Divisive politics is dangerous short term thinking
Anyone who works in natural gas knows that the price can be very volatile. The price can drop very low as it has again recently. About 30 years ago natural gas went through a similar low price cycle. A friend of mine who worked for a gas transportation company told me he had an idea to boost demand and get higher gas prices. He thought it would be a good Idea to get in bed with the climate alarmists and help them demonize coal. Switching all the coal fired generation plants to natural gas would result in higher prices.
On the surface this looked like a good plan so my friend was surprised when I said we should not do it. My reasoning was simple. You would get what you wanted in the short term but your long term problem would be worse. In the long run you would find that the dangerous lunatics you supported would turn on you. It would only be a matter of time before the climate lunatics would figure out that even though natural gas produces less CO2 than coal it still produces CO2. They would eventually demand that you stop using natural gas.
Essentially my friends plan was to use a rabid dog to chase the neighbors off their land. The first part of that plan would have a 100% chance of success. Eventually the rabid dog would frighten off the neighbor. It is the second half of the plan is problematic. Once your neighbor leaves you are stuck with a rabid dog that will be just as dangerous to you as it was to your neighbor.
My prediction from 30 years ago has come to fruition. The Province converted the coal fired generation stations to natural gas. Emissions went down and electrical prices went up but that did not placate the climate lunatics. They started to campaign against natural gas generation and now there is a plan to mothball all the generation that was converted to natural gas.
Cooperating with extremists might get you what you want in the short term but it is a dangerous long term strategy. It is unfortunate then that politicians are such short term thinkers. They stoke anger and division when they see it as useful for boosting popularity. The Trudeau liberals are in trouble and are desperate to keep younger voters. When polls showed that younger Canadians supported Gaza over Israel the liberals took an anti-Israel stance and turned a blind eye to the extremists in the group who were committing hate crimes against the Canadian Jewish community.
To be clear I take no stance in this conflict and that is not what this post is about. If polls showed young Canadians supported Israel the Trudeau liberals would have taken a completely opposite position. This post is about how opportunistic politicians use division and even turn a blind eye to criminality if it gets them a bump in the polls. This is an often used and dangerous strategy with predictable end results. When you use a rabid dog as a weapon it is not a question of if it will attack you. It is a matter of when it will attack you and the liberals have now been bitten by their own dog.
Pro-Palestinian protesters have moved on from attacking Jews to attacking politicians; liberal politicians.
The vandalism happened in the wake of former public safety minister Marco Mendicino calling for the creation of “protective zones” around political constituency offices to shield members of Parliament and their staff from a rising tide of threatening behaviour.
The liberals have lost control of their own attack dog and now need protection from their own rabid pet. Guess who gets to pay for it? Politicians, especially Canadian politicians try to use chaos to manufacture votes. If it works the country suffers. There is another way. How about trying competent governance and running elections on your accomplishments rather that the hate you stoke between different communities?
That could work but the stumbling block for Canadian politicians is that the plan requires actual accomplishments. There is no one in Canadian politics today that is capable of an actual positive accomplishment. Canada is broken. Politicians and voters broke it.
