The Gods of the Copybook Headings

The Day We Grew Up

25 years ago:

“The only thing that we’ve lost,” added Mulroney, “is some of our insecurities vis-à-vis competing with America and the rest of the world. Canadians were told repeatedly that we can’t compete with a country 10 times our size. The CBC, the Toronto Star, academics, you name it, they all said that Canada would be crushed. They have all been proven wrong.” In spades.

And that ladies and gentlemen is the most perceptive thing Brian Mulroney has ever said. The article is both informative and hilarious. I only partly remember the 1988 election, yet I do recall quite vividly the hysterical attacks on the Mulroney government and especially on Mulroney himself. John Turner, an otherwise sane and committed public servant, was accusing the sitting Prime Minister of being a traitor. The country, particularly the Left, went nuts in 1988.

From the perspective of a quarter century the whole thing is almost inexplicable. It isn't just that everything turned out well. The oddness of that time is how worked up people got about a trade agreement. Seriously. It's an international trade agreement. The Harper Tories have signed quite a few, including an important deal with the EU. It's barely headline news. But way back then it was the beginning of the end of Canada, if the good and great of the Canadian Cultural Establishment were to be believed.

Adding more distance to the passage of time is the demographic revolution that has taken place since, a revolution kicked into high gear by Mulroney not Trudeau. The Canada of 1988 was a much whiter and far more WASPish place than it is today. The Canadian WASP is an odd creature. Genial to a fault, decent, hard working and subdued in manner and lifestyle. He does, however, have one terrible weakness: A paranoid fear of the United States.

The Punjabi, the Vietnamese and the Filipino immigrant could not tell a Loyalist from a lolipop. The strange pyscho-drama that has consumed the Canadian elite since Simcoe landed is now, mostly, over. The new Canadians have no fear of the old enemy America. There are no intergenerational flashbacks to the Battle of Queenston Heights. The Americans are just the loud neighbour to the south. It is not entirely coincidental that free trade was at last brought to Canada by an Irish Catholic, supported by a phalanx of Quebecois. Neither group ever really feared America. Among them there was never that nagging sense of imminent cultural absorption.

Certain caveats should be made. The deal wasn't a free free trade deal, it was a relaxation of trade restraints that opened up large sections of the Canadian market to American competition. The full impact of the deal was also minimized by the gradual devaluation of the Canadian dollar. For much of the 1990s the dollar was below 80 cents US. Still its economic impact was formidable. It's psychological impact was even deeper.

Way back in 1875 George Brown signed a free trade deal with the Americans, the now almost entirely forgotten Fish-Brown Treaty (the US Secretary of State was Hamilton Fish). Unfortunately it failed in the US Senate. John A took this as proof that the Americans would never negotiate a reasonable deal, which he himself had tried to strike in his first term. Making a virtue out of necessity Macdonald promoted a strong protectionist tariff, which he shrewdly labelled the National Policy. For the next 110 years trade was wrapped in the flag. To question the logic of Macdonald's protectionist hot house was to question Canada's very essence. That a nation as successful as ours could be undone by a trade deal was absurd. Yet it was plausible enough to generations of Canadians, especially to Canadians who worked in protected industries.

The Left in 1988 argued that free trade wasn't about economics, but about the soul of Canada. They were right. In freeing trade with America we freed ourselves from the psychology of mediocrity, cowardice and parochialism. We said that we were now, belatedly, more than capable of taking on our older brother on his terms and beating him. So we did. By extension we are now capable of taking on the world. 

Not bad for a trade deal. And yes Mr Turner, we have read the agreement. 

 

Monday Night - Gordon Lightfoot

Gehry Ghetto

National Post:

Architect Frank Gehry says there are only two buildings in his hometown worth saving: Old City Hall and Osgoode Hall.

Everything else is fair game to be torn down, Mr. Gehry suggested to Toronto and East York Community Council on Tuesday morning.

“I don’t know whether we should be designating heritage buildings,” said Mr. Gehry, who was born in Toronto. “I think you should preserve [Old] City Hall because I used to go there when I was a kid.”

Well that's sporting of him. Apparently the many architectural gems of the University of Toronto, the Victorian Gothic homes of Cabbagetown and Mies van der Rohe's Toronto Dominion Centre are, in the Gehry balance, nothing but dust. For a man who designs buildings that look like train wrecks, that's pretty bold. 

