Why do I do this to myself?

Just Couldn't Leave It Alone, could you.

@AntoniaZ, @SusannaKelley, @marcusbgee, and the Rob Ford ascendancy | #TOpoli

Wonderful thing, the Tweeter. Keeps things lively, and keeps you on your toes.

So apparently there's some question over what I wrote about the Globe's ideologically reliable urban affairs curmudgeon and his role in helping propel Mayor Stupid into the Chief Magistrate's office. Over at ontarionewswatch.com, Editor-in-Chief and Ontario Bureau Chief @SusannaKelley apparently takes issue with a tweet from @AntoniaZ regarding a post from me yesterday morning.

@marcusbgee calls Ford on his bullshit, but who helped put him there? | #TOpoli

So a few people – Thor and Nancy for starters – are linking to this piece from the Globe's ideologically reliable urban affairs curmudgeon, who's arguing, not without reason, that Mayor Stupid should have known all along that he couldn't guarantee that there wouldn't be any service cuts or layoffs.

One hesitates to accuse Mayor Stupid of lying, chiefly because it's obvious that he can't tell the difference between true and false. You know those people who are so out of touch that they don't even know what the facts are? The kind who pull facts and numbers out of their asses and know they'll never really have to account for it? The kind who just dispense with facts entirely and go with their gut because ... well ... just because. Shut up and fuck off.

Some late-night thoughts on Mayor Stupid with @thekeenanwire and @UnionSt | #TOpoli

Storify: great for aggregating tweets, but you can go blind putting them in order if you're dealing with more than a handful.

If only there were a sort function ...



Tips of the chapeau to @AureliaCotta and @timfalconer and @HiMYSYeD as well.

Team Ford's malignancy: It's not just the Jarvis bike lanes | #TOpoli #bikeTO

By now so much has been written and blogged and tweeted about today's clusterfuck at Toronto Council that there's no point in rehashing it. Go read Matt Elliott's summary at Ford For Toronto if you want a recap.



For Christ's sakes. This isn't just about the lack of any coherent policy justification, or the Machiavellian political gamesmanship, or the schoolyard-bully dynamic evident on the council floor, or the Speaker's obvious bias and procedural cluelessness. It's about all of those, but something worse as well.

'Respect for Taxpayers' is a load of crap

True, I may be undermining weeks of arguing for engaging the people we disagree with in a spirit of openness and respect. And name-calling isn't going to help us show them how they're actually voting against their own interests, or reveal the corporatist / continentalist / ruling-class Divide-and-Conquer strategy. Class warfare's tricky that way.

@thekeenanwire, #TOpoli and that whole 'deserve' thing, redux

Go and read this piece from Ed Keenan in The Grid.

He's right of course, and you don't need a master's degree in public administration to know that public services cost money. And you don't need cheap childish gimmicks, either.

The troublesome part is that something so blindingly self-evident seemed to elude a majority of Toronto voters last fall. They were all too willing to buy into Rob Ford's bullshit about mountains of wasted cash and municipal inefficiencies and gravy trains, and worst of all, the idea that under David Miller, things were just so irredeemably awful that the only thing to do was to blow everything up.

Economic, ethical and ecological collapse, according to Chris Hedges

Very sobering piece from Chris Hedges (author of American Fascists, among other things) about what happens when empires go sclerotic.

As long as we're asking quis custodiet ipsos custodes ...

I know, I know, it's Sunday night and people just want to wind down the weekend and fall asleep in front of the Golden Globes and for chrissakes, can't you just give it a rest already?

Yeah, well. Michael Geist flagged this last week, and pogge and Jymn have picked up on it, but it bears more than a little emphasis. The Star and the Globe seem to think it's important too.

Nice country you got there

There's a light unto the nations for you.

Another morning, another false equivalency from Metro Morning

It's not even over yet, but first thing this morning, Matt Galloway's got the Venomous Loser^TM on to talk about the official kickoff of the Rob Ford era.

