Shania Twain Had a Point, Or: The Only Way to Beat a Right-Wing Populist

When I heard that Shania Twain got in hot water for saying that she would have liked to vote for Donald Trump if she could, my knee-jerk reaction was to think she was silly and ignorant. But I had to stop and ask myself, what is Trump's appeal? He clearly has some, despite all the awful things he's said and done.

Twain said it herself: "He seemed honest."[1] He isn't of course, but he is a straight talker. Whatever comes into his head is quick to fly out his mouth. No number of handlers can keep him "on message" for long.

Contrast this to what we have come to expect from our politicians. Spin. Talking points. Questions going unanswered. Boring blather. Broken promises (Justin Trudeau being just the latest, most egregious example).

"If I were voting," said Twain, "I just don't want bullshit."[2] Bullshit is exactly what we get from our politicians. We've had decades upon decades of bullshit. Did they think nobody would get tired of it? Fact is, our politicians are the ones responsible for the upswing of right-wing populism around the globe. They built this edifice of Neo-Fascism, brick by bullshit-infused brick.

Twain should be neither vilified nor mocked. She should be lauded for her valuable insight. She told us exactly What Happened, probably better than Hillary Clinton's self-serving, blame-everybody-and-everything-but-Hillary-Clinton book ever can. Let's hail Twain as the prophet of the twenty-first century: voters don't want bullshit, and that's why Trump is the President of the United States.

In the long run, only one thing can beat a right-wing populist, and that's a left-wing populist. Bernie Sanders could have beaten Donald Trump; polls told us that well before the election.[3] Among other things, Clinton wasn't progressive enough to present voters with an exciting alternative to Trump. Sadly, while the Republican Party failed to prevent the nomination of their populist, the Democratic Party succeeded, and Americans are paying the price.

And as long as left-wing parties continue to block their most interesting, populist candidates, the rise of the right will continue. Perhaps that's what we're seeing in New Brunswick, with the NB Green Party's unprecedented ousting of Fredericton North candidate Chris Smissaert. No reason was given.[4]

So it seems our elites have not learned. They continue to want someone controllable, predictable, presentable and safe. Someone who will stay on message. Someone who will bore the living shit out of the voters. This fact puts us in continuing danger of being governed by somebody like Doug Ford.[5]

What can we ordinary people do? My best advice is, stop holding your nose and voting for the safe option. That's not a winning formula. Vote for the left-wing populist. If he gets blocked from running, vote for him when he runs as an independent. Yes, that may split the vote, but what difference does it make if the right-wing populist wins because of vote-splitting or because of the lack of an appealing candidate on the left? The result is the same, so we may as well bet on the only real chance we have.

Fear of vote-splitting is how our overlords keep us under control. It's the reason Justin Trudeau didn't implement Proportional Representation. He doesn't want you to vote for the left-wing populist, he wants you to vote for him, and he's perfectly happy to undermine democracy, trash the environment, and betray Indigenous people and everyone else in order to maximize his chances of winning an unjust majority.

If you rail against the "ignorance" of those who find Trump appealing, you're wasting your breath. Sure, in a perfect world, everyone eligible to vote would make an effort to research the candidates and their policies. Since this is the real world, that's never going to happen.

Another thing that's never going to happen is whipping all left-wing voters into voting for the safe, dull candidate the king-makers (or the queen-makers) have chosen. The Americans have that whipping and bullying routine down to a science. Third parties were scarcely a factor in their last election, and the results were as we have seen. In Canada, the situation is different. This hasn't been a two-party system in a long time, and it will never be again.

We need to thwart the king-makers, and choose the left-wing populist. Business as usual can only doom us.

---

1. "Shania Twain Apologizes After Saying She Would've Voted for Trump", CBC News. http://people.com/country/shania-twain-voted-donald-trump-the-guardian-interview/. Back

2. Ibid. Back

3. "Bernie Sanders says he consistently beats Donald Trump by bigger margins than Hillary Clinton does", Politifact. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/08/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-says-he-consistently-beats-donald-t/. Back

4. "N.B Green Party bans candidate from running in provincial election", KHJ Radio. http://www.iheartradio.ca/khj/khj-news/n-b-green-party-bans-candidate-from-running-in-provincial-election-1.3751232. Back

5. "With nine weeks to go, the Ontario election is Doug Ford's to lose", CBC News. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-ontario-poll-tracker-1.4603291. Back

The Economy Should NOT Be Our Number 1 Priority

An election looms on Monday, following one of the longest election periods in Canadian history[1]. Not entirely coincidentally, the four-year term drawing to a close feels like one of the longest in Canadian history. During this period, our environmental laws have been gutted like our fish[2]. Our libraries have been trashed, years of irreplaceable data discarded like empty Tim Horton's cups[3]. We have acquired mandatory minimum sentences[4] and a habit of using solitary confinement as an oubliette[5]. Veterans—you know, those people who risked life and limb for us—have been stripped of their pensions[6]. Largely due to the tar sands, our pollution levels are increasing[7] and Alberta's caribou are disappearing[8].

