Words matter. These are the best Neil Macdonald Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The word nationalism, to most people, has a virtuous whiff; historically, it’s been conflated with terms like patriotism and loyalty and solidarity with one’s civic tribe.
The fact is, no modern president, Democrat or Republican, has shown the level of contempt for taking questions from the media that Stephen Harper has demonstrated.
In fact, American presidents never apologize for what America does in war, because in the American mind, all its wars are defensive, always fought from the high moral ground, always good versus evil.
I saw a bumper sticker once that stayed with me: ‘God help me become the person my dog thinks I am.’ I don’t have the heart for this. Meaning, of course, that I’m the failure.
So America’s president now says most Jewish American voters are either ignorant or disloyal. It’s such a dreadful thing to say, so heavy with historical hatred and violence, that it’s utterly unsurprising in U.S. President Donald Trump’s mouth. And his supporters nod and say he’s right.
As stupid as it might sound, older people everywhere would probably be better off if they’d abandoned prudence and borrowed more. That is obviously not what the central bankers or our political leaders want. But that’s the situation they’ve created.
Very deliberately, the central bankers have punished savers, pushing interest rates so low that any truly safe investment – and older people are always advised to play it safe – yields a negative return when inflation is factored in.
The ‘vote for me because the other guy is scary,’ nana-nana-poo-poo stuff I just find useless.
Barack Obama actually grew up black in America. He knows a thing or two about being judged by the color of his skin, rather than the content of his character.
Quibbling over the definition of genocide does nothing but help obscure the long history of vicious racism and undeniable suffering of Indigenous people in this country. It’s bad enough whatever you want to call it.
I cycle like a fiend, but I can’t even sit through the highlights of the Tour de France.
Certainly no university president, at least to my knowledge, has ever stood up and said ‘this land is unceded, meaning it’s not ours, so we’re going to give some of it back.’
I am deeply sympathetic to Indigenous treatment at the hands of white society.
Politicians pose and grip and grin, and mouth blandishments, and, like the beloved Arab leaders, are careful to say nothing. The prime photo op directive, it seems, is to say absolutely nothing.
There’s a reason the United States opposes the very existence of the International Criminal Court, at least where American war crimes are concerned.
Moderation is regarded by the Republican base with suspicion.
Trump’s direct predecessor, Barack Obama, never attacked his own generals or officials on Twitter, and never referred to war criminals as heroes.
A white nationalist would claim that flying the confederate flag on a state building is an expression of cultural history, rather than racial sentiment. A white nationalist would claim, as the television host Megyn Kelly once did on Fox News, that Jesus was white, and, by implication, God, too.
Resist, however peacefully and even in your own home, and heaven help you, no matter what your skin color.
And what are the Liberals’ election talking points, in this age of environmental insecurity and economic anxiety? That Andrew Scheer is scary.
The other danger of the Snowden disclosures, of course, is that they reveal methods that should make any sensible person more careful about what he or she says on a cellphone or landline, or in an email.
Conservatives generally think it’s best to take enemies at their word, to believe their bombast and threats and make preparations, rather than dismiss them as crackpots and regret it.
Fortunately for Canada it is part of the so-called Five Eyes network, along with the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand. These nations are in fact so integrated that they effectively comprise a single colossal listening organization, the most powerful in history, with America in charge.
Among other things, Netanyahu is a master of timing. His emphasis on irrationality coincides with the annual burst of anti-Israel, anti-U.S. malevolence, delivered from the podum of the United Nations by Iran’s bombastic and somewhat clownish president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Elizabeth Warren fully intends to change the system, and says so. When she said how good it felt to be with working people in a workers’ hall, you knew it wasn’t a platitude.
Some economists seem to think that only a credentialed economist has the right to be utterly wrong about an issue of economics. Their contempt for amateurs – columnists with broad audiences, for example – would sear the lungs if inhaled.
In the U.S. – yes, sorry, the U.S. – surgeons and doctors usually give you their cell phone numbers, and tell you to call anytime if anything goes wrong. They often call to follow up after a visit, or go over test results. They have email.
Trump’s America is a midden. To hell with it. I am glad I don’t live there anymore, and doubly glad to read about unlicensed barbers and annexes to grand old Ottawa hotels and the terrible dishonesty of the Canada Food Guide.
White nationalism is about keeping power white. Yes, yes, there are minority groups represented among Justin Trudeau’s ministers, but they were all given jobs by a white guy.
Trump is the white evangelicals’ version of V.I. Lenin’s ‘useful idiot,’ a character who is helping achieve their apocalyptic fever dreams, but who will perish along with the rest of us as the faithful perch in the clouds.
Our virtuous system is already corrupt. Does anyone seriously think that cabinet ministers or captains of industry or powerful officials wait in the same lines as the rest of us?
The plain Canadian fact is that relative to other Western democracies, the U.S. in particular, there isn’t much difference between our two main political parties.
Trump cannot be re-elected without the votes of evangelical Christians, a group of people who, because of their heated eschatological dreams, are simultaneously capable of blindly supporting Israel and regarding American Jews with suspicion.
Trump is a travelling freak show, and bound to say or do something laughably stupid wherever he goes, so, because he’s president, he’s news.
The hungry little radge never takes a vacation, which is why, when legislatures aren’t sitting and other news-generating institutions are on summer schedule, assignment desks will pounce on anything that even smells like news.
In early 2008, before the criminal greed of America’s mortgage and investment bank industry nearly destroyed the world’s economy, the balance sheet of the U.S. Federal Reserve stood at about $870 billion.
During my years in the United States, I met a lot of evangelicals; they comprise a quarter of the American population, and are utterly unlike most Christians you’ll encounter in this country.
Maybe the Tea Party dream is coming true, and the next Republican presidential nominee will be a blunt-object, red-meat down-the-line rightie.
In Trump’s lizard political brain, all Jews should unconditionally support Israel, so all American Jews should support him, the greatest supporter of Israel in the history of America and Israel.
I am grateful to hockey. As a CBC employee, I would be foolish not to be. Hockey Night in Canada probably pays a good chunk of my salary.
People are told in their churches to vote Republican. I’ve heard pastors say it from the evangelical pulpit. Congregants are actually told that lower taxes and less government is the Christian way.
Governments, many of them European, are actually offering – and investors are buying – bonds that are worth less at the end of five or 10 or even 30 years than their purchase price.
Like Donald Trump, Trudeau is in high office because of how the system groups and allocates votes. No wonder the Liberals broke their 2015 promise to reform the system and bring in proportional representation.
But that’s the way America rolls nowadays. Consensus, laws and treaties are out. Smug, religion-soaked majoritarianism is in fashion. It is not coincidence that Bible study is returning to American public schools.
