Party Politics: Part 3, Managing a Campaign with Brent McArthur

Brent McArthur with someone I vaguely remember seeing before. Photo provided by McArthur.

I started this series about the "nuts and bolts" of how political parties work in a representative democracy with someone seeking a party nomination, Michelle Bowman, and then someone who'd already ran, Aisha Jahangir. Now I want to go behind the scenes with a conversation with a Campaign Manager, Brent McArthur. I started things off by asking him to introduce himself.

Cloudwalking Owl · Who Is Brent McArthur?

I think it's important to zero-in on Brent mentioning that his father was a politician. I did a bit of background reading on political membership in Canada and came across an article titled Factors Influencing the Decision of the Young Politically Engaged to Join a Political Party, by William Cross and Lisa Young (Party Politics, vol 14, no 3, pp 345-369).

That article deals with why membership in political parties has been and still is in decline in modern societies. As they state it, there is a worrying trend of young people not getting involved in the numbers that parties previously enjoyed.

The low rate of youth membership in Canadian parties currently stands in sharp contrast to the situation only a generation ago. Perlin et al. (1988) review the formal status accorded to youth in the major parties of the day and analyze surveys of delegates to the 1983 Conservative and 1984 Liberal leadership conventions. They express a strong concern that the over-representation of youth in party decision-making was distorting parties’ internal democratic processes. Twenty years later, such concerns have little currency. The shift towards plebiscitary forms of decision-making in Canadian parties has weakened youth organizations and reduced opportunities for young people to exert influence over leadership contests and other party decisions (Young and Cross, 2002a). [Cross and Young, p-348]

I won't bore you with the details of their discussion, but in a nutshell, this is what they say: 

1. Over a few decades (from the 1980s to the date of the paper, 2008), there has been a dramatic decline in youth participation in Canadian political parties
2. Presumably, if someone doesn't join a party in their youth, they won't later on. This risks parties "hollowing out" as the rank-and-file membership declines and parties become more and more controlled by paid professionals.
3. When polled, young people who are interested in exerting some role in society tend to split into two groups: those who believe that activist groups are better than political parties, and, those who think political parties are better than activist groups. (Young people who have joined political parties rank it as the most effective thing a person can do to change society, whereas people who've joined activist groups rank it as being the least effective.)
   
4. Young people who do join political parties have a much greater chance of having a parent who was involved in one. (Young people who do join have 62% chance that one of their parents has been a member in the past, whereas among young people in activist groups the number is only 28.4%.)

I'm a little concerned about this, as I have seen evidence in support of these issues during my time in politics and activism. On average, being involved in politics does seem to be something that people are born into---just like religion and class. And if fewer people are involved, then there will be fewer children that get introduced to it. Small changes will multiply over generations. 

Similarly, I meet people over and over again who seem to think that there is some sort of contradiction between activism and politics. Indeed, I stopped being involved with the Green Party mainly because I had always wanted it to be the one party that melded the two together---but once it gained some success, the new members overwhelmingly opposed being involved in anything except electoral politics. I think that unless people learn that they can walk and chew gum at the same time, politics will continue to have little interest for many engaged young people. I think that this is a really bad thing. 

Cloudwalking Owl · How Long Have You Been A Liberal

The back and forth between McArthur and I raises an issue that I've been wrestling with since I started thinking about this series of articles. I decided early on that I wasn't going to ask any members of the Conservative party to take part. I  didn't come to this decision lightly, but I think that recent behaviour by conservatives both here and around the world has pushed me to the decision that they simply aren't active participants in democracy so much as a force that is actively trying to undermine it. 

First of all, it's important to remember that it was the federal Conservatives who were behind a co-ordinated, national campaign to suppress the votes of Canadians through the "robo-call" campaign. Secondly, the party seems to have consistently courted the worst elements of Canadian society---to the point where former leader Andrew Scheer actually hired away a key member of Rebel Media to become his campaign manager. This vile undercurrent in the Conservative membership explains why someone like Max Bernier was appointed to a cabinet position by Steven Harper and came within a "hair's breath" of becoming the leader after him. (For those of you who might not remember "Mad Max", he founded the People's Party of Canada and has since become a darling of the anti-mask and anti-vaxxer groups.)  

Moreover, the federal and provincial Conservatives have shown repeatedly that they place ideology ahead of scientific evidence in particular and expert advice in general. The embarrassing way that the governments of Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and, Manitoba have repeatedly ignored scientific advice until the grim reality of case counts from Covid-19 forced them to back-track is just the latest examples of Tories shoving their fingers in their ears and humming loudly when experts tell them something they don't want to hear. Federally, the Harper government adamantly refused to take any action on the "so-called Climate Change" file---no matter what the science said. Doug Ford ripped up Ontario's cap-and-trade agreement with California and Quebec---even though his lawyers had to have told him that severing a contract has legal consequences and that the Federal government would then impose a carbon tax anyway. And Jason Kenney threw away over a billion dollars in support of an oil pipeline that would only have succeeded if Donald Trump had won the 2020 election---and any pollster would have said that there was a more than 50% chance of him losing.

Democracy can only exist in a world where people have respect for the rights of others. Any party that decides to actively deny people the right to vote rather than try to convince them to change their opinion has effectively given up on the democratic ideal. In addition, democratic discussion can't work in a society where key players have constructed alternative descriptions of reality based upon their particular ideological biases. By consistently following strategies aimed at subverting people's right to vote and lying to the public about important public policy issues, the Conservative party has walked away from the consensus that democracy is a good thing. As such, I have decided not to give them a platform that they have zero interest in earning. 

