It's amazing just how exhausting American politics is. It always was a kind of clusterfuck ever since the 24/7 news networks pumped the airwaves with absurd controversies, needless punditry and sensational coverage of whatever tragedy came about. Politicians have been losing their grip on modern times, their constituencies, common decency and even reality itself. And corporations have so thoroughly infiltrated our lives that an uncanny valley is formed where you truly question if the person you're talking with isn't just a machine whose neural networks are unable to subliminally get you to consume the latest garbage fad. With the internet's potential for malice and mayhem fully realized, along with absolute lunatics wanting to run the government, it's no surprise that American politics is not only everywhere but in every second. In a way I am kind of sharing in this hell given we had ourselves an election this year and it felt longer than usual. It's nothing like the incessant campaigning that can't let a single year be by itself without the concerns over super-PACs being filled up or Senator Who-Gives-A-Fuck (D) doing an epic own on the latest clown to be hired by the moronic burger-loving pseudo-crypto-fascist, but it was still nevertheless obnoxious.
A major part of it is that Canada, as I've expressed before on social media, marches along the US despite its absolute frustration in doing so. Though there are some noteworthy exceptions to the political landscape, ones which one would hope could provide for a way for the nation to truly differentiate itself from its neighbor, there is a temptation to fall into the American model. Justin Trudeau has no doubt been a shining example of this, as his charisma gave Canada an Obama-esque failson to shove neoliberal platitudes down everyone's throats as he waffled about in actually being progressive. Of course now the election has proven that he not only abides to Obama's doctrine but also seems to aspire to be like him physically given his penchant to blackface. He has provided a good counter to Trump, so much so that American liberals believe him to be the dreamboat that he appears to be but he titled to the right as soon as he came along, providing a tax cut that ended up benefiting the rich the most, helping out the oil lobby and even having his own flagrant disregard for the justice system with LavScam! Remember that? Of course you don't! We were too busy laughing at him auditioning for The Jazz Singer.
Given that there wasn't the mirror effect that emerged from say a Mulroney-Reagan or Harper-Bush partnership, and Trudeau still played up to his faux-progressivism despite everyone clearly being aware of the prefix, ol' pretty boy JT was seen as a socialist standing only slightly left to Trump. And so the Donald's style of populism bubbled its way to the surface. Countless conservative premiers (governors of the provinces) popped up to provide a check to Trudeau, none more spectacularly reprehensible as my boy, Doug Ford, leader of Ford Nation (once known as Ontario). This man, whose crack-smoking brother ran the 6ix until death, brought about the most Trumpism, the best Trumpism, with a man-of-the-people farce that a majority of the electorate bought up. It helped that he was competing against a long-standing establishment technocrat that wore out her welcome (with the only difference being that she actually rose to a prominent seat of power). He has been cutting everything that he can, dialing back education, infrastructure and healthcare all in the pursuit to satisfy his cronies as he further turns the kleptocracy to his favor. Best of all, he has his own absurd promise that he's failed to live up to, given that he has yet to make Buck-A-Beer a reality to his base of hockey dads that are no doubt are pissed that Don Cherry can't be on CBC ranting about fruity pansies taking over the NHL.
On a federal level however, it failed spectacularly. The Conservative Party of Canada were flirting with the idea during their pick for leader. Kellie Leitch and Kevin O'Leary were the two parts of the fusion dance to make the proper Trump parallel as one thrived on xenophobic fervor as the other was the rich dipshit famous for being on TV. Neither of them made it through given that Leitch was laying it on a little too thick for the majority of passive-aggressive racists that celebrate the cultural mosaic before grumbling about those benefits the First Nations get and O'Leary Francophoned it in all to sell some book that would've probably been shot down if he pitched it on Shark Tank. However it was Maxime Bernier's whose razor-edge loss to the potato sack accountant Scheer would only propel him to a humiliating defeat trying to bring the nativist anger to the people with his own party. It'd be sad that his popularity didn't manage any tangible victory if he weren't such a cretin. So I guess we got lucky there.
