Monday, March 11, 2019

I Admit It. I Don't Much Care.



It has been very slightly amusing to watch Trudeau's acolytes and Trudeau's adversaries rally to support or rally to unseat this prime minister.

Now this may be the worst thing ever to those who have spent the past two weeks furiously grinding their axes. It's not. Nor is the drubbing Trudeau has received undeserved. He got his nose rubbed in it. Fair enough.

Overall it seems "the system" worked as it should. The PMO tried to twist Jody's arm. Jody held the line. The prime minister was rebuffed. SNC-Lavalin would not be taken off the hook with a DPA side deal. It turns out the people of Quebec think that's just fine.

The story had some traction but not nearly as much as some who worked overtime to fan the fires plainly hoped. It's an intra-mural sort of thing. Ordinary people, people with the ordinary problems that beset life in the 21st century, are not taking to the streets with pitchforks and torches to storm Parliament Hill.  Attention fades. It would take a modern day Sisyphus to keep pushing this scandal up that steep hill day after day forever or at least until October.

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, "when you strike at a king, you must kill him." What Machiavelli actually said was, "never cause an enemy small injury." The way things seem to be shaping up, LavScam will probably not kill the king but it will leave him with small injury.

In the imperial Japanese tradition, those who move against the king and fail commit seppuku. In the modern Canadian tradition, their heads implode. I'll keep listening for that sound.

Meanwhile there are matters that matter - to the country, to the economy, to the people. The CBC's Don Pittis writes that it's time to get back to business.

2 comments:

Toby said...

Don Pittis' title says it. "Political circus diverts government attention from Canada's economic woes." That's the whole point. Bread and circuses.

The Mound of Sound said...


Bread and circuses indeed, Toby.