This isn't to say that there aren't good people in the Conservative party. I interviewed Michael Chong a couple years back and very much enjoyed the experience. But he seems to be a wild outlier and I don't see him as being in any way representative of the party. My only concern about him is why he hangs on with this gang. I suspect if asked (and he answered truthfully) he'd say that Canada needs a good Conservative party and if all the good people leave the worst elements will always control it. 

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I put a lot of work into these articles. If you like the results and you can afford it, why not subscribe? Pay Pal and Patreon make it easy to do.

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Cloudwalking Owl · What Does A Campaign Manager Do

I suspect that the biggest value from a local campaign is that it's something of a symbolic display of a candidate's connection with the community. A well-run one shows that an individual has the support of many competent people who feel inspired to work together as a team in order to do all the things that McArthur describes in this clip. It's like a West-Coast aboriginal Potlatch, a Roman Triumph, the investiture of a monarch, etc.  

This is a useful metric for voters, because if a politician cannot get a large number of local volunteers working together to raise money, canvass voters, put up signs, etc, there is a very low probability that she is going to be able to effectively form a government and rule the nation.

Cloudwalking Owl · Is Volunteering On A Campaign A Good Education

I will add to Brent's point about being involved in a campaign being a good introduction to project management that it's also a way to learn how government works. Being a good politician isn't just about having good ideas. It's also about knowing how to sell them to both the general public and the government bureaucracy. It's also about negotiating priorities and dividing up scarce resources. If a politician can't do these things, their term in office will be a disaster. And it's not only important for a candidate to show that they understand these points and can organize a team to deal with them, it's also important for voters to understand what a government MP has to do to be effective. Volunteering in a campaign is one way to find this out.

Cloudwalking Owl · How Important Are Political Parties

Cynics might suggest that policy doesn't come from rank-and-file members but instead from professional lobbies. I think that that's probably right in some cases. But I don't think that there is any reason why a political party shouldn't listen to industry representatives when they argue a case. The issue is whether or not they have undue influence---it's an issue of degree, not kind. And don't forget that the larger NGOs, such as Greenpeace, also hire professional lobbyists to convince politicians about the necessity of a certain type of action.

I do think, however, that it is certainly true that rank-and-file members are able to introduce new ideas into a political party. But the process of getting those ideas onto the platform and to the head of the line of government policy takes an huge amount of work and a very long time. Most ordinary members lack both the knowledge of how to do this, and, the time for execution. Political parties are like oil tankers---they take a very long time to change direction.

That can be extremely frustrating for many citizens. They don't want to devote their lives to promoting a piece of legislation. I get that, but it's important to understand that democracy isn't something that you do once every four years when you vote and then forget about. It requires a great many people working together on an on-going basis. That's the work of  the Electoral District Associations (EDAs) that McArthur is talking about.

Probably the greatest check on undue influence by paid lobbyists comes from how many people are willing to put in the time and effort required to control and keep real influence over their political parties. If this wanes, then the vacuum created will inevitably be filled by individuals who don't care about the public interest. At that point we still have the empty shell of a democracy, but the substance has been removed. I believe that's what Brent's father meant when he said that democracy is a fragile flower that needs to be carefully nurtured.

Cloudwalking Owl · What Should People Learn About Political Parties

I mentioned above that I wrestled with the idea of bringing someone from the Conservative party to this discussion. I also have felt some concern about being seen as "too cosy" with bourgeois political parties in this series. As I've gotten older I have tended to become more and more radical in my politics. Moreover, at least a few of my subscribers are pretty left-wing too. But as an acquaintance  recently said to me, if you get too picky about who you will associate with, you run the risk of ending up in a party with only one member.  

I agree with McArthur that the majority of people I've met in all political parties tend to be well-meaning. But having said that, I also believe that most of the problems that beset humanity come from misguided people who are trying to make the world a better place based on a very flawed understanding of how to get there from here. 

I square this circle by adhering to the idea of "the broad front". That's the idea that just because people aren't in the same organization and don't share the same particular short-term objectives, it doesn't mean that they aren't going in the same direction. For many contentious issues, people sit on a Bell Curve. Some people tend to be "outliers", who are either late figuring out an important point (they are at -3 in the graph below) or ahead of most people (+3), with the vast majority in the middle (clustered around 0). But they all exist on the same continuum and eventually almost everyone will get to the same point.

Bell Curve, from Lukion Taulukot, c/o Wikimedia Commons.

The thing about politics is that it is always important to have people who "lead the way" (+3) for everyone else. These people raise the outlandish, yet important ideas that eventually become "conventional wisdom". But to really change the world, it's necessary to bring along the majority of people (the 0s). I think that's a very good way of understanding politics. It's all about influencing the majority of citizens as a way of changing the society we inhabit. Can it be frustrating? Completely---if you think you can see something much better than we have now but most others don't. But I have yet to think of any other way of creating a better world.

If this holds within political parties, it also holds between most of them. (As I mentioned above, I have grave concerns about whether the modern Conservatives do fit into this framework. And that's why I wonder if maybe they no longer are committed to Canada as a democratic society.)

