Danielle Smith comes out swinging; Justin Trudeau responds with the rope-a-dope strategy

As the retired lawyers, and oilmen in our circle of friends have said over and over again while these stupid reformers hurl their sarcastic comments at anyone who doesn’t support them it’s obvious that they never consult with our oil executives. We don’t see any oil executives supporting any of their stupid remarks do we? The internet is full of articles from oil executives saying that Global Warming is a serious problem and wanting to do something about it. Lougheed certainly agreed and so did Dr. David Swann and Klein had him fired for suggesting that we need to do something about it. Just like Daniel Smith with doctors for daring to say vaccines would prevent deaths. Oil executives were the ones who wanted the carbon tax implement, because they know it works and were pleased that Notley and Trudeau would help them do it after Stephen Harper refused to.

This looks like the “year of Danielle’s silliest season ever”. I guess it will continue until (hopefully) she will get jettisoned back to the talk show crowd.

Say what will about PMJT, he’s a skilled operator — maybe too skilled for his own good, but skilled nonetheless.

Standing and watching everyone lose their heads and fall into ranting hysterics is often the best strategy for looking like the only adult in the room. We can see that this was successful in negotiating with the provinces over the additional health care funding. Not do the feds not trust the provinces with the additional funding without the oversight, it seems that the residents of the respective provinces don’t trust their own provincial governments to do the right thing. That’s why B.C. hopped on immediately to the proposals; if Alberta wants to do to their crazy shite, let them. They wanted and need the funding and accepting the reasonable oversight isn’t too much to ask for.

Of course, for the sake of FreeDUMB, Danielle Smith goes the other way and goes all Posse Comitatus and go all convoy crazy over whatever her bases obsesses over. Alberta is now seen as the Karen of provinces, whining endlessly about being cheated, all the while earning higher incomes than the national average, and boasting about the next ATV or bigger and more blinged-out pickup truck they are going to buy.

May as well say out loud what everyone is thinking: Danielle Smith is the white trash premier for a white trash province.

I was a big fan of Cassius Clay, later known as the great Mohammad Ali, the heavy-weight champion of the cosmos. His Rope-a-Dope was devastating because not only could he deliver a flurry of bout-ending punches (check out his 13-punch combo, while training for “The Rumble in the Jungle” in the excellent doc, When We Were Kings—just check it out), Ali could take round after round of absolutely monster body shots (and, after nearly eight rounds with George Foreman, that had to hurt; a lot) before bursting out of nowhere and rendering fight-commentator Howard Cosell almost unintelligibly drowning in saliva, the hulking Foreman almost unconscious, and everybody else watching slo-mo reruns for years and years just to figure out what happened.

Not quite the royalty of Ali or Foreman (“Rope-a-Dope” was coined by this match), JT deftly employed the same strategy inside— and now outside—the ring, the former an easy dispatch of the pudgy-tatted blowhard, Harper-appointed Senator Patrick Brazeau that presciently rattled the HarperCon government, the latter driving Freedumbites mad with frustration with his perennial “sunny ways, sunny days” demeanour which they’re sure is cocking a snook at them, no matter what they throw at him. (I wonder if the PM read Ali’s book of wisdom? I would recommend it to anyone—even Danielle Smith—especially Danielle Smith. I like to think no one is beyond redemption, anecdote notwithstanding.)

The principle is simple: a missed punch takes more energy than a landed one (notice Tyson never threw missed punches, nor ever used the Rope-a-Dope strategy). Indeed, the rarity of a fourth term for any Canadian PM (it’s been over a century since the last one) might prove Trudeau the master strategist by letting his partisan rivals exhaust themselves with poorly-landed body-shots only to find themselves swinging and missing at the air when he steps down like a tag-team All-Star wrestler and the fit and fresh Marco Mendocino bounds into the ring (or whoever—but that’s a fight I’d sure like to see!) Surely the Liberals’ enemies fret about this possibility.

It’s the dysUCP/CPC/PPC/PP frustration-Schadenfreude that’s so delicious (I bet they’re praying JT rides the Rainbow Railway through the Wild Rose province while arrogantly flipping Freedumbites the finger—“just once, please, Lord!”) The fact that Smith’s dysUCP base is so easily baited doesn’t diminish the joy of toying, but despite the jaw-dropping ridiculousness, and especially the preposterousness of Danielle Smith and her rabid corner, one has to snap out of it and realize: this is really very serious stuff. Alberta’s in a fix right now, what with longterm prospects of its dominant bitumen-boiling industry looking as infeasibly noir as charcoal-burning eventually became, and a paralyzed government now led by the Princess of the Peter Principle only the most bizarre of political circumstances could produce, Canadians are bound by national patriotism to help however they can. Even after the UCP is unelected to sort it-selves out. That’s what federalism is all about—Smith just doesn’t know that yet.

What would the “Rumble in the Jungle” or the “Thriller in Manila” have been like in the internet age? Would the Covid Age have stolen Foreman’s mojo like that training injury did wayback when in Zaire? I dunno, but the irrepressible Ali prob’ly woulda loved Twitter—or maybe not (he virtually invented rap—possibly with the help of Percy Mayfield). But as clownish as he was, he was a very serious champion of peace, love and human rights. Rendered speechless by cumulative concussions and nerve-wasting disease, he wrote sincerely of his prescription for a fair and healthy future for all—and without a trace of bitterness for all the injustices and cruelties he endured in his transition from prize-fighter to silent sage.

All funning aside, it should be said that although many wanted Foreman and Brazeau to win, it was apparent that more cheered at their respective losses. And, possibly due to these popular expectations, either way, both Foreman and Brazeau were rocked by what should have been for either of them just another fight, whether in the ring or the beer parlour, and both were thrown into such deep, introspective depressions that it could be said, as indeed both did in their turns, that they were spiritually as well as sportingly stung by defeat. But—and this is important in even the crazy politics of Alberta right now—both Foreman and Brazeau eventually had epiphanies which turned their personal griefs around and toward helping others, not least by confessing their Blues, perhaps inspired by the monolithic icon of the stoic Ali as he meditated in shambling silence and wrote of a better world to come.

We would wish the same for Tyler Shandro who might not have experienced such crushing defeat yet, but who would do well to take a lesson from the ultimate redemption of these boxers: once they were kings, then they became living, human assets for their respective communities— and for us all.

We wish the same for the great province of Alberta. Once its citizens crash and exit the wreckage of neoSoCon redoubterism, hopefully they’ll see, 20-20 in hindsight, that it was just a transition after all. It’s the beginning of the 8th Round in the Parry on the Prairies, JustinCase you were wondering.