Reading Wednesday

 Just finished: In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience by Helen Knott

I finished this the day I posted about it last week. It was a tough read. Hopeful, in the sense that she gets clean and survives to write the memoir, but it's basically a long trauma conga line until then.

Currently reading: From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way by Jesse Thistle.

A theme is emerging in my reading so far this year (this is because a colleague loaned me a big stack of books; it's not by accident), and that theme is narratives of Indigenous trauma and survival. This is another memoir, and like the last one, is a good book with an awful title. (Publishers. Stop that.) Thistle's story is remarkable in its gruesomeness; his descriptions of homeless life, the illness and injuries one accumulates as an addict, and the brutality of daily life, is visceral and spares no detail, to the point where it's given me some nightmares. 

A cynical part of me wonders at the prevalence of trauma memoirs by Indigenous authors that are, I think, marketed towards a white audience. Knott's book explicitly says, "this is for us, not you," but...is it? I don't know. I'm probably too decaffeinated to really interrogate this. Like obviously the authors get something cathartic out of it—I hope, otherwise yikes—and there's an implicit healing in that these are always recovery narratives about reconnecting with one's community. But I also wonder if it's not somewhat of a ritual for CBC intelligentsia types to use these books, with their emphasis on the individual and on lateral violence, to absolve themselves of responsibility.

(She says, as a CBC intelligentsia type.)

Anyway. It's excellent. It's very powerful. It's a giant trigger though.

A working theory of performative incompetence

Picture your loveable bumbling sitcom dad: schlubby, impulsive, but well-meaning with a buzzkill wife who takes care of herself, takes care of her family, and takes care of him. She's exhausted. After tripping over yet another dirty white tube sock that he's left on the carpet, she finally starts losing it, and bawling on the floor of their living room.

"What did I do wrong?" the husband exclaims.

She begs him to take on more of the housework. But he doesn't see dirt! She's just...better at cleaning. Still, he is well-meaning, and he tries. He loads the dishwasher without rinsing, jamming up the mechanism and flooding the kitchen, while leaving the dishes with huge chunks of caked-on crusts. He sends the kids to school with peanut butter sandwiches because it's the only thing he knows how to make, unaware that the school is nut-free. He struggles to change the baby's diaper and tries to flush it down the toilet. The wife returns from work to more of a disaster than she left, but there he is, with a bunch of long-stemmed roses and an apology balloon.

He tried, you see. He really does love his family!

She decides that from now on, she'll do all the chores, since he is a big baby who just can't do anything right. Cue laugh track.

Picture this, but instead it's an entire provincial government.

See, I'm no longer convinced that incompetence is enough of an explanation for what Drug Fraud's Goon Squad has been doing. It's difficult because as a reasonably intelligent person with imposter syndrome, I have a hard time understanding how people get to adulthood and positions of power while being demonstrably stupider than I am. And as a reasonably competent person under nonstop scrutiny should that competence ever falter, I find it impossible to imagine incompetence going unchecked and unpunished. Ultimately, incompetence has to be a strategy, because no one could be as stupid as the Ontario Conservatives and still manage to, say, pay their bills on time, or tie their shoes, or perform any of the myriad complex tasks of adulting.

Case in point is the new Ontario license plates. No one cares about license plates. No one wakes up in the morning and says, "you know what's wrong with this world? My license plate isn't good enough." No one thought this was a problem that needed solving.

Except Doug Ford, obviously, the heir to Deco Labels, who thinks only in terms of stickers, logos, and beer. He made a huge deal about redesigning the license plates despite the fact that no one cared, and he did. There's only one little problem with them...



Ooops! You don't think anyone will notice that you can't read them at night, do you? Like maybe a cop wouldn't notice, probably.

(Spoiler: The cops noticed.)

These were immediately the laughingstock of the province, because come on, a former suburban hash dealer designing license plates that can't be seen in the dark is hilarious as heck, but what's even better is the degree to which the government is digging its heels in here. The Minister of Government and Consumer Services, Lisa Thompson—yes, the former Goatfucker, demoted from Education Minister to be replaced with the much more literal Goatfucker Stephen Lecce, who has had sexual intercourse with barnyard animals—refuses to admit that they done messed up good here. She is sticking to the talking points, which are completely bonkers.

Let's break them down, shall we?

Talking Point #1: They're "actually very readable."
Reality #1: Have a look at the above pictures, or the many others circulating on the internet, and tell me what the letters and numbers say.

Talking Point #2: “We have gone through a rigorous testing program with our stakeholders to ensure that the new plates for Ontario are durable, are absolutely reflecting the key information that the people need to be seeing,”
Reality #2a: I would think that the key information that people need to be seeing would probably include the letters and numbers that identify the vehicle.
Reality #2b: They're not going to release the results of that rigorous testing program any more than they'll release the findings of the class size consultation.

Talking Point #3: "We are confident in the plate that has been presented. They work—but as with any issue, I'm sure you can appreciate, we welcome feedback."

Reality #3: See above.

Talking Point #4: “I’m sure everyone here today would agree with me, whole heartedly, that the status quo, the flaking and peeling Liberal plates were not an option to stick with."
Reality #4: The old license plates weren't politically branded. They weren't "Liberal" plates, because no government in the history of ever has politicized license plates. It just wasn't a thing until they made it a thing.

Now, do I care about license plates? I don't drive. Though I do care a little bit because ex-anarchist or not, I actually believe that laws around driving and driver safety are very important and need to be enforced better, and it's weird that you can kill someone with a car and it's considered a lesser offence than killing someone any other way. And also because I'm often in positions where cars try to run me over, and if that happens, I want someone to take down the license plate so that the cops can do nothing about it. 

But I'm more interested that they managed to bungle this so badly and just dug right in on the lies and didn't even make a pretence of acknowledging reality. And that's where the performative incompetence comes in, because...there are pictures. And even a stupid person has to look at the pictures and acknowledge what they're seeing. But like our bumbling sitcom husband, there is actually a strategy behind the incompetency. In this case, it's likely to protect cronies who are getting payoffs for the redesign and manufacture, to distract from the fact that all four teachers' unions are striking province-wide on Friday, and to draw attention away from a social assistance privatization scheme.

So while it's funny, it's also...kind of not.

Cue laugh track.