Beware of anger politics – The Hill Times

HALIFAX—No wonder a lot of people think anger-merchant Pierre Poilievre has a shot at becoming prime minister.

No wonder the CPC has managed to convince itself that retreads from the old Harper government can take them back to power—even though the record shows that the two times the party has tried that, it has lost at the polls.

And no wonder every mildly progressive Conservative leadership candidate is reviled by the party establishment with a zeal normally reserved for attacking the government. If the party wanted “reasonable” candidates, it would not have dumped Patrick Brown, and Jean Charest would not be looking at Poilievre’s tail-lights in the leadership polling.

But the CPC doesn’t want reasonable, it wants aggrieved. It wants the new leader to steer away from policy ideas of the kind Charest has injected into the contest in order to reflect the anger that is bubbling up in this country and the United States. Widespread public anger is their ticket to ride—or at least they think so. And maybe it is. There is certainly a lot to be angry about.

Gas, home heating, houses, groceries, travel (if you call being put in storage at airports travel), have all skyrocketed in price. Inflation is pushing ominously close to ten per cent year-over-year. Everyone is feeling the pain.

Central banks are raising interest rates to cool off the economy, which will put a lot of debt-laden homeowners underwater. Every time the rates go up, it feels to regular people the way it does when their dentist hits a nerve while drilling a tooth. And there is no guarantee that this tricky game of tightening the monetary belt won’t lead to a recession or worse.

And then there is the loss of faith in political leaders and institutions. Recent polling from Angus Reid showed massive dissatisfaction in Atlantic Canada with the health care system—a system that will be further ravaged this fall and winter, when the folly of reopening during an ongoing pandemic will be exposed by new and far more infectious sub variants of the virus.

Political leaders have been whistling past the graveyard on this one, hoping it will go away. It will not. When the seventh and eighth waves of the virus start rolling and restrictions have to be reintroduced, there will be hell to pay.

Political leaders in Canada and the United States have also lost significant moral capital with voters. In Canada, the Trudeau government had to choose between returning gas turbines to Germany, that will guarantee it will be able to continue getting gas from the Nord Stream 1 system of pipelines; or abide by sanctions it imposed on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to return the turbines in the interest of supporting Canada’s European allies, while they transition away from Russian gas. But there is a massive contradiction here, particularly in light of the government’s high-profile support of Ukraine and its now iconic president.  That decision will guarantee that Russia will be able to continue selling its gas, and using the proceeds to fund what some have called a genocidal invasion of Ukraine.

The real stinker in this? It is going to take a long time for Europe to find alternate energy sources to Russian gas. Until they do, Russia’s war machine will remain well-financed and Canada will have helped.

Time is the one thing Ukraine doesn’t have. Which is why Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced Canada’s decision, and warned that Russia will view it a sign of Western weakness in enforcing sanctions. Ukrainian Canadians, who want this decision reviewed and reversed, may see it as a stab in the back.

In the United States, U.S. President Joe Biden is caught in a grave moral dilemma of his own. Based on hard information from multiple U.S. intelligence agencies, Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman was involved in the butchering of former U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Turkey.

Former president Donald Trump blew off Khashoggi’s gruesome murder, the better to suck up to rich Saudis. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, even became besties with the Crown Prince. Biden, however, promised a different response.  The United States would turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” state for its homicidal barbarism and massive human rights abuses.

But gas prices have clearly trumped principle and Biden’s promise. The president is now set to visit Saudi Arabia to beg for greater oil production from the Saudis, a move he hopes will ease the pain of filling gas-tanks in America.   So far, he won’t even say if he will raise the state-sponsored assassination of Khashoggi with his hosts.

That’s why The Washington Post says this disgraceful reversal of policy weakens the moral authority of the United States. But what is moral authority with mid-term elections just months away, and prospects for the Democrats more than dismal?

Make no mistake about it, public anger is a potent force. But here is the fatal problem with anger politics as practised by the Republican Party in the United States and the Conservative Party in Canada.

It works by transforming anger into hatred, and then training that hatred onto individual people. Policy becomes an afterthought, unless you think firing the head of the Bank of Canada or cryptocurrency as the answer to inflation are policies.

Politics at that point becomes irrational and extreme. That’s when the “lock-her-up” chants carry the day, and the “Fuck Trudeau” signs appear. That’s when a Hillary Clinton gets demonized and a Donald Trump gets elected, and maybe re-elected, despite mounting and damning evidence that if anyone tried to steal the 2020 election it was Trump.

The Conservatives will likely choose the not-so-fabulous Poilievre in September. But before backing Poilievre’s sneering and cynical brand of politics, Canadians should keep in mind that a vote cast in hate is a wound on the country. And they should also remember that Poilievre’s idea of peace, order and good government was the Truckers’ Convoy.

Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. 

The Hill Times 

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