Every politician cultivates his or her base. Pierre Poilievre's base is dominated by angry young men. Linda McQuaig writes:
An insightful article in The Walrus, co-written by prominent pollster Frank Graves, describes how Poilievre is making gains among disaffected Canadian men — particularly young men — who “complain they have not seen the kind of progress their parents and grandparents did. Pensions and secure retirement are a mirage.”
These men are correct, and their anger at being left behind as the world economy zooms ahead is understandable, even poignant.
Where they get off course and start lapsing into loopy thinking is in their inability to grasp who’s to blame for their predicament. And this is where a populist strongman can make hay. A strongman purports to be on their side, grasping their grievances and feeling their pain.
Poilievre presents himself as a strongman:
Typically, the strongman urges them to vent their rage by storming the seat of government or, in the Canadian version supported by Poilievre, parking in front of Parliament and clogging the surrounding streets with enormous trucks, hot tubs and bouncy castles.
Strongmen offer up a clear villain: government, or in Poilievre’s words “this big beast called government.” Government’s evil is apparently perpetrated by all those who exercise its authority, notably public health officials trying to curb a pandemic.
But Poilevre misplaces the blame:
Blaming government is a clever bait-and-switch, since the root grievance of the angry men is their economic insecurity.
And it wasn’t government officials (or pointy-headed public health authorities) who made them economically insecure. The corporate world did that!
If pensions and secure retirement are a mirage today (which they are), it’s because the cutthroat corporate world of recent decades stopped providing pensions to its employees.
The corporate world also pushed governments to adopt a whole range of pro-business policies that destroyed the earlier economic order based on the New Deal, under which economic rewards were distributed much more equitably.
Indeed, that New Deal order had treated the economic security of workers as vital — the very glue that made democracy work; if working people could achieve economic gains and financial security, they would value highly the democracy that delivered all that.
This has been stripped away over the past four decades as the corporate elite has managed to impose the new pro-business order, redirecting income and wealth to the top, slashing social supports and undermining the ability of the common people to achieve economic gains through unionizing.
This leaves today’s uneducated workers with little hope of retiring comfortably or buying a house, as their uneducated parents and grandparents did.
No longer tethered to a democratic system that doesn’t deliver as it used to, they become a volatile, malleable mass, susceptible to the snake oil of a wily strongman.
And Poilierve is just their man.
Image: The Toronto Star
6 comments:
Skippy has no right to criticise government because he is government. He will have a golden retirement package that will outshine those angry young supporters. As far as the pointy head bureaucrats not causing their situation but the corporate world being wholly responsible for the damage is nonsense. Who allowed the corporate world to inflict these policies if not governments. Bad government policies from Thatcher, Reagan and Muldoon issued in Union busting, unbridled capitalism, free trade agreement, etc.. that brought about the devastation to many more than the present complaining generation. Skippy included. We might remind ourselves that Skippy was spawned by the slime known as Harper who, as a conservative, shows all the characteristics of the afore mentioned Cons of Government. Government goes hand in glove with their corporate master/donors.
The trouble is that the Libs, and to be honest the NDP too, aren't offering an alternative to the cut taxes, privatize, and deregulate agenda of the Cons. The Libs have tinkered with tax hikes on luxury items, but aren't going to return the highest marginal income tax rates to what they were under Paul Martin. They haven't put back regulations abandoned by Harper, and as their increased use of consultants shows, they're committed to privatizing government functions. In short, they're complicit in maintaining and exacerbating the environment in which strongmen flourish. When will they learn that they're acting against democratic values, and even their own best interests?
Cap
Point well taken, zoombats. The corporate world got the government it paid for.
All political parties have bought the conventional wisdom that taxes are toxic, Cap. That notion is, in itself, toxic.
They want to cut taxes? They are stupid. Here in Nanaimo letters to the editor frequently complain about municipal taxes. My question always is: What services do you want to cut?
Many of these men, are not uneducated. Life just didn't turn out the way they thought it would. They did not have a back up plan and their parents, we the aging baby boomers didn't prepare them for a world as we see it today.
What has happened in our society, is something which reminds me of the frog in the pot of water, which slowly becomes hotter and hotter. It is only too late when they realize they are being boiled to death.
The greater problem is in this democracy many people simply do not go out and vote. Others do, and its frequently those who will vote for the more conservative parties which are not socially friendly, i.e. not much into social programs, ensuring people don't live on the streets, kids don't go hungry, seniors loosing their homes due to low pensions, etc.
Going on these road trips with their trucks gives them a sense of purpose, they think they're there with people who care about them and their situation, and it also allows them to forget their greater problems for a while. P.P. knows this and much like Trump caters to them, verbally. Its not like he is going to do anything for them, but rather speaks in a manner that leads them to conclude, he is going to do something. P.P. attacks the Liberals and NDP and of course people interpret that as he is going to change things. P.P. isn't going to change anything for the working person/middle class. He will do as his master did, enusre corporations get more and the rest of us get less. People also might want to stop reading papers controlled by multi nationals or at least dont' believe everything you read or see on t.v. or hear, etc.
Harper and PP along with the rest of those beholden to the corporate elite, passed 9 pieces of legislation which they knew in advance were in violation of the Constitution. Fortunately they were all over turned by our supreme Court.
It always boggles the mind, what did these people really think they were going to get by driving to Ottawa and partying in other people's neighbourhoods. Even their demand that Trudeau and the Liberals leave office and that the country be ruled by the GG, the protestors, and Senate. Did they forget there was a Constituion? That even if Trudeau were to have agreed, there was no way it would have been legal. The protestors might have thought PP was there to lend his support, but really? he was there to find out how much use they would be to him and what amount of strength they had. P.P.. is now the leader of the Conservatives, Trudeau is still P.M. and the Conservatives have yet to put forward anything which will improve the working/middle class's lives
As long as a large segment of Canadians is ignorant of how the works, e.a.f, we're going to have politicians like Poilievre -- who will take advantage of them.
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