Cloudwalking Owl · Is There Anything Else You'd Like To Say

We are in an election now, which probably means that these articles will get a lot more readers than they would have otherwise. But I wish people would take what Brent says to heart. Politics keeps on between elections. And if you really do want to have a maximal influence, you need to volunteer during the campaign---but the time you will really have more sway is between elections when most of the other party members are no longer involved. I spent a lot of time in an EDA myself, although now I'm doing the journalism thing, (which means I try to keep a distance from partisan politics). But I think that citizens in a democracy should feel something of an obligation to be as involved as they can in the functioning of politics. 

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That's enough for one week. Keep your distance, wear a mask, get vaccinated if you aren't already, and, hope that the fourth wave will be much smaller than the last one. 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with! 

Parliamentary Reform, an Interview With Michael Chong: Part One.

Last summer I interviewed the Wellington County Member of Parliament, Michael Chong. Like many leading Parliamentarians, Chong has a specific interest that he's devoted a lot of work towards: Parliamentary Reform. That's what dominated this conversation. I found it tremendously illuminating, so I hope readers will too.

Michael Chong sitting at his desk in his Fergus Constituency office.
Photo by Tim Allman.

The following transcripts have been edited to improve the reading and---I hope---still accurately convey the gist of what Chong had to say about a fairly complex subject.

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Hulet:  My first question is how well do most MPs understand how important the rules that they are working under are for the function of a real democracy?

Chong: I think most understand the importance but not many come to the job with a lot of knowledge, so they don't understand the implications. Our rules are both written and unwritten, and a lot of them have evolved through many decades and are only really well known to those who practice them. And that's one of the unique characteristics of the Canadian system. Unlike the US which has an entirely written constitution, our's is a hybrid that is partially written and partially unwritten. A lot of those conventions govern parliament and that's why a lot of MPs---when first selected---have very little idea about how they function. 

Hulet: So about the reforms that you have been promoting. Are they a response to how the unwritten rules have evolved? Or do you have a sense that sometimes people change written rules in order to change the unwritten rules? I'm wondering how much those two things play against each other in what you're doing.

Chong: The reforms that I've brought forward are an attempt to address both. They have changed considerably in our Parliament over the last 150 years. 

I often say to people that Sir John A. MacDonald would not recognize how the House of Commons operates. He would be familiar with the buildings of Parliament, but the rules---both written and unwritten---have changed a lot in the last 150 years. It has gone from a Parliament where the elected member was the primary organizing entity to a one where political parties---and particularly the leaders---are the primary organizing principle. And I think that that has fundamentally changed the system and diverted it from what the political constitution prescribes. 

We have written rules and those can be found in the standing orders of the House of Commons----which anyone can download in a pdf document. They're also found in written law, for example the Parliament of Canada Act. They're found in parts of our written constitution, the 1867, and 1982 Constitution Acts, for example, and then we have the unwritten rules which are the conventions that govern a lot of what we do in the Commons and it's committees. These unwritten rules---or "conventions" as they are often called---can evolve. 

Political theorists often say that the test for an unwritten convention is two-fold. Can it be articulated? Secondly, do the actors in a political system act in conformity with that explicitly defined rule? If the answer is "yes", then an unwritten convention exists. They can evolve, and many have for many years. In the early 1980s there was a Supreme Court reference to the conventions that govern our system. The government of Pierre Trudeau asked the court if the written constitution allows the government to unilaterally patriate the constitution back from the United Kingdom. He also asked whether the unwritten constitution allows the same thing. 

The Supreme Court said "Yes" to the first one, and "No" to the second. So there's an example of how our system works. Sometimes the unwritten rules are at odds with written ones. So the two parts are always in tension with one another. All of which is to say that as a result, the vast majority of MPs---when they first come to Ottawa---do not know the rules and how the place actually operates. And it takes some years to learn.  

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I think some background info would probably be useful here. For those readers who might not know it, the government of Canada didn't really have full control over it's own constitution until 1982. Great Britain had given all Commonwealth nations full legislative independence in 1931. But because in Canada the provinces couldn't agree upon an amendment formula, Canada had asked the UK that Canada's "constitution"---the British North America (BNA) Act of 1867---be specifically excluded from those laws that the Canadian Parliament could change. There had been changes to the BNA Act between 1952 and 1975, but those had been allowed because the British Parliament had amended the BNA Act in 1949 to give the Canadian Parliament the limited authority necessary to do those specific things.

Rene Levesque, Party Quebecois premier
from 1976 to 1985. Toronto Star photo
c/o the Toronto Public Library Archives.
Used under the "fair dealing" provision of
the Copyright Act.

The Liberal government under Pierre Trudeau wanted to find some way to bring the constitution "home"---specifically to enshrine Canadian rights and freedoms, and, to give the Supreme Court the power to preserve them from infringement by elected officials. But most of the premiers at the time were loathe to create new limitations on their power, so they had never agreed upon any sort of amending formula.  Moreover, at that specific time the government of Quebec was composed of separatists lead by Premier Rene Levesque. Since Levesque wanted to lead the province out of confederation, there was no way that he would agree to any changes to the constitution---simply because that would not only imply endorsing the Canada as a political entity, but also because by doing so it would remove one of the arguments for separation in the first place (ie: the continued ties to Great Britain).

As Chong points out, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the authority to change the constitution, but it couldn't do so unilaterally---there had to be significant support by the premiers too, but total consensus wasn't necessary.

