Don't Say Sorry Martha!

The Dauphin's fraud is briefly exposed:

“You keep referring to the middle-class,” Hall Findlay said Saturday. “You yourself have admitted that you actually don’t belong to the middle-class. I find it a little challenging to understand how you would understand the real challenges facing Canadians.”

Apparently this is a severe career limiting move on the part of Martha Hall Findlay. I can understand that her comments might come off as being petty and personal, but she is actually telling the truth. The typical Tory candidate gets far worse personal attacks just running in some obscure riding in urban Ontario. Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper have received absolutely vicious personal attacks for years. Why the heck is the Dauphin so special?

Years ago it used to be said that in hockey there was a no-hit rule for Wayne Gretzky. The Great One was far too special to be handled in the usual rough and ready way of Canada's national sport. Apparently Justin Trudeau is getting the Gretzky treatment, except that the Boy from Brantford was a legendary athlete and the boy from Sussex Drive is an empty suit. You can argue that Gretzky earned his alleged special status. Justin hasn't earned anything.

Now put yourself in Martha Hall Findlay's professional pumps. The lady is a curriculum vitae fetishist. By the time she graduated university she had already accomplished more than Justin has in his four decades on this planet. That's not an exaggeration. In the popular parlance she is a big-time keener. What must be going through that perfectly coiffed head of hers? Staring for hours at Justin's vacuous face.

I think we can hazard a guess: I'm smarter, tougher and more experienced than this trust fund baby and yet he's winning! For someone who has been so successful, so intent on being first place, being beaten by Justin Trudeau must be especially galling. A person like that can accept defeat at the hands of a Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff, each keeners in their own way. But a keener cannot accept defeat at the hands of a rich pretty boy.

Frankly, Martha just snapped.

I don't blame her. She was right to say what she said. It was politically very stupid. Then again truth and politics are at best nodding acquaintances. Everyone is suppose to pretend that Justin Trudeau is a serious candidate for the office of Prime Minister. Much in the same way that everyone is suppose to pretend that all babies are cute. It's a courtesy. Too much courtesy can be a dangerous thing as the Grits are about to discover when Justin is anointed in a few weeks time. Martha asked a reasonable question, which perhaps could have been phrased more tactfully.

How does a man fight for the middle class when he's never had to earn a living? It's possible. But Justin Trudeau's boilerplate response suggested not understanding but noblesse oblige. The Son of Pierre is gracious enough to enter politics and help you, the little people. I've had this great education and all these wonderful experiences, now I'm going to cast a little daylight into your sad and miserable lives. Let us be grateful.

The more I see of Justin the more I recall how much I like Conrad Black. The man emits a high intensity rich WASP vibe that can be sensed from several postal codes away. It requires very little to imagine Lord Black holding a snifter of Brandy in one hand while maneuvering toy soldiers with the other. His lips form a thin smile as your right flank is crushed by his artillery. There is no pretense to the man. Conrad Black is a very rich and very intelligent man who makes you perfectly aware that he is both. He doesn't even have to try, it's just the way he is. Justin Trudeau, by contrast, is making a very poor impression of a mediocre politician.

It isn't the real Justin we see in these Grit confabs, except in his natural shallowness. It's a prepackaged Justin-flavouring prepared by Gerald Butts & C0 of Toronto. The real Justin is an unremarkable though sometimes histrionic school teacher. Not an MP. Not a party leader. Definitely not Prime Ministerial timber. He is an exaggerated creature. Exaggerated first by his staff and then by a content starved media.

Martha Hall Findlay has done a great service to the country, if not to herself. She was rude enough to expose the Justin phenomenon for what it is. Will the rest of the Liberal Party be rude enough and smart enough to agree that she's right? 

Not betting on it.

Comments

[nomdeblog]

We need to define the middle class. It isn’t simply a calculation of income in the middle. The middle class is more a state of mind and a value that is often retained by people who rise up from low positions on the economic totem pole and climb to the top of it. In a healthy situation the economically successful still hold onto their middle class values rather than using their economic position to try and rule others. In other words they usually don’t become elitists. Some do, George Soros comes to mind.