But it's a Phyrric victory that Trudeau won. Though Trump would have certainly gotten along more with Scheer politically, he must have some grudging respect for Trudeau for playing the media the same way. He was corrupt, his scandals should've sunk him, but he was no doubt given more air-time regardless of whether it was good or not, facing off an opponent whose party begrudgingly offered support for as he failed to inspire anyone to really commit to him. I didn't meet anyone who honestly in their heart of hearts would die for Scheer, but he can at least give that Hilary humble-brag of having won the popular vote before the CPC shoots him out of a cannon in the next leadership battle.
The media was perhaps the worst affected by American influence, brimming with much of the same reactionary rage and deep seated cynicism that acted like it was a choice between the devil you know and the devil you don't. I'm not quite surprised if the NDP gets treated like throughout its inception, but 2019 proved to be especially sickening given that Jagmeet Singh could barely break through in between discussion over whether the Conservatives or the Liberals were more morally bankrupt. They didn't bother to give him exposure, since he not only posed a greater threat to the establishment but had very little about him that was scandalous. The only scandal that could even be cobbled up was racial, and not in the comically offensive way that Trudeau was or the clandestinely offensive way it was with Scheer or the flagrantly offensive way it was with Maxime or anyone in the PPC. More in just how he was adjacent to the offensive given how many bigots he had to swat away as he was talking about the real problems that faced Canadians. It's a shame that much of his run was governed by his race and even more of a shame that Quebec damaged him further given how their on their secularism bullshit.
Even with the election concluded a month after the fact, there is still that American logic seeping into the Great White North, as the long-standing grievance Western provinces have had in being ignored by the East has turned into the Brexit's brain-damaged offspring of Wexit, where Alberta whines about not being able to lay pipe like it used to, donning a kind of anti-intellectualism only seen from MAGAheads down in Texas that think secession would play well for them.
Of course you can look into much of the details of what I've mentioned here and think that adopting an Americocentric line of thinking towards Canada is perhaps shoving a square peg into a round hole. But Canada's rounded out its edges. It's America with social justice at 1.5x speed, but some people keep wanting to rewind (most of which are from Rebel Media who follow in Canadian entertainer tradition by trying to make it big in the States). I studied in the same university that gave y'all Jordan Peterson. I've seen Cuckservatives stickers right about when Trump was leading in the polls. I've talked to Trump sympathizers and alt-right chuds (usually by surprise). I've even seen anti-choice groups brandishing photos of aborted fetuses around Toronto. Canadians don't like being seen as kinder Americans so they just revert to being Americans that are waaaaay more passionate about hockey and common decency.
I'm exhausting myself with these comparisons of the most Northern American nations in part because I believe one can look to the Great White North in viewing the Great Again South. I know that for the most part yanks don't much care for what canucks are up to. As part yank I can totally agree with this assessment. Very little of what happened in the last decade seems to connect meaningfully to what' happened in the US, and Canadians can be tiring and boring in their superiority-inferiority complex with their neighbor. But watching this Canadian election I can't help but find myself reinforced by the most cynical aspects of politics over in the US. Trudeau might not be as egregious as a sorry embodiment of the current state of politics as Trump but both of them have been exposed as bold-faced liars that were fortunate to have an uninspiring and deeply flawed opponent protected by a media apparatus that opted to correct the narrative to continue their party's business as usual. The complacency bred by the media through hammering the lesser of two evils fallacy had succeeded well enough, thanks in part to a vocal ignorant minority projecting itself to be larger than it was. The NDP was unable to break through in an election where the Conservatives and the Liberals were met with immediate revulsion from the majority of the populace, and Trudeau figured he had a mandate despite technically losing. I can still wake up and look towards tomorrow with Justin despite what he stands for as a politician but seeing his victory fed into the harrowing future that may come in America.