#VoteTO: The prospect of Mayor Rob Ford, and the long road back to sanity

Via Chet Scoville at The Vanity Press, a piece by Edward Keenan in The Eye Weekly about what happens when Rob Ford becomes mayor.

Not going to try and replicate the whole thing here. Chet's underlined some of the more important points, notably the flimsy and questionable assumptions upon which the whole "wasteful spending, city falling apart, taxpayer rage, yargle bargle bleghhh ... " narrative rests.

But there's something else about the piece that's even more disturbing, and it dovetails – again – with my continuing obsession with the celebration of stupidity. As Keenan argues, it's a mistake to see Ford as some scheming Machiavellian with a hidden agenda. The simple truth is, and I think Keenan's onto something here, that Ford has no coherent agenda at all. He is not going to find hundreds of millions of dollars in savings by cutting out catered lunches for councillors, replacing streetcars with more buses, or firing the guy who waters the plants at City Hall.

And whether you agreed with David Miller or not, the record shows that he managed to herd the cats – er, work with councillors to get things done.  Even (God forgive me) Mayor Mel showed some proficiency that way. If Rob Ford's ever been able to work and play well with the other kids, I haven't seen it.

No, the most unsettling thing about Ford's ascendancy – and Keenan touches upon it – is the continuing buzz about his "authenticity." I've written before about how none of the lies, drunken rants, belligerent public misbehaviour or gaffes seem to stick to him, but instead underline his "regular guy" cred. He really does believe that bicycles shouldn't be on the road. And when he talks about servicing his constituents and cutting waste, he's not posturing or triangulating – he's being genuine. In Keenan's own words:

Except when childishly denying personal-life indiscretions or poorly thought-out comments, he speaks his simple truth as plainly as he can. In short, he is incapable of spin and his branding — such as it is — of himself as a plain-spoken, unapologetic truth teller is an honest representation.

And that's the biggest problem. Not that Rossi and Smitherman and Thomson are trying to skim some of his support by trying to reposition themselves as smarter versions of Rob Ford. Not that Ford's vision, warped though it is, seems to have become the defining lens through which this election is viewed. No, if what Keenan's arguing is true, then the key to Ford's appeal is that he's genuinely sincere in what he's saying.

To which, in my snobby condescending downtown elitist way, I say: So what? What's so great about being sincerely stupid?

What's so great about a worldview that has no capacity for reflection? What's so great about reducing the complexities of politics and municipal governance to a series of sound bites and simplistic clichés? What's the benefit of using words to inflame and obscure? What's admirable about trumpeting your shallowness, your ignorance, and your lack of education?

Once again, it comes down to citizenship and its attendant obligations. Thoughtful civic engagement shouldn't be optional, regardless of what level of government you're talking about. I want policy decisions made on the basis of sound analysis and a thorough consideration of goals, resources and targets, not on the basis of some asshole's gut reaction. And Rob Ford's popularity is all about simplistic gut reaction.

His ascendancy represents the triumph of intellectual laziness and disengagement, of gullibility and an obliviousness to being played for suckers, and of a willingness to swallow bullshit whose flimsy transparency ought to be self-evident to anyone with more than a few brain cells. The prospect of his victory holds out little more than four years of stagnation. And that's four years lost that could be spent building a healthier and more functional city.

Sorry, but if you're basing your voting decision on a simple visceral desire to kick ass instead of a thoughtful and reasoned consideration of the issues, then you are a fucking moron. Stupidity is not a civic virtue. There's nothing to be gained by pretending otherwise. If you find that offensive, too bad. (H/t thwap, again.)

This is the damage done by 30 years of right-wing nonsense. And let's not kid ourselves, my friends. This isn't conservatism. This is destructive atavistic bullshit.

Hey! Kory! Come back here!

You can't go yet. We're not done with you.