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

Coup de Dief et Ford

When everyone's favourite liberal plotted to overthrow the Canadian government:

President Kennedy was a beacon of liberalism and a promoter of the Canadian Liberal party. He hosted a dinner for Nobel prize winners that featured Pearson during the 1962 election campaign. His team surreptitiously worked behind the scenes for Pearson, encouraging bad press notices for the Tories. His pollster, Lou Harris, did secret work, and helped Liberals learn modern techniques of doing politics.

So for those Canadian conservative who do not already regard the Kennedy mythos with distain, here's another very good reason: JFK helped create Trudeaupia. It was Pearson, let it never be forgotten, who plucked that socialist out of his Montreal bobo lifestyle and placed him gingerly in the halls of power. 

In fairness, for we are nothing if not fair here at GCH, Dief was self-destructing by 1962. The Canadian MSM was vigorously plotting to destroy the incumbent Tory government, bitter at Dief's common man touch and his supposed usurpation of power. Since Mackenzie King buried what was left of R.B. Bennett's political career, it had been understood that only Liberal technocrats, and their buddies in the universities, public service and media had a divine right to rule Canada. Dief, for all his many faults, was a powerful counterblast to the Establishment. Sadly he blew his chance.

There is a parallel, albeit an awkward one, between Rob Ford and John Diefenbaker. It is, of course, noted that Dief would never, even in his most eccentric moments, have described sexual acts in public or pushed over a grandmother. There were certain proprieties in mid-century Canada that everyone observed. Even the drunks of that era had a certain class about them. No artist half a century from now will be making winsome dramas about crack smoking mayors. 

For their times each man represented a populist angst. An increasingly powerful technocratic state, an arrogant and tin eared elite who had become disconnected with the concerns of the common Canadian. In the 1950s it was the emergence of the early welfare and regulatory state. Today it's the panopticon society created by modern technology and the stagnant incomes of the middle class. The cultural disconnect was also deep in both eras. By about 1960 few of Canada's educated elite took religion very seriously, yet most Canadians still did. The new technocratic and highly urbanized age disturbed and alienated many ordinary Canadians. Dief was able to emotionally connect with that alientation, though only George Grant was able to articulate it. Both men were, in time, ignored and half forgotten.

There is and always will be a separation between the elite and the common man. There is nothing inherently wrong about this cultural and intellectual gap. The function of any elite is to lead. Every society requires leadership. But in order to lead effectively an elite must understand the needs, aspirations, strengths and limitations of the common man. When they fail to do so they become arrogant, assuming that any divergence from the elite consensus is the product of idiocy or ignorance. To lead, however, requires you to first respect those you are leading. When that respect is not offered, your followers revolt.

Whatever the rhetoric of democracy, the reality of human nature is that the vast majority of people prefer to be lead rather than to lead themselves. Their concerns are parochial and their aspirations comparatively modest. This is not because they are necessarily stupid or ignorant, but because they prefer real everyday connections with human life. Grand abstractions are unappealing. The lived reality of the moment matters. What comes after or beyond is of little interest. Leadership is, among other things, a specialization of function. Some lead so the rest can on with the business of living. 

When their leaders fail them the common man looks for new leaders. In 1958 they found John Diefenbaker and gave him the greatest peacetime mandate in this nation's history. He offered a grand and noble vision with little in the way of practical details. Dief promised a better Canada more intuned with the needs of ordinary Canadians. Unfortunately he hadn't the slightest clue how that could be accomplished. The game plan seems to have gone little further than: The Liberals are the problem, so let's get rid of the Liberals. But Liberals are never the real problem, the party is simply too pragmatic to be an intellectual force in its own right. The late St. Laurent - Howe Liberals were a sympthom. 

In 2010 the leaders of Toronto, and indeed of the province of Ontario, had failed in their duty. They had become disconnected from the needs and strengths of their people. The common man sensed this and sought out other leaders. At the provincial level they found only the empty suit of Tim Hudak. At the municipal level they found the improbable and seemingly impossible force of Rob Ford.

His life has been lived like an episode of the Trailer Park Boys, though produced on a millionaire's pay scale. The man is a vulgar, emotionally awkward brute with a limited vocabulary and modest intelligence. Rob Ford, however, is also a man of remarkable personal courage, which occassionally shades into deluded arrogance. There is, somewhere, in that bloated mass of instincts and contradictions an essentially decent man trying to do his best. That does not excuse his behaviour or make it any less necessary for him to leave political life, it should still give us pause.