Such is the hell of post-2016 life, where time nauseates us with how much it goes around in circles. The cynicism and erasure of better progressive candidates is not so much a groundbreaking revelation but more akin to a workout motivation to push ourselves to strive for better. One can only hope that the latest UK election, which once again feels like its results will provide a strong prediction to how the US elections will fair, ends with a Labour victory after years of the Tories tripping over themselves to fail to deliver anything positive from the mess they've created. But I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't a resounding one, much less if it doesn't come to be. Nor would I be surprised if I'm wrong to assume that the UK election might have anything to do with how the US election will end up. Jeremy Corbyn could be rocking in Number 10 with an absolute majority and Trump could still have made it through to a second term.
It certainly is weird thinking about Trump winning given that 2019 was definitely not his year. He's taken a hell of an L after losing the House in the midterms, he's been booed multiple times in public, special elections gave him and his party another L to hold and impeachment has melted his brain to the point that you could probably hear sloshing if you stood next to him when he bobs his head. He's gone from unraveled to just a mass of exposed muscle, screaming in pure rage as he digs the knife further in the hopes to drown everyone else in blood. FiveThirtyEight has yet to give him a 47% approval rating, let alone anything above 50%. But it's easy to trust the polls again. These polls are clearly fake. And thinking Trump's losing now is libtard thinking. He's clearly playing 12th dimensional chess, folks!
Much as it is silly to think Trump is a grandmaster, it is frightening that his playbook could be as effective as it is simple. He's already capitalized on the distrust in the media and the establishment among his supporters that they're addicted to Two Minutes Hate, he's got a behemoths of campaign finance machines at the ready, and Republicans have just quit pussy-footing around claiming to give a shit about civility and embraced the dark chasm inside of them. Meanwhile the Democrats a corncopia of candidates that are only suffocating the airwaves for self-promotion rather than running for local office or spending their obscene wealth on bettering the world. If we see Trump win in 2020, I want the first point of every single analysis post-election about the Democrats lost to be not setting a cap on how many people can run by wasting their time entertaining the egos of nobodies, grifters and empty personalities.
Likewise, I hope the second point focus on the glaring faults whatever DNC-approved dipshit gets the nomination over Bernie. If we have to trust the polls (which we really shouldn't given how deceptively they're constructed), they have Joe Biden in the lead, wasting his chance to primary against the Donald to ramble about Obama and how Iowa makes the best gosh-darn popsicles. He is going to gaffe his way into a loss, we can already see it as he gets publically owned in every debate. So much for not being a socialist, Joe. Pete Buttigieg's essentially just a younger, gayer, less gaffe-prone version of him, who has just as checkered of a political record and no prominent black friend to lean on to help his numbers among African-Americans. Kamala Harris is a neoliberal experiment that has backfired, no doubt in part due to having campaign staffers that ran Hilary into the ground. Speaking of Hilary, we can't forget about Elizabeth Warren, whose replacing her in the false equivalency of weighing progressive bonafides and just won't have the strength to fend off the insults the right lunges at her (though at least I can believe she could be convinced to do better in the unlikely event she wins rather than persist as a toxic tumor on society that definitely 100% killed Epstein). Oh I could go on but I already have clowned on all the candidates on my social media!
I've noticed that in the last few years I've found myself saying "I don't know" more often. Not so much to others but to myself as I question my decisions. I've certainly sighed it under my breath quite a lot in writing this. It feels redundant, needless. However getting all of this down is therapeutic as well. Not just because I'm satisfied my future self can get a snapshot of how the world was in late 2019, but because there is a rejection of obfuscation here. Uncertainty is without question the dominant mode of modern life. I cannot make a solid prediction yet that I would be willing to make an outrageous bet in favor of. But there is a clarity that has been reached here. There's going to be so much bullshit coming in the next year that will seek to fool everyone into assuming moving to the center is the way to victory or that there are elites out there with good intentions, honest! But it is as farcical as number 45. And these people know it. Christ, Obama has basically stopped pretending and exposed himself as the sham that he always was!
However things turn out in this hellworld, I'm at least confident in that the result will inspire most in abandoning convention and aspiring for their dreams. I can only hope that such will be from a renewed optimism in humanity.
