‘This is not normal’ and truth doesn’t stand a chance: a partial list in today’s politics

CHELSEA, QUE.—Perhaps the most memorable moment in last month’s debate among U.S.Republican presidential candidates—well, except for the front-runner—came from former New Jersey governor and Donald Trump factotum Chris Christie. Said Christie, referring to Trump’s mounting criminal indictments: “This is not normal.” And it isn’t, of course—not only that Trump would be campaigning for president, while simultaneously facing the prospect of imprisonment, but also the former president’s utter disregard for anything beyond vengeance and his regular golf games. Trump has torn up the political rule-book—desecrated it, even—for how aspiring political leaders should behave. Porn star, hush money, tax evasion, pandering to dictators, cruelty towards opponents, treachery towards friends, encouraging treason, and lies. Lies so plentiful, so frequent, so venal—and, sometimes, to be honest, so entertaining—that truth doesn’t stand a chance. The champions of truth—in the media, the Congress, the think-tanks, the regulatory bodies, the judiciary—are painted as humourless nags or vindictive losers, insisting, as they do, on “the rule of law," “common decency,” or ‘democratic tradition.” Haven’t these priggish elites, these persnickety scientists, these “rich men north of Richmond," pushed ordinary people around for long enough? Trump thinks so. And he will likely become the Republican nominee and could, despite everything, become president of the United States again. Really, not normal. Unfortunately, we are not immune from the new, more brazen amorality in Canada. Politics has always traded in half-truths, insinuation, cheap shots and ugly advertising. And it is unwise to compare the present moment to some imagined, virtuous past, when the jousting was mostly benign and the lines of decency and dignity were never crossed. Even with those caveats, however, the lies today seem especially blatant, mainly because they are so easily refuted—by verified facts, abundant evidence, archival video—in an obsessively documented time. But also because these casual fabrications are NEVER acknowledged, much less corrected. Sometimes the lies are snide, petty and personal, but sometimes they are enormous and dangerously false. In Alberta, for instance, Premier Danielle Smith is financing a renewed “war room” campaign to sell more of Alberta’s oil and gas to the world—claiming it is a clean and reliable energy source—while the province is, almost literally, burning around her. This is insanely short-sighted and self-destructive at a moment when the rest of the world has made the connection between continuing greenhouse gas emissions and the climate catastrophes unfolding everywhere. The campaign, spearheaded by the so-called Canadian Energy Centre, whose budget has been covertly tripled to $22-million by Smith, flies in the face of settled science. Oilsands bitumen is among the most emissions-intensive on the market, “natural” gas is increasingly being recognized as a health hazard, and efforts to reduce emissions intensity have stalled, or rest on expensive and unproven carbon-capture technology. Adding to the insanity, the same government has declared a moratorium on Alberta’s burgeoning, and promising, renewables industry on the flimsiest of pretexts. This is like erecting a barricade on the only road to safety while the town is burning. All this, while the province’s energy minister was in Germany, extolling the export of a pioneering Alberta geothermal technology to that country. You don’t need an advanced degree in logic—you don’t even need high school civics—to unravel the fallacy that underlies Smith’s dedication to a fossil-fuel future. Meanwhile, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is normalizing small and large deceptions as he campaigns to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister. His Axe the Tax campaign against the federal carbon tax, for instance, exaggerates the impact of the levy on the cost of living, ignores the rebates to most families, and downplays the captains of industry who are amassing record profits while food banks are overwhelmed. That can be dismissed as politics-as-usual, of course, or, a nostalgia tour for those who remember the Harper era. But it is harder to explain away Poilievre’s recent comment to a voter, while he was campaigning in Durham, On., that Trudeau, and his father, Pierre, are both “Marxists.” The juvenile jibe went viral. Many pointed to an obvious contradiction: how can a prime minister that Poilievre portrays as a tool of the World Economic Forum and the “globalist” elite, be, at the same time, a Communist? But, another childish insult. Big deal. Normal. Then there is the opposition leader’s claim, based on one news story from Ottawa, that “after eight years of Trudeau, day cares are closing because of crime, chaos, drugs and disorder.” Or, that the independent news-gathering agency, The Canadian Press, is an arm of the CBC and part of a campaign to discredit the Conservatives. Or that former governor general David Johnston, appointed by Harper, was a Liberal stooge—and on, and on. (Pity the newly-appointed head of the inquiry into foreign interference, Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Marie-Josée Hogue. Within minutes of the announcement last week, trolls were denouncing her as “another traitor judge.”) As to Poilievre, there is his infamous accusation that “the Trudeau government has been spying on you everywhere. They’ve been following you to the pharmacy, to your family visits, even to your beer runs.” Or, “Liberals say the common people should shut up and do what the experts tell them. Here’s the thing: the common people are the experts.” The Trump script, imported with only light editing. Poilievre never apologizes, never retreats. And his smears, deliberate distortions and cheap shots are not slowing his party’s rise in the polls, just as Trump’s legal quagmire isn’t hurting him, so far. This is not normal—unless it is now? Susan Riley is a veteran political columnist who writes regularly for The Hill Times. The Hill Times

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‘This is not normal’ and truth doesn’t stand a chance: a partial list in today’s politics

We are not immune from the new, more brazen amorality in Canada. Politics has always traded in half-truths, insinuation, cheap shots and ugly advertising.

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