But seriously, though ... several bloggers have joined in the karmic pile-on already, so I'll forbear for now. But I can't help noting how consistently some of the biggest names at Sun Media have been stepping in pile after pile of their own shit recently.

There's Kory and his Snuffelupagus-impersonating "source." And there's David Akin and his spotty grasp of history. In fairness, David deserves credit for having owned up and fixed his "embarrassing mistake," but it does say something about Sun Media that it stayed online for a week without anyone else noticing or doing anything about it. Even with some mean-spirited bastard pointing it out repeatedly. (Really, David? "Twit?" That hurts.)

However, David's mea culpa slags BigCityLib, who flagged the error before I did, for indulging in a "cheap gotcha." Dear me, I'm clutching my pearls and looking around for the fainting couch. Heaven forfend that Sun Media would ever stoop to "cheap gotchas."

Yes, that's another cheap shot, but if Sun Media's going to cut across the blue line with its head down, it's going to have to expect to get lined up.



But while we're on the subject of Sun Media, let's revisit the Ian Davey controversy for a minute. We've all read about it, so no need to rehash, but as Dr. Dawg has argued, Davey really wasn't so far off the mark if he was suggesting that Sun Media puts out papers for morons. As the good Doctor writes:

The Sun specializes in vulgar, uninformed comment intended to inflame prejudice and damp down reflection. And there's a constituency for that. Davey didn't express himself well, but that's precisely what he was getting at, and--let me go out on a limb here--it's what a lot of us believe, even if we sometimes forbear to say it out loud.

Dawg's already made the argument better than I can, and I'd urge you to go read it in full, but it ties into what I've been saying about the deliberate cultivation of ignorance and stupidity. And I guess the deeper I get into this argument, the harder I'm finding it to disagree with thwap about the utility of calling people on their stupidity.

Citizenship and civic engagement go hand in hand. You're not fulfilling your obligations as a citizen if you can't be bothered to think critically. That means looking at things through something more thoughtful and challenging than a smudgy lens of right-wing clichés (h/t Dawg again). And if you're too lazy and / or stupid to try, well, you might get some momentary satisfaction out of being pandered to by the Suns and Rob Fords of the world. But you've forfeited any right to be taken seriously or treated with respect.

So I'm a snooty condescending elitist? Sue me.

Rationality, critical thinking and Phil Plait: the limits of civil discourse

As you can tell by looking over to the right a little, I follow quite a few blogs. Dozens, in fact. Lots of friends on Facebook and hundreds of tweeters as well. And sometimes I just go surfing, clicking on links without any preconceived objective, just to keep reading. So I can't really remember how I found this, but thank you to whoever pointed me to it.

Phil Plait - Don't Be A Dick from JREF on Vimeo.

Rather timely, I think, because it's hard to be a skeptic, especially given the institutional energy devoted to pushing packaged narratives and manufactured storylines. It's never been easy to swim against the current, let alone persuade others to do likewise.

What's particularly worthwhile about Plait's presentation, though, is the passage from which the title is taken (at about the 24:30 mark). As he argues, no matter how wrong people's beliefs are, you're not likely to convince them they're mistaken if you're insulting them. Mea culpa, therefore, given the tone of yesterday's post about Rob Ford's supporters and "suburban fury."

But it raises a number of issues, for me at least, about civility and civil discourse. I've written previously about the obligations of civic engagement, and how the tone of public conversation has been poisoned and corrupted, deliberately, by the likes of Fox Noise and the Rove / Murdoch cult. You don't have to dig too deep to see Stephen Harper, Kory Teneycke and the folks at Sun Media using the same playbook. 

One of the comments on Plait's presentation argues that debate isn't so much about changing your opponent's mind as it is about convincing as many members of the audience as possible. Plait himself alludes to that, I think, in his remarks about the "big tent." Whether you agree with that or not, though, it implies another question: when you're making an argument, whom are you trying to convince? And does it indeed suggest that a commitment to civil discourse implies an obligation to listen respectfully and hear out any and all opposing viewpoints, no matter how outlandish?

