go into WalMart, I go into Giant Tiger—all have prominent displays of orange T-shirts or sale with the slogan “Every Child Matters.” These are a protest against the residential schools. Uptown, I see two pedestrian crossings painted orange with stencilled feathers—again a protest against the residential schools. At the Art Gallery of Ontario, when I visited a year ago, there was a big display in the atrium of children’s shoes arranged in a circle, to represent the supposedly murdered children.

There has been a wave of arson attacks on churches across Canada--up to 803 now. Including to my mind the most beautiful building in Alberta, St. Jean Baptiste in Morinville, a perfect French Canadian church sitting incongruously in the middle of the prairie. Burned to the ground. Another uniquely beautiful and historic church in Fort Chipewyan, Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Burned to the ground. Canada, especially Western Canada has too few historic or architecturally interesting buildings. And the authorities did not seem to care. Trudeau spokesman Gerald Butts said the attacks are “understandable.” 

That statue of Egerton Ryerson that is shown in the video splashed with paint has been taken down. He was the founder of the Ontario public school system, but he is now condemned for having advocated the residential schools for Indians. Ryerson University, named after him, has now been renamed “Toronto Metropolitan University.” This hits close to home, since both I and my grandmother are graduates. The statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in Macdonald Park in Kingston, his hometown, has been taken down. He is the founder of Canada, but his government also funded the residential schools, so he is now a villain. My ancestors, my family, are from Kingston, and would have known him.

In June, government official Kimberly Murray suggested it should be made a crime to deny that there was genocide in the Indian residential schools. Justice Minister David Lametti said he was “open to the suggestion.”

It’s all a hoax.

The original report of a “mass grave of indigenous children” came from the reservation in Kamloops. I have lived in Kamloops; the story immediately sounded impossible. The residential school is right across the river from downtown Kamloops. If large numbers of children had gone missing in this, or any other urban school, you can be sure it would have been noticed. The tribal government would have been on the case, the Kamloops police would have been on it, the Provincial and federal governments would know about it; not least, the child’s family would notice if little Tommy did not come home for Christmas or summer vacation. There would of course have been records of all students entering and graduating, and any deaths. If nobody noticed at any level, the problem must have gone far beyond the school.

During the public announcement by the Kamloops band of a “preliminary indication” of unmarked graves, the one that spread the story of mass graves and genocide across the world, they promised to follow up soon with a further investigation. Other tribes soon followed suit with their own magnetic imaging and their own announcements They were given federal money for said further investigations. And yet after two years no excavations have been made.  None are scheduled. This suggests strongly they have known all along there were no unmarked graves.

After two years, Pine Creek is the only band who has been naïve enough to excavate. The rest are apparently all hoaxing the public for more funding.

“The system forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time,” the NY Post piece explains. That is, at best, overdramatized. There was as now a legal obligation to send your children to school in Canada. In the case of Indians it was actually rarely enforced. Most Indian parents had the choice of a residential school or an ordinary day school; most Indian children attended day schools. Residential schools were available for parents too remote to have a school nearby, or families who did not want or could not bear the expense of supporting their own children. Most attendees in many schools were orphans or wards of the state.

The piece goes on: the schools “forbade them to acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or to speak their own languages”

Think about it. If the plan was to separate Indians from their heritage and integrate them into the larger culture, the thing to do would obviously be to send them to the regular government schools with everybody else. The very existence of separate indigenous schools proves an intent to keep the Indians separate and distinct. They had a separate curriculum which featured elements of Indian culture, along with their reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. The use of indigenous languages was sometimes restricted; for two reasons. First, for the same reason language schools usually  prohibit speaking L1 (the students’ first language) in class—because immersion is the most effective way to learn a language. Second, because most schools had students with a variety of first languages. The only common language was English or French. Using another language was excluding classmates from the conversation.

The official policy of at least the Catholic Church, which ran most of the schools, was not to restrict use of the original language outside of the classroom. Many staff members were themselves aboriginal, and would address students in their own shared language.

Conditions at the schools might sound harsh in modern terms, too much macaroni and cheese and not enough fresh fruit in the cafeteria, perhaps, but we were all poorer then. The schools were sometimes not well-funded. However, conditions had to be better than the children would experience at home, or their parents could and would pull them out of the schools. Administrators worried about this—showing, of course, that parents had that choice.

This is not, of course, to deny that school is hell. That goes without saying.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Born This Way?

 

Scene from the Brooklyn Public Library

Friend Max asks, Are people born gay?

Unlikely. 

Back in the eighties and nineties, because the Human Genome Project was the big thing happening in science, genetics were imagined to be the cause of everything.

Just as, when electricity was discovered, it was postulated to be the cause of everything, of life and consciousness—so the novel “Frankenstein.”

