{"id":15850,"date":"2016-11-16T18:48:27","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T23:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15850"},"modified":"2016-11-16T18:48:27","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T23:48:27","slug":"brocks-banter-your-smugness-is-showing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-your-smugness-is-showing\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Your smugness is showing"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it happened.
\nDespite polls showing it a near impossibility, reality TV star Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States.
\nWell, sort of.
\nOnce again, despite Hillary Clinton handily winning the popular vote across the United States, the antiquated Electoral College system has put in place a candidate who more than half of participating voters didn\u2019t vote for.
\nIt\u2019s a system that will need to be addressed to the south of us in due course \u2013 for many, it reached its Best Before date 16 years ago \u2013 but the fact remains it is the system in place. Time after time over the course of the arduous presidential campaign, Trump, apparently laying the groundwork of blame for his eventual loss claimed the system was rigged against him.
\nAlthough the United States turned into a sea of red on Tuesday night, it\u2019s a claim he still holds onto.
\nOn Sunday night\u2019s 60 Minutes, the President-Elect maintained the Electoral College is still rigged, despite his win, but the fact he alluded to his own presidency being the illegitimate product of a \u201crigged\u201d system was not pressed further by Lesley Stahl and that, in itself, is unfortunate.
\nSo, how did you spend your Tuesday night? Did you watch with eager fascination sure in the knowledge that however the cookie crumbled you were witnessing history in the making? Did you chomp on endless bowls of popcorn as you rooted the candidate of your choice across the finishing line of 270? Did you simply tune out, having reached your election saturation point a long time ago? Did you sit rocking back and forth in a corner waiting for the chips to fall?
\nFor me, it was a combination of all of the above.
\nMy election night consisted of covering Tuesday night\u2019s Council meeting, while keeping one eye on my laptop to see the returns come in live. After a while, however, it all became too much as that sinking feeling\u2026well, sunk in.
\nHaving stayed up to nearly 3 a.m. after a 14 hour workday, a combination of fatigue, disappointment, stress, and a certain degree of relief that it was all over, conspired to make me physically sick. The President-Elect\u2019s celebratory speech would have to wait until the morning.
\nSleep would do me good, I thought, and I tried. That eventually came around the 4 a.m. mark, and before long 8 a.m. rolled around and it was time to come back to the office.
\nThe speech waited for morning, but what I hadn\u2019t accounted for was logging onto social media and reading the reactions from my American friends, many of whom are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and visible minorities. To say these individuals were despondent over the results would be an understatement. Devastated is probably more on target, but this devastation was coupled with genuine terror over what the next four years will mean to them, their families, and their hard-fought rights and strides towards progress.
\nI am not ashamed to admit that their reactions triggered a visceral reaction in me. As a kid who experienced his fair share of bullying over the years for various \u201creasons\u201d I was always taught by my parents to pay them little heed because, one day, \u201cthey\u2019ll be working for you.\u201d Well, Tuesday\u2019s election results certainly blow that well-worn platitude out of the water for parents and children everywhere.
\nBut it was interesting to contrast the reactions of my American friends to those closer to home.
\nWhile there were several examples of people sharing in the sadness expressed by so many of our neighbours there was also a degree of smugness.
\nMaple leaves abounded, pictures of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were offered as \u201csunny\u201d alternatives to American turmoil, and sales pitches painting Canada as some sort of Shangri-La for all those feeling disenfranchised by the results sprouted everywhere. It provided that warm and fuzzy feeling for a little while as it was a respite from everything else, but it serves no purpose to delude ourselves that we\u2019re somehow better than our American cousins by the systems we have in place.
\nTo all those focusing their attention on taking to the streets of Toronto this Saturday to protest against Donald Trump \u2013 and there are, in my opinion, no end of legitimate reasons to do so \u2013 I believe this energy and passion would be better spent keeping an eye on politics closer to home.
\nThere is no reason to sit back, basking in our collective smugness to think what happened on Tuesday night couldn\u2019t possibly happen in the Great White North. On the contrary, the seeds are all in place.
\nSeemingly flying under the radar of most Canadians is the ongoing race to replace the impressive Rona Ambrose as permanent leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and, in turn, to become leader of Her Majesty\u2019s Loyal Opposition.
\nThe race to fill the vacancy left by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper has attracted an encouraging number of highly qualified candidates who are big on ideas, brimming over with a vision for their party, who have all seemed to have learned from the beating their party took at the polls last year.
\nOne candidate in the race, however, appears to be taking a leaf out of the Donald Trump victory.
\n\u201cTonight, our American cousins threw out the elites and elected Donald Trump as their next president,\u201d wrote the candidate in question on social media. \u201cIt is an exciting message and one that we need delivered in Canada as well. It\u2019s the message I\u2019m bringing with my campaign to be the next Prime Minister of Canada.\u201d
\nThis past Sunday, the field of Conservative candidates gathered near Ottawa for an informal debate of the issues. Although attending a meet and greet before the discussion, the candidate in question left before the start of the discussion citing an \u201cincident\u201d at their Simcoe County home.
\nLater revealed to be a suspected break-in attempt, an unfortunate and regrettable decision for anyone, their campaign staffers are quoted by the CBC as attributing such a crime as tactics of the \u201cleft.\u201d
\nEvidently some believe the fuel that propelled Donald Trump can be tapped in Canada as well. Unfortunately, there is always a possibility that that is
\nindeed the case, but do you want to
\nallow it to happen? If not, take a few minutes and consider \u2013 possibly for the very first time \u2013 the individuals hoping to be your next Leader of the Opposition, become involved, and have your voice heard well before Canada next goes to the polls in 2019.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Well, it happened. Despite polls showing it a near impossibility, reality TV star Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States. Well, sort of. Once again, despite Hillary Clinton handily winning the popular vote across the United States, the antiquated Electoral College system has put in place a candidate who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-47E","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 03:26:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}