The elite hates Rob Ford. They are, unfortunately, too mediocre and arrogant to understand the man or what he represents. He is not merely a populist simpleton who has allowed the common man to vent. He is a sympthom of a frustrated age. Rob Ford is an indictment of the elite. They failed to lead. Instead they sought to command. A free people, even a free people in the incipient stages of decadence, will not be commanded. You cannot tell the Canadian people that teachers are co-parents, that windmills are a practical alterntive to sustaining a modern economy and that spending on ideological baubles is a substitute for fiscal prudence. They will not believe you. They will hate you for deceiving them.

The common man might not understand why they are alienated, abstractions are not their strong suit. They do, however, feel alienated. Thus the inchocate and at times almost fanatical loyalty toward Rob Ford. If this were simply a matter of a bad man with good policies, someone else would have picked up that banner. But there is no one else. The common man sees a row of arrogant elitists who have deceived him time and again. A stubborn minority will cling to Rob Ford all the way through hell fire, as they did for John Diefenbaker fifty years ago.

There is another Trudeau in the wings. Let us tread carefully. 

Friday Night - Roger Moore

Anchorman: The Exhibit

Even I think this is nuts:

With “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” out in December, Newseum officials are hoping Ron Burgundy and his eyewitness news team can bring visitors in record numbers to the site, which has been struggling financially. Pictured, part of the “Anchorman: The Exhibit,” which opened Thursday.

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

Lazarus Tory

He lives!

John Tory’s burgeoning mayoral bid is heating up with influential Progressive Conservatives, Liberals, and New Democrats meeting to map out a post-Rob Ford Toronto.

A two-part, two-hour campaign session Monday night at the Bloor Street East offices of FleishmanHillard was the clearest signal yet that Tory will run in next October’s municipal election.

There were about 60 people in attendance, including current and former Liberal and Conservative cabinet ministers, NDP strategists, city hall movers and shakers, communications experts, and civic activists from downtown, Etobicoke, East York, North York and Scarborough.

Read that last paragraph. The key words are "NDP strategists." What is an NDP strategist, to say nothing of the plural, doing at a meeting to elect a "conservative" politician? Do you think Stephen Harper ever invites Tom Mulcair and his buddies over for staff meetings in the PMO? This is rather the problem with John, he is a Tory in name only.

The man himself was in Montreal and denied any involvement. He even emphasized the fact that he was out of town, so he could not possibly be involved. Apparently the telegraph lines are down in the whole of Quebec. It was a denial so transparent it could be used to wrap luncheon meats, assuming John Tory knows what those are.

Then there is the location. When you think high-power PR firm headquartered in downtown Toronto, does the common touch come to mind? John Tory, despite the very best advice from the very best people, keeps losing. He keeps losing because he comes across as an elitist. When he tries to act like an ordinary guy he comes across as even more of an elitist. During the 2007 provincial election, when he lead his party to its second ignominious defeat since the departure of the Mike, he was canvassing in some part of Toronto. Running across a young man he asked what university he was attending. The young man volunteered the University of Ottawa. John Tory, every inch the U of T graduate, then began making fun of the University of Ottawa. Seriously. 

Now regular readers know that I'm a condescending elitist. Regular readers will also know that, for all my many faults, I'm not dumb enough to run for political office. My instinctive contempt for most of mankind, combined with my naturally haughty demeanour, renders me unfit for elective office. This level of self-awareness eludes John Tory, as it eludes most of the governing class of Toronto.  Because they're ever so smart they believe they should be in charge.

It is at this point in the conversation that I let nostalgia get the better of me: I miss the old hereditary British aristocracy. We lost something, something at times quite useful, when we ditched the Toffs for a total meritocracy. People who have inherited their status possess two tremendous advantages over people who have earned, by means foul or fair, their place at the High Table of Life: 

1) People who inherit great positions have often spent decades preparing for that role. They have therefore usually acquired some modicum of manners, a basic cultural erudition and some interesting personality traits. The meritocrats, by contrast, are in many cases crude arrivistes and curriculum vitae fetishists. They talk as if the spirit of Dale Carnegie infused every inch of their overly toned bodies. Having been born to climb they never stop doing so and therefore, sooner or later, destroy themselves and those around them. Their every waking moment must be filled with action, lest the silence bring forth unpleasant thoughts, the most unpleasant thought of all being:

What is it all for?

