Alice Munro, truth-teller; long may she reign
Our political culture, which is both an outgrowth of and feedstock for the larger culture, is ill — gangrenous, even. But what is the disease, and where is the cure?
Among the many delightful aspects of Alice Munro’s bagging of the Nobel Prize for literature was the sheer relief it provided, however briefly, from the rest of the news. Why? Probably because this was justice — a hard-working, gracious and gifted woman, recognized internationally after a lifetime of dedicated service to her art — which is, at root, about telling the truth. How often does it happen that truth-tellers are rewarded — or the corollary, that liars and dissemblers are held accountable?
In Washington, D.C., as the rest of the world looks on in horrified fascination, leaders of the planet’s greatest democracy are playing chicken with the global economy — in other words, the livelihoods of billions. No one really believes the impasse will result in the U.S. defaulting on its debt — that would be unimaginable, an economic Armageddon. Yet even the fact that U.S. President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner have taken their battle this far — in particular, that Tea Party Republicans believe there’s profit to be had in holding their country, and by extension the world, hostage — is astonishing. It is government by concussion grenade, in the centre of global power.
In Canada, meanwhile, we have the Rob Ford, Dalton McGuinty and Mike Duffy sagas — a trifecta of dissembling so broad that it begins to merge into white noise. As a colleague said to me a few months back: How long can anyone maintain apoplectic outrage? After a while you have to move on. And so we do. But the billion-plus dollars of Ontarians’ money wasted — stolen, in effect — by the former McGuinty Liberal government, as it shuffled gas plants three years ago, in a bid to keep its majority — is real. It must be paid. McGuinty will ease gracefully into retirement, as senior politicians do, authoring books and giving speeches. Working Ontarians will pay his monstrous tab.
News that Sen. Mike Duffy allegedly paid a buddy $65,000 from the Senate purse for “consulting” on matters such as obesity and the ineffable nature of Conservativeness, has caused barely a ripple. Why? No one can be surprised, any longer, by tales of the ol’ Duff. Nothing is beyond the pale. There is a blanket assumption now that the Senate is a nest of thieves, and that elected politicians are little better. Ironically, that provides an odd blanket of cover, resignation being easier to manage than anger. There’s resigned acceptance now of the Harper government’s strategy of simply ignoring every difficult question about the Duffy mess. There is no notion of the public’s right to the truth. In Ottawa today truth is a quaint anachronism.
And how are we to fathom the continuing survival of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford? His “spectacular” economic record, says Bay Street lawyer and Ford fundraiser Ralph Lean, trumps “outside things,” namely the mayor’s reported associations with criminals, and the fact he’s been under covert surveillance by his own police force. Never mind that the carefully constructed image of bootstrap, ordinary-guyness that surrounds and protects Ford has been smashed into a million bits by the revelations that began last summer. Never mind that Ford, like Harper, like his former chief of staff Nigel Wright, like Duffy, like McGuinty, has mastered the dark magic of just bulling through, without ever tackling fair questions head-on. Ford is a pol, right? So of course he’s off. He’s just a little more colourful about it than most.
The glue that holds this together — the connecting filament that unites these figures from different parties, with very different political persuasions and constituencies — is, simply, amorality. More precisely it is the certainty that irresponsible, dishonest or incompetent words or deeds by a politician have no real consequences. They can dissemble and abuse the public trust with impunity. If the theft is of a billion from the public treasury, as opposed to, say, $75 from a convenience-store till, there’s no penalty. Twitter gets mad for a while. Then everyone moves on.
Now: Can any of this surprise us, in a broader culture that elevates the evil genius of Breaking Bad’s Walter White, or the evil genius of House of Cards’ congressman Frank Underwood, or Dexter, or … you get the picture. Everywhere in pop culture, TV and film, there is a soup of amorality — postmodernism taken to its logical conclusion. This isn’t to impute causality, just that it’s all of a piece, and that, short of laws imposing fines or jail terms for politicians proven to cheat and lie, they won’t start speaking truth. The decline will accelerate, because the bar is already so low.
So this is why, when a decent, unassuming, hardworking — dare we say oldfashioned, she’s not even on Twitter — small-town Ontario truth-teller such as Alice Munro receives one of the world’s highest honours, we can only say, hurrah. Good for her. And long, long may she reign.