Good People: Populist Resentment in 4 Portraits of Gord

Good People: Populist Resentment in 4 Portraits of Gord

There is to my knowledge only one religious doctrine susceptible to 100% empirical confirmation and that is the Christian doctrine of original sin; something utterly nasty lurks even in the best of us and under the right circumstances the best of people can become the very worst of people. Currently I am having great trouble sympathizing with good people. Good people have been essential to every atrocity ever committed and they are essential to all the current ones. Let’s take a good person; Gord. I have no problem with Gord under most circumstances but, alas, change things around just a bit and Gord becomes a malevolent menace. This has to do with Gord’s virtues as much as his vices (as the ancient Greeks taught us our greatest virtue is also our greatest temptation). Let me tell you about him. Gord lives in a small town and has always lived in a small town. Gord is a good employee and an excellent neighbor. Gord may even be a decent spouse or parent though the domestic sphere is one where Gord’s cracks might show just a bit. On the whole though, Gord, is a harmless and decent being and if Gord were never exposed to social media or talk radio he might never come to grief. Gord knows his world, his town or neighborhood, very well and functions effectively in its social ecology. Unfortunately, Gord has heard of a world outside his town and may have briefly encountered it though he is no great traveler. As his feelings for his own community are strong so, correspondingly, his feelings for what is outside are sketchy and ambivalent. What is more, his attitude to this outside world is governed by a principal of parsimony: every resource, he has learned growing up, is a finite resource. Small town people like ‘good country folk’ understand the virtues of frugality and apply that to everything.

Two things that are inherently in short supply are respect and compassion. Gord receives not much of either as he is neither rich enough to earn the envy of others nor poor enough to receive their help and sympathy. Some people are the Other but Gord, alas, is only ever the Same. Gord feels a keen deficit of the respect he regards as a finite resource. Respect given to others is respect taken from him. Compassion given to others is compassion taken from him. When Gord thinks about this he gets more and more vexed. The media is constantly telling him that he needs to feel compassion for people he does not know or directly care about. Yet compassion is finite and Gord has only so much to give. Gord’s greatest fear is that this precious resource will be wasted on people unworthy of it. The possibility that refugees, for instance, might be scammers looms so large in his mind that it becomes a dead certainty for him that they are. In fact, refugees and migrant s and others are coming to steal the very recognition and human sympathy that Gord feels are due to him.

For this reason, Gord wants all such people to feel the contempt they have so justly merited. What is more anyone who lives in a small close knit community like Gord sublimates a good deal of aggression and hostility. If he can vent these feelings on outsiders, preferably distant outsiders, then he can function all the better in his own little realm. Consequently, Gord will gravitate inevitably to politicians who will satisfy his impulse to vicarious cruelty far away in a place where he will never see it whether that is in squalid migrant camps or distant wars in which he does not have to participate. Gord will bless an atrocity (somewhere) and indeed regard anyone who objects to atrocity as a kill-joy and an obnoxious scold. Of course Gord will be (and sincerely) insulted that you do not regard him as a man of compassion. He IS a man of compassion in many ways and might be shockingly kind to those he knows and trusts though compassion can never be allowed to trump suspicion or resentment. These remain his prior principles though, if they are satisfied first, Gord has no problem showing a bit of kindness. Of course one solution to this is to give Gord more of the respect he craves though whether this works is questionable for the desire for recognition, like the desire for vengeance, is boundless and may well have no finite satisfaction. At bottom though there seems a basic tension: Gord’s virtues make for a better world on the micro scale but when his parochial outlook is translated onto the national or international scale it makes for fascism. On these macro levels Gord will only and can only work for chaos and suffering.  