2) Because they have inherited their position by genetic lottery they are, relatively speaking, humble. They do not, in their heart of hearts, really believe themselves better than the common people. Had fortune's wheel spun a bit slower or faster, they too would be cleaning the silverware. This limits their ambition and, by extension, their threat to the stability of society. Their appetites are easily satiated, those of the climbers and plotters never are.

In a free society where government was small and democracy's powers circumscribed, none of this would matter very much. If John Tory or a sack of potatoes wanted to be Chief Magistrate of the Imperial Capital it would be of little import to the common man. But we are no longer so free and government today is quite large. Leviathan has breed a new meritocratic ruling class, one which combines the parasitism of the welfare state, the paternalism of the nanny state with the LCD mentality of modern democracy. The questionable merits this meritocracy displays are the ones of manipulation, crude pragmatism and a cynical contempt for the ordinary voter.

Thanks to many decades of modern public education, the older variety was decent if not great at its job, the ordinary voter is too ignorant to have the slightest clue what is going on. Don't believe me? Ask them about Justin Trudeau. Not just the minimum wage bolt tighteners, but university graduates too. And this is where we really go off the rails. There is a reason the liberal arts has acquired a bad name in recent decades, it is not because the liberal arts have ceased to be vital to our civilization, or that its classical truths fail to prepare the young for the modern world. Not at all.

It is that the BA has been so debased by lowered standards and inflated grades that young men and woman, who in previous generations might have been content to live out modest lives to match their modest talents, now aspire to higher things. They think themselves clever because their teachers have told them they are clever. So out these little darlings go, filled with grand dreams and little of anything else.

They find, soon enough, their talents incapable of practical accomplishment. They drift here and there. A few, a precious few, find themselves in the offices of public relations firms on some late autumn night. They find themselves, perhaps, managing political campaigns. They think themselves fit to rule because they have acquired, through crude imitation, a kind of animal cleverness in the manipulation of the English language.

The ordinary man without the BA is ignorant, foolish and greedy. But he has one great advantage over his BAed leaders. He knows he is not smart and distrusts most people who are smarter than himself. He suspects that the clever ones are trying to pull something over on him, though he is not sure what. So when he votes he votes for Rob Ford, a man who lies like a child. They will not vote for John Tory, a very smooth man from a very elite family who has learned since a young age how English can be bent to near breaking. The ordinary man trusts Rob Ford because Rob Ford knows he is not clever enough to run other people's lives. He cannot even run his own. John Tory, by contrast, isn't clever enough to know that no matter how clever you think you are, you can never be clever enough to run anyone's life but your own.

 

Thursday Night - Stompin' Tom

The Musical Tastes of Somali Pirates

The Guardian:

According to reports, Britney's hits, including Oops! I Did It Again andBaby One More Time, are being employed by British naval officers in an attempt to scare off pirates along the east coast of Africa. Perhaps nothing else – not guns, not harpoons – is quite as intimidating as the sound of Ms Spears singing "Ooh baby baby!"

There is at least one thing I have in common with Somali pirates. 

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

A Muscular Liberal Christianity

The Washington Post:

Nadia Bolz-Weber bounds into the University United Methodist Church sanctuary like a superhero from Planet Alternative Christian. Her 6-foot-1 frame is plastered with tattoos, her arms are sculpted by competitive weightlifting and, to show it all off, this pastor is wearing a tight tank top and jeans.

[...]

“I never experience God in camping or trees or nature. I hate nature,” she told the Austin crowd as she paced the stage. “God invented takeout and duvets for a reason.”

Oh, dear. 

Wednesday Night - Luther

Policing For Profit

Reason:

Think speed traps are crooked? A Texas town’s “cash for freedom” policy has taken highway robbery to a whole new level.

Imagine getting pulled over while on a family vacation and having small-town cops accuse you and your family of being drug couriers. Then imagine hearing that you have two options: Fork over your cash and continue on your vacation or face felony charges for money laundering and child endangerment, in which case you go to jail and your kids get handed over to foster care. That’s what happened to Ron Henderson and Jennifer Boatright while traveling through Tenaha, Texas, a town that regards piracy as just another way to raise revenue.