Yet the Progressive[9] Conservatives are at 30% in the polls. The Oct. 5 issue of Macleans displays a picture of a Conservative candidate and her supporters holding signs that read, "Economy #1 Priority" and "Protect the Economy"[10].

The focus of many a political debate suggests that this premise is widely accepted. To hell with justice, human rights, air, water—it's all about money! This is what we get if we allow Stephen Harper and his spin doctors to control our conversations. Which is what we have done, so far. Let's stop it, shall we? Should the economy be our number one priority? Of course not. No sane and civilized society would think so.

This government has created a tremendous amount of human suffering. That should trump any discussion of the economy. Why aren't we talking about that? Why aren't candidates and party leaders bringing it up in debates? The assumption is that we Canadians are all selfish and care about nothing that doesn't affect us directly. If we as a country want to embrace that, then we need to stop pretending we're "nice." The out-of-date perception of Canadians as nice people persists for now, but it won't forever if we continue down this road, and we shouldn't expect it to. Nice people care not only about their immediate interests but about what's happening next door. Such people would have a problem with a government that refuses to do anything about sky-high rates of murder of Aboriginal women. They certainly wouldn't plan to vote for said government at a rate of 30%. (Yes, it's a minority but it's far too large a minority.) This is shameful and a disgrace.

Of secondary importance is the fact that making the economy our number 1 priority will not keep us safe and secure. Anyone who prioritizes the economy for this reason has not thought things through, and there are a lot of people who have not thought things through. Apparently it's a popular idea that as long as we have a strong economy, we don't have to worry if we're not growing enough food to feed ourselves; we can simply buy food from abroad. Pierre DeRochet says as much in the Oct. 5 edition of CBC's The 180[11].

Sure, that'll work—until we do something our food supplier doesn't like, and they decide to withhold food from us until we change what we're doing. What might the reason be? Well, maybe we have good relations with another country that our food-supplying country is at odds with, and they want to change that. Maybe they don't like our laws. Maybe they don't like our immigration policies. It could be anything, really. But as food diminishes on our grocery store shelves, we will do whatever they say. Once our entire food supply is in the hands of someone else, we will have zero autonomy.

Perhaps you think they won't do that because they want the money that we pay them for our food. That might work in our favour for a while, until something comes up that they hold more important than money. After all, just because we're stupid enough to value money more than anything else doesn't mean everybody else is that stupid. They can manage with less money for a while. They have food, and without the cramp of hunger in their bellies, they can hold out until they get what they want.

Another scenario is that the food-supplying country has seen a huge drop in their yields, due to unfavorable weather, and no longer has any surplus. They cease to export food, because they need it all to feed their own populace. In this scenario, there are no demands we can give into in order to feed ourselves, no terrible trade-off to make. We simply starve. This scenario becomes more likely as progressive global warming leads to more extreme weather conditions, droughts and floods[12].

When that happens, those who prioritized the economy can eat their money. Too bad it's now made out of plastic. The paper money we used to make would have been a little more digestible.

Canada, it's time to grow up. Start prioritizing the things that really matter: people, animals, lakes, rivers, beauty, compassion, love. Vote for these things on October 19. Stop prioritizing that crackly stuff in your wallet. Your infatuation with it degrades you now, and it will surely let you down in the end.

