Good Sunday Morning!
Thanks to all the local Saanich-Gulf Islands Greens who came to yesterday’s annual picnic! It was such a boost to see so many friends, including my dear sister and Deputy Leader Rainbow Eyes. I was glad to introduce our newly nominated BC Green candidate for Adam Olsen’s seat of Saanich North and the Islands. Rob Botterell will be a great MLA, It was a contested nomination and the other candidates – Stuart and Amy – were great- and thanks to Stuart for making it to picnic. It is time to pull together and do all we can to ensure the two ridings – federal and provincial remain double-Green!
My thoughts are also turning to the election south of our border. Under normal circumstances I would avoid mentioning US politics in your Sunday morning letter. We are inundated with US news. But ever since President Joe Biden passed the baton to his vice president, Kamala Harris, I have felt as though a weight has lifted.
Her choice of VP, Tim Walz of Minnesota, has given the new ticket added oomph. My first huge political work was for another Minnesotan, Eugene McCarthy, back in 1968. I was only 13 when I started door-to-door canvassing in the legendary snows of New Hampshire, with my mom and younger brother, for Senator McCarthy. I am so long disconnected from US politics that I had not even heard of Governor Tim Walz until very recently. But I am so impressed. Bottom line, both Harris and Walz are likeable, and in fact loveable. They have flaws and at times have made bad choices in their lives, as do all humans. For example, I wish they were stronger in acting to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but the contrast with a looming, and what seemed an almost inevitable Trump presidency, is like night and day.
It is so overdue for a woman to be president of the United States. Kamala Harris is so impressive; a woman of colour and a sharp lawyer, former prosecutor and successful politician elected to the Senate from California, before becoming Joe Biden’s VP pick in 2020.
The shift in the mood of American politics and the shift in the polling has been so encouraging. And it is leading to increasingly crazy stuff from Donald Trump. Walz was right to just call it “weird”, noting that Trump says such strange stuff, riffing about Hannibal Lector and Silence of the Lambs. But then Trump appeared to get even more unhinged in attacking Kamala Harris when speaking to the National Association of Black Journalists annual conference on July 31. No doubt you heard about it as Trump claimed she only recently decided to “turn black”. He said, “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black,”
Trump’s obvious meltdown as he faces a Harris-Walz ticket did not end there. It was on full display at an August 8th Florida press conference. As The Atlantic reported, media has a problem in knowing how to write about the former President.
“The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has described as the ’bias toward coherence,’ and it leads to careful circumlocutions instead of stunned headlines.”
The piece linked below is particularly helpful in realizing how dangerous it could be if incoherent, delusional and paranoid rants receive less attention because no one any longer expects the former president to be anything other than untruthful, delusional and incoherent. For far less, Biden had to exit the scene. (published in The Atlantic August 8, apologies if you hit a pay-wall, but good journalism does need to be compensated.) This story reveals that Trump often claims new mothers kill their babies in the delivery room, “The baby is born, the mother meets with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully, and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.” He also claims that he draws bigger crowds than anyone in history—underestimating the crowd at Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. And rambling about how he once was on a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown who said nasty things about Harris, as Trump veered into a complete fantasy that the conversation was as the helicopter was about to crash. The Atlantic reporter could only theorize that maybe he meant former California governor Jerry Brown, with whom he might have been on a helicopter, but in any event there is no evidence the helicopter was ever in peril. But no matter. So it goes with Trump.
“The Truth About Trump’s Press Conference
“His obvious emotional instability is frightening, not funny.
“…Donald Trump’s public events are a challenge for anyone who writes about him. His rallies and press conferences are rich sources of material, fountains of molten weirdness that blurp up stuff that would sink the career of any other politician. By the time they’re over, all of the attendees are covered in gloppy nonsense.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/truth-about-trumps-press-conference/679425/
Our collective disconnect from anything resembling truth or facts is a threat to Canada’s democratic discourse as well. Things are decidedly worse in the USA, but we cannot be complacent.
Social media is clearly a huge ingredient in the toxic cocktail. The recent rioting in England is an example of why facts matter. It is horrific that three little girls were murdered in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. The pain and grief of it is palpable halfway around the world, but there was no risk of rioting until Elon Musk and his social media platforms falsely claimed the murderer was a Muslim asylum seeker. He was in fact born in Wales.
Night after night racist, Islamophobic hate-filled mobs terrorized communities. The riots stopped (or one hopes they have stopped) when thousands of people reclaimed British streets with anti-racist messages.
What a moment to be embraced! Thousands of tolerant, law-abiding, anti-fascist citizens took back their communities.
“…a vast sea of people sought to take back control of the streets, as the aerial footage from Walthamstow showed so graphically. The far right were crowded out by people who wanted to stop them causing trouble by occupying their meeting points. There was, literally, no room for racism.”
Of late, I have been saying in my speeches that the timeline in the race to avoid the worst of the climate crisis – to avoid self-accelerating, unstoppable global warming – is the same time line as to stop galloping fascism and protect healthy democracies. These hopeful developments, Harris and Walz’s rising popularity and the actions of British people stepping up against the thugs, while different in context and culture, represent signs of hope.
We need to embrace that hope. We need to share that hopeful sign that humanity and civilization can move to be life-affirming. Mother Earth needs us to be on her side, to be on our own side.
Take good care of yourselves as we face climate extremes, deluge rain in Montreal, more heat and more fires. Stay safe, look hard for the signs of hope, and embrace the positive!
Love
Elizabeth
PS Please look in your inbox for a message from the Green Party—subject line “Question on Co-Leadership”. It was sent on August 7 at 8 pm ET. The email links to a ballot from Simply Voting. The matter is a straw poll on co-leadership. I have heard from a lot of people that the phrasing of question is confusing. No doubt, it is awful, but is a result of a negotiation in which I was engaged. Sorry but voting “I do not oppose co-leadership” was the clearest option of a number among a number of worse ones. PLEASE vote now.
Thanks!