Trudeau got his way because he held the threat of a referendum over the heads of the premiers and polling showed that his charter of rights and freedoms was overwhelmingly supported by ordinary voters, both within the entire country and the province of Quebec. This peeled off the other premiers and left Levesque all by himself. Incidentally, this political event is called "the night of the long knives" by Quebec separatists because they view it as an example of English Canada ganging up on Quebec. To contrast this narrative, polling of French-speaking Canadians seems to indicate that they are just as supportive of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as the rest of the country. (In contrast, the politicians who supported the deal called it "the kitchen accord".)

In the end the Premiers outside of Quebec agreed to bring the power of changing the constitution back to Canada by accepting an amendment system that in most cases required support by two thirds of the Premiers representing more than 50% of the population. In exchange, Trudeau accepted the introduction of a "notwithstanding clause" that allows provincial governments the right to create legislation that ignores a provision in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms---as long as that exemption only lasts five years unless it is passed again in the provincial parliament for another five years.

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We've passed through another Yule, which is a time when I and many others tend to make donations to various charities and institutions in society. For example, I've made my yearly lump sum payments to the Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. I do this because both of these institutions are things that I use constantly. I'd like to suggest that if you regularly read the "Back-Grounder" that you consider subscribing or making a lump sum payment. It's not a charity, but I am trying to build an institution that is important to the proper functioning of a modern democracy.

I spend a lot of time looking at various forms of Guelph media, and I'm more than a little appalled sometimes by what I see. Some folks seem to have simply lost any interest in trying to find out the truth about anything. Instead, what I see far too often is simply what passes for "conventional wisdom" within their own particular social circle being repackaged and "sexed up" to increase the reader's emotional response. That is not what I do when I write an article. 

I often start off with an idea and discard it after I start my research because in looking at the "picky details" I came across something that just blows my mind. That's what I consider real journalism, as opposed to just creating "click bait". But it requires time and effort, and, it doesn't "do social media" well, because that is all driven by emotions---mostly anger. This pretty much precludes any ability to raise money through advertising, hence my appeals for subscribers.

If you think what I do is worth reading, I'd suggest it's worth paying for. So please consider starting the New Year right and go to Patreon or Paypal to subscribe, or send a cheque to "Bill Hulet, 124-A Surrey St. East, Guelph, N1H 3P9". 

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Hulet: Can you give me a specific example of an unwritten rule that has actually changed?

Chong: Sure. 

There are a number of unwritten conventions governing Question Period that have changed. For example you will notice today that question period questions are now limited to 35 seconds. There is no rule that says that questions and answers have to be limited to 35 seconds. That unwritten rule came about as a result of an agreement between the party whips and the house leaders in the 1990s. There was a discussion with regard to the way question period operated and this small group of people decided that they would limit the amount of time to 35 seconds. Before that, it was up to the discretion of the Speaker and people were often allowed up to a minute, or a minute and a half for a question; and a minute, minute and a half for an answer. So that's an example of a minor rule that has changed.  

Probably the biggest one I can think of allowed caucus to directly elect the interim party leader. That was done under an unwritten rule. For many decades in our history, elected members of parliament would directly elect---or remove---a party leader. That unwritten rule has evolved in that it is rarely used any more.  

Hulet: That leads into another question. What impact do you think changing the system from one where delegates at a leadership convention elect the leader to one where leaders are directly elected by the rank-and-file members has influenced the power of the party leader?

Chong: I'd say that it's massively grown the power of the party leader---particularly the Prime Minister. When delegates elected a party leader we were talking about a small group of about 1,000, maybe 2,000 delegates who would elect the party leader. And many of these delegates would be Parliamentarians themselves: MPs, Senators, ex-members, ex officio members of the party, and, so on. 

Because the group was quite small, the party leader was accountable. Today we elect party leaders through a one member, one vote system---and in most party's constitutions that doesn't happen very often. For most parties, once they elect a leader that leader doesn't face a leadership review if they gain power. 

For example, Jean Chretien was elected Liberal party leader in 1990 and did not have to face a leadership review vote ever during his time in power and did not relinquish power until October, 2003---13 years later. Not only was there no leadership review, during that 13 year time frame, most of the party members who had voted for him in 1990 were no long living or were no longer party members by the time 2003 came around. And the same was true for Mr. Harper who was first elected party leader in March 2004  when he resigned as party leader in 2015 he had never faced a party review vote. And most of the party members who'd voted for him were no longer party members or no longer alive by the time 2015 came around. 

That lack of accountability has strengthened party leaders considerably. So that's unlike the old system where party leaders were constantly and on a daily and weekly basis, accountable to elected members of Parliament. That's because at any moment in time they could remove the party leader----even if he was the Prime Minister. In the system we used to have, the system that is mostly existent in the UK and Australia---although they've gone through some rule changes more recently---the party leader is constantly having to make sure that they are accountable to MPs. And if they're not, they're removed. 

We've seen that countless times in Australia and numerous times in the last several decades in the UK. So party leaders have  to be constantly accountable to their MPs, who in turn have to be constantly accountable to their constituents. But here we have a system where party leaders get elected once and it's very difficult to remove them. The one limitation is that party leaders do face an automatic review vote by delegates at a nation policy convention after an election in which they do not form a government. So there is theoretical accountability in most party constitutions, but it's not sufficient. It's just not the same type of accountability that we used to have. Moreover, the moral authority of the delegates simply isn't as great as it used to be.

Hulet: Because the leader was directly voted into his position by the party rank-and-file---.

Chong: Yeah. And if the leader becomes Prime Minister there is no review vote. And actually, a point of correction. I said Mr. Harper never received a review vote after he was elected leader in March 2004. That's not correct. He was elected in March 2004, he had a review vote because he lost the election in 2005. But between that review vote and 2015 he never had a review vote because he was Prime Minister. 