There is another iteration of Gord we need to discuss and that is Jesus Gord. Jesus Gord comes in two varieties whom I will discuss in turn. The first Jesus Gord is pretty much a Gord in general. He smokes, drinks a bit more than he should and has a couple broken marriages. He has barely glanced at the Bible (most of which is unintelligible to the general reader anyway) and rarely darkens the door of a church. Jesus Gord has no prayer life or religious experience of any kind and is bored to death by any sermon over 5 minutes. For all that though Jesus Gord feels a fierce loyalty to Christian symbols and particularly to symbols of Christian supremacy. He draws no distinction between these and the patriotic symbols he is ALSO fiercely attached to. We might say (smugly) that Jesus Gord’s piety is sham and his religion shallow but that is not how it feels to Jesus Gord who knows better than his critics do that he has deep failings as a human being. Jesus Gord is no intellectual and can’t win arguments on Facebook but one thing he IS exquisitely attuned to is tone. Jesus Gord knows when he is being dissed with the fine discrimination of an art critic and he can read the dis at a level of sophistication far past what he could summon for any other text.

Thus, when Elizabeth Warren cracks about ‘sticking to one wife’ Jesus Gord knows that he is the object of that barb. Jesus Gord is not proud of how his two marriages ended and being hectored on the subject by a female politician (obviously a negative ‘mother’ image) fills him with fury. For this very reason he clings sentimentally to the ‘idea’ of marriage as his parents and grandparents understood it even though he has failed to instantiate its values (he may well have TRIED however). It is, however, a bizarre bias that says that people who fail to exemplify an ideal or value should abandon it for something easier. Plus, like many people who must swallow insults, Jesus Gord sees insults where none may have been intended. Things are worse if Jesus Gord has experienced financial stress or outright poverty (and he often lives in places where that is a distinct possibility). Jesus Gord has been around the block enough to know that those cookies warming on the plate are not for him. They are for bosses or lawyers or ‘others’ somewhere else and the community Jesus Gord lives in has always gotten on without them and in his mind always will. One thing Jesus Gord DOES have however is his pride and whether that is embodied in religious symbols or guns (or in guns as religious symbols) pride is the one thing Jesus Gord will protect and indeed the one thing he will sacrifice his material interests to. In short Jesus Gord will defend himself ferociously against those he perceives as condescending to him. What is more, Jesus Gord perceives BETTER THAN WE DO when he is being condescended to and especially by whom.

Now let me introduce you to Jesus Gord 2.0. Like Jesus Gord Jesus Gord 2.0 has had a checkered past perhaps involving substance abuse or even prison. Out of this dark past Jesus Gord 2.0 has experienced a spiritual awakening though spiritual awakenings are something he has few words or ready symbols for having not read William James or ever taken a university class. Perhaps Jesus Gord 2.0 has been to a Pentecostal meeting and felt transformed in the ecstasy of the moment. At any rate religious experience is now at the center of his existence. He is no more a ‘reader of the bible’ than Jesus Gord as the book is just as unintelligible to someone of his background and experience. Atheistic critics often make the false assumption that ‘literal reading’ of texts is a kind of natural attitude that all Gords in all times and places take to sacred books. Reading is a cultural activity however and there is NO natural approach to it strictly speaking. If there is a default approach to reading (most people don’t do it at all) it is selectivity not literalism. Jesus Gord 2.0 reads those bits of the Bible that appeal to him and that he can understand. Among these he understands some very literally (Noah’s Ark) and others not (the Sermon on the Mount) as the mood strikes him. The rest he waves away and ignores. At any rate founding an egalitarian non-priestly religion on a book was never a good idea as most humans who can read detest doing so and I call to witness here ANY university professor WHATSOEVER tasked with getting students to read even a short story. Jesus Gord 2.0 though has his experiences and the sense of community he gets from his church and that is plenty for him.

