Canada and The “Real Danger” of Going Down a Right-Wing Rabbit Hole Like the US

 

Canada and the “Real Danger” of Going Down a Right-Wing Rabbit Hole Like the US 

by Don Curren

                                                                         

    

Today I'm going to deviate from my standard operating procedure for this blog.

For those who aren't regular readers, SOP goes like this: come up with an esoteric topic that's only tenuously connected to what's going on in the world, get excited and write a long, digressive intro (kind of like this one, but usually longer), realize more research is required, futz around doing that and some incremental writing, run out of enthusiasm, set it aside for a while, wait until my interest in it has almost completely evaporated, and then sit down again and finish it.

For this post, all I'm going to do is put three posts I made on BlueSky this morning together into a concise, unrevised piece, resisting the temptation to do some more research, and take several days (or weeks) to flesh it out into something more expansive. (I'll resist the temptation to make this intro longer by mentioning the relative excellence of BlueSky as a social media platform. Damn, I just did exactly that.)

I'm taking this "direct-to-disc" approach because the BlueSky posts related to a subject that deeply concerns me: the political outlook for Canada in the next few years.

George Monbiot wrote a column for The Guardian today arguing that if Donald Trump is elected President of the United States again, the United Kingdom will have to pivot from regarding the US as it closet ally to looking at it as its "greatest threat."

In response, somebody from Australia "skeeted" the following: “The same applies in Australia. As far as Canada is concerned there’s a real danger they could follow the US down the right-wing rabbit hole.”

This is my response, originally three separate skeets, unedited and untinkered-with:

I’d say “real danger” is a fair assessment. I’d say our position is roughly equivalent to that of the US in 2016. We have an Opposition leader who is ideologically similar to Trump and is definitely unprincipled, although it’s near yet clear if he is as consummately unethical as Trump, and the Conservative Party’s reliable base vote is probably smaller than the GOP’s. The risk is that exhaustion/dissatisfaction with the Trudeau Liberals alone is sufficient to propel the Conservatives to power. Structurally, we’re in a better position than the US with better campaign finance laws, a healthier electoral system, and a sound Supreme Court. We also benefit from a having a smaller, weaker oligarchical class than the US and a less polarized public discourse, although the latter is deteriorating.

(That’s it. That’s the post. I may blog some more on this and/or related topics, but at the moment, that sums up my perspective on the subject fairly well, and I don’t want to go down my own personal rabbit hole of research and revision.)