Reckless Conservative incitement

Metroland Media reporter Derek Dunn recently unveiled that Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke MP Cheryl Gallant’s Facebook page had neither censored nor stigmatized a certain George Edward, who in protesting the Liberal government’s firearm law changes, posted, “would it not b simpler to hire couple of maffia (sic) hit men to off turdbrain and blairnuts?”.  After the story was published Ms. Gallant’s page removed the post and she denied having ever been aware of it before the story was published.

Many folks become regularly excited by this MP’s apparent routine of obscenities.  It is best however to imagine these violent assassination fantasies as not so much representative of her personal tone as much as representative of the conservative movement’s tone more broadly, especially in relation to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  Recall that the Prime Minister was encouraged by his security detail to wear a bulletproof vest in one of his campaign rallies last year.

It is plainly clear that Justin Trudeau is in a sense a spoiled politician.  He owes his entire political career to the favourable media coverage that he received starting in his early childhood.  He was effectively born into the special political advantage of the family name of a previous Prime Minister.  Yet is also plainly clear that some conservative media in this country harbour an impulsive and numb-skulled hatred for Trudeau that smacks of a bitter envy at his political success.

There are reasons to be cynical about the features of Canadian politics that allow a celebrity-politician to thrive.  But the conservative movement has become pathetically useless in offering any suggestions for fundamentally making democracy better, or even offering the many fact-based criticisms of Trudeau there are to be made.  And it takes a certain lack of self-awareness for the Conservative Party to decry Trudeau as the worst ever Prime Minister, without investing any effort into uniting other rival political parties into the same thinking.  

Canada benefits when conservative ideas are put on the table for consideration among competing ideas for solving Canada’s many problems.  But in recent political history in Canada and the United States, the tone of conservative dialogue has been deranged and abrasive to the point where some Canadians are not only dumber for listening to it, but possibly made more favourably inclined to political violence too.

Stefan Klietsch

Renfrew