To fully understand the CPC's lusty embrace of demagogic, conspiracy-laced populism, it's important to grasp the party's ideological tradition--particularly its Reform Party/Social Credit roots in Alberta... Preston Manning--Stephen Harper's mentor, CPC godfather, & patron saint of Canada's "conservative movement"--is the link bridging Social Credit, Reform, & the CPC.

Social Credit (SC) were never Tories. In fact, they were antithetical to Toryism, even more so than the CCF...

We don't need an inquiry. I'll just cut to the chase.

Here's the story on foreign interference in Canada... Since the early '60s, the United States has routinely interfered in Canadian affairs--mainly through the exploitation of its monopoly of cultural production, the funding of domestic "think tanks", lobby groups, and social media orgs...

Getting a bit tired of all the "Don't worry, be happy" takes. A hugely influential province has just elected a patently unhinged far-right ideologue who openly & unrepentantly allied with literal domestic terrorists... Pundit-class MSM midwits are acting like the MAGA-minimising milquetoast US media who treated the Trump insurgency like a droll sideshow instead of an existential threat...

Well, well, well. Looks like the CPC has been witnessing some little-reported chicanery in the Woodstock area, the nature of which should come as no surprise...

lfpress.com/news/local-new… Seems Poilievre rigged the riding nomination to sideline a local candidate in favour of a parachuted crony, some guy called "Khanna", who lost his 2019 election in Brampton but has a special talent that makes him invaluable: he was a co-chair of Poilievre's leadership campaign...

I feel like the media are discussing the implications of the Chinese electoral meddling affair as if the Chinese were idiots. The assumption seems to be that Chinese intelligence really funnelled a few grand into the campaigns of a few nobodies in order to influence policy... ...and that China's alleged preference for a Lib government is a "secret" uncovered by CSIS. The first assumption relies on a belief that Chinese operatives model their activities on bad 1930s spy flicks & are unaware that backbenchers are irrelevant to policy formulation...

As I see it, the CPC faces a dilemma similar to that faced by the US Democratic Party in the '50s & '60s, when the Dems were split between urban progressives in the North & a large racist, regressive, segregationist support base in the Deep South. This situation was untenable... Ultimately, the Dems amputated their gangrenous Southern arm. The definitive split, after years of acrimony under JFK, was accomplished through LBJ's Civil Rights Act.

For the CPC, that gangrenous limb is its Prairie (read: Albertan) base...

Of the many ways in which the CPC are similar to the GOP, one is particularly striking: Both parties despise their institutional legacy.

Think of it. The GOP, the party of the Emancipation Proclamation & Reconstruction, have been the party of racist dogwhistling for decades... Here, the CPC & its predecessor parties have either destroyed or attacked Macdonald's National Policy (via the FTA), the Wheat Board & the CBC--all Tory creations. For bonus legacy-betrayal, the CPC's Prairie base also despises Sir John A.'s centralist conception of Confederation

Watching so many Canadians suffering fits of the vapours over a few *attempts* (not successes--attempts) at interference is particularly disappointing given that Canada is where the Cold War began, during the Gouzenko Affair, when a network of spies was uncovered in Ottawa... We were clearly made of sterner stuff then. The media didn't demand Mackenzie King's resignation or shriek about Canada being in Russia's pocket. I suppose we understood that espionage & foreign lobbying are occupational hazards of being an open, liberal, democratic society...

It amazes me that anyone who supported and/or still admires Stephen Harper can be critical of Justin Trudeau's performance at the #EAInquiry. That most Harper supporters *are* critical says everything about their moral emptiness & puerile partisanship... When you're a politically homeless Tory such as I am, you can't afford to determine provisional partisan allegiances on policy alone, because no current policy stances reflect your views. You thus tend to fall back on that most conservative of ethical considerations: character...

Among the countless un-conservative features of today's right wing, possibly the most un-conservative is their total lack of cultural memory. Collectively, the Canadian right's grasp of history is roughly equal to that of pubic lice.

Now, sometimes that amnesia is deliberate... Take the right's current pants-wetting hysteria over the "Great Reset", allegedly being enacted by a shadowy cabal of globalists headed by Klaus Schwab. Yes, it's a deeply unhinged conspiracy theory on the order of the Elders of Zion. It's also espoused by mainstream CPC figures

There's a new phenomenon I call "conwashing", whereby headlines are written to reflect something radically different from (and sometimes contrary to) the article's content, with the effect of making a right-wing voice seem more acceptable. Case in point:

calgary.ctvnews.ca/some-conservat… The disconnect between the headline & the actual piece (in both article & video form) is total. First, the use of "some conservatives" (plural) is irrational because only one MP (Rempel-Garner) is cited. And she doesn't say she disagrees with Thomas. She says the opposite...

