Columnists
Do you believe in magic?
I’ve been around a long time. I don’t often delve into politics, although the Times is my political arm—where I can vent my thoughts, and you can love me or hate me. I’m okay either way. I’m a big believer in: “Say what you think.” If you have the strength to speak your mind, you will get an honest opinion in return. Not always a good one, but that’s the price you pay for standing on your opinion.
I am uneasy with politics, because it’s a game I don’t like to play. There’s always a motive behind every engagement. As a business person, I’ve learned to look out for sneaky subtext—ideas that sound great, but are largely intended to get me to do something they want me to do. It’s like when my chess addicted brother taught me to play chess: “And the rook moves like this … I win!” That isn’t even a game. Just someone playing for the win.
In other words, the game is rigged. In politics, it’s not even as simple as an easy fix. It’s just a joke. A handful of people turned up in our last election and—yay!—we have some guy we don’t know, who probably does not know what we want, or what we need, but has read some reports, and has great-looking family pix, and a track record of … what? Don’t get me wrong. Whasis name from wherever may turn out to be brilliant. My problem is: Wouldn’t it be nice to find out he was brilliant before we elected him? But this is what we do.
MANDATORY DISCLAIMER
I was a reporter at the Gazette in the early ‘70s. At the time, and since then, I’ve seen so much BS shovelled through the political spectrum that I should have a tropical garden in my backyard, with pineapples and coconuts. The stories I could tell—which I can’t tell, because I learned the game, and reporters just report. Plus reporters can’t afford good lawyers, if they decide to ‘tell stories out of school’. Still, we see what we see. During that time, based on what I saw on the ‘Campaign Trail’, I didn’t vote for four years. To me, it was pointless.
SAME OL’ , SAME OL’
Our County, our country, the world falls for political promises like we’ve never been fooled before. In the circus world, they call us ‘rubes’: “This amazing medicine will cure you of indigestion, sleeplessness, heart problems, kidney problems, constipation …” because it was 90 per cent alcohol. (Not that I haven’t used that for many years to treat whatever ailment I might assume I have! I promise! It works!)
BACK TO POLITICS
Remember Bill Davis? I covered him for the Gazette during my time there. The press called him ‘Slick Willy’. He became Premier of Ontario by cutting the provincial sales tax from seven per cent to five per cent a couple of months before the election, and put it back to seven per cent a little after he was elected.
I won’t say he did a bad job, but it was aweinspiring to watch him work a crowd. Promise after promise. He could make them up on the spot! I watched him in the scrum after the event. You got a problem? I’ll fix that. Taxes too high? Fix that. Fuel prices too high. Fix that. Unexpectedly pregnant? Even he didn’t offer to fix that. He had his ‘promise limit’ code.
And we fell for it. Just like your average sheep. We believe. Oh, we want so much to believe that we will believe anything.
That’s what makes us ‘rubes’.
WHAT I BELIEVE
No, not me. You. We have information pounding us every day. I would take a wild guess that 10 per cent of that information is true. Wait, it’s Wednesday. Make that five per cent. Lots of people believe the other 95 per cent is true. Join the Sheep Corral.
Many of you sit in audiences and listen to every unfounded promise, and cheer like crazy. You’re probably there because you are already a party person, and hope to hear enough promises to support the conviction you already have. You are ripe for the picking.
Sadly, I once saw that world from the underbelly. I watched former MP George Hees slip $5 bills to every person he shook hands with. I watched his ‘manager’ cue him with the name of everyone in line, so he could greet them by name, as if he knew them. My favourite: A woman was greeted by name, and he turned to her 80-year-old mother and said, “And this must be your sister.” The poor lady giggled like a schoolgirl: “I’m her mother!” Get out! This is how politics used to run. Same game, but it has changed.
HERE COMES THE TOUGH PART
I always remain politically neutral in my columns, and I am not taking sides here. I have voted for every Canadian party over the years (except for Rhinoceros; are they still around? What were they?)
TRIGGERS
Based on everything you’ve just read, I have a problem. No matter the party, or the politician, all I can see is the game. Y’know, the game we always fall for.
My problem is with Pierre Poilievre. Not with him so much, but with how he plays so well in the media. “Pierre Poilievre is a life-long conservative, champion of a free market, and fighter for people taking ownership of and responsibility for their own futures.” Step back Rocky, there’s a new dude in town.
I don’t know the guy, obviously. I know him only through his TV ads. But everything he says and does sets off all the triggers in my mind. To me, he is not a person. He is an ad campaign. Flashing back to ‘Slick Willy’, here are my triggers:
1) Lots of pix and videos of ‘happy family’ (No problem there, it sells).
2) Lots of Canadian flags everywhere, even in open fields, where no one but the video crew has ever visited. That’s a strike.
3) The Big One: Promises. I’ve heard some good ones over the years but: Cut taxes; make homes affordable; support our military; remove ‘woke’ thought . .. Wow! He’s the Magic Man! Every problem we have—solved! This is so typically ‘Snake Oil Solution’ I get tired of hearing it. He can do anything, including making my clothes ‘whiter than white!’.
4) Another favourite from his ads: “Stop Crime!” No details, or even an indication of the crime that will be stopped, or how he has the answer to a centuries-old problem in every country in the world. Only he and Batman know for sure.
5) No one says how this Utopia might be created, or who will pay for it. The devil is in the details, and no details have poked their heads up yet.
This is not an election. It’s an ad campaign. And we’ll fall for it, just like we buy a pile of stuff on Amazon, which turns out to be all hype, no followthrough. PP may be the real deal, but promises are just that. A whim. A wish. And lots of flags and family pix.
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