I haven't worked this out in full, but this, I think, is where I run up against the limits of Phil Plait's argument. One of the worst aspects of the Karl Rove playbook, and one we see the Harper government embracing with relish, is the calculated devaluing of science, evidence-based decisionmaking, and acquired expertise. The script is familiar: dismiss experts as elitists out of touch with real people, and insist on "balance,"and demand that people should hear "both sides of the issue." It's how the denialists manage to derail any serious attempts to address climate change, for example.  

The effect is to set up a whole array of false equivalencies based on two faulty assumptions: firstly, that complex issues can be reduced to a simple "he said / she said" storyline, and secondly, that both sides of this artificially framed issue are valid and deserving of equal time. Which is why we see entire social movements devoted to pushing creationism, and school textbooks forced to include disclaimers that evolution is just a theory.  

And this is where I get off the bus. Yes, civil discourse is preferable to inflammatory rhetoric, and yes, reasoned debate is better than screaming and namecalling. But there's no obligation to treat creationism, cultish superstition or other forms of manufactured stupidity with the same weight or serious consideration as the body of scientific, rationally tested and demonstrated knowledge we've developed since the Enlightenment. And if people continue to cling to it in the face of fact and evidence, out of laziness, dogmatism or sheer spite, they don't deserve to be treated with respect.

If that makes me a snobby condescending elitist, fine. Sue me.

Ford's ascendancy, explained

For the last day or so, I've been thinking about Alex Himelfarb's wonderfully thoughtful essay on why people vote against their own interests. Again, nothing I can say to improve upon it.

And now, a perfect illustration: from the Star today, it seems that Rob Ford is “tapping into suburban fury.”

So what is this “fury,” and why, since the Star never explains, should anyone take it seriously?

Is it just the usual “I don't wanna pay taxes for those condescending downtown elitists / lazy overpaid unionized thugs / tax-and-spend socialists / artsy-fartsy communists, yargle bargle bleghhh, drool ... ” horseshit?

If that's it, then fuck that and the people thinking it. A toxic brew of inchoate rage, ignorance and resentment is not the same thing as committed citizenship. And it's time we stopped coddling it and pretending it's something that needs to be humoured or respected.

Honestly, are people no longer capable of thinking except in clichés? Has anyone noticed how easily “mad as hell and not going to take it any more” morphs into “lazy, stupid, belligerent and unwilling to do anything that actually requires thoughtful engagement?”

That's why Ford's leading. That's what Stephen Harper taps into. That's why Sarah Palin is, well, Sarah Palin. And that's what's behind the outbreak of teabaggery to the south, along with a healthy dose of bigotry, racism, and well-orchestrated fear and scapegoating of The Other – all conveniently misdirected so that no one can see who really benefits from just how dysfunctional things have become.

It's a simple, easy-to-grasp narrative, unaffected by facts, devoid of context, and willingly propagated by the Fox Noise wannabes at Sun Media. An easily exploited, all-purpose current of spite, resentment and anti-social sentiment – in other words, the perfect basis upon which to build a healthy community. Not.

Read this post from Alex Himelfarb

Not going to try and summarize it here. Can't possibly do it justice. Here's a taste:

The new anti-elitism is, I believe, profoundly misplaced, strangely focused on politicians, public servants, experts, and knowledge workers rather than on those who have all the money and power. That’s certainly good news for those who have all the money and power.

Read it here.

I know I've gone on about the cultivation of stupidity and the celebration of ignorance, but this takes the analysis that much deeper. It's long, but it's worth it. Go. Read.

The Harpokons and Insite

I won't try to summarize Paul Wells' argument here. It's succinct enough on its own. The money graf:

This is not mere disregard for reliable data. It is an attempt by the state to put falsehood in the place of reliable data. George Orwell wrote books about this sort of thing.

