So long Viktor Orbán! The times, they are a changin’ … but can Wild Rose MAGA buck the trend?

This far right lunacy is causing so much harm, but the brainwashed don’t see it. It’s because they are so blind. Regardless of what the polls say, Danielle Smith and her UCP gong show are going to end up sinking. She can only lie so much, before the end comes.

I suspect and hope things will get a lot more bumpier for Smith. All the distractions like data centers, pipelines, and on and on, do nothing to help the less fortunate folks or help anyone get better education or health care. Regardless of her MAGA style constant blathering, which she no doubt got from Trump, it is getting harder and harder to stomach her nattering. I just hope all those uneducated rural yokels wake up and see the garbage dictator style direction she is heading.

It would seem good advice that Danielle Smith distance herself from tRumpublicanism, judging from the fates of those whom the Orbange One (oh!–can I say that anymore?) endorses, both in the USoA and abroad–and even here in the “51st State,” naturally, because we share the longest border, only occasionally defended, with our elephantine econo-strategic partner.

The craziest Canadian election I ever saw owed its drama to Donald F tRump to whom Conservative leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition had–with a little help from his fabulated arch-enemy, JT–been irrevocably handcuffed. Mere months before the last general election pollsters were giving Pierre Poilievre upwards of 95% odds that he’d become prime minister, but just a whiff of spray-on carotene was enough to erase and reverse those odds and lose his own seat of 21 years (tRump, apparently so-advised, was careful NOT to endorse Poilievre, but of course blew it, as usual, by saying too much in his distinctive way most people take as gleeful insincerity–that is, lying: I don’t really care who wins; I hope he doesn’t win; I don’t know who he is; I never heard of him. But that was enough to match tRump’s gigantic bag of soiled diapers to PP’s reminiscent rhetoric).

Perhaps having failed in Canada’s case, tRump tried the other way around with the Hungarian election. I sensed Orbán looked very happy about tRump’s typically overwrought endorsement, replete with unabashed appeal to favouritism and bribery, delivered in doubly dubious measure by JD “Veep” Vance who somehow manages to double his satirical caricature of which the characterization “hapless” is probably too generous by half. Indeed, Orbán’s expression under JD’s firehose of blandishments was rather more like a simple “I am so fucked…” It doubtlessly reverberates in the Oval but, naturally, for every wrong reason except irony.

Is there any identifiable contrition from politicians who regret getting the Orange-Goo-Tan tat? The would-be Aussie PM’s concession speech seemed to express a little. It appears Italy’s Regina della destra partigiana, Giorgia Meloni, has given the boot to tRump’s heavy-handed desperation despite their initial buddy-rightism. The EU and its NATO members have been earnest in trying to appease the rug-topped rogue–only to concede that earnestness doesn’t earn an Oscar but, rather, puts a bullseye on their backs. Their not-so-secret weapon is, of course, that they don’t risk tRump’s poisonous “friendship.” By literal definition, idiots don’t have any friends. But what keeps unapologetic sickofans under the misspelled trance of Captain Allcaps?

It probably relates to the Q whether PP won’t or can’t hive off of the rank MAGA battle line: the regressive conservative right hammers its pitons into social seams mythologically baked-in; once so-secured, it becomes legitimizing as citable history. Its demagogic quotient is as strong as certain baked-in elements of any clan, nation, or alliance are real. tRump thrives on the indelible anxiety of the newborn republic, although he need not bother with details that at its now-glorified birth it was financially exhausted, strategically weak and surrounded or infested by perceived enemies– European imperialism, slave revolt, and scalping “Indians”, all of which inspired the Rebellion itself, thence the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the US Civil War, and the Seminole War–at 42 years, America’s longest combat engagement. For a Cohn-trained psychopath and history ignoramus it’s a mere hop, skip and jump to: “they’re [the mythological “other”] ripping us off,” and worse: “they’re laughing at us,” “they are killing and raping us,” screwing the dissonance of perverse US reproductive prudishness and propriety of porn deep into the xenophobic scar that stretches across the nation’s body politic and authorizes sledgehammer reaction to the slightest weeping from the tactically-picked scab of American bigotry. It’s baked-in so tRump always finds it easy to scratch. It’s simple so he will always fancy himself a genius even as the real complexity of domestic politics and foreign diplomacy repeatedly reveals him a done-in Krieger–which explains how he constantly brags about passing a screening test designed to detect cognitive impairment–like, not even as hard as the grade-six-level english entrance exam I passed at UVic (out of about 300, not only the only 100% mark, but also the only one who passed at all!–not bragging, just lamenting…)

But how does Danielle Smith get away with her unabashed association with tRump? The answer might be found in what’s baked into Alberta’s heart and soul: its historical struggle with the federal government, a scar, as ‘t were, that might have healed over had not the players played their respective parts–Lougheed tried to heal, PET clawed the scab. Et cetera–there’s always something to crow about at any rate.