Now here is one thing that especially angers Jesus Gord 2.0. Secular critics tend to assume that ‘Christians’ as a group are privileged and address Jesus Gord 2.0. as if he was basking in the benefits of belonging to a majority. This is often (though not always) false in an economic sense but even leaving money aside this account is not, as we academics like to say, granular. If Jesus Gord 2.0 belongs to an Evangelical church (Catholic Gords are a whole other question I must address below) he belongs to a church with a long ingrained inferiority complex vis a vis both other mainline churches AND with respect to the general secular society. Jesus Gord 2.0 thinks people in both groups despise his beliefs and him along with them. As far as I can tell Jesus Gord 2.0 is entirely right about this. He is despised and the current leader of the NDP in Canada has said openly that Jesus Gord 2.0. and others like him cannot aspire to public office. Jesus Gord 2.0 realizes that this is not just ‘secular principle’ (Canada is NOT an officially secular country) but a dis. He knows this because there is another group of people, Muslims, who also tend to have conservative views on things like family and personal modesty yet are not subject to the same kind of reflexive contempt (except from angry Gords on the internet and lunatic Gords in the flesh). In a society supposedly founded on diversity Jesus Gord 2.0 knows that certain professions are closed to him yet open to a visibly different person like Mr. Singh. ‘Others’ are different in a way that must be cherished yet Jesus Gord 2.0 is not: he is not the other but the same. This eats Jesus Gord 2.0 up with resentment as all double standards do even ones, or rather ESPECIALLY ones, which can be given a firm rationalization. Indeed, if there is one sound Jesus Gord version 1.0 or version 2.0 CANNOT stand it is the sound of a person they perceive as elite (like a journalist or professor) rationalizing their prejudice and explaining clearly and articulately and with impeccable logic why Gord is a second rate human. At any rate the upshot of this is the will to revenge: Gord wants Muslims (especially) to feel the contempt he has internalized. Gord has no interest in politics and society per-se EXCEPT where it concerns grievance and revenge especially on others he sees as taking up space due (in his own mind) to him.   

Some Gords are Roman Catholics. On its face this should not be for two reasons. Firstly, Catholic Gord belongs to a Global church that is universalistic in outlook which Gord is most definitely not. Secondly, Catholic Gord is a ferocious proponent of Libertarian politics (taxation is theft!) and a dyed in the wool defender of capital and rugged individualism even though these positions bear NO relation whatsoever to the last century of Catholic social teaching which is social democratic in broad outlook. Catholic Gord has fully and freely adopted the position of his Evangelical brothers with their hatred of the idea of the state and suspicion of public charity. Catholic Gord feels himself most Catholic precisely when he is least so though this is partly the result of the efforts of skilled Catholic neo-Liberals like the late Michael Novak who was employed (full time) to explain away the socialistic musings of John Paul II. Why does Catholic Gord feel he is the most loyal of loyal Catholics while ignoring a huge swath of what his faith entails? This is not all down to effective propaganda which after all needs appropriate matter to work on. The thing you need to remember is that Catholic Gord has ARRIVED. A Catholic Gord (or Catholic Gord descendent?) is the leader of the CPC for instance. In this Catholic Gord is much like Jewish Gord. He has a pact with society according to which he will be accepted as a real Canadian or American on the condition that he reciprocate by becoming more ‘normal’. Normal here means more ‘conservative’ for reasons I will get into below. At one point in time Catholic Gord was the other. Until the 19^th Century he did not in fact possess civil liberties (in England at least) on the grounds that he owed allegiance to a foreign head of state. Even when he did receive full civil liberties it was understood that he would not embarrass the general society by, say, running for the highest public office in the land. To put it bluntly, he was part of the great unwashed.

When J. F. K. broke this unstated rule there was much negative comment of course but much rejoicing for now a Catholic (while in most instances the son or grandson of an immigrant) could aspire to polite WASP society (see William F. Buckley noted Catholic social climber). After all, the leader of the free world was one! This is why my pious grandmother had a picture of JFK next to her picture of John XXIII. My pious mother was also a devoted admirer of Gen. MacArthur for his rabid anti- communism and here surely was an area where Catholics could show they were real Americans and to a lesser extent real Canadians. They could repay the debt they owed by internalizing the standards of the dominant culture which had so graciously let them in the door. Reader’s Digest was joined by Catholic Digest which pushed the same anti-socialist free market fundamentalist ideology which supposedly separated the ‘West’ from Godless communism. In this Catholic Gord was like a poor boy made good, who, to show he truly belongs to the business elite, turns in contempt on the lazy working class he came from. Some recent immigrants turn against other immigrants for the exact same reason. In this they perform the function of the ‘black friend’ or ‘native relative’ by validating the prejudices of their new social circle: as a satirical site puts it “Every Canadian has native friend who is not offended by that”.   