Just as, when magnetism was first understood in a scientific sense, it was imagined to be the cause of everything; of consciousness itself. “Animal magnetism,” “mesmerism,” could cure “mental illness.” This evolved into modern psychiatry. Freud started with it.

Just as, when computers first appeared, saying something had been put through a computer established its unquestionable truth. I remember getting into structuralism back in the day, which argued that all human cultural artifacts could be analyzed into binaries and, theoretically, computerese. That claim gave the theory vast authority.

Just as, when the atom was first split, radiation was supposed to do all kinds of magical things, both good and, mostly, bad. The superheroes of the early sixties got their powers by being exposed to gamma radiation, being bitten by a radioactive spider, or the like. At the time, it all sounded plausible.

In a similar way, in the eighties and nineties, almost everything was supposed to be genetic: homosexuality, pedophilia, alcoholism, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, “antisocial behaviour,” whatever. A dangerous path to tread—it leads logically to racism and eugenics. But no plausible gene has yet been found for any of these. Since the white coats have been looking intently for over forty years now, with our understanding of the human genome growing exponentially, it seems unlikely they exist. There are no genes for thoughts, opinions, likes or dislikes. Apparently there’s this thing called free will. Who could have guessed?

But the gay lobby seized upon the moment back in the eighties to declare that homosexuality was an inborn characteristic, like skin colour, something over which they had no control, so it was unjust to criticize, let alone discriminate, on that basis. “Born this way.” Now that is frozen into law, even constitutional law, and we are not allowed to question or we are “homophobic.” 

But it was always illogical. If gayness were based on a gene, that gene would breed itself out within a generation—homosexual sex does not produce offspring.

There is one alternative possibility: that it is caused by some sort of intra-uterus brain damage. But what’s the mechanism?

Moreover, you may know, as I do, of “homosexuals” who have gone “straight” later in life. Kathy Shaidle used to claim that every “gay” friend she knew in high school later went straight. This used to be assumed to be the standard path in ancient Greece; young men dabbled in homosexuality before later settling down to have a family. It was also more or less expected in British residential schools back in the day. We often hear news of this or that prominent person, married with children, suddenly declaring in midlife that they are gay, and running off with a same-sex partner. If it can happen in one direction, surely also in the other. We might at most be dealing with an addiction, like alcohol, or tobacco, or any other sexual fetish.

How do people become gay? After all, you yourself probably have no desire whatsoever to have sex with another man; nor do I. The most likely explanation is some pleasurable early experience of gay sex; which then develops a habit, overriding the natural instinct for the opposite sex. Just as we reach for an olive because we remember how good an olive tasted once before. And prefer redheads because of some notably pleasurable early experience with some redheaded girl.

In other words, homosexuals are groomed into it by other homosexuals. This, and the need to maintain the population of the polis, is probably reason enough for most past societies taking a dim view of the practice. I note that in Saudi Arabia, while homosexuality is technically illegal, nobody will disturb you at it until and unless you approach a minor. Then the hammer falls quickly.

If you are gay, you face a fundamental problem: 97% of those people you want sex with will not want sex with you. There is no obvious way of telling who that remaining 3% are. Without facing eternal and possibly brutal rejection, what are your strategies?

Bath houses with a certain reputation are one. Being very publicly gay, acting effeminate, is another—so the classic image of a gay man lisping and mincing. Marching half-naked in a gay pride parade to advertise your availability is another.

Another obvious one, though, perhaps the most obvious one, is to groom someone too young to really understand sex. They will probably not reject you, because they don’t grasp what’s going on. You’ll initiate them into the habit, and perhaps have a reliable sex partner for a time. In any case, you have enlarged the pool.

Even if gayness is broadly socially accepted, this still may be the easiest path, and the one that needs the least courage. Why do all these transsexuals and transgenders and their advocates currently want so badly to introduce “drag queen story hours” in schools and libraries, and books referring to explicit gay sex to grade school children? We would never tolerate such sexual displays among heterosexual adults.

If it isn’t grooming, what else could it be?

To be fair, we cannot accuse all gays of going after children. Many gays understand that being gay is, at best a misfortune, and are as adamant as anyone about opposing sex with children.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Trump or Chaos

 

The electoral system has declined so badly in the US that the Democrats are blatantly trying to rig the 2024 election by indicting their leading opponent and trying to take his name off the ballot. 

Given how thoroughly they have discredited the process, it is urgent that Donald Trump be declared the winner in 2024. That is now the only way to restore public confidence. If Trump does not win, his supporters are unlikely to accept the result, and their only recourse, the electoral process having been withdrawn, would appear to be insurrection or civil war.

We can be grateful that it has not reached this stage in Canada yet, although the Canadian Liberal government is hurrying down that same path.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.