And what a weekend it was indeed — and then some. I go offline for a little while, and before I know it a sharknado evolves into a hurriquake. (These are Pokémon, I think?) That'll teach me to take an (extended) Labour Day break. So what happened while I was away, and what's on the docket next?
. . .
Long live the queen
I'm American, in case you didn't know, even though I mostly write about Canadian politics and culture. It's considered unpatriotic blasphemy to say it where I am, but in some regards, I think the Founders goofed. Then again, with Liddy Regina having gone to the great corgi sanctuary in the sky... Her Majesty's Commonwealth Realms (including the Maple Crown) are #StuckWithChuck.
And they even changed their pronouns to His Majesty to match the current zeitgeist. (Their Majesty? The royal "we"?) Still, no word yet on if the unofficial national anthem of Great Britain will be "Do Your Ears Hang Low."
(There's a Python skit in here somewhere...)
I kid, of course. Most of us here stopped holding obsessive grievances against the mother country a long time ago (except the really hardcore Tea Party cosplayers still fighting the war of 1812). We're allies now, and many so-called royal watchers across the pond have a tremendous respect for, and fascination with, the British royal family, warts and all. QEII was a beloved figure at home and all over the world, the longest-serving female world leader and a feminist icon who worked on cars, joined the armed forces, and stood against fascists.
She was also a mom, a grandma and a great-grandma with a biting wit. A true representation of the rapidly-fading Greatest Generation, not unlike many of our own grandmas, nanas, vavós, mémères, and abuelas. She loved her dogs, wore nice jewelry, handed down her pearls of wisdom, worked every day until her last, and even took time to share four o'clock tea and crumpets at a teddy bear's picnic for children. (Complete with a healthy helping of marmalade, of course.)
Needless to say, I'll bet she didn't expect her dining companion to be the President of Ukraine in disguise. But I digress. Long live the queen. Often imitated, never duplicated, there will never be another one like her.
Meanwhile, speaking of pretenders to the throne...
In the hall of the pigeon king
When I talk aout pretenders to the throne, I'm referring of course to delusional grifter and transplant from a faraway country (if not another planet), Ramona Dildo, who fancies herself the self-proclaimed "Queen of Canada" and ruler of Internet micronations. Needless to say, there can only ever be one Queen of Canada, and she's dead, while this crackpot doesn't have a rightful claim to so much as a Burger King. (Though her fan club did take over a church around the time the Pope came to town.)
But you know who her subjects also happen to be? The dedicated followers of the Covidiot Convoy. On Saturday night (while Canada was in a state of national mourning), they crowned Petulant Pigeon Pierre Poilievre the new leader of His Majesty's Disloyal and Defiant Opposition. It really came as no surprise to anyone but the desperate and failed Canadian pundit class, who really, really wanted "Fancy French Jeb! Bush" Jean Charest (as Evan Scrimshaw called him) to Make Conservatives Respectable Again.
Having failed at that mission, because actual Conservatives (rather like rank-and-file Republicans) want no part of the "respectability politics" of the so-called "Laurentian elites," the media now seems resigned to memory-hole all of Petey Peckerhead's deplorable behaviour and associations, as though he was a terminally-online influencer manufacturing a narrative-friendly sob story to marshal a pitchfork mob with intent of giving his criminal record a royal flush. (Except, Pierre is a pigeon, not a kiwi. Don't go down the abyss of that story, whatever you do. It's a total clusterfuck and your eyes will regret it.)
Anyway, Pierre will never be a royal, as the song says. But it'd be easy to mistake him as a Republican candidate for president — and, yes, that particular president, Sir Donald of Orange (if not deputy court jester, Ron DeSantis the Florida Man). Now the concern is that Canada is on the verge of making a sequel to that god-awful Yankee ripoff of The Crown (in this case, The Czar of Queens).
But instead of a royal chariot, an RAF ambulance, or even a golf cart, Pierre le Puke, Sir David of Duke intends to roll into the halls of governance on the back of... an 18-wheeler with a message expressing a desire to copulate with the current prime minister, or a tractor plowing bullshit. "Because it's 2016."
And that's where I stop this metaphor, because I've already stretched it as far as it could possibly go. Instead, just pick up and read Scrimshaw's contrarian takes putting paid to the groupthink of the broken Canadian media (and insisting, in vain, that they #DoBetter). Maybe he could be a Royal (or a Blue Jay), because he just keeps hitting it out of the park.
Which brings me to the subject of Pretender Pierre's dashing opponent, the French Prince of Nice Heir.
Long may he reign
Time and time and time again and again and again, no means no means no means no. I've noticed over the time that Justin Trudeau has been in office, how much the sneering pundit class and self-appointed muckrakers in Canada's decrepit fourth estate have treated him like a woman.
I say this because nothing he says is ever believed, while the conservatives, who represent "traditional" masculinity and authority structures, always get the benefit of the doubt and never get called out for the liars they are, while Trudeau has to say the same thing over and over in order to be taken seriously.