We speak of the banality of evil. We could also speak of the virulence of mediocrity.

JFK's effortless charm, beauty, and privilege turned Richard Nixon's inferiority complex into a wasting disease that devoured his soul. There's a straight line from Camelot to Watergate... Similarly, the unhinged hatred of Trudeau on the right has little to do with policy. There's something distinctly Salieri-esque about the rancid bile that sluices forth from the Poilievres and the Rex Murphys...

Call it "a tale of two tweets". In one, a NatPost scribe thanks America (but, really, when is a NatPost scribe *not* thanking America?). In the other, the same scribe is conjecturing, entirely without evidence, that the Biden admin inserted itself into a juridical process... The tweets are at their most interesting when paired, but each is charming enough on its own. In the first, Canadian efforts to secure the release of the #TwoMichaels are damned by omission, even though we have zero info on what their impact was. Their nullity is assumed...

My brand of Toryism is built on a rejection of two modern beliefs: 1) the perfectability of human nature & 2) the Whig version of history, which posits that civilisation progresses on a straight line via which, on average, things get better and people become wiser... The latter belief implies that societies learn lessons.

Every day offers new proof that they don't. In today's example, we have Canadians, most right-wing but many claiming to be "progressive", begging to jump on America's Yellow Peril Cold War II bandwagon....

I've been reading reviews of Gwynne Dyer's "Canada in the Great Power Game, 1914-2014" to see if it's worth getting. It seems to be. This (not entirely glowing) review puts things into perspective nicely.

londonpoetryopenmic.com/frank-davey-bl… A excerpt:

"New agreements with the United States have brought about a situation in which the Canadian military have more confidential information about world security and US policies than Canadian government ministers are allowed to have...

Whenever the CPC loses & debate about the party's ideology resumes, one vocal segment of the base always argues some version of "We don't need two Liberal parties!" It's a truism that masks an absurdity... Imagine if R.J. Manion's Tories had voted against Mackenzie King's declaration of war against Germany, instead moving a motion approving of Hitler's invasion of Poland & wishing him every success, merely to avoid being too much "like the Liberals"...

Is there any evidence that O'Toole, as a Harper minister, ever objected (publicly or privately) to any of the cynicism, corruption, incompetence, or criminality of that dreadful regime? Did he object to Harper's attacks on the Supreme Court?... Did he object to Harper's attacks on Elections Canada? Did he object to Harper's attacks on public servants like Linda Keen who were targeted for doing their jobs? Did he object to the flagrantly criminal In and Out scam?...

Not sure we should let the CPC & media allies draw too great a distinction between them & the PPC, which could arguably be seen as embodying a "tendency" within the parent party. Important to recall that Bernier left the CPC only because he was burned by the leadership results... It's not like he underwent some kind of public ideological metamorphosis. He may well represent what a "mainstream" CPC pol looks like when he's decided real power is out of reach & he has nothing left to lose. He's the guy who ridiculed Kellie Leitch as "Karaoke Trump"...

I won't make election predictions. I learned my lesson last time, when I thought the Libs were toast. I'll just say two things. 1) If JT pulls this off with another minority (which is still a big "if" IMO), he'll need to be considered one of the best campaigners in our history... Not one of the best PMs, of course, but one of the best federal campaigners. Think of all the minuses he both faced & created for himself going in: The electorate is fatigued & surly after 2 years of COVID, bad news for incumbents; the campaign began under the shadow of Kabul...

Questions (likely in bad faith) are apparently being asked among right-leaning media about why the Libs are holding events that "allow" disruption, which, to me, appears insignificantly different from asking why the Libs aren't campaigning from bunkers in undisclosed locations... It's possible that JT is making himself accessible in order to counter the hostile 7-year-old narrative that he's an "elitist" who can't take the heat. Also, a huge part of his specific charisma is the appearance of vulnerability. Ask a Gen X woman how attractive that is...

So glad to see 𝘚𝘶𝘳𝘧'𝘴 𝘜𝘱's been given the "archive" treatment, re-released with demos, alternative takes, and live cuts. I'll gobble up anything related to that beautifully bizarre album.

theguardian.com/music/2021/aug… I got deep into music as soon as I could operate my family's huge wooden mid-60s-vintage stereo console, when I was four or five. Didn't use the radio on it, I just invaded my (much older) siblings' bedrooms & pillaged their record collections...