Hulet:  You mentioned how long Jean Chretien went---.

Chong: He never had a review vote!

Hulet:  The immediate thing that jumped into my head was whether that long, long time without a review vote was why there was  that nasty internal battle between him and John Turner---.

Chong: Exactly! That's exactly what happened. So because there is no mechanism to remove a leader once they become Prime Minister, it becomes a massive battle in the caucus and the party that drags out for years. Because there is no mechanism, and so that's exactly what happened with the Martin/Chretien battles. 

Whereas in the UK and Australia presently, when there is a desire to remove the leader  it's a very quick process that happens in a matter of weeks, rather than years. And you're seeing that right now in the UK where Teresa May was told by caucus that she had to go. They were gentle about it, they didn't force a review vote to remove her, they simply said: "We'd like you to go, please give us your date for resigning" and she gave them a date. And that's why they are currently going through a leadership vote. 

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Jean Chretien. Photo
by Joe Howell. Image
c/o Wiki Commons

Photo by Andrew Rusk.
Image c/o Wiki Commons. 

For those readers who don't remember this (or were born after it happened), there was a long battle within the Liberal party between Prime Minister Chretien and the Finance Minister, Paul Martin. They both had factions supporting them within the party, and---as Chong says---there was no mechanism to formally settle their differences. The result was a sort of "underground" battle between the two groups that dramatically weakened party unity.

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I keep getting complaints that my articles are too long, so I'm going to end the first part of my interview with Michael Chong here. Next time I'll be talking about how the existing rules influence the day-to-day life of Parliament and get in the way of effective governance, and, while parties can cause problems, they are still essential to politics.

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Furthermore I say onto you, we need to deal with the climate crisis! 

Public Education: Baby Steps Versus Playing the "Long Game"

Several years ago I was volunteering for a Green Party election campaign and I got "schooled" by a "hip youngster" with a degree in marketing about why it is important to not be what I'd call "punk and plain" about environmental issues during an election campaign. (I have a tendency to go on about unlimited economic growth being the ideology of cancer, among other things.) She told me that she had been taught that the key to effective advertising is to change people's behaviour and that that comes from appealing to them "where they are" instead of "where you'd like them to be".

She used the example of a fairly famous advert from my childhood, one that she said studies had shown did absolutely nothing to actually change people's behaviour. Here it is (ah, the wonders of YouTube!):

(Before we get too far, let me first admit that this video is somewhat racist. It plays to the "magic Indian" trope. This says that the First Nations peoples have some sort of inherent, genetic propensity to being environmentally groovy. While I think a case can be made that at least some of the tribal cultures are more "in tune" with nature, I don't want to give credit to the idea that this is something inherent in their genetic make up---which is clearly as racist as saying that all Chinese Canadians are good at math, and, all Black Canadians "have rhythm". Moreover, there is the whole point that the actor playing the role was actually an Italian-American who had adopted the persona and name of "Iron Eyes Cody". Having said that, I don't think that this invalidates anything I'm going to write after this disclaimer.)

Here's the other advert that her professor compared it to, one that actually is supposed to have made a real difference in how people act.

At the time I hadn't heard about this second ad, I was old, she was young, and I didn't want to get into an argument with someone who had studied marketing. But something about what she had said just didn't "sit right" with me. That was over 10 years ago, but I think I've finally figured out what I didn't like about what she said.

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Every time an organization creates and promotes a message it is going to have to decide whether it wants to "play the long game" or "seek out the low-hanging fruit". I would argue that our discussion wasn't about whether or not we were going to change people's behaviour, but actually about whether we were playing the long game or seeking after low-hanging fruit. Moreover, I'd suggest that just chasing low-hanging fruit is ultimately self-defeating in politics.

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On one level, this involves the message you are projecting to the audience. In the case of the "don't mess with Texas" ad, it is simply that you should put the trash in the can, period. The "crying Indian" ad is much more ambitious. It's trying to suggest that there is something inherently wrong with modern industrial society. That's why we have shots of him paddling through harbours with cranes, factories, oil refineries etc in the background. It's also why we have a zero-in on the huge traffic-filled highways before we see a bag of fast-food dumped at his feet. In short, the "crying Indian" ad was a critique of modern, capitalist, industrial society whereas the "don't mess with Texas" one was simply focused on litter.

Also, think about the people who were chosen in each different ad to represent the public viewpoint. In "Don't Mess with Texas", the heroes were two extremely well-paid NFL players. In "the Crying Indian" it was (I've already offered my disclaimers above) a First Nations member---certainly not a person of privilege. So it is a case of putting in the viewpoint of people who have the system working for them, and another who has probably seen nothing but exploitation from it.

The point I'd like readers to meditate upon is that it is always easier to do well in the short term if you have no problem with ignoring the long haul. For example, a government can almost always gin up the economy for a few years with tax cuts---if you don't care about the size of the deficit or the resulting wealth stratification in society. Executives can always increase the dividends they pay stock holders for a few years if they cut their research and development departments, and, avoid investing in new machinery---at the price of having the competition "eat their lunch" ten years down the road. Similarly, a political party can always do better in the short run by pandering to voter's pre-conceived notions than in trying to educate them about important issues---if they don't care about the long-term consequences for society.