And still he isn't, even when the facts corroborate what he's been saying, and then he gets criticized for not having anything new to offer, that his "messaging" is getting "stale." But someone like Poilievre comes up with a new lie to patch holes in his previous lie, and he gets praised for being "dynamic."
So it kinda makes you wonder, maybe Trudeau is contemplating the exit ramp to some other venue where he'd be appreciated. Like a Netflix or podcast deal the way the Obamas and Clintons have done. Or something that appeals to his (and Margaret and Sophie's) passion for mental health advocacy, the way William and Harry (and Kate and Meghan) have done. (Well, Margaret and Sophie tried, but Pipsqueak Pete ruined that too.) Or maybe he does just want to return to a quiet private life and go back to being a schoolteacher, as was his initial calling, an environment that you can still see he longs for.
Or, you could listen to the man himself when he says, adamantly, that yes, he does intend to stick around for awhile longer, and no, he is not going to resign just yet, because he still more work to do to build a better Canada, and he has never given any indication that he wants to quit that job and do something else.
Which is exactly what he said, again, for about the umpteenth time, this past week en route to a cabinet retreat in Vancouver. It is also the same thing he said in the spring, and at Christmas, and last fall, and an untold number of other instances in private and in public. And yet only a handful of people believed him; the rest went along with the bandwagon effect that, no, he was definitely on his way out... and that there would be an election this fall (a year after the last one?), and that Jean Charest was going to be the Conservative leader and he would be contesting the next election against Chrystia Freeland.
I am no fan of Paul Wells in the least, but his axiom about the pundits usually being wrong still seems to hold up.
(Which includes Paul Wells himself, for what it's worth.)
I started cataloguing all the evidence for a Trudeau fourth-term contest way back in the spring during the convoy fracas. This weekend, in light of Trudeau's announcement to end all announcements (although, I don't count out the possibility, even likelihood, he'll have to reiterate the point again), I redid that thread, and even modified and expanded it a bit. You can read it in full under my pinned tweet and compiled on Thread Reader for convenience.
And though I don't expect anybody whatsoever in the Canadian pundit class to go over it, it would be nice if they did, so that they can at least admit that they have a pretty steady track record of screwing up.
Which brings me to the last marker of this roundup, another turning point in history when truth started its steady decline into becoming a relic of the past.
The eternal September
It's been twenty-one years since the September 11 attacks, another event where, just like the COVID pandemic, empathy and unity seemed to be in vogue for about twenty minutes before we all returned to partisan and internecine squabbling, and a withdrawal into our various team clubhouses of subjective "personal truth." It didn't take long for "we're all in this together" to become "you're either with us, or you're agin' us."
A war soon followed. Protests went hand-in-hand with it. Security protocols were forever changed; concerns about civil liberties arose in response. People got swept up in the "shock and awe" of the moment and the cascading effects of the aftermath. Some revived their faith in a higher power while others "lost their religion." Babies were born, and marriages broke down. Leaders led, while cowards got the boot.
And I guess it was a harbinger of things to come. At the same time I almost don't want to imagine what that moment would have been like if social media had been as ubiquitous as it is today. Yet at the same time as that, I've lost so much trust in the sensationalist agenda-setters of the media, that I'm inclined to wonder if it would have been any different were we all glued to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube instead of CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. (I have no idea how trustworthy or objective were the major broadcasters in other countries.) The Internet did exist, having survived "Y2K," and bloggers started to become "a thing," but 24/7 cable "news" was still the de facto transmission model. I guess what I'm wondering is, is it inevitable that no matter where you look, that the message gets lost in delivery?
On my own personal account, I wrote a brief thread about a niche online controversy that mostly flew under the radar and caused me to lose a little more faith in humanity. My thirty-sixth orbit around the sun took place at the end of August, when the last remnants of summer's glow start to fade into the chill of autumn and winter. I also caught COVID after two and a half years of avoiding the bug. I noted that I've been having my own crisis of conscience as I approach the milestone of four decades on this pale blue dot.
It really does seem that the most terrible people (and yes, in this case, there were, in fact, very awful people on both sides) are being emboldened as this century drags on, the Internet becomes as much a part of daily life as the flush toilet (and just as clogged with shit), and the material conditions of the physical world continue to deteriorate and buckle... like steel beams exposed to jet fuel.
Clutching our iPhones and nervously consulting our "likes," memes, bumper sticker slogans, in-group jargon, and dogmatic acknowledgments, we slide, almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness.
And yet a stubborn candle of hope remains flickering in my consciousness, hope that we have not yet descended fully into the demon-haunted world. It might be ephemeral, illusory, more smoke than fire. I don't know what the status of that light will be by the time I hit forty. Or even if I will hit forty.
But if and until that day comes, I'll try my damnedest... to look for the helpers.
