The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Is Green The New Brown?

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Unidentified riot control groups in unmarked, mostly green, uniforms patrolling streets outside the White House. What?Plus a potpourri of other "stuff" to get you thinking.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily so there was my line on the cover art for today's episode and in the Instagram and Twitter promotions. And it said, is green the new brown? Now, I know my audience is pretty sharp, so I'm assuming that most of you understood what I was getting at there. But just in case you didn't, brown is the color of the shirts worn by those who were marching in the streets of Germany in the late 20s and 1930s. They were a force to be reckoned with.

Many of them street thugs, really. Who were used to beat people up and to force the way of what turned out to be the governing party. Green is the color of some of the outfits worn by a special, seemingly special group of people who have been marching

or standing by in parts of Washington, D.C. this week, trying to ensure that there were no riots. Now here's the difference between the two. The brown shirts, as they were called, there was no doubt about who they were. They wore the insignia of the Nazi party, and they were there to do the Nazi party's dirty work. Now, the green shirts, and I use that term loosely because I recognize that some of them look more like black outfits than green outfits,

but green is certainly a dominant color for some of them. The difference with them is there are no identification on them. People are still trying to figure out who they are. There's some assumption that they're the kind of riot squads that work in some federal penitentiaries, and they were put together as a group to come into Washington by the Attorney General, Bill Barr. I don't know whether that's true, but that is one of the things that is kind of suggested by a number of credible news organizations that they think that's where they came from.

But you wouldn't know that by going up to them, because there's nothing on them that identifies who they are. It's clear what they're doing there. They're in full riot gear. And they are there to certainly leave the impression that they will move in on those who are protesting in a way that they deem to be unacceptable. So that's the background to is green the new brown and it's a provocative statement to

get people thinking about what we're seeing unfolding in the u. to 48 hours, we have seen a movement away from the president by those who, A, used to serve him, and, B, some who represent the same party. It's just a couple in terms of elected representatives, but that's a start. We haven't seen that before.

And we certainly haven't seen anything like what happened last night with James Mattis, former U.S. Secretary of Defense for Donald Trump, a man who Trump praised. The former general, he called him Mad Dog Mattis, which was one of the names he'd picked up in the military. But Trump used to praise him. This is my guy. We love him.

Mad Dog. But I didn guy. We love him. Mad dog. But I didn't love him for long because Mattis obviously grew unfawned of Trump and Trump grew unfawned of Mattis. They parted ways, I guess, what, about a year ago? And it was over Syria. I think it was over Syria.

I think it was over Syria and the pulling out of U.S. forces there. Mattis thought it was nuts at the time. Anyway, this week Mattis came out full bore after being basically begged by a lot of people to tell the truth about what it was really like working for Trump and what it was like right now, and Trump's threat to use U.S. regular forces against U.S. citizens. Well, Mattis didn't hold back. I'm sure you've read the statement. If you haven't, you should.

Well, there have been others since. Other former military officials. And even the hint, the suggestion on the part of the U.S. Secretary of Defense today, Esper, that he wasn't fully cognizant of what was going on the other day when they gassed the crowds in front of the White House so Trump could do a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church that had been partially set on fire the night before. Anyway, it's interesting what's happening

because this is the first time, and let's see whether it lasts or whether it leads to anything, where there has been a break on the part of former high-level officials, cabinet secretaries, and there could be more, and we'll have to watch that over the coming days, because that could really signal very difficult days ahead for Donald Trump in holding on to power. He's already in a major problem in terms of all the polls that are coming out and the way Americans see his handling of both COVID-19 and the fallout of the riots and protests, marches of the last week. And some of the suggestions as to how this would break out in terms of elections results, even though the elections are still, you know, five, six months away. It's a long time until Americans vote.

