Please Advise! Which Crackpot Will Lead the Cons?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

The Conservative leadership race is in its final days with the winner to be announced this Saturday. What's your take?

Signed,

D.N. Baker

Dear Dief,

See candidates run. Run, candidates, run! Watch fingers point. Point, fingers, point! Hear Conservatives spinning crackpot theories about ice cream schemes and the World Economic Forum. Crack, pots, crack!

Apologies — Dr. Steve is merely attempting to follow the advice of Conservative leadership frontrunner Pierre Poilievre, who recently pledged that as prime minister he will simplify government language. No more linguistic confusion once Pierre is in charge. Simple words, simple ideas. Stupid, even. Lately the Conservative race has offered up a steady diet of stupid, especially for dessert. One candidate in particular recently baked up a tiramisu of terror. Call them the Ice Cream Cops, the Popsicle Patrol, the Nutella Narcs, Big Broccoli Brother — evil forces, we are told, are coming for our calories.

The warning came from candidate Leslyn Lewis. During a recent interview with bro guru Jordan Peterson, Lewis predicted that the World Economic Forum could execute a sweet SWAT attack on your next ice cream sandwich. “Even in the United States right now you can go into, I think it's Walgreens, and they have coolers... with locks on it,” she told Peterson. “In the future it's predicted that, those locks, you will be able to put in your digital ID, if you've had too much sugar, that ice cream fridge won't open for you.... And that's what people are not looking at... the promises that have come out of the World Economic Forum.”

Yes, friends — beware the autocrat at the Automat. First the globalists tried to cancel the Choco Taco. Now the Häagen-Dazs Gestapo are planning to blitzkrieg your Blizzard. Let's say one day you go out to buy a Chipwich. Just what kind of chips are they feeding you? Chocolate? Or micro? It's the Great Reese's-Set. So vote for Lewis and she'll ensure the socialist cabal gets its just desserts.

As for Poilievre, he chose to champion a different confectionary controversy. The frontrunner recently offered up one of his folksy videos claiming that, thanks to Justin Trudeau's runaway inflation and the price of eggs, milk and flour, it is now too expensive to make Nanaimo bars in Nanaimo. Poilievre might have chosen to cite the cost of Froot Loops in Kamloops, Wonder Bread in Thunder Bay, Crackerjacks in Chilliwack, perhaps even Metamucil in Medicine Hat. But he opted for Nanaimo bars. And was instantly schooled by Canadians who informed him there is actually no flour in Nanaimo bars. Poilievre may be the favourite to win the Conservative leadership but he'd never make round two of the Great Canadian Bake-Off.

At least Poilievre did not blame the national Nanaimo bar crisis on the World Economic Forum. But he has led the way in demonizing that organization, insisting that under a Poilievre regime no cabinet minister would be allowed to visit its conferences. It's odd, since Poilievre's ideological overlord Stephen Harper has been a favourite at the WEF. But that was before Klaus Schwab's Geneva-based think tank became a favourite fetish item for the tinfoil chapeau crowd. Nowadays the WEF is typically portrayed by the political right as a Swiss watch inexorably counting down to one-world government. (No doubt Conservative candidates are even now scrambling to take credit for B.C.'s recent triumph over that other sinister globe-girdling operation, Swiss Chalet.)

In fact so toxic has the WEF brand become, it is actually interfering with the Conservative voting process. The party's mail-in ballots are addressed to auditing firm Deloitte Canada, which describes itself as a "long-standing strategic partner" of — say it ain't so — that same malevolent WEF. Could it mean an express delivery to electoral fraud? (Rudy Giuliani and the My Pillow guy declined to comment on the advice of their lawyers.) A number of Conservative party members quoted by the National Post expressed concerns about sending their precious ballots to Deloitte. After all, by the time that self-confessed nest of globalist conspirators gets through counting, the winner could be Justin Trudeau.

Much of the venom directed at the WEF employs the standard far-right phrases about globalists and the “Great Reset.” But since Poilievre has called for simple language and clear expression, it's perhaps best to use one simple syllable: “Jew.” To be fair, Poilievre has not appealed directly to antisemitism in his campaign. But to reference one of his favourite topics, you might describe it as a blockchain. Code phrases like Great Reset, New World Order and “global elites” connect up the chain to demonized figures like George Soros, the Rothschilds and Klaus Schwab (who is not Jewish but sounds like he could be, which is close enough), and right on up to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. None of this is very crypto — sorry, cryptic.

There's not much mystery about the leadership results either. Anything other than a clear Poilievre victory on Saturday will indeed seem like a treacherous Deloitte plot. Once Poilievre wins, life will be good. Words will be short. Nanaimo bars will taste funny. And remember, no Swiss chocolate.