            Catholic Gord is angry because this did not quite work. This is not simply because the sexual revolution moved the general society in a direction that did not sit easily with the traditions of his church (though I suppose that is a factor). Catholic Gord is angry because of the people who came behind him, the immigrants, who did not pay their dues the way his parents and grandparents did. Two or three generations from being an immigrant himself (in many cases- unless he a Franco-phone) Catholic Gord has come to hate immigrants even if they are his own co-religionists. This is obvious in the case of American Catholic Gord who despises Hispanics even though they belong to the same church he does and are probably more sincerely pious than he will ever be. High on this list are Muslims of course and Catholic Gord will cheerfully repeat the very same slurs used against his ancestors claiming that Muslims cannot be ‘real citizens’ because they owe allegiance to a ‘foreign law code.” He sees these people as succeeding without playing by the rules. They are embraced by the ‘liberal left’ for instance which gave up on his vote long ago. They do not, as grateful immigrants and ‘poor boys’ should, adopt the right wing discourse of ‘self-reliance’ but often vote liberal to left. What is worse they keep their traditional religious garb which is offensive and troubling to Catholic Gord especially if he is French (secularism is the new Catholicism for French Gords but that is a bit complicated for now). I do not think there are many Catholic Gords because it is a generational thing. Still, Catholic Gord discourse filters down to younger folk like Kenney and Scheer even if the social grounds for it have been muted or even forgotten. I must add one more thing: Catholic Gords are an overwhelming minority in their own church and not even many Bishops share their reflexive ‘conservatism’ (so called). This makes Catholic Gord even more resentful and he has a particular venom for liberal sell-out ‘cafeteria’ Catholics who skew center to center left politically and theologically. This makes him, overall, an angry fellow indeed and a devoted populist who can be relied on by capital to always vote correctly.                             

Finally, we need to discuss Oil Gord whom I have a good deal of sympathy for as members of my family are Oil Gords and Oil Gord has been cruelly shafted by the industry he works for yet remains stubbornly and irrationally loyal to. Oil Gord knows deep down that the fossil fuel executives he works for would drop him and his pension in a heartbeat if it were in their interest to do so yet hopes against hope that they will not and angrily dismisses anyone who tries to disabuse him of this hope by pointing out, say, that the global trend is for disinvestment from fossil fuels and that the people making money on oil will be just as happy making money on something else if the regulatory environment becomes too strict. Oil Gord has the usual populist disdain of ‘freeloaders’ and ‘migrants’ but his special foes differ a bit from the Gords above. Oil Gord is mad at environmentalists and he is mad at other Oil Gords. As the last one is the odder of the two resentments I will treat it first. Oil Gords tend to come from the Prairies or from Atlantic Canada though the demography of the oil patch is rather more complex than this (symbolically though, outside oil workers come from Newfoundland). They can be Jesus Gords or even Catholic Gords too but this is not necessary. Oil Gords from the Prairies have what Max Weber might have recognized as a sense of Calvinist election. This has nothing to do with religion (at least in an ethical sense) as Oil Gord may well be a crack-head who roughs up prostitutes when he is done with them.[1]