Read it here.

Really, what more is there to say? I wrote recently about the damage that results from turning ignorance into a civic virtue, and here's a prime example.

And looky here: it seems some of Harper's fans don't like what Paul has to say. And they don't like what the peer-reviewed facts and evidence about Insite and harm-reduction strategies suggest. And, of course, they think that name-calling and sticking their fingers in their ears and going "la la la, I can't hear you" are the same thing as reasoned argument.

A couple of weeks ago Bob Herbert wrote about America's continuing abandonment of education as a public good. If what we're witnessing is the decline and fall of Imperium Americana, that's got to be a big part of the reason.

This is the road the modern right wants to take: knowledge, experience and expertise are no longer qualities to be valued, but indicia of condescending, out-of-touch elitists, to be reviled, disdained and demonized. How much hope is there for a political strategy (or a society, for that matter) based on the deliberate cultivation of stupidity?

(Update: Chet has some further thoughts on the matter.)

The Rob Ford slow-mo train wreck

Staying up late to watch a replay of a mayoral candidates' debate from earlier this week on CP24.

Mea culpa: a few weeks ago, I was chortling at the prospect of Mayor Rob Ford because I thought how entertaining it would be. The guy's feet would be in his mouth so often, he'd need a welcome mat on his chin. Reporters would be fighting to get on the city hall beat. Every time he served up a gaffe, it would be a straight shot to the front page. It would make Mayor Mel look like Winston Churchill.

I hate to say it, but he's still got a way of capturing my attention. (No shit. Rossi's talking now and I don't even need to mute the sound in order to focus on the keyboard.) Unfortunately, he's capturing a lot of attention, and somehow he's turned into the frontrunner. And, as a comment on another worthwhile blog puts it, a certain columnist thinks he's the cat's pyjamas.

Not much point in writing about what an embarrassment he'd be. Other observers have made that point already. What's worth pointing out, I think, is the nasty current he's tapping into. It's one that Blatchford  rides as well, and is going to continue riding for as long as it puts kibble in her dog's dish.

Both Ford and Blatchford channel and exploit a mean-spirited, anti-intellectual approach to politics, a small-minded worldview that shuns reflection or nuance and champions gut reaction. It's the mindset of the torches-and-pitchforks crowd. Catching Ford lying or contradicting himself or seemingly failing to understand the normal complexities of municipal governance doesn't matter to people like this, because all it does, according to Blatchford, is burnish his "regular-guy" cred. (You want to see the same dynamic at work in another setting? Watch Don Cherry on Coaches Corner sometime.)

While visceral reactivity may have a momentary emotional kick, though, it's no basis for well-considered public policy, and listening to people like Ford and Blatchford, you start to understand where mob rule begins. There's a point beyond which the rejection of the complex for the simple veers into simple-mindedness, and they're both well past it. But there's something else at work here as well, and it ties into currents that go well beyond the confines of Toronto's current municipal election campaign.

Once upon a time, ignorance, stupidity and belligerence used to be character flaws. They were things to be ashamed of, things you wanted to hide, things to work on, things to overcome. Nowadays, they're actually celebrated as evidence of authenticity, of Real American / Canadian character. It's part of the explanation for Sarah Palin's ascendancy, and it's a big part of Rob Ford's shtick too. And thanks to the extent to which the Fox noise machine and its wannabe Canadian counterparts at Sun Media have managed to push the boundaries of civil discourse, pointing that out doesn't matter any more. It's just another example of the snooty left-wing liberal urban elites, sneering at hard-working Real Canadians while showering their hard-earned tax dollars on effete theatrical festivals that glorify Islamic terrorism.

Rob Ford may well self-destruct over the next couple of months, because I don't see him growing his drooling base, but reversing a political and cultural movement that's turned ignorance into a civic virtue is going to take a hell of a lot longer.