Truth is a hard-workin’ word

The often bizarre response to former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s take on his predecessor, the late Pierre Trudeau, is telling on us as a nation and society.

Mulroney questioned Trudeau’s moral right to lead the country. Trudeau’s wartime fascist background became known about a year ago, though a willfully blind public largely ignored it.

Until Mulroney brought it up again.

Ironically, in coming to the defense of his late boss, former Trudeau cabinet minister Marc Lalonde not only confirmed Mulroney’s recycled charges about Trudeau’s wartime activities and attitudes, but also suggested it was shared by many, many other people – in fact, a whole academic sector in Quebec at the time. Folks sympathetic to wartime fascist and collaborationist regimes.

Given these revelations, we can see just what our veterans faced, especially those from Quebec: enemies overseas and at home. The overall political and media reaction to that part of Mulroney’s recently published memoirs shows what many in this country really think about our veterans.

But it’s more than just being had by an imposter - or imposters - and taking your pick of former prime ministers’ personalities.

It tells us what we think of ourselves.

They criticize Mulroney for wanting to settle old scores – even with the deceased. Well, settling scores is a factor in much of Canadian heritage. It adds to personal – and even professional – accountability. It has its place.

It appears many folks would rather be identified with the dandy, the dilletante. They don’t want to recall their personal or collective working-class background.

This can’t be blamed on Trudeau or his pilot birds. It was a North American thing after the Second World War. I recall the 1970s American sitcom All in the Family, when making fun of working people and their fears and attitudes was just about institutionalized. We here in North America are so sophisticated, aren’t we? So urban urbane.

Pride in a trade or hard work gave way to bigger and better money, doing as little as possible for it. Here in Canada, it was ‘get off the farm or out of the factory.’

Many have long trashed Mulroney’s blue collar heritage. They ignored or downplayed his accomplishments – as a politician and as a person.

In the States, politically, during the 1960s and ‘70s, the pampered elite worked to trash working class Richard Nixon in favour of the sophisticated Kennedys – despite the fact Nixon’s presidency saw more progressive, real legislation than any other since FDR. Typically, in their collective memory, the Americans opt for the superficial.

Now we see the United States – in the midst of a war – enduring the Paris Hilton trend. Again, a popular television show denigrated working people. We have to ask, what’s so damn funny about making fun of people’s work? Any work?

Little wonder we can’t find trades people, why our infrastructure comes falling from the sky every so often. Soon we in Canada won’t be able to build our own ships, make our own steel or mine our own minerals.

Just wait until we dandify ourselves right into being unable to feed ourselves.