And what exactly has been the trajectory of Texas since the "don't mess with Texas" ad first aired? Well, a quick Google search resulted in the following statistic:  Texas is 48th worst out of 50 states in terms of health risks from pollution.  (US News and World Report) (Obviously someone is messing with Texas after all---.)

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I suspect that at least some of my readers keep meaning to subscribe but never quite get around to doing so. It's not that hard. If you have a credit card (and I know that almost all of you do), all you have to do is sign up on Patreon or PayPal. But here's something new---why not have your community group buy a subscription? Unions, service clubs, charitable institutions---you all benefit from having local news. Why not subscribe? Or even buy an advertisement, for that matter. All sorts of groups used to buy ads in the old paper newspapers---what's stopping you from doing the same thing in the Back-Grounder? 

Drop me an email at thecloudwalkingowl@gmail.com if you want to find out more. 

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Both of these advertisements have become "icons" in the American psyche, so it might be useful to see how they have exerted their influence since they were first created.

Here's a clip from The Simpsons that plays on the "crying Indian" ad: 

And here's another advert from Texas that is an out-growth of the original "Don't Mess with Texas" ad: 

I've cherry picked somewhat, but I do think that there is some sort of rough generalization that can be discerned here. But the point I want to make is that almost all pieces of messaging can be divided into two different messages: the foreground and the background.

In the case of the clip from the Simpsons, the foreground message is clearly that there is something profoundly wrong with American society---hence the giant, rat-infested garbage dump. The background message is that native Americans have some deeper appreciation and respect for nature than the average citizen. In the case of the official Texas advert, the foreground message is "don't litter", but the background one is "have respect for the military" and even "we honour our Confederate traditions". (I suspect this last bit is unconscious and came about simply because an existing institution---the Texas Confederate Airforce---helped with the ad. Indeed, the organization realized this fact and in 2002 changed it's name to the "Commemorative Air Force".)

The original advert inspired a whole line of official ads aimed at the "don't mess with Texas" trope. Here is one that is more than a bit "loopy":

Here's one that is a bit more indicative of most of them:

And another official ad that plays on the usual tropes:

The real message of the "don't mess with Texas" ads is that "life is good, happy motoring is good, things are just fine in Texas---just don't toss your trash out the window of your car as you roar down the road on your way to destroying the planet!"

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In the recent election there were a lot of times that I thought the politicians were obviously pandering to public opinion polls without even attempting to make any sense. Two examples that immediately come to mind were the idiotic policies that the Conservatives and Liberals came up with to make housing more affordable. Scheer announced that he'd loosen the requirements that would allow more people to get a mortgage, and, he'd allow it to be paid off in a maximum 30 years instead of the current 25. Trudeau's offer was to expand the "First-Time Home Buyer Incentive".

Both of these suggestions are flat-out idiotic and would be immediately obvious as such to anyone who hadn't flunked first year economics. That's because they don't actually increase the number of houses being built, just make it easier for everyone to borrow money in order to buy one. If they were implemented, they'd just increase the cost of housing, and channel more money out of home-owner's pockets and into the banks.

Both the Conservatives and Liberals had to have known this fact. But the leaders looked at the polling numbers and decided that they had to say something that sounded like they were concerned about housing affordability. As such, both Scheer and Trudeau were deciding to "make baby steps" and "pander to people's preconceived notions" rather than try to educate voters about the real reasons why housing is so damned expensive. They were following the "don't mess with Texas" route instead of the "crying Indian" one.

They thought that they had to do this to win the election. But the problem is that by pandering to the ignorance of voters, they were making it that much harder to get them to accept a more reasonable policy later on down the road. If you keep telling people "there's no reason to make hard choices---it's all just peachy the way it is", it may be surprising, but it's true none-the-less, that a lot of them will actually believe it. And if you turn around and tell them something different at a later date---like "if you want affordable housing you are simply going to have to accept living in small homes in higher density neighbourhoods"---they are not going to be happy to hear it. In effect, every time parties do the "easy thing" and suggest that all people need to do is "make baby steps", they are dramatically limiting their ability to tell voters the hard truth at some time in the future.

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This problem has been identified a long time ago. Henry David Thoreau once opined

"There are a thousand people hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root."

Henry was no fool, he knew what was important.
Henry David Thoreau, Public Domain image by Geo. F. Parlow.
Public Domain Image c/o the Wiki Commons.

And that's the ultimate problem with taking "baby steps" in our messaging about important public policy issues: they only strike at the branch of problems while leaving their roots still strong and vigorous.

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Making Up Our Minds: Mind Your Language!

One of the things that every citizen needs to remember is that there are a lot of very smart people in this world who want to trick you into supporting some action that isn't in your own best interest. One way that they often do this is by manipulating language to confuse you. I thought I'd devote this weekend's editorial to some of the more common tactics that political weasels employ.

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Loaded Language

This is when a politician uses words that have a specific assumption that supports them is "baked into" their meaning. For example, conservative politicians have gone to great lengths to get Canadians to call refugees who cross the border outside of the customs entry points "illegal immigrants". In actual fact, what these people are doing is perfectly legal and in keeping with the United Nations refugee rules. The problem is that Canada has an agreement with the USA that suggests that since America is such a mellow, immigrant-friendly place, that there's no need for anyone to come from there to claim refugee status in Canada. (And then came Trump---. Maybe this "Safe Third Party Agreement" wasn't such a good idea after all.) This rule doesn't invalidate international law, however, so these people are not "illegal" in any way, shape, or, form.