This attitude embodies a complex reflection on luck. Nobody wants to owe their status in the world to chance but on the face that is Oil Gord Prairie version’s problem. Being born over a pool of oil implies no virtue or merit. It might though, imply election or special favor from God. Perhaps god has given him this gift because of some special degree of thrift or enterprise or initiative he possesses (inherently) and others do not. Oil Gord Prairie version thus addresses his anxiety over being a mere child of fortune and happenstance by inventing a secular theology of grace. To wit, he is the chosen people not as the Hebrews were by sheer, unmediated grace but by a Pelagian grace which confirms pre-existing merit (this of course is the very opposite of TRUE Calvinism but I will leave that to Weber!). This, let me emphasize, is not a religious idea per se (actually it is senseless as a religious idea for we are all creatures) but a kind of secular Calvinism that is the half-thought, semi-conscious mental inheritance of people from places like Alberta.[2] As the religion of all Prairie Oil Gords, it is indifferent as to confession so that it may be the faith of a Ukrainian Catholic or a Mormon or a Pentecostal. As oil implies merit and divine favor it is a special sign of grace: a sacrament in fact. This is why the Oil industry is THE industry and the party that supports oil, the Conservative Party is THE party. As oil revenues support the rest of Canada (including many people who are feckless and incapable) oil and it’s Petro-Party also represent the nation as a whole so that it is sacrilege to vote for any other party. To continue our theological metaphor, Oil Gord Prairie version is the salt of the earth without which the nation would lose its savor, the righteous generation who avert the wrath of God from idlers and cheats.  

Other Oil Gords, hard- working though they may be, do not understand or appreciate the inherent necessity of this theological construct. As such they stand as Samaritans did to the ancient Jews. These Oil Gords vote for OTHER PARTIES that are not the party of God and Oil but the party of welfare bums and foreign Muslim devils (of whom, remember, Justin Trudeau is one!). These workers are often from Atlantic Canada and especially from Newfoundland. These workers have no theology to speak of though they may absorb one if they stay out west a sufficient amount of time and are rewarded by being the ‘black or native friend’ who confirms the prejudices of the larger group. In general, they do not buy the bourgeois myth of self-reliance because they are descended from people whose hard work was appropriated by a merchant or feudal class with dregs left over for them. As such they are sceptics concerning the whole ideology of work though they are willing enough to do it because like all humans they like to eat and drink and breed. They do not have a religion of work however and are, for that reason, not reflexively conservative and are certainly willing to receive benefits from the rest of society if need be (though they may also be happy to give them in turn). In the mind of Prairie Oil Gord however Atlantic Oil Gord is a heretic to the true faith for he has not understood contract behind charity.

There is a wonderful novel by Francois Mauriac called A Woman of the Pharisees that tells us all we need to know on this subject. Christian charity is conditional upon reform and can be angrily refused or retracted if reform is not immediately forthcoming (which, on the Pelagian model, it should be). In the novel a woman just and righteous in her own mind and obsessed with her own merit gives money to an indigent young couple only to find they have bought a piano. She interrupts their joyful singing in high dudgeon and vents her wrath on the ungrateful pair in a brutal scene in which she reduces the young wastrels to tears of shame. This is because charity comes with strings and Prairie Oil Gord conceives of himself as in the relation of a giver to the rest of the country. This is of course literally true in the sense that Canada’s system of equalization redistributes federal money from Alberta to other parts of the country. This, of course, allows people to travel and find opportunity around the country without experiencing a drastic drop in services. Prairie Oil Gord does see it this way however. Partly this is because he does not travel and if a bridge collapses in Fredericton that is someone else’s problem not his. Money not spent in his immediate vicinity, where he can see it, is money stolen from him (in this he resembles childless people who can’t understand why their personal share of income tax should support schools). Moreover, he has a low opinion of the professional class for whom traveling and working in other places is an issue. Many of them are civil servants, for instance, who in his own mind are welfare recipients sucking off the teat of the taxpayer. It does not matter to him how little a teacher or nurse is paid: whatever the amount is that amount is too much for it could, in principle, be less. One such person even made sneering reference to my ‘public education’ (was he educated in a forest?) as if the very act of going to school was mooching. Thus it is the duty of every politician to reduce the salaries and benefits of public servants to a bare minimum by, say, busting public sector unions.

