[Al Jazeera] Before Donald Trump...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
, there were the brothers Ford.
In many ways, Doug and the late Rob Ford, the travesty twins of Canadian politics, presaged Trump's pestilential presidency albeit on a much less consequential, but still instructive scale.
It's instructive because the success and stubborn popularity of the brothers Ford are a frank rebuttal to anyone, anywhere, who envisions Canada, and more particularly, Canadians, as enlightened antidotes to Trump's seething malevolence.
Indeed, the brothers Ford are proof that with the right help, at the right time, and given the right circumstances, lots of gullible people, propelled, in part, by fear, avarice and ignorance, are susceptible to the appeal of calculating charlatans who exploit that fear, avarice and ignorance for their parochial, largely libertarian, aims.
It was true in 2010 when Rob Ford became mayor of Canada's largest and most cosmopolitan city and it will be true again if, in a few months, Doug Ford becomes premier of Canada's most influential and, arguably, most cosmopolitan province.
Trump and the Fords are infected by the same sinister contagion and employ the same cynical modus operandi disguised as "populism" to infect as many others as possible - whatever the cost to the common good or decency.