It has been a month since the American election and, so far, I have not weighed in.
It is not for lack of trying. Every week, I have started writing some version of this column, but eventually abandoned it because it started becoming too shrill, or apocalyptic or illogical. But mostly, I have steered clear because I am still trying to wrap my head around it.
The fact is that Donald Trump getting elected shook me to the core. On November 9, I woke up in what I can only describe as a state of shock. Since then I have run the gamut of the five stages of grief. I am still not entirely through to full out acceptance; some mornings I still wake up with the uneasy feeling that this cannot be happening.
The world in which a human being as abhorrent as Trump can be elected president of the United States, that great bastion of democracy and freedom, is not a world I feel comfortable in.
And his election, coming just three days before Remembrance Day, filled me with dread and helplessness. Despite the fact we annually recite the words “lest we forget,” the rise to power of a modern day authoritarian propagandist like Trump with his trailing posse of white supremacists, seems evidence we are indeed a long way down the road of completely forgetting what all those brave men and women died for in the first half of the 20th century.
It is a scary new world. Nevertheless, it is the world in which I find myself living, and, much to my horror, spreading to Canada.
The incident at Conservative Party leadership candidate Chris Alexander’s rally in Edmonton last week in which, echoing the hate-filled vitriol Trumpians hurled at Hillary Clinton during that campaign, neo-Cons here started chanting “lock her up” referring to Alberta premier Rachel Notley.
Notoriously, the Conservative leadership race has focused a lot on Canadian “values.” I honestly cannot think of many things more contrary to Canadian values than calling for the imprisonment of another Canadian over a difference of opinion.
There has, of course, been endless analysis of what can only be described as a controversial and divisive election result south of the border.
One thing that stands out is a suddenly pervasive thread of media of all stripes grappling with the issue of social media bubbles and fake news.
It is undoubtedly problematic. A sure recipe for disaster is dehumanizing your opponents.
I recently did a little social media experiment. I have always prided myself on trying to be fair and objective. I monitor opinion across the political spectrum and attempt, as best I can, to filter out the BS.
I follow left and right and centrist pages and publications to be aware of what is going on, but have never actually joined a clearly politically partisan Facebook group. So, I joined Overtime with Bill Maher. Of course, 95 per cent of the conversation there is political and anti-Trump. At first, I found it cathartic. It was that wonderful welcoming comfort of confirmation bias. It did not take long, however, before I started feeling uncomfortable.
Along with legitimate criticism of the president-elect, there was a plethora of nonsense. One example was a posting post of the meme that in 1998 Trump said: “If I were to run, I would run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.”
With all the actual terrible things Trump has said and done, the quote is believable. And the creators of this fake quote added the nice little touch of attributing it to an interview Trump did with People Magazine in 1998. The date and attribution lends credibility. It also makes it pretty easy to fact check.
It begs the question, why make stuff up, when you can just as easily discredit someone with the truth? Trump was the subject of a lot of this stuff and he played it brilliantly. He used the fake stuff to discredit the real stuff. He managed to paint the mainstream media with the same brush even though legitimate journalists actually debunked these lies just as they did the lies perpetrated against Clinton.
It also goes a long way to explaining how so many people could support a man like Trump against their own best interests.
When I pointed out in the group that the post was false, I was viciously attacked as a “troll.”
These are dangerous, almost Orwellian, times in which differences of opinions are “lies” and political opponents are “criminals” or “traitors.” It is us versus them, but the enemy is not some foreign power bent on the ideological destruction of our way of life, it is ourselves.
I still want to believe we are better than this, but it is getting to be a hard sell these days.
