Farming rage, greased by populism

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/10/2023 (727 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During our most recent visit, I mentioned the video that’s gone viral on social media where Pierre Poilievre is chewing an apple in an Okanagan orchard. While eating fruit, he’s devouring a local reporter, delivering more acid than the juiciest Ambrosia.

“I knew at my core, that this was going to excite conservatives imagining a new prime minister with big shiny boots, squashing people they think of as rotten apples.” Those are the words I left readers with. Some of them emailed, asking whether I was serious.

In 740 words or less, the answer is yes.

Conservative voters love seeing their leader bashing Canada’s prime minister and trashing members of the media.

According to Conservative Party of Canada gospel, the media is bought and paid for by the prime minister.

Because government subsidies have been granted to media companies to keep them alive, and because a billion dollars is granted annually to the CBC, the Conservative message is that, no matter what you are reading, watching or hearing, the media content is purchased by the prime minister to assist him in convincing the country that Liberals are good and Conservatives are good for nothing.

Pardon me if my interpretation of Conservative messaging may appear simplistic. It ain’t. In the era we live in, where powerful minds are under suspicion, where the politically intellectual is ineffectual, I’m just exposing you to the poisoned fruit of populism — simplistic nonsense, what Canadian conservatives are calling common sense.

Common sense is a term you see in almost every Poilievre message, whether it’s a speech or a commercial.

The pitch is as mindless as an apple crate. A vote for the Conservatives means the elimination of those Trudeau taxes that brought us high interest rates, high inflation, high prices for food and shelter. You don’t have to be high on drugs to buy the pitch. You just have to be angry enough with way things are.

Populism’s promise is the absolute absence of thought. It feeds on raw emotion — negative feelings squatting in a neighbourhood known as rage. Are you quick to rage when interest rates double and your renewed mortgage payments are instantly twice as expensive? Do you develop any positive feelings at the grocery store? You may buzz on the aroma of freshly baked bread. But in every other aisle you’re sniffing expensive.

What I love most about our twice weekly visits is my opportunity to push my cart down the thinking aisle of the reader’s mind. And so I can ask you to consider this.

Do you think that a prime minister can alter the worldwide market prices for everything you shop for?

Do you think the prices for beef and pork are set at the supermarket? When those in the agriculture business, who we simply call farmers, focus on the futures markets for wheat, soybeans, rice, corn, cattle, hogs, eggs and diesel, do you think they’re wasting time or doing business?

Those are world markets based primarily in New York and Chicago. They don’t give a fig about Justin Trudeau’s Liberals or a raw reporter freshly peeled by a Conservative.

When you’re at the grocery store, whether you’re buying hamburger or Hamburger Helper, rice or Rice Krispies, corn on the cob, Corn Flakes, or ketchup, the prices are given their bounce by world markets — not the politics of the Liberal market. And not the guy sitting high on Parliament Hill.

By now you might be asking if the media is in the tank with the Liberals, why don’t you see Poilievre’s porous message regularly trucked to the media slaughter house?

Allow me to run a play right out of Apple Orchard Poilievre’s play book. I will spear your question with my question.

Who told you the media was in the tank? Are the Conservatives a reliable source? Are they reliable when their leader tells you that owning your own home is easy-peasy once he gets behind the big desk and cuts some taxes? The Bank of Canada sets interest rates. Do you think the Governor of Canada’s Central Bank gargles every morning with Poilievre populism? Do you think he takes the razor blade to rates if voters turn right during the next go?

Oh, if only life in the world of groceries and bungalows was as simple as the populist porridge served up by Mr. Poilievre.

Common sense tells you there’s nothing on that grill but grease.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com