However, Oil Gord Prairie version will not necessarily go full Ayn Rand. In fact equalization and other mechanisms of redistribution (without which a modern nation state cannot exist) can be made tolerable to him if the recipients of HIS charity (and he only thinks of it as HIS) show proper gratitude and respect. Now if Atlantic Canadian Oil Gord has driven on roads and gone to hospitals funded in part by equalization that is tolerable. If Atlantic Canadian Oil Gord has partaken of God’s bounty by working in the oil patch that is fine as well. However, having benefited from the true religion (and its hard working enterprising communicants) Atlantic Canadian Oil Gord must pay respect to the true religion. He must recognize the gift by adopting the values of the giver because the values of the giver underlie the gift. He must recognize that ‘leg ups’ are temporary; the proper attitude of the recipient is to rededicate himself to the mantra of self- reliance so the gift will not need be repeated. Especially he cannot abuse the charity he has been offered by voting for center or center left parties who will only take MORE money from Prairie Oil Gord and give it to MORE feckless people like the stubbornly socialistic French. This is the same attitude Republicans have to black voters. Republicans think the franchises of black people belong to them because voting for a ‘tax and spend liberal party’ is immoral and ungrateful if you are a recipient of public charity. Black people do not have the right to steal money from white taxpayers and that is why they should not have the right to vote. This attitude is put into effect by purging black voters from rolls and closing voting stations in their neighborhoods. Prairie Oil Gord thinks likewise: the act of receiving ‘charity’ (remember Prairie Oil Gord is only conscious of giving; in his mind he receives nothing) comes with the cost of your franchise[3]. Atlantic Canadian Oil Gord must vote for the party that represents the ‘real people’. Real people are resource extracting people for they see that the country runs on oil and that one party represents the interests of that industry. This party must also be the state for the state must represent real citizens only and not fake ones who don’t wear poppies. As a friend of mine put it: the people equals the industry equals the party equals the state. Canada must, like Alberta, be a one party state and if this is Fascistic in principle well, all Gords are nationalists and the political expression of nationalism is, taken to its logical conclusion, Fascism. Thus, Atlantic Oil Gord is a class traitor and a heretic if he votes against the interests of ‘real people’ and their religion and thus, must be fired from his job for voting wrong or, to be more exact, coming from a province which voted wrong.

Now we come to a tragic dilemma for all Oil Gords which is human generated climate change. Oil Gord wants pipelines which will open more markets to Canadian oil which will allow for the expansion of oil production. This is something no sane or responsible politician can grant him. To Oil Gord, however, this is insanity. As one oil Gord told me; many, many things are made of oil. Plus, he tells us in a tone that implies we don’t already know, oil pays for many things. If provinces like B.C. say they are concerned about increased tanker traffic along their coastlines this must be a shakedown. To Oil Gord no one could possibly be sincere about such a thing. As he has no concern about the environment it is inconceivable to him that anyone else could. I am credibly informed that in his mind B.C. is only looking for a deal and an independent Alberta could impose such a deal by means of a blockade! As we saw above oil is a sacred substance and it is blasphemy to think God could have created a world in which its limitless exploitation could be in any way harmful.[4] Environmentalists then, are foreigners attempting to subvert the nation which is something, in fact, that Oil Gord literally believes. No ‘real Canadian’ could accept such rubbish and anyone who claims they do must be influenced by money from outside the country, probably from Canada’s competitors in the energy sector. What is worse, while Oil Gord can see that many things are made of oil with his own eyes he cannot see this ‘climate change’ the brainwashed elites are talking about. This is as abstract and meaningless a concept as the notion that his tax money spent somewhere else on something outside his direct field of vision actually benefits him too.

