Oh. Canada?

Back in the 90s when the Clinton impeachment circus was underway I formulated my thesis that I called "America Inside-Out."  The premise was that while some behaviors normally associated with public acts were being driven into the silent regions within people, emotions that were normally internal were being made public in a big way.  The behavior of  Republicans in the impeachment frenzy was proving at least the second half of that thesis every day.

It might be simpler now to suggest that what we in the "general public" repress from our behavior gets expressed by public figures.  It used to be Hollywood stars and their affairs and vice.  Now it's political leaders (and sports stars.)  There is still that additional level of paradox when public officials (our representatives and those in charge of governing us) act out of their raging unconscious, almost as a matter of course.

In the U.S. this has led to what is now normal: one major party and chunk of the media operating entirely on fact-free emotions, making assertions that are easily and repeatedly proven not to be true.  It's irrationality raised to the throne, where I suppose it's been before.

Now comes Canada, the model of rationality in contrast to our chaos.  I haven't traveled there in some years, but I retain the feeling of awestruck joy experiencing the clean efficiency and calmness of the Toronto subway and Air Canada.  Even the funky Vancouver buses (and drivers) were humane and they went everywhere, cheaply. Calmly friendly, Canada was the place where people knew what they were doing, and they kept thinking about how to do it better.

So it comes as a very rude shock to see the current Mayor of Toronto, an admitted public drunk and as of today admitted crack smoker, though he allowed that he doesn't really remember it due to his drunken stupors.

This might seem to be a very public inside coming out, with the force of so much repressed feeling.  But I don't think it's sudden.  I don't follow Canadian politics closely but thanks in part to an old friend and one of this site's most faithful readers, I have some sense of what's been going on.  At least part of it might be described as the U.S. political contagion finally moving north.  Rabid right irrationality has infected Canada, east to west, or at least it seems so to me.  In Toronto specifically, it's dominant in the suburbs that have only recently been included within the Toronto electorate.

That doesn't entirely explain the Mayor of Toronto.  Because what is still inexplicable is not so much the man as how Canadians of Toronto could possibly have elected him.