Challenge accepted: Premier throws down the gauntlet with defamation accusation; CBC picks it up

The only problem with a blustery Danielle Smith, threatening to throw down the gauntlet and and say, “See you in court” is that she doesn’t have the brass to be that bold. And she really doesn’t know what the goods the CBC has on her antics. I suspect Smith will walk this one back (again) and say something to the effect that she’s the victim, she’s only trying to do the right thing, and FreeDUMB.

On CBC’s podcast, West of Centre, yesterday, one of the speakers made the point that there is a significant difference between an anonymous source, and a confidential source. In her words, an anonymous source is a manila envelope left on a reporter’s windshield, which may or may not be reliable. A confidential source, as David clarified above, is known to the reporters; they just want their names kept out of the news story.

I wonder if the sources who told CBC about emails from the premier’s office to crown prosecutors would now be willing to let the CBC reporters see the emails.

There’s a growing habit of speech in US circles of politics and punditry, and that is to say that an elected politician, usually from a rival party, has made an issue “too political,” or simply, “political” when what is really meant is that someone has made an issue too partisan.

It’s particularly disturbing that Democrats mistakenly use the term ‘politics’ this way when criticizing GOP antics which are overtly partisan—that is, affected purely for what tRumpiblican parliamentarians perceive as advantageous for their party or, equally, disadvantageous to their rival Democratic Party which tRump labelled in the most partisan way possible: the enemy of the state—the same sort of way UCP politicians and supporters label Canada as the enemy of Alberta.

In either case, subscription to such bogeymen as George Soros, the Elders of Zion, and Sasquatch relies completely on rote partisanship to garner votes since the political art is limited to the possible, and membership to the club demands belief in the fantastic where reality and political possibility are moot. Further, when accusing the Democrats of the most offensive treason—for which the penalty is death—cannot garner enough votes for the GOP to prevail democratically, cheating is employed in a way that only Machiavelli could find artful.

Ultimately, politics is denigrated by misusing the term to mean something bad, something done for partisan advantage only instead of the public good. tRump himself boasted, “ I’m no politician,” and his burgeoning base practically cheered the house down. ‘Government’ in tRumpese is a ”swamp” that needs draining. Et cetera.

We hear tRumpublican apes like PP and Danielle use similar denigrations of government, like, “it’s broken,” a direct lift from tRumpublican rhetoric. Yet Poilievre’s reticence to play ball with Smith is indicative of the political—if inappropriately partisan—contrast between the two politicians: although at least half of CPC influence comes from the two landlocked provinces—the two which have recently passed so-called “sovereignty acts” with thinly veiled secessionist ideology— it is impolitic for PP to cooperate in this kind of rhetoric from his federal position. His ‘politics’ might be too partisan, but he’s enough of a politician to know that the democratic system is not so “broken”—despite his incessant claim that it is— that voters wouldn’t denounce breaking up the country or any partisan rhetoric to that effect, and do so at the ballot box to his party’s disadvantage.

Danielle Smith, on the other hand, is not nearly as much of a politician to know that most of the policies she proposes are quite impolitic, even within the smaller Alberta electorate. The fact that she acquired her position because of extraordinary circumstances that reflect very little democratic approval doesn’t seem like the “art of the possible” that true politics is supposed to be—that is, it doesn’t seem possible that her policies, polices which don’t even have the unanimous approval of her own party, let alone the electorate at large, will succeed in the partisan sense—the ‘politics’ of getting and keeping power. Indeed, PP is rightly afraid that association with Alberta Sovereignty is politically and electorally dangerous because Smith has practically no political chops whatsoever.

The single exception is that both he and she focus their große Lüge blame on an alleged “coalition” of JT and Jagmeet—but we haven’t heard PP poo-poo Rachel Notley as being part of it like Smith has—which he surely would do if he thought it the least bit politic for his own party’s partisan advantage. One wonders if PP cringes whenever Smith does it because, as a seasoned and fairly successful politician, he sees that she is not, yet it’s too toxically risky to ever be caught helping her coordinate their respective narratives and, in any case, her political ineptitude probably prevents her from tempering her rhetoric for both of their sakes. She is obviously not one to be discrete —and is too proud of it by half.

The biggest corroboration of that is the painfully obvious fact that she should keep her big fat mouth shut, but doesn’t. None of the pickle she finds herself in now was necessary politics, yet she just can’t seem to help picking at her scab.

…which exemplifies what happens when the term politics is misunderstood, as it appears to have been for Smith’s entire political career. If she accepted it something as bad as tRumpublicans insist, then she probably rejected learning even the basics—just like she doesn’t want to listen to medical expertise about Covid: she simply rejects it out of hand. Like tRump, she thinks politics is an unnecessary impediment that can be easily ignored and replaced with nothing but partisanship.

But what it really means is, because politics has been mistaken for unquestioning partisanship, her party is most likely to be retired by voters. Because politics, Danielle.

Words do matter.