For the Record: Gunga Dinesh Holds Forth on the Demonstrations in Ottawa

 

Video screenshot via CTV News.

Oh, you're a Marxist now are you? That wasn't on my bingo card! Welcome to the Left, but there are a few things you need to get straight before you start speaking on our behalf.

— Against Yastronomical Odds (@Yastreblyansky) February 6, 2022

"Workers" revolting against vaccine mandates aren't doing anything to help workers. Low-income inviduals end up in hospital and dying of COVID-19 at horrifyingly higher rates than upper-income. https://t.co/8KJUIfz3Cc pic.twitter.com/6zoqrlemQG

— Against Yastronomical Odds (@Yastreblyansky) February 6, 2022

But rich amateur pissants like yourself and Tucker Carlson get a big share of responsibility for all this suffering and death, as you work to churn up vaccine hesitancy and refusal because you think it will gain votes for your political party.

— Against Yastronomical Odds (@Yastreblyansky) February 6, 2022

So if you want to join a mighty workers' revolt, just remember that the class enemy isn't Justin Trudeau, it's you.

/fin

— Against Yastronomical Odds (@Yastreblyansky) February 6, 2022

Lumpenproletarier living in a false consciousness promoted by the pet intellectuals of the bourgeoisie is something Marx waa pretty familiar with, though I don't know if he would have identified it with white nationalism (arising among white trash told they could at least be proud of not being Black in the Old South) as easily as we can today.

Brooks on Poverty

Town Square of Waterloo, Ontario, via Hogg Fuel and Supply.

Some really remarkable goings-on in the current David F. Brooks, I mean qualitatively different from the usual dishonesty we like to tax him with over here, presenting a truly original view of, of all things, poverty reduction in his native Canada, which Brooks claims is being handled better up there than down here on the other side of the border, which doesn't sound surprising at all, since they have a much more effective government than we have, but that's not what Brooks is saying: he's claiming that Canada is doing a better job of poverty reduction than the US because they're thinking more like, not to put too fine a point on it, David F. Brooks ("Winning the War on Poverty"):

According to recently released data, between 2015 and 2017, Canada reduced its official poverty rate by at least 20 percent. Roughly 825,000 Canadians were lifted out of poverty in those years, giving the country today its lowest poverty rate in history.

How did it do it?.... They begin by gathering, say, 100 people from a single community. A quarter have lived with poverty; the rest are from business, nonprofits and government.

Well, on the other hand, at first blush the reality doesn't look anything like the way David Brooks thinks, according to the available online information, which I have access to, no thanks to David F. Brooks, who provides no links, but because I own a Google, where they tell how they did it, in the following terms:

Because We're So Stupid: Mystery Maybe Solved

"Whaddaya mean they make cars in Canada? Where, for Christ's sake?" Image via Greenpeace.

I think I may have a fix on what happened (as discussed in yesterday's post, and thanks to a comment from Professor Fate) when Trump was enjoying himself telling the Missouri Republicans how he makes shit up the other day, if you bear with me for a minute here, starting with the fact that he's told the story about his brilliant defeat of Prime Minister Trudeau before, notably at the Pensacola rally in support of Roy Moore, December 8, via Toronto Globe and Mail:

"I like the prime minister very much. Prime Minister Trudeau. Nice guy. Good guy. No, I like him. But we had a meeting... He said, 'No, no, you have a trade surplus.' I said, 'No we don't.' He said, 'No, no you have a trade surplus,"' Trump told the Florida crowd.

"(Trudeau) said, 'I'm telling you that Canada has a deficit with the United States.' I told my people – in front of a lot of people – I said, 'Go out and check'."

He said his staff found Trudeau left out some key details, pertaining to trade in goods: "(Trudeau) was right. Except he forgot two categories: Lumber timber; and energy. Other than that, he was right. When you add them all together, we actually have a $17-billion deficit with Canada."

Literary Corner: Because We're So Stupid

Update here.

After blanking on the name “Canada”, U.S. President Donald Trump was overheard referring to Justin Trudeau as the “leader of the igloo people”, as the two met for crunch talks. The incident occurred during the President’s sit down meeting with the Prime Minister in the Oval Office. While Trump was commenting on how “great” the PM was, he paused mid sentence at: “And you’re honestly a terrific leader of…” Unaware that his microphone was on, or that everyone else in the room could easily hear him, Mr. Trump leaned over to his advisor Kellyanne Conway and whispered: “Ah, what do they call themselves again, those people,” Trump said while discreetly pointing upwards. “You know, up there where it’s cold,” he added, snapping his fingers. Before an alarmed looking Conway could respond, Trump bluttered, “the igloo people, is that it? He’s the leader of the igloo people, right?” (Satire, I should say, from the Burrard Street Journal. Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters.)

In the briefing I said I would provide the trade deficit number we have with Canada. In 2017 we had a $17.58 B trade deficit. In January 2018 we had a$3.63 B trade deficit. Both reflect trade in goods. Which is exactly what @POTUS referenced. https://t.co/PHm7hXdszD

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) March 15, 2018

I hate to tell you all, but she's almost right. Lying, but only over one nonsensical detail. Trump is not exactly making that up in his fundraiser speech for senatorial candidate Josh Hawley in St. Louis on Wednesday . Or he is, but he isn't lying: he's creating; he's not trying to tell his audience what happened as much as giving them the drama of how it felt. He's messing it up in a very odd way, too, but that's another matter. There's just one real lie in his account, which Sarah is lying about in turn in a more calculated and yet brazen way. But Trump is like Herodotus, giving you the sting and the rush of it:

Yo Canada

I don't think Canada was meant to have a Thatcherite revolution; it took them an awfully long time to try one out, getting around to it only in 2006, and it was only scandal that got the "natural governing party of Canada", the Liberals, out in the first place—though a scandal that seems by US standards ludicrously mild-mannered, like Dr. Evil's extortion demand; the government was found to have improperly awarded $3.75 million in contracts to some Montréal ad agencies, almost half of which involved no actual work, or what Pentagon insiders commonly refer to as "a typical Tuesday". And in the end none of the party's leaders were implicated.

But in the meantime, Canadian voters just don't like criminality even of such a modest sort, and while the country as a whole is normally of the left, the left is always divided, among liberal Liberals, progressive New Democrats, and the ethnicist Bloc Québécois, and so the vile Stephen Harper slipped into office with 36% of the vote, and 124 of the parliament's 308 seats, which is allowed in Canada's parliamentary system as long as enough people in the opposition put up with it (because, say, they don't want another election).

How many Americans...? (addendum)

I didn't really finish the previous, because of the risk of belaboring the obvious, but then the belaborer is worthy of his hire, so:

Q: Why did TransCanada and the US Chamber of Congress and so forth lie to the US Congress, and the American people, and their shareholders about how many jobs the Keystone XL pipeline project would create?

A: Because the project is a stinker which actually advantages no one except those who can extract some profit out of it; but if it created jobs, then it would have created jobs, and practically everybody likes that.

Q: So how come they told the truth to the Canadians?

A: Because Canada is ruled by Tories, also known as Conservatives, the only exception to the "everybody likes jobs" rule. They do not give a frack, as we say, about jobs. Give them a chance to extract profits and they're fine--and the opportunity to destroy Alberta is just icing on the cake.

Beach wedding sand cake; stolen from Flickr.