And lots of things can change. But right now, between the pandemic and the economy and the handling of these protests, I don't know, that's a pretty difficult spot for anyone to be in. And so Trump is looking like he's feeling the pressure. So there you go with green is the new brown. Moving on. And here is a bit of a Thursday tradition is a potpourri of stuff because I have quite a few little things that I want to mention

that I've noticed in the last day or so that are worth keeping in mind. Remember way back when, when was it? Four months ago, five months ago, when Britain left the EU. After much fanfare and debate and this, that, and the other thing, they left. They broke ties. Their children are still trying to sort out what their relationship is. But I don't know, was that a good time to do it, given what's happened since? Listen to this in the Financial Times today. The European Union is rising to meet the

COVID-19 crisis through a radical financial plan from Germany and France for a new 500 billion dollar fund and a subsequent increase of 750 billion by the European Commission for Recovery and Resilience as it demonstrates solidarity and creates a new financial instrument Hmm. The U.K. is arguably in the worst state of any country per capita as a result of the pandemic. And they're still stumbling around trying to deal with how to deal with it. They just today, I think a couple hours ago, said they would be making it mandatory in a few days to wear masks on public transport.

They're still back and forth on lockdowns. And their numbers continue to be a major problem. But when they see that big stack of $500 to $750 billion being put up by the EU, you must wonder, hey, we could have been there. But they're not. Wuhan, remember, was it two weeks ago? I told you about the fact they'd seen one new case of COVID-19 in Wuhan, which is the place where it all started last November, December.

They'd cleared it out. They'd reopened. There were no new cases reported for, I think, a month, and suddenly there was a new case. So they ordered that in the next 10 days, I think it was 10 days, they would do 10 to 12 million tests to find out how much of a problem this was. Here's the update. And Associated Press reports it as, you know, somewhat positive news. Wuhan tested 10 million people during an unprecedented 19-day campaign,

identified just 300 positive cases. 300 out of 10 million, all of whom had no symptoms and no infections among over 1,000 close contacts of the people who tested positive. That's a pretty encouraging development because, as the AP argues, it proves that a huge swath of a city population can be tested in less than a month

and that the rate of infectious spread appears to be manageable if caught. That's positive news. Still don't know how the heck they did that. So like, you know, close to a million people a day being tested. Now here's one. It's in Wired magazine. And it's back to the UK for a moment,

shows the UK's lockdown is essentially falling apart, possibly furthered by Boris Johnson's top aide, BJ, of course, Bojo, the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Possibly furthered by Bojo's top aide, Dominic Cummings' repeated flouting of the lockdown rules. You heard that story all through last week. As the number of Brits coming out and about had more than doubled in the aftermath of the revelations of Cummings' movements.

And that just shows you the impact a public figure's, you know, ignoring of the rules can have on the general public. Now, here's one about hydroxychloroquine, right? How did it ever get to the point where it was even remotely being regarded as a potential prevention mechanism or cure for COVID-19? Such to the point that even the President of the United States claimed,

although nobody seems to believe him, that he was taking it himself, even against the advice of doctors, some doctors, not apparently his own, that it would help him as a preventative. Well, here's this. In The Guardian, a very concerning investigation from The Guardian

revealed that the WHO and multiple national governments have changed their COVID-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from a little-known U.S. healthcare analytics company, Surgisphere. Okay? Flawed data on a number of different things, and I think hydroxychloroquine is one of them. But listen to this about this company that had the influence it had. Only had a handful of employees.

And they appear to include a science fiction writer and an adult content model. They helped provide the data to a number of studies on COVID-19, written by the chief executive of Surgisphere. Okay, that's where you want to get your data from. What do you make of that? Now, here's something else for you to think about. As you know, I live in Stratford, Ontario.

Not a big city, relatively small city. But I'm told, and I haven't seen the proof of this, but I'm told by people both inside and outside Stratford, that Stratford has the highest per capita rate of swimming pools, both in-ground and above ground, in Canada. Now, I wouldn't know that. I mean, you don't see pools from the street. You see them from the air, but there's not a lot of flights that go over Stratford.

But I'm almost tempted to go out to the airport and see if I can get on, talk my way onto one of the little planes and fly over Stratford to see because they tell you, these people who argue this, that from the air it's just like everybody seems to have a pool. Now, why do I mention that? Well, right now, a lot of people are looking at the summer ahead and trying to determine how they're going to spend it, how their kids are going to spend it. If there are places they can't go that they'd normally plan to go on cross Canada travel or travel to other countries or even in some cases going to a cottage well one way is to have access to a pool

now