Thread by @sunnshiiny

All I can say is I warned people Barnes and Loewen were a distraction.

Kenney isn’t suffering any loss of support. The Churches, liberty & patriot crowd (white supremacists) and business owners have been given what they want. Zero restrictions, no masks. Voluntary compliance.

https://twitter.com/AB_MD_WarRoom/status/1420499298928664579

I said Kenney and his party were performing political theatre.

I wasn’t guessing. The Dominionist Christian community and Rebel media were making threats they would withdraw support.

The UCP base voters pressured Kenney to comply with their demands.

Kicking Barnes and Loewen out of the party served to distract the public, decrease public concern and deflate interest in the topic. Within days Kenney moved to withdraw all covid restrictions and announced he would not reinstate them, no matter what.

I believe the move is called bait and switch.

While the left laughed and was overjoyed at the internal turmoil within the UCP, Kenney quietly withdrew all restrictions. Not because it was safe to do so.

Kenney did this because of the demands from his loyal voter base: Dominionists, racists & wealthy entrepreneurs.

There’s limited friction within UCP.

Hoe can you believe Kenney, a well known micromanager, would allow people to text or tweet info from a confidential meeting.

And then not go completely ballistic on the caucus.

That was the first clue.

I monitor Alberta Dominionists fairly closely on more than one medium. There was grumbling, but no disloyalty before the info “breach” from an “insider.”

It was probably Matt Wolf typing and Kenney dictating the responses for maximum effect.

Kenney is a manipulator with theatrical emphasis.

He didn’t start out as a devout Catholic. He was born into evangelical Protestant faith where drama and devotion go hand in hand.

The priest at the boys school that his father ran for several years was a well known charismatic Catholic priest. Well versed in the use of emotional triggers to create a narrative and shape behaviour.

I’ve also said Kenney is not stupid. He’s manipulative.

I myself have played dumb to remain underestimated. It’s a strategy that people who need time to assess the environment (or want to manipulate) perform.

Kenney is a master at it.

Just because he’s been caught a few times doesn’t mean he isn’t really good at playing dumb.

He’s so good at it that most people on the left refuse to acknowledge his well honed manipulative skill and the ease with wishing he lies and gaslights. He doesn’t even bat an eye.

There is nothing Kenney says or does that isn’t scripted and well planned out.

But the public keeps gravitating towards explanations for Kenney’s behaviour that label him as stupid, ignorant, inept, and incompetent.

He’s not. So stop it and recognize the man is a much larger danger than the oafish buffoon Trump.

Stop listening to white male political pundits who may know normal and regular politics, but they don’t know how people with serious personality defects work politics to their advantage. And by no means is anything that’s political been “normal” for several years in Canada.

Kenney is an authoritarian. He is installing “ordered liberty” in Alberta. If you don’t know what that means, how can you assess his behaviour, policies or rhetoric?

How many pundits understand the Dominionist Christian agenda? How many know it exists.

Sometimes experts are so impacted by their confirmation bias they can’t see the forest for the trees.

That’s what’s happening. I’m not pointing fingers at independent journalists & political scientists using their knowledge base to analyze UCP to the best of their ability.

In a normal political environment, they’d have the advantage and legitimate authority to opine.

But this is not a normal environment. There is an organized and coordinated attempt to destroy democracy. And the experts are only trained in their stove pipe: Politics.

But that’s not where most of the subterfuge, politicization and underhanded manipulation is occurring.

The UCP base voter is either a white supremacist/nationalist, Q’Anon conspiracy theorist, Dominionist Christian, or a wealthy entrepreneur.

Three out of four of those groups are not governed by norms, laws, normal politics or social cohesion.

The majority of UCP loyal voters are at society‘a fringe. They have their own set of rules, norms, laws and exclusionary closed social groups.

Or hasn’t anyone noticed that?

So you cannot use standard methods to analyze their behaviour. You cannot assume they will follow laws. You can’t assume that they respond to shame, peer pressure or logic.

Three out of four of those groups are governed by magical thinking. Not critical thinking skills.

So you can’t understand their agenda and the lengths they will go to to achieve that agenda by using standard political theory or accepted norms and laws.

Because they don’t. As we have all witnessed during covid.

Current political experts and pundits are at a disadvantage because they ignore the fact most UCP supporters live in an alternate reality. Some of the wealthy businessmen are also part of one of the other three groups.

Take Brett Wilson for example. You think he is predictable using normal social expectations, norms and laws? He’s called for hanging Trudeau and NDP. He’s a wealthy Dominionist Christian businessman. I can predict his behaviour. Because I understand his agenda.

Your average journalist and political pundit is stymied by his chaotic and anti social behaviour. I’m not. It’s characteristic of a fascist.

Which no one seems capable of using that word to label Mr. Wilson. But that’s who he is and what his ideological belief system is.

He’s 100% convinced he’s superior to just about everyone else. So rules, laws, social conventions and norms don’t apply to him. He’s part of what he believes are the ruling class (wealthy white Christian men). Everyone else is just disposable second class scum.

If you don’t understand that, how exactly can you analyze his behaviour and root out his agenda? You can’t.

Wilson is one of the people celebrating the commitment by Kenney to refuse anymore covid restrictions. He’s one person I watch to assess the veracity of UCP rhetoric.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I do look through significantly more lenses to assess a situation than what journalists and political scientists use. Which means my accuracy for predicting what UCP is up to is much higher. I’m not clairvoyant. I just know where to look for info.

@threadreaderapp please compile