The Age of Stunt Politics

So yeah, we're well into the Age of Stunt Politics, but I'm hopeful it will soon be on the wane soon.

I don't know why I'm hopeful, but I am. I may just be losing my mental faculties. Certainly it wouldn't be surprising after two and a half years of Donald Trump sucking all the oxygen out of the world.

This isn't really a political post, although it kind of is, I guess, but I wanted to share a thread on Twitter I came across this morning, pointing out the opening line of a speech by Andrew Scheer that was supposed to reassure us the Conservative Party of Canada isn't the party of White Incel Nationalists.

Hey - WIN.

The speech was the result of an improv performance by one Michael Cooper at a justice committee hearing the other day examining online hate. I'm not sure what his point was, beyond personifying the problem for everyone by behaving like a typical rightwing troll, but enter Andrew Scheer to...?

Well you be the judge as Norlaine Thomas on Twitter breaks it down from the opening salvo, "We are all children of God": Okay, you fuck off now, hear?

As far as I can tell, Scheer's a member of a Conservative Christian sect that pretends to be under attack by others/us because of the religious beliefs of its adherents, when what's actually happening - and Scheer knows this - is that others/we are objecting to discrimination by the state that's almost entirely due to the embedded influence of Conservative Christianity in politics and society.

For whatever reason or lack thereof, Scheer et al don't like the prospect of everybody living free of discrimination from the state. I honestly don't know why they don't like it, but they clearly don't. And I believe, if he becomes Prime Minister of Canada, Scheer will devote his efforts to shoring up that embedded influence in ways both seen and unseen, while doing what all Conservative politicians do now as a matter of course, which is to eliminate public space by privatizing it.

And maybe I'm misreading his lips but it seems to me he's giving us a pretty good heads up on his intentions.