Unfortunately, the lazy-ass, mainstream media haven't "pushed back" against this blatant attempt to confuse voters, and most of it has adopted the phrase themselves. This has allowed the Conservatives to pretty much take over the debate and force the other parties onto their back legs. This has damaged political discourse in Canada and allowed the alt-right a way of making immigration---which has historically been seen very positively by most Canadians---into a political football. 

False Dichotomies

People will sometimes manipulate a conversation to strongly imply that there are only two possible options and then force you to answer "yes" or "no". Sometimes this is done to create phony statistics in favour of a given point of view. This is called a "push poll". I remember a pollster explaining the concept to Peter Gzowski (an ancient CBC radio host) by polling the general public about whether or not Knowlton Nash (an equally ancient CBC tv news reader) wore skirts that were too short for decency. (Of course, Nash never wore a skirt in his life.) 

My personal favourite example is the basis of a Gary Larson cartoon.  

Gary Larson cartoon from the Far Side,
used under the fair use provision of the Copy Right law.

 

One recent example of a false dichotomy is the idea that the only two choices that Canadians face is to either destroy the Albertan economy by limiting oil production, or, avoid doing our bit to prevent out-of-control climate change. The assumption seems to be that there is something wrong with Albertans in that they are genetically incapable of doing anything else than work in the tar sands. (Poor souls---is it the result of some sort of in-breeding?) The idea that they might want to fund their government by putting in place a sales tax (like all the other ox-like,  dull, subhuman provinces) or diversify their economy (again, like the other ox-like, dull, subhuman provinces) seems to be impossible to contemplate. (There's no sense wondering what the poor, feckless souls did with the royalties they charged on all their conventional oil. Conservatives are notoriously bad with money. They just don't seem to be able to help themselves, poor dears. Just witness what Doug Ford is now doing with the Ontario budget.)   

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Last Thursday I heard a talk by Patti Broughton about the Guelph Arts Council. Afterwards I had a brief talk with her, we exchanged business cards, and, I decided to join the organization. I told her about the Back-Grounder and she said that I should join, even though this is a journalism project rather than fiction. The membership is $30/year, so there's one more expense that I've taken on with this publication. Unfortunately, she'd never heard of it before. What that tells me is that I should be putting more effort into letting people know about it. So, I'm asking readers to consider sharing the link to my blog with the other people on social media. I need to take advantage of "word-of-mouth" advertising just as much as I need subscribers. So while I like it when people click on the "like" button, I also would like you to click on the "share" one too.  

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Plastic Words

One last thing I'd like readers to consider happens when politicians use "plastic words". These are phrases or descriptors that seem to mean something, but when you ask people to define what exactly they think that they mean, you get very different explanations. One of the best use of these comes from an environmental debate that goes back decades. 

In 1972 an international think tank called "The Club of Rome" published a report titled Limits to Growth that put forward the totally obvious (if your head isn't stuffed firmly up your butt) observation that economic growth cannot continue forever on a planet that is not also growing. The idea was that there is always a "limiting factor" in any population that stops it from growing beyond a certain size. These could be a specific essential nutrient, or, it could be that beyond a certain point the ability of the ecosystem to recycle waste becomes overwhelmed and the organism poisons itself.

Unfortunately, the world dominant religion---capitalism---is based on the idea that economic growth can continue forever. And as we all know, for many people whenever facts conflict with ideology, facts always have to go out the window. That means that the "punk and plain" words of the Club of Rome report had to be sabotaged and safely removed from public discussion.

An innocuous title, but yet one of
the most effective pieces of anti-environmental
propaganda ever produced! 
Image from the Wiki Commons. 

Enter the Bruntland Commission, which came up with an alternative to Limits to Growth, known as Our Common Future. The genius of the slime-bags behind this was that they came up with a plastic phrase---sustainable development---which then drove the phrase "limits to growth" completely out of public discourse.  

The "great thing" about this term, is that it allows people who want to save the world (ie:  who want to have sustainability) to use the same words as those who want to sustain the existing status quo (ie: who want to have sustained economic growth.) At that point, the discussion about whether or not the human race should still be growing like crazy, cutting down forests, polluting the oceans, etc, stopped being honestly discussed because everyone agreed on the same thing. Wow! Plastic words are like magic. 

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

Identity Politics

Years ago there was a big debate among the very small number of people who actually care about "big debates". It centred around whether activism should be put into "single issues" or "political organizing". That is to say, in the grand carnival of society the question raised was whether it was better to organize demonstrations, mount petition drives, fundraise, issue press releases, and, so on for one specific social issue, like wage discrimination against women; or; whether it would be make more sense to put all that effort into building a political party that would fight for that issue plus others like ending carding, gay rights, unions, higher minimum wages, fighting climate change, etc. No one talks about "single issue politics" anymore (mainly because people have learned that it is possible to "walk and chew gum at the same time"), but the discussion continues in a slightly different form in arguments for or against "identity politics".

What distinguishes this new iteration from the old one is that the focus of organizing isn't on the specific social problem---such as police violence---but instead on a specific, sub-group of the population, such as blacks, and their unique experience of the problem, as in the "Black Lives Matter" movement. The argument being that white people have such a profoundly different experience with authority over their lives that you simply cannot understand the problem without actually having lived it yourself as a person of colour.

Public Domain photo by Johnny Silvercloud, c/o Wiki Commons

This change in focus can be threatening to people who are not members of that specific group because it seems to be arguing from a position of "privilege". That is to say, for example, if you simply cannot understand a significant aspect of policing unless you are a black civilian, it feels to some that your point-of-view as a police officer (or white civilian) simply doesn't count. 

