Roundup: Bozo eruptions coming from the top

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Given some of the “bozo eruptions” over Twitter over the past couple of days by Conservative MPs and senators, I have to wonder about both the mindset behind this strategy of posting, and the adult supervision that underpins it. Obviously, the latter is lacking given what we’ve seen this week especially, but we also can’t deny that there is an attempt at strategy behind it, even if it’s a strategy that’s been kluged together in service of a narrative. That narrative is to put “Justin Trudeau” and “failed” in as many sentences together as possible, but it’s also about a deliberate campaign of lies and misdirection in service of creating that narrative. But even with this in mind, some of it is just really, really dumb.

Take this tweet from Shannon Stubbs – who is a pretty decent MP, it should be stated, but seems to have lost her ability to be credible over Twitter. Part of what is so gross about this tweet is that it basically undermines our entire criminal justice system, which requires that the accused have advocates in order to have a fair trial. And she knows this – the party knows this (while they go about fetishizing victims of crime and altering the entire vocabulary around them in order to tilt the playing field against the accused so as to deny them fairness). But the temptation to be shamelessly partisan is just too much for some of them to withstand. And in the end, I have to think that it’s this mindless partisanship is often to blame – and it is mindless. It robs them of their intellect and critical thinking capacity, and makes them focus solely on scoring cheap points.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1028043707788996610

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1028049573279948800

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1028052339914104832

I’ve seen a lot of the chatter about the tweet from Senator Denise Batters about Omar Alghabra, to the point that the woke crowd is referring to as a “white nationalist,” which I’m quite sure she’s not – she’s just partisan to the point of being mindless, and that includes making ill-suited attacks to the point of dogwhistling, because it becomes reductive and about scoring points. She should know better. (As for Blaine Calkins and his tweet, well, I’m not sure I’d give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows better, so I’ll leave it at that). But there needs to be a recognition that this kind of point-scoring is actually doing damage to their own brand, and as we’ve seen this week, has blown up in their faces more than once. You would hope that this would be cause for some reflection and that they’ll think twice before continuing to engage in this kind of behaviour – but I’m not holding my breath. So long as the official line from the leader is to lie over Twitter as often as he thinks he can get away with it, he’s set a low bar of an example for the rest of his caucus to follow, and it’s no surprise that we’re seeing these kinds of bozo eruptions.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau and other MPs and political leaders offered their condolences for Friday’s shooting in Fredericton.
  • While the US and Mexico iron out some of their issues related to NAFTA, it looks like dairy will be a big negotiating point when trilateral talks resume.
  • The government can’t produce the statistics behind their anecdotes about the source of guns being used to commit crimes.
  • Here’s a look at how Canada is becoming diplomatically isolated from our allies – at least in public, while some efforts may be happening behind the scenes.
  • There’s a forthcoming academic article about the paranoia about #MeToo that has set into the Hill, where some male MPs are afraid of false accusations.
  • After weeks of complaints from the Conservatives, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has cancelled the arctic surf clam quota and will restart the process.
  • The contract for leased icebreakers from Davie Shipyard has now been finalized, and they can now bid on other shipbuilding contracts where they couldn’t before.
  • The federal government plans to argue at the Supreme Court of Canada that children born to spies on Canadian soil shouldn’t be granted citizenship.
  • New measures to reduce the Phoenix pay system backlog appear to be working, and the system could be stabilized in fewer than the projected five years.
  • An economist who consulted on Ontario’s basic income pilot project says the poor execution of the project would have resulted in near-useless data.
  • Susan Delacourt writes about the stakes for Jagmeet Singh in his by-election.
  • Colby Cosh takes on Victoria’s decision to “temporarily” remove their statue of Sir John A. Macdonald and the notion of politicians venerating politicians.

Odds and ends:

Here’s a look at some of the bizarre propaganda that Saudi Arabia is currently running about Canada.

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