Does Canada's Prime Minister Actually Exist?

Image from Hackernoon: 

Does Canada's Prime Minister Actually Exist?

​Or is he the product of an oligarch's rich imagination?

And who is (was) his right-hand-man, Gerald Butts, really?

Butts went virtually straight from a degree in English Lit to the job of policy director in 1999 when the Liberals were running the Ontario government, apparently having learned everything it was possible to know about government merely by having organized a federal cabinet minister's papers for a biography that was never written.

After that, he became an indispensable governmental go-to man. Imagine. Who was it that whispered in his ear the words he whispered into the ears of elected officials? I think that's a fair question, given the reported circumstances.

Apparently, simply starting a Ph.D (in what?) can be a point worthy of proud mention, but how it qualifies one to be appointed boss of the World Wildlife Federation, when the Ontario Libs were no longer in power, remains somewhat of a mystery.  Does it seem as if some anonymous entity managing Butts' career simply located a holding spot for him until the rest of a bigger plan took shape?

Can we be blamed for wondering thus?

HuffPost: Who is Gerald Butts - 5 Things to Know about Trudeau's ex-principal secretary

Hmmm ... is the HuffPost article about Gerald or Justin?  I suppose Gerald would have been nobody sans the future of Justin and, my goodness, the vice may also be versa. A veritable Lincoln/Speed connection, but we all know how that turned out in the end.

Who is the string-puller behind this heart-warming scenario?  Who was it that gave Gerald the part of fireman to Justin's pyromania?  It was a tough role to play given the variables.

For one thing, Trudeau was a bit too chatty for his own good:

• "Most people wouldn't think that I also got 98 percentile on my LSATs," Trudeau told HuffPost somewhat jokingly.

He probably thought he was being cagey; leaving it up in the air as to whether or not he did actually ace the LSATs, but forgetting to consider that one could deduce he may well not have taken the test at all.

From LSAC.org: 

• The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is an integral part of law school admission in the United States, Canada, and a growing number of other countries. The test is designed specifically to assess key skills needed for success in law school, including reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, and logical reasoning. 

The probability of such questions apparently worried Butts enough to rush into damage control.

From the Huff Post article:

• Butts requested that the quote [be] omitted. Justin would never have said that if he thought he would be quoted, he said. 

And here is what Butts thinks is a legitimate rationale for the request:

• "We are not in a position where we need to prove to people through some sort of standardized test how smart he is."

"Some sort of standardized test", eh? Yes, by all means denigrate the test; that should work. So what if he didn't have the courage to take it, or if he took it and failed; it was a worthless test to begin with.

The "sour grapes" don't seem to have gotten any sweeter since then.

All one has to do is look at Trudeau's brief and scattered work history before being rescued by the Liberal party in 2008, no doubt on the basis of his being the son of a former mythologized Prime Minister, and the faint hope of a possible antidote to the Harper administration.

Incredibly, it wasn't long before prestigious awards were heaped upon him, including an honorary Doctor of Laws from New York U. With a US stamp of approval, it became immaterial whether or not he could have passed the requirements to study Law.

(But I think it's worth noting that, back in the 70's, I was Assistant to the Coordinator of Graduate Studies and Research in a Faculty of Education, who told me flat out that most secondary school teachers have average intelligence.)

Can't help suspecting it was George Soros who arranged the NYU Doctorate for Trudeau, being himself a generous donor and his own "playboy" son, Alexander, having graduated from there (also with no sign of any level of cum laudes or deans' lists - which surely would have been mentioned if earned).

Designed to impress is a mention that Alexander is currently working on a Ph.D.

Don't forget that Butts "started" a Ph.D. too.

And Trudeau "started" a Master's degree, before quitting to go into politics, so the chances he went anywhere near the LSATs seem rather slim. In fact, it seems almost as if he was just killing time until bigger things became possible.

Don't know if Butts attempted the LSATs, but at least he married a lawyer (Ottawa Citizen), so that's something.

What really grabs my attention in the HuffPost article is Butts taking credit for having devised Justin's eulogy to his father, Pierre.

Which suggests that my earlier creep-out at watching the video was justified; it seemed that Justin was essentially play-acting the whole thing, right down to the dry-eyed, screwed up sorrow face as he paused at the coffin.

The Huff Post continued:

• "I knew this was going to be an important moment for me and for the country," Trudeau told [his biographer] at the time. 

In order to achieve so much, so much else has had to be judiciously omitted.

In case you missed it, here is the full text of Butts' resignation statement.  It pretty much paints Wilson-Raybould as a liar. So, that's both of the top team calling her that -- without actually using the word, of course.

Butts probably believes himself when he says:

• I have served the public interest, not the interests of any individual ...

It's fascinating how so many politicos take credit for absolutely everything except having failed. For instance, without actually saying "Without my help, Wilson-Raybould would have been nothing", he nevertheless takes full credit for her political success, and none whatsoever for her current predicament.

• I want to say a word about my relationship with Ms. Wilson-Raybould. I encouraged her to run for the Liberal Party of Canada, and worked hard to support her as a candidate and then Cabinet Minister.

It seems his degree in English has failed him. He ought to have said, "My past relationship".

Naturally, he ends his statement with the ubiquitous lofty term "public service" as if politicians are missionaries of some sort, never self-serving, and certainly not creative communicators (to put it nicely) who use the gift of gab to garner a certain amount of dubious fame and a huge salary plus expenses.

Politicians, in general, seldom fail to emphasize how hard they labour for the benefit of the common folks, as if all other vocations are vacations.

But how demanding can the job really be if it can be landed through the gift of blarney and connections to money, with a standard education (and no mention of any level of cum laudes or dean's lists - though there would be if they existed) and precious little sustained and relevant outside work experience?

Not to mention that being a calendar boy is somehow considered less of an embarrassment than a delightful career boost.

Well, the calendar boy has demonstrated the Peter Principal, I'll give him that. He can't be promoted; he can only be outvoted in the next election.

And then we'll be saying, "Geez, Justin was bad enough!"