Essays in Idleness

Now, as in the past, I take sides on the public issues according to which side I hate more. There is no side to love. Americans and others apparently do the same, except for that minority who know things. The mass market’s growing revulsion with the Democrat party brand gave Donald Trump his remarkable victory, last November. This does not mean they, or any large number of them, had learnt anything about the issues involved. All they had to know was that the Democrats were detestable, and indeed, worse even than the Republicans. Since that election, it turns out they were dead right, and we now know what a vast “shithole” America had become, but now they have called in new “plumbing managers.”

Canada is, I suspect, only a different case for the moment. Everything I know about politics in this country assures me that the NDP-Liberals are actually worse than the Democrats, and that we are proportionately more deeply enmired in corruption. If Poilievre does what Trump and Musk are doing, to eliminate counter-productive spending and thus cut debt and taxes — up here in the frozen north — we wouldn’t have to embarrass ourselves with “Orange Man Bad” demonstrations. We would instead simply resume getting rich. But give it a year or ten to work out, and Canada will once more be chasing the U.S. example.

If we were intelligent, improbably enough, we would be proportionately well ahead of the United States, rather than well behind. Alas, so long as we are voting for the latest “progressives” to send to Ottawa, we will be going down the drain hole faster.