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To political organizers (ie: those folks who see the "big picture" and want to build political parties), identity politics is really scary and dangerous. This is because the classic way that populations are manipulated and controlled is through "divide and conquer" tactics. For example, racism has traditionally been a wonderful thing to use against poor whites---because if you could convince a lot of them that they were so much better off than people of colour they would believe that they had a "stake" in the system. And if you identify with the people exploiting you, you don't want to change things.  

Unfortunately, however, understanding the danger of "divide and conquer" doesn't alter the fact that some fractions of the population simply do not have the same experience as others. The vast majority of men have no idea at all about what it's like to be sexually harassed. Most whites have no idea what it's like to be "carded" or stopped by the police for "driving while black". Nor do heterosexual people have any understanding of what it's like to go through life being gay or trans. And the really important thing to remember is that while something like being "carded" or harassed because of your sexual orientation is a totally incidental and minor thing in the life of people that it almost never happens to---it is a huge, big deal if it is a routine part of your life. And because of this tremendous difference in the perception of importance, it has tended to be extremely easy for organizations like political parties, unions, etc---who have tended to be overwhelmingly composed of white, straight men---to simply "bargain away" any movement on these "lifestyle" issues when "more important" stuff like tax rates, minimum wages, base salary, etc, came up for negotiation. This is why groups have recently started to mobilize around the sub-population instead of the issue, and focused on the single issue instead of the broader, political party.

The "divide and conquer" tactic has been attempted, and it has met with mixed results. Some police unions and elements of the Republican party have tried to create a "blue lives matter" campaign to divide people who are concerned about the problems police officers face from the people who are concerned about the problems of blacks---and pit one against the other.  

Public Domain photo by Daniel Oines, c/o Wiki Commons
Image has been cropped by Bill Hulet

This has managed to develop some traction, as the sign above would indicate. In contrast, an earlier attempt to divide divide blacks and gays over same-sex marriage (using appeals to conservative black churches), seems to have fizzled out before it actually got any momentum. Primarily, this happened because the black population is more sensitive to "civil rights" than the general public. They seemed more interested in helping others gain rights that they had to fight for themselves than they disliked gays. (There are still inter-racial couples alive who were forbidden to marry under the old Jim Crow laws. The parallel with laws forbidding gay marriage were obvious to many.) 

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There is an element to identity politics that scares a great many folks. Once you start looking at the world this way there is a danger that it can become a bit of a Pandora's Box---the identities will start to multiply to the point where there will no longer be any sort of majority left. Just to illustrate with my own example, consider the following. I'm a straight, white male. But I'm also someone who grew up in a poor, working class family. I'm a union member in what is considered a good place to work. But I've always worked at physical labour and as a result, various parts of my body have been damaged in ways that cause me considerable pain (arthritis, tendinitis, sciatica.) Moreover, I am married to a woman who has a psychiatric illness that has kept her from being employed for a large part of her adult life. Moreover, I am planning on sponsoring her to come live with me as an immigrant (she's an American citizen.) Also, I am a survivor of an abusive, dysfunctional family, and, as a result, suffer from PTSD. 

Any one of these issues could become something I identify with and see as being key to who I am. I could go on about class discrimination, the casually brutal way people treat the mentally ill, the way managers routinely ask people to do jobs that wear and tear on the body without bothering to think about the cumulative impact that this has over a person's lifetime, and, so on. But the fact of the matter is that compared to many others, I'm doing pretty good. And I understand that---just like everyone else---I have to pick and choose my battles. As a result, I've made it a practice to try to identify my struggles through issues instead of identity. I am not about to cast aspersions on others who emphasize their own specific experience even though I choose to emphasize the value of seeing things within a larger context. We all bring different experiences and gifts to the table, and diversity is generally a strength instead of a liability.

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Just a reminder. If you like this blog, please think about subscribing through Patreon. Even a dollar a month will make a difference. I work hard on it, and if you want to have an independent, local media that isn't beholding to corporate owners or based on an editorial policy of maximizing advertising clicks, you have to be willing to support it. If you don't want to commit, feel free to toss something in the Tip Jar. Finally, if you are afraid of using your credit card, I'd suggest signing up for either PayPal or mailing me a cheque at:  124-A Surrey Street East, Guelph N1H 3P9. 

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This raises one last point. 

It's a natural thing to always try to generalize from our own personal experience in order to understand someone else. For example, I was able to scrimp and save, put together a down payment, and, buy my own house---even though it was a slum and I had to gut and rebuilt it over 20 years. So what's stopping someone else? Well, lots of people didn't grow up on farms and learn that they can do just about anything if they put my mind to it. Moreover, houses cost a lot more now than they used to---even slums. I know this stuff logically, but it is still emotionally easy for me to forget about it. How can I avoid making similar judgments about someone else? 

What I try to do is remember the following statement: "I may think I know what that person's life is like---but I really don't. So the rational, the kind, the enlightened thing is to simply suspend judgment. Maybe I will be able to learn a little bit about that person's life, but until then I will just take what they say on its own terms." I know that it's really difficult to remember to suspend judgment, but when you can it is useful to try. And if you continue to try, after a while it becomes easier and easier to do. And at that point you begin to start to listen to what the other person is saying and you also start to lose any resentment you might feel towards granting that person anything that you might have once thought of as being "special privileges".