Such is the hell of post-2016 life, where time nauseates us with how much it goes around in circles. The cynicism and erasure of better progressive candidates is not so much a groundbreaking revelation but more akin to a workout motivation to push ourselves to strive for better. One can only hope that the latest UK election, which once again feels like its results will provide a strong prediction to how the US elections will fair, ends with a Labour victory after years of the Tories tripping over themselves to fail to deliver anything positive from the mess they've created. But I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't a resounding one, much less if it doesn't come to be. Nor would I be surprised if I'm wrong to assume that the UK election might have anything to do with how the US election will end up. Jeremy Corbyn could be rocking in Number 10 with an absolute majority and Trump could still have made it through to a second term.
It certainly is weird thinking about Trump winning given that 2019 was definitely not his year. He's taken a hell of an L after losing the House in the midterms, he's been booed multiple times in public, special elections gave him and his party another L to hold and impeachment has melted his brain to the point that you could probably hear sloshing if you stood next to him when he bobs his head. He's gone from unraveled to just a mass of exposed muscle, screaming in pure rage as he digs the knife further in the hopes to drown everyone else in blood. FiveThirtyEight has yet to give him a 47% approval rating, let alone anything above 50%. But it's easy to trust the polls again. These polls are clearly fake. And thinking Trump's losing now is libtard thinking. He's clearly playing 12th dimensional chess, folks!
Much as it is silly to think Trump is a grandmaster, it is frightening that his playbook could be as effective as it is simple. He's already capitalized on the distrust in the media and the establishment among his supporters that they're addicted to Two Minutes Hate, he's got a behemoths of campaign finance machines at the ready, and Republicans have just quit pussy-footing around claiming to give a shit about civility and embraced the dark chasm inside of them. Meanwhile the Democrats a corncopia of candidates that are only suffocating the airwaves for self-promotion rather than running for local office or spending their obscene wealth on bettering the world. If we see Trump win in 2020, I want the first point of every single analysis post-election about the Democrats lost to be not setting a cap on how many people can run by wasting their time entertaining the egos of nobodies, grifters and empty personalities.
Likewise, I hope the second point focus on the glaring faults whatever DNC-approved dipshit gets the nomination over Bernie. If we have to trust the polls (which we really shouldn't given how deceptively they're constructed), they have Joe Biden in the lead, wasting his chance to primary against the Donald to ramble about Obama and how Iowa makes the best gosh-darn popsicles. He is going to gaffe his way into a loss, we can already see it as he gets publically owned in every debate. So much for not being a socialist, Joe. Pete Buttigieg's essentially just a younger, gayer, less gaffe-prone version of him, who has just as checkered of a political record and no prominent black friend to lean on to help his numbers among African-Americans. Kamala Harris is a neoliberal experiment that has backfired, no doubt in part due to having campaign staffers that ran Hilary into the ground. Speaking of Hilary, we can't forget about Elizabeth Warren, whose replacing her in the false equivalency of weighing progressive bonafides and just won't have the strength to fend off the insults the right lunges at her (though at least I can believe she could be convinced to do better in the unlikely event she wins rather than persist as a toxic tumor on society that definitely 100% killed Epstein). Oh I could go on but I already have clowned on all the candidates on my social media!
I've noticed that in the last few years I've found myself saying "I don't know" more often. Not so much to others but to myself as I question my decisions. I've certainly sighed it under my breath quite a lot in writing this. It feels redundant, needless. However getting all of this down is therapeutic as well. Not just because I'm satisfied my future self can get a snapshot of how the world was in late 2019, but because there is a rejection of obfuscation here. Uncertainty is without question the dominant mode of modern life. I cannot make a solid prediction yet that I would be willing to make an outrageous bet in favor of. But there is a clarity that has been reached here. There's going to be so much bullshit coming in the next year that will seek to fool everyone into assuming moving to the center is the way to victory or that there are elites out there with good intentions, honest! But it is as farcical as number 45. And these people know it. Christ, Obama has basically stopped pretending and exposed himself as the sham that he always was!
However things turn out in this hellworld, I'm at least confident in that the result will inspire most in abandoning convention and aspiring for their dreams. I can only hope that such will be from a renewed optimism in humanity.
