Political plague of populism sweeping across the United States is rolling our way

HALIFAX—The political plague of populism is sweeping across the United States at an alarming rate. Who could have imagined a traditional political party like the GOP standing for the Big Lie that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the 2020 election, especially after that allegation has been thoroughly debunked in every official recount and court case that looked into the facts? Who could have imagined the need to fence off the Capitol Building in Washington to protect it from an insurrection of American citizens bent on bringing down a duly elected government? Five people dead. For weeks in Washington, it was National Guard democracy at best. Who could have imagined any candidate in the U.S. primary season banning reporters from their meetings, and eschewing public debates? That is what happened in more than one Republican primary. Herschel Walker, endorsed by Trump, avoided all debates and interviews in his bid for the GOP Senate primary in Georgia. Ted Budd, who won the GOP Senate primary in North Carolina, skipped all four debates. He was also backed by Trump. And the Republican National Committee itself is moving toward withdrawing from the 2024 presidential debates, which should come as no surprise. Trump skipped some debates both in 2016 and 2020, and still has a firm grip on the GOP. Democracy used to be about talking about your ideas and record to win the public’s confidence. It meant taking questions from reporters. It meant meeting your opponent face to face for all to see and hear. The new GOP just wants the power without talking about it. They understand the Second amendment, even after the atrocity in Buffalo, but seem to have forgotten the First. State Senator Doug Mastriano’s staff barred reporters from entering a rally he held along with another far right primary candidate Kathy Barnette. Mastriano, identifies as a Christian nationalist, and has the endorsement of Donald Trump. This election-denier won the primary race to become the Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania. If he wins, he will be in charge of the presidential election in Pennsylvania in 2024. Who could have imagined representatives from the Trump State and Justice departments meeting with some of those involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and in one case, drafting official letters calling into doubt the 2020 electoral outcome? Fortunately, no one else in the Justice Department would agree to releasing the letter. Who could have imagined the wife of a justice of the U.S Supreme Court exchanging 29 text messages with Trump’s chief-of-staff in the wake of Biden’s victory, asking him to overturn the result of the election? But that is exactly what Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas did, including this message to Mark Meadows. “Help This Great President stand firm Mark!!!….You are the leader, with him, who is standing up for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows that Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” It is worth noting that in 2021 when the Supreme Court itself rejected Trump’s last claims that the election had been stolen by fraudulent mail-in ballots, Clarence Thomas dissented, calling the ruling “baffling.” Now there is an eight foot, unscalable fence around the Supreme Court building, after a draft of a ruling that would remove a woman’s right to an abortion, if adopted, was leaked to the press. All entry points to the building have been blocked off to vehicles. There are also more police patrolling the halls and grounds of the Supreme Court. Ironically, Clarence Thomas is likely the justice who will write the majority opinion that could strike down Rowe versus Wade, and 50 years of settled law on abortion rights. The reaction has been so severe to that possibility, that all nine Supreme Court justices are under the 24-hour protection of the U.S. Marshals Service. The question isn’t whether this sinister eclipse of democracy in the United States could happen here in Canada. It is already underway. The risibly named Freedom Convoy was Canada’s capital insurrection without the deaths. The nation’s capital was high-jacked by people whose idea of freedom was pissing on the tomb of The Unknown Soldier, waving Confederate flags, costing their fellow taxpayers $36-million, closing businesses, and robbing Ottawa residents of the use of their city and enjoyment of their property for more than three weeks. Why did they keep everyone awake all night for over three weeks? They didn’t want to follow any mandates during a pandemic that has killed more than 40,000 Canadians and more than six million people worldwide. Not long afterwards, came Rolling Thunder, which rumbled into Ottawa on motorcycles in a feckless attempt to gum up the city the way the Freedom Convoy did. After the 350 uneasy riders attended a biker’s church service as their last event of their three-day protest, they rolled out again. Nine people had been arrested, dozens of vehicles were towed, and almost 1,000 traffic and bylaw violations were enforced by police. Make no mistake about it. The police did a good job. But it didn’t bring much joy to see a massive police presence on the beautiful streets of Ottawa, as the only way of preventing another fiasco in the downtown core. And it’s not just an Ottawa problem. Similar disturbances have taken place in Toronto, Québec City, Winnipeg, and Coutts, Alta., where four anti-mandate protesters were charged with conspiring to murder police officers. The Conservative Party of Canada legitimized this dangerous and illegal activity by standing with the 10 per cent of truckers who showed up in Ottawa, rather than the 90 per cent who recognized the importance of vaccines in fighting COVID-19; the ones who stayed behind the wheel doing their jobs. Pierre Poilievre, who is promising “freedom” to Canadians if he becomes prime minister, took selfies with the truckers and tried to extract political benefit from a lawless situation. Candice Bergen made the stunning statement that there were good people on both sides of the occupation of Ottawa. That was virtually the same sentiment Donald Trump expressed after a Unite the Right rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned violent. It ended with 19 people injured and the death of Heather Heyer. Despite that, Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides.” Bergen repeated Trump’s desperate moral equivalency between spreaders of hate and those who stood up against them. She did that by trying to get her party to sympathize with the very people who had taken protest all the way to breaking the law. Not every Conservative was fooled. Former Harper cabinet minister James Moore said that supporting the trucker convoy was “an ugly burden that’s winning no friends for anybody.” Nunavut Senator Dennis Patterson quit the Conservative Senate caucus over the party’s support for the occupiers, whom he described as “racist, hateful, misogynistic, white supremacist hooligans….” He kept his membership in the Conservative party, but he could no longer recognize it as the party of law and order. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has often mentioned that democracy around the world is under siege. The rule of law is being replaced by a seething populism that threatens to push aside or politicize key institutions, and replace them with authoritarian, and dictatorial people like Donald Trump. Now the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario has candidates in both Sudbury and the Nickel Belt in the provincial election who are skipping debates and shunning media questions. It might just be time to Unite the Left against the rising tide of populism that is transforming American democracy into a metaphor out of The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats. What rough beast is rolling its slow thighs towards Washington to be born again, no one knows. Michael Harris is an award winning author and journalist. The Hill Times