The left in Canada is very threatened by Pierre Poilievre. Since the left can’t defend their positions with logic or data when they feel threatened they lash out often through their friends in the media. The liberal brain trust got together and decided to brand Poilievre as a Populist stoking the fears of a fringe minority with unacceptable views.
Populist is a go to smear for the left. It is an attempt to link a politician to Donald Trump which makes it a very economical smear. The media has already spent billions disparaging Donald Trump. Why let all that energy and money go to waste? Just because Trump is gone doesn’t mean you can’t attach others to him and recycle all the expensive lies. I am shocked Canada does not have their own Steele dossier linking Pierre with Russian hookers.
So what is a populist politician and what makes them so dangerous? A populist is simply an opportunist. He sees a parade, jumps in front of it, then pretends to be the parade marshal. There is really not much difference between a populist and other politicians. They all jump in front of parades and pretend to lead it. The difference is in the parade. The parade the populist jumps in front of is real while more traditional politicians manufacture their parades.
The parade that Trump led was of people concerned that Washington no longer had their best interests in mind. Poilievre’s Parade is full of people who think Ottawa is disconnected and authoritarian. Both of those parades would have existed without either men. They were organic, full of real people with real concerns. The parades traditional politicians lead are fake. Friendly media whip up useful idiots over imaginary issues.
Real parades are large, peaceful, and have large numbers of supporters silently watching. Fake parades tend to be loud, lawless, and have few supporters who are not already in the parade. Often real parades are caused by the fake ones. The people who pay the bills finally get tired of the mess left behind by fake parades.
Real people sometimes get swept up by the fake parades but their enthusiasm wanes when they discovered how incredibly fraudulent it is. That is why fake parades cannot be sustained without an overwhelming media propaganda program. That is how you can tell the parade is fake. If the media spends a lot of time on it, it is fake. If the media ignores it, it is real.
COVID was an enormously fake parade that the media reported on incessantly. The Prime Minister and all the premiers can be found at the front of that parade. The Parade Poilievre pretends to lead is full of people tired of government mandates and angry about losing their rights for 2 years. How many news stories have you read about the systematic destruction of human rights it Canada? Real parades get no publicity or media prodding yet happen anyway.
There is another fake parade happening south of our border right now. Left wing politicians are firing up another gun control parade. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the Uvalde shooting was fake. It was very real and very tragic. What is fake is the idea that more gun rules would have prevented it. I make these comments as a person who owns no guns. I do not value guns, I do value data and logic. Data and logic do not support the case for gun control.
It is true that the US has more guns and gun crime than other western countries. On the surface it would indicate a correlation but the devil is in the details. Almost all of the gun crime in the US happens in areas that have very strict gun rules. If gun control worked places like Chicago would have no gun crime yet Chicago has 10 shootings every day. That is a lot of shooting for a place where it is almost impossible to own a gun. Lori Lightfoot claims the problem is that other places don’t have strong enough gun laws. That is true but if guns cause crime then why don’t those places have more crime? The correlation is backwards. If you were following the science you would investigate how increased restrictions cause crime.
I have no doubt that Uvalde will result in new rules but why do you think new rules will work when no one used the old rules? When this happened I told my wife we will find out this young man had a long history with the police. I could not know this for certain but it has become a very predictable pattern with the last few young shooters. The shooter has well known violent tendencies that no one did anything about. Every time he got in trouble he was let off with a slap on the wrist because all the social workers disguised as judges and police did not want to ruin his life. Instead they waited until he ruined other lives and then blamed the gun.
The gun is blameless. It is an inanimate object incapable of harming anyone. The blame lies on the young shooters and the authorities that facilitated their crimes. If these young men were charged for even one of their crimes, they would have failed background checks and could not legally purchase firearms. This would have made things more difficult but not impossible. I have never tried to purchase an illegal gun but I can’t see how it would be difficult. The world is awash with guns. There are over 100 million AK 47s and that is just one type of firearm. The US could ban firearms completely and criminals would still have guns because of the porous southern border.
US border patrol seize over 100,000 tons of illegal drugs every year and yet drugs are everywhere. More than 1 million people illegal walk across the Mexican border every year. If the US can’t keep out drugs and people why do they think they can keep out guns? Clearly more gun control rules will only be followed by people who already follow the existing rules and were never a risk in the first place.
But let’s pretend for a moment that it is possible to concentrate all guns into the hands of the government. The Totalitarian government in China has managed to remove guns from citizens and they do not have school shootings. They do however frequently have mass killings in schools. A gun is a tool. It can be used to kill but it is not the only weapon available. Killings are done by criminals not guns. Even a rock can be used to kill. We could ban trillions of rocks or we can deal with a handful of criminals. That is the root of the problem in the US. The authorities and politicians simply refuse to deal with criminals. As long as they do that there will always be mass killings, with or without guns.
Gun control is just a convenient issue for the fake parade marshals. New rules can always be legislated and they will be as ineffective as the old rules. There will be another shooting and an opportunity for another parade, which will lead to more rules that also don’t work. It is the perfect political merry go round. Why solve a problem when you can exploit it forever?