            Here we get to the tragic part. By his anti-environmentalism Oil Gord has shot himself in the foot. His denialism and delay, his slavish devotion to industry talking points has in fact intimidated any politician who has ever even considered even the mildest measures to deal with climate change. This means that the window has closed on any ‘soft’ solution to the climate problem. A soft solution (possible 30 years ago perhaps) would have involved a sustainable mix of fossil fuels and renewables and retraining or early retirement for any Gord who needed to shift to another industry. Now we are in the realm of hard solutions where we must, alas, begin regulating fossil fuel extraction out of existence and investing massively and quickly in alternatives even if this means nuclear power (which has its own problems). Oil Gord will be the big loser here (the fossil fuel execs, who have successfully run the clock out on this issue, will be just fine thank you) and sadly he is partly to blame. What is worse, since two of the three major parties have given up on his vote (nothing they can do can ever placate Oil Gord so they will likely not bother) he will have no advocate. He will be simply beating his head against a wall raging at people in Atlantic Canada who won’t vote Conservative and posting violent rape fantasies about that “ugly retarded girl from Sweden who is owned by George Soros and the Chinese”.[5] He will sink into a morass of misogyny and conspiratorial thinking from which, thanks to the internet, he will never have to emerge.

            His problem, I must emphasize is theological. Sometimes this is literally the case as when Jesus/Oil Gord thinks that concern for the planet would betray a lack of faith in the immanent return of Jesus. However even if Oil Gord is not also a Jesus Gord environmentalism is still ‘witchcraft and paganism’ as it subverts the entire religious system outlined above. This is because it denies freedom: the infinite potential of human development and the infinite possibilities for enrichment entailed by this. A finite planet that can only be exploited finitely is simply not worth living on. The fulfillment of specifically human wants and needs can have no inherent limit and anyone who says otherwise is simply scamming for their own benefit. I should probably qualify this however. Oil Gord may well be responding to the inevitable loss of this cheerful faith as he more often gives off the air of a man clinging desperately to what he has both in a monetary and a cultural sense. Perhaps too even Oil Gord feels something of the tension between this Faustian optimism and the Christianity he otherwise thinks he espouses. If we want to get psycho-analytical we might suggest he feels he is being roped in by women (in their mother/school teacher aspect) preventing him from raping a feminized planet. Environmentalism is, to put it crudely, something yucky and female and we must remember that, like Ancient cultures with taboos about menstruation, Oil Gord has his own personal idea of purity and pollution. In this sense he is in fact utterly pre-Christian and consumed utterly with what is (oil) and is not (wind power) fit to eat.      

            Gords are dangerous. Some in the progressive community think the appropriate response to this is to shame and silence Gords with clap-backs on twitter. After a few years of this Gords will begin dying off anyway so that we needn’t take them seriously. This is a mistake because Gords will not let this happen. We in Canada happen to be in a lucky moment because Quebec Catholic Gords hate Jesus Gords and that is the only reason we do not have a populist conservative Government to match the Trump administration in the U.S. Should Quebec Gords ever align with Jesus Gords (perhaps in a party with a more nakedly Islamophobic platform) we may not see even a Liberal Government for a generation and there will be zero possibility of an N.D.P. one. Plus, Gords will not go gently into that good night. If they perceive the demographic tide turning against them irrevocably they will become terrorist Gords. Many American Gords are making this threat right now and nothing good is going to come from it because authoritarian forces benefit massively from civil unrest. It does not take a majority to create a fascist police state only an energized minority. But, you will say, Gord cannot be reasoned or argued with (which is true). If this is so, how can he be included in the political process? Plus, Gords may be past the point where ANYTHING can placate them. However, despair is always the worst counsel. There is a way out of this morass though it might be a bitter pill for some to swallow. As I mentioned above when people live by disordered myths the answer is not ‘reason’ or ‘more education’ (which are impotent in these matters) but better myths. I know many of my readers hate Gord’s myths, however, and would rather celebrate other ones.

