Keeping it Under America's Hat

 

Trump’s win is moving the Overton window rapidly in the US. Some people are going to be caught with their pyjamas down. The NYT and The View have caught the smell in the wind, and are trying to shift their tone. Trumpism, is now demonstrably the mainstream, and they risk either bankruptcy or irrelevance. The woke will soon be laughing stocks.

What does this mean in Canada? For Canda, just as for the rest of the developed West, the US sets the tone—more now than ever before, because we are so interconnected. Pierre Poilievre, in particular, has a tricky path. He needs to make rapid policy changes to more closely conform to Trump’s agenda, or start to look stale and conventional. He needs to make some striking new policy proposals to keep people’s excitement. He can’t just talk about the carbon tax.

This is a revolutionary period, and the revolution eats its children. You must race to stay in front of the parade, or be trampled by it.

Is Poilievre, and are the Conservatives, up to it? If not, Maxime Bernier might steal his thunder.

Trump’s drive to cut taxes and regulations and unleash oil and gas is also going to force whomever is in government in Canada to do the same. Otherwise investment will flood out of Canada into he US; the results will be too obvious. Voters will not stand for it.

"Whitelash"

My Facebook feed this morning is full of wild-eyed posts lamenting the outcome of the US election. An American colleague, who did not himself vote for Trump, apparently finds the same. He writes, “Sadly, my FB feed is filling up with HATE messages from Clinton supporters.” Apparently, to hear them tell it, Trump’s victory was a win for racism, for misogyny, for homophobia, for assaulting women, and for Fascism.

Stop here a minute. This means these people actually believe that a huge proportion of the American public, perhaps a straight majority, are racists, misogynists, homophobes, women assaulters, and Fascists. A “basket of deplorables.”

You can see right here why so many felt compelled to vote for Trump: the “elite” with their hands on the levers of power clearly hold the common people in contempt. Or perhaps, it is just a gambit to hold power: if anyone disagrees with them and their agenda, they do not engage in any discourse. They try to shout dissenters down with insults like racist, misogynist, homophobe, abuser, or Fascist.

If you do not vote for an obviously corrupt Hillary Clinton, and the obviously corrupt Democratic establishment that nominated her, you are a racist, misogynist, homophobe, abuser, Fascist?

Despite the fact that Trump actually did better with blacks and Hispanics than Romney did?

Obviously, such a prejudiced, dishonest, and self-serving ruling class must be rooted out. Trump, for all his apparent awfulness, was and is the medicine. Perhaps the medicine is rough. But this attitude is the disease.