---

1. The longest election period in Canadian history was in 1872. See The Ottawa Citizen, Aug. 3, 2015. http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/two-down-76-to-go-the-longest-election-campaign-since-we-first-re-elected-john-a

2. Linnitt, Carol. "New Report Shows 'Systematic Dismantling' of Canada’s Environmental Laws Under Conservative Government." DeSmog.ca, Oct. 14, 2015. http://www.desmog.ca/2015/10/14/new-report-shows-systematic-dismantling-canada-s-environmental-laws-under-conservative-government

3. Kingston, Anne. "Vanishing Canada: Why we're all losers in Ottawa's war on data." Maclean's, Sept. 18, 2015. http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/vanishing-canada-why-were-all-losers-in-ottawas-war-on-data/

4. Department of Justice, Government of Canada. http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/ccs-ajc/rr05_10/p2.html

5. White, Patrick. "Confined: the death of Eddie Showshoe." The Globe and Mail, Dec. 4, 2014. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/confined-the-death-of-eddie-snowshoe/article21815548/

6. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/benefits-for-wounded-canadian-veterans-do-not-stack-up/article23381161/ and https://www.change.org/p/government-of-canada-our-wounded-veterans-deserve-life-long-support?recruiter=14631496

7. See http://environmentaldefence.ca/blog/latest-data-shows-canada%E2%80%99s-carbon-pollution-still-rise

8. See http://albertawilderness.ca/issues/wildlife/caribou

9. I believe that these days, the word "progressive" in the party name is short for "progressively worse."

10. See http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/is-it-time-to-take-party-names-off-the-ballot/

11. The 180. "Food Security: Is it better to 'eat local' or global?" Oct. 11, 2015. http://www.cbc.ca/radio/the180/burka-avenger-and-the-niqab-decriminalizing-polygamy-and-legalizing-apologies-1.3261221/food-security-is-it-better-to-eat-local-or-global-1.3264960

12. See http://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/2324.html

Poll Results

The results of my first poll are in--and when I say "first poll," I mean the first poll to actually have results. I had another poll up before, but no one answered it.

This particular poll looked all right as a form but made a terrible results display. The reason for this is that I had long questions. For reasons known only to the programmers, the questions wrapped in the form (that is, where the reader makes a selection), but not in the results, which led to a horizontal scroll bar appearing. It was quite unsightly, and I didn't want to keep such an ugly thing on my page. If you ask me, the poll widget could use a bit of work. This is not the only problem I have had with it. If you try to change the poll ending time, and you do not stick exactly to the original format (right down to all caps for the AM/PM!) the thing freezes. You can't save and you can't go back. You lose your poll and have to start from scratch and retype everything. Very frustrating. Probably the best thing to do is not change the ending time, but alas, I'm anal and I like my polls to end at midnight, so in the future I will be very, very careful to capitalize AM and PM.

But in any case, it's nice to put the results in a post so that they are archived. The poll widget does not provide an archive feature. It's a buggy bare-bones kind of a thing. But enough kvetching; on to the results:

What does the future hold?

Flying around in hovercrafts like the Jetsons	2 (40%)
Utopia of clean energy and sustainable living	0 (0%)
Return to subsistence farming	1 (20%)
Relocation to another, earthlike planet	0 (0%)
Mass death from global-warming-related starvation, plague or war	1 (20%)
The Rapture: all good Christians floating up to heaven while non-Christians are left down here to rot	0 (0%)
Other	1 (20%)

Number of votes: 5

As you can see, "flying around in hovercrafts like the Jetsons" got the highest number of votes! I'm hoping that the respondents were just being funny. I mean, it's cute but terribly naive. Then again, I'm heartened by the fact that nobody voted for The Rapture. I'm guessing that that particular subset of Christians prefers to hang out at other blogs.

Mass death got one vote, but in all fairness I should admit that that vote came from me. This is not because I am in favour of mass death in any way, but because in my pessimistic moments, which are frequent, I think it's our likeliest fate. It's not just me; James Lovelock thinks so too (see his interview in New Scientist, January 24, 2008). There's also one vote for subsistence farming, which is my outlook as well, when I'm in a more optimistic mood. But come to think of it, you can have both. First mass death, then subsistence farming for whoever is left.

A utopia of clean energy and sustainable living would be nice, but none of my respondents think it's going to happen. That's a shame. On the other hand, none of my respondents think relocation to another planet is going to happen. Some people see that possibility as a way to save the earth: all the humans leave and the earth recovers in their absence. Scott Westerfeld explores the concept in his novel Extras, the sequel to the Uglies trilogy. But that scenario necessitates everyone leaving. I wouldn't do it. I don't think I could bear to leave earth. It would kill me. Also, were it an option, some people would see it as license to make as big a mess as they want. Why worry about a planet's environment if there's always another planet to hop to? The universe is infinite, after all. Such a prospect makes me ill. That's why I don't support the planet-hopping option.

I hope to get more respondents for my future polls, as it's impossible to draw conclusions, scientific or otherwise, from such a small sample.