It didn’t take long for the BATs — Boys At Timmy’s — to go sour on Mark Carney.
That’s not entirely accurate though, because in order to go sour on something, you must first have had some, albeit grudging, degree of sweetness, although that’s way too strong of a word to apply to the hard men who hold court at Tim Hortons franchises across this great land every afternoon of the week. Long accustomed to being the primary political thinkers in their respective communities, they never really took to Carney in the first place. Instead, when they saw the political winds shift biblically from the Conservatives to the Liberals, they decided to hold their fire and seek cover, at least and until their natural instincts of baked-in oppositional thinking kicked back in.
To see them, and to hear them rise from the metaphorical ashes and begin their campaign of perpetual sour grapes is sort of like watching a healthy ecosystem re-balance itself, like a creek snaking its way through a modern subdivision. Except for the healthy part.
There would be no Tim Hortons without these men. These are the kind of men who give the men at the Horton Dump a bad name. They don’t just show up to dump garbage, but go even further in spreading it as well. And unlike the boys at the dump, they show up every day, every single day, without fail, life support systems and workers in tow if necessary. Without fail, 365 days a year.
These are the guardians of Canada, the self-appointed heroes of our great nation, angry at so much of what they see in life, just like a bunch of, well, old men.
I’m not going to defend a prime minister, and why should I? What would I get out of it? Nobody throws any gold in my direction for attempting to be politically level-headed, which makes perfect sense because level-headedness is not a trait anyone seems to be looking for in their political thinkers these days.
You can imagine the cognitive dissonance, the sheer confusion of finding out that something out there, something ‘bad” out there, wasn’t Justin Trudeau’s fault, but rather Mark Carney’s?
It’s a lot to take in.
The BATs are howling with renewed vigour because they feel that the prime minister “caved” to the Americans by walking away from a digital tax the federal government had levied against the big-box American tech giants that have overwhelmed the Canadian space without any regard for the harm they cause to many established Canadian ecosystems, mostly in the area of impartial and independent media. These are the men who would be apoplectic in their opposition to that same digital tax in the first place, but are now using it as an excuse to label the prime minister as being weak, or of not being a strong enough negotiator. They don’t say who’d they rather see negotiating on behalf of Canada, or who this “tough” leader ought to be, because that’s not in the mandate of the double-double crowd. Positive, well-informed discourse is not on the menu here, because that dog ain’t never gonna hunt with this bunch.
They’re nothing compared to the loser with the F**k Carney flag, a flag seemingly already in production despite the fact that the election was just two months ago. Waving it around with that nerdy look on his face, you can just see how delighted this guy is, no doubt thinking that he’s atop a wave of similarly-minded losers who feel it’s okay to inject visible displays of crude profanity into our public discourse. You kinda get the sense that this guy was a loser his entire life, and that this, the flag waving, is how he’s chosen to define himself. He strikes me as one of those annoying kids who doubles-down on the annoyance since he’s resigned to the fact that such annoyance is all he’s got, so he might as well lean into it.
An incredible amount of psychology lurks behind anyone waving such a flag.
And speaking of flags, I think we may have successfully taken ours back from the Fringe Folk, that band of rebellious malcontents who co-opted our national symbol just so they could fit in with the dirty-diaper crowd.
No more ripped flag in the front window of Edward Jones. No more cabals of Convoy-loving fan-kids occupying the parking lot of a local Tim Hortons. No more Canadian flags lying on the aisle floor of my local Metro, while others hang in disarray throughout the store and in the store windows.
Instead I see people treating flags with respect, almost as if they were proud to be Canadian. It’s a bit ironic that the shift was more than likely a response to the predations of Donald Trump on our economy, or maybe it has to do with the “quiet” that’s followed the political hiatus of Pierre Poilievre. Regardless of the reason, it’s nice to take in, especially since we know Poilievre will be back after August 18, so to Canadians far and wide, please enjoy the moment.
Sometimes, we tend to let those who represent our base instincts become the loudest voices in the room, and all too often the only voices in the room. We diminish ourselves when we do this.
Recently, it seems that we’ve been entertaining some thought and opinion that is less reactionary, less conspiratorial, and less angry. As such, the political temperature has come down to a noticeable degree.
But the BATs cannot allow this. This is their raison-d’etre, their purpose for being. Without the negative narrative, without the bitching and complaining, what would be left? Where would we be? What would be the point of getting out of bed in the morning?
I, too, am an old man.
But when I go to Tim Hortons, I go for the coffee and the apple fritter, all of it kept secret from my doctor. I don’t attend to be enlisted in a society of gut-twisted rage and discontent directed toward the government.
Sorry, I should clarify: Rage and discontent directed towards the Liberals. When the Conservatives are in power, these same men will have nothing to say about the government, mostly as a face-saving mechanism that they themselves are unaware of. Instead, they’ll direct their anger at the Liberals, and to a degree the New Democrats, particularly if that latter party is led by a guy wearing a turban.
In a way, you have to admire their consistency and their predictability.
But that’s where the admiration ends.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 