It’s deeper than oil and broader than bitumen, and so obviously unhelpful that political balms have repeatedly been pragmatically applied, then ideologically torn away.

It’s not unique to Alberta that ideological opportunists can be found anywhere there’s history. In BC’s case the distinctiveness Cascadians need not imagine indelibly etched by the Continental Divide rationalizes demands for extras on top of the original 1871 bribe (a free railway to Canada, blithely illegal negligence of treaty-making, massive land grants to private industry, &c) just as there is no ‘final instalment’ to a blackmailer. Quebec “always remembers” the Conquest (Carney needn’t have reminded anyone but himself) and nurtures similar demands for extras on top of its original inducements –its french-speaking Catholic culture allowed on condition it never avail its then-four-to-one advantage of population over Loyalist anglophones after the most powerful part of British North America hived off in 1775-89. It’s the other way around now: Quebec’s population is a bit less than a quarter of Canada’s but the mythic source is as viable as ever.

For Upper Canada the always-available seam is the fact that the US Rebellion necessitated its umbilical fraternity with its francophone twin (including Roman Britannia/Gaul, Norman dukedom/kingdom, the Angevin Empire, and two World Wars, this scar is very, very deep). Ontario’s preoccupation with this continual rebranding hasn’t gone unnoticed by peripheral federates–indeed, it underwrites some of their own mythoi.

Manitoba and other western federates-come-lately take their turns around the edges while Newfoundland-Labrador reminds the Maritimes of their lost mercantile importance that once flourished and grew. In fact, Alberta rocks back and forth between nose-thumbing Quebec and/or Ontario, between allegedly favoured Quebec and elites holistically named “East” who should altogether be left to “freeze in the dark.” So much for distinction. It is the narratological nature of human organization to find the raw ingredients anywhere there’s history.

Alberta’s schizophrenia features fascinating irony: the recent inflation of patriotism tRump’s threats and insults inspires in the ROC aligns or factors somewhat with Alberta’s own, provincial loyalties, thus secessionist and federalist sentiments can beat in one heart. Dual loyalty is supposed to be beneficial. Polls suggest the UCP benefits from standing up to Ottawa, as usual, but as many petition signers acknowledge, subscription to secessionism is significantly underpinned by a sovereign Alberta standing up WITH Ottawa, only on better terms. Recall that at one time separatists included all four western provinces, naturally because all of them, like all eleven Canadian sovereignties, have baked-in historical demands of one sort or another for better federal terms. So much for distinctiveness: Alberta separatists have since lengthened their pitons to bear more upon sticky sand than upon western alienation, now aggressively insulting Casacadia–uh, I mean, BC–and punting Saskatchewan aside like a spatted WC Fields a bothersome street urchin (since seen hangin’ out in Asia with Eby–and having a pretty good time, too). In short, some Albertans admit to endorsing secession only to get Ottawa’s attention, not to–you know–actually separate– kinda like an 8 year-old’s misspelled note signifying an afternoon of running away from home forever.

This contributes substantially to the UCP’s superior poll numbers (in addition to the frustratingly measured opposition of Naheed “dry-powder” Nenshi) in spite of Smith’s unabashed affiliation with MAGA Logo. The real question is whether this fortune-upon-a-knife-edge of public opinion, perched as ‘t were upon the timeless clouds of mythology, can weather down-to-earth general election ballot marking. So long’s we are transfixed by the uncertainties of our moment, Smith can get away with stuff, but does it translate favourably in the only poll that counts?

Perhaps Alberta could be called a “distinct culture” if it bucks the trend of fatal snake-handling, maybe even see Smith re-elected (for the first time?–I’ve lost count…) neither of which would be as disturbing as bucking the Constitution in order to separate illegally–which at present is the only way to do it.

The breakdownab substack has published an interesting article about the corruptcare scandal. Lots of detailed information.

I feel that the lines in the political sand no longer exist. Carney worked hand in hand with Harper on economic strategy. There is a common thread throughout both of their times involved in world trade and banking – making the rich richer. I see two British loyalists who have placed rubbing elbows (forget elbows up) with the elites as their personal priority. It would appear that they both have been willing to sell off Canadian resources to foreign entities with the side effect of filling their own coffers and elevating themselves to the international trough. Insider trading and outright corruption have left Canada vulnerable in all ways.
The Canadian military lacks oversight, and the RCMP seem to operate independently of Canadian law – both of which have long ties to Freemasonry. And the courts do not prosecute. These are all institutions of the CROWN.
In Paris there is an ongoing court case against the mason Mafia there. I sincerely hope that those who have boots on the ground are understanding how they were used to feed the rich and helped to create the world we must now try to live in.