The middle class in a large population capitalist economy is the majority class that creates the economic surplus of a society that is needed for investment and growth. Therefore entrepreneurs who rise to the top of the economic heap are usually careful to treat their employees with respect rather than try to lord over them as happens in a 2-class feudal system.

Those who choose to become career politicians tend to forget the Middle Class values they sprung from or at least understood once upon a time. They tend to become elitists trying to manipulate the Middle Class into an entitlement society that can be bought off and driven into a 2-class society. Their idea of a “just society” isn’t one of equal opportunity in the Middle Class. Instead it is based on equal outcomes because they still think we’re living in the days of Robin Hood where the wealth of a nation was static and in the hands of land owners and inherited by next of kin.

That won’t work in the long run. Egypt is a good example of a 2-class society whose population is now too big to support itself. Until Egypt figures out how to allow the majority to be free to become the middle class and be the dynamic creator of wealth realizing returns on its risk, Egypt won’t succeed.

The key to the Middle Class is that it is the majority and membership is open; anyone can create wealth and thus, be a member. Political power in any society must rest with the group who generate economic wealth. This means a capitalist society must be a constitutional democracy operating by elections and the rule of law.

Again, many rise above their inherited economic status (thinking of Dr Ben Carson born into a marginal economic situation but got an education and achieved considerable economic success) yet they retain their Middle Class values throughout their lives.

None of this would make any sense to Justin or Obama because they are only interested in using meaningless jingoes like “social justice” in order to manipulate and rule as elitists. Martha Hall Findlay might get better traction if she stopped thinking in terms of the Middle Class being mid level income and instead articulated it as a value or concept necessary for a global economy to work.

[Cytotoxic]

You keep saying Trudeau will be a terrible mistake for the Liberals but poll after poll says otherwise.

[Dwayne]

In the same way the the NDP has managed to sell itself as the party of the people, with the help of the media, Justin will be able to do the same, again, with the help of the media (by media I mean all of the mainstream news and TV media as well as many magazines and other print media).

I take one look down south and know that the media has the greatest influence over the electorate, more than it has ever had. That an empty suit like Obama can win 2 terms is proof that a friendly media who will bury bad news is all that someone needs. And Justin already has the full cheering section just waiting in the wings, CBC, CTV, Global, etc. The print media, Globe and Mail, The Star, etc are all ready for him too. And they will all attack the only "right" wing voice, the Sun (excepting the Vancouver Sun, which is the Vancouver Red Star in all but name).

You just have to open the aggregators like Bourque or National Newswatch to see the constant stream of attack from the so called fair and balanced media to understand how much they operate like a hive mind. Witness the attacks on the Senate lately. It isn't like the information that is coming out is new. In the past this was Liberal Senators who were 'questionable' when it came to residency, but the news back then was reported once and then forgotten. Today it is constant, and ongoing, day in and day out. This to me is proof of how something as mundane as residency can be made into "big news" if only to try and embarrass the CPC. Who remembers the Liberal senator who had Alzheimer's. She was declared legally incompetent in Feb of 2012 and stayed in the Senate for months and months. If you Google it you will find some stories around Aug 28 and then nothing until she resigned 30 Nov. I have sympathy for someone, but she was declared incompetent in Feb for God's sake! What the hell does that say about the Senate? That they kept it out of the news until Aug is statement enough, but the sympathetic coverage on those couple of days in Aug were just more proof to me that the media is a progressive's best friend.

Done ranting. Feels good. Doesn't accomplish a damn thing.

[John Chittick]

The Spawn of Satan will get the coronation without much effort as he personifies the nullity of the LPC and much of Canada's cultural and political mindset. Martha's credentials would reflect something other than the superficial nature of the human ballast that claps like trained seals for the Spawn. With Quebec's tendency to vote to screw the ROC in Federal elections, along with media-catalyzed Harper-fatigue, the Spawn will only need the support of some of Ontario's overly abundant human ballast and Harper is back to being a minority PM or in opposition. How long before we hear "conservatives" lamenting the wasted majority with little to no accomplishment in leviathan shrinking.