I share the same sentiment. However, every error contains its truth and Gord’s errors are no different. Hard work, thrift and self-reliance are not the sum total of virtue but they are not alien to virtue either. There is nothing wrong with loving one’s country either or being rooted in one’s neighborhood. Further, if we do not live in a highly confessional society this is not because we are less Christian but more so. We live in a hyper-Christianized world in which the reflexive contempt for the beliefs of Catholic and Jesus Gords are grounded in a basic failure to grasp history. All this is by way of saying that in the civic mythology of the hyper-Christian secular world there must be some place reserved for Gord’s myths. To use a crude example, Jesus Gord might think differently about rainbow crossings if there was a Jesus crossing too. Highly ‘secularized’ Christmas does not count as recognition in Gord’s view, nor frustratingly does having Easter off but pointing out Gord’s contradictions is like pointing out anyone else’s contradictions; a complete waste of time as no one whatsoever wants their contradictions pointed out. At any rate Jesus Gord understands that the issue is not one of the superficial distinction between religion and a supposedly non-religious, neutral ‘secularity’. He sees it as a battle between two foundational theologies and in this he is shrewder than people of much greater sophistication. It is much easier to see something from the outside than from the inside and Jesus Gord can see things to which the smartest of us are blind to because we don’t have an outsider’s perspective but an insider’s one. Plus, we shall also have to accept that Oil Gords have performed a great service for the country if we hope to convince them that they should undertake a new, more arduous one in a new kind of energy sector. If they take discourse about climate change as an implicit rebuke of how they have lived their lives, we will never get them to sign on to the project of re-investing in renewables. Jesus sidewalks and celebration of fossil fuels (for their great PAST services) will be hard pills for many progressives to swallow but at some point you have to decide whether you want to win or not and to win we cannot trample on the sentiments of the people who, if we could shift even 10% of them, could break the back of Fascist populism. We need to tell a story that engages Gords and does not leave them feeling dissed while STILL conscripting their assent to a green revolution and convincing them to at least tolerate demographic and other social changes that they may never like but, if sufficiently wooed on other fronts, might be willing to put up with.              

                                   

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[1] If you are a crackhead who beats up prostitutes it is actually a profound comfort to know that you belong to an ‘elect’. It is a profound consolation to know that for all your sins you are a ‘real Canadian’ while the prostitute you use and abuse is not (i.e. she is probably indigenous) and thus ‘deserves it’.

[2] A friend of mine was recently asked “what are you?” in the sense of “what religion are you?”. This is not in fact the way to find out what someone’s religion is. To discern a person’s religion, you must follow them around and note the small judgments they make and the maxims implicit in them. Few people are aware of the principles they act under and need them pointed out to them by others. That people act out theological and symbolic scripts of which they are barely aware is something many people would vehemently deny (since Locke people have tended to identify thinking with conscious thinking) but practices like psycho-analysis (perhaps Jungian analysis in this case) indicate otherwise.  

[3] Oil Gords are like everyone else in this and nothing I say here should be taken to imply that the failings of any version of Gord are anything besides all-too-human failings. We are very aware of what we give because giving is more difficult and that is why we notice it more. It is less easy to note the many things we get on a daily basis such as the too numerous to count benefits we receive from belonging to a stable federation. One thing Oil Gord does NOT notice is the degree to which the industry that he regards as the epitome of self-reliance and the frontier spirit is subsidized by all levels of government directly or indirectly to the tune of billions. In his mind he is a self-made man in a self-made industry. Though he may be nominally a Christian ‘give us this day our daily bread’ is not his prayer but “How long O Lord must I give and give!”.

[4] Oil Gord believes, for instance, that his oil is especially pure because he, and it, are ‘ethical’ unlike dirty Muslim oil. This claim is balderdash alas for all the same investors profit from oil everywhere. This is part and parcel of his general obsession with purity (it is the purity of the ‘clan’ to which he belongs that washes his own impurities- patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel).

[5] Oil Gord, god love him, is no looker. He may well be overweight with a face like a pug yet in his mind women have a duty to look good that he does not especially in the public sphere. Thus, it is deeply offensive to him when people lionize a girl who is not in his mind pretty or attractive. I confess I don’t understand this at all as his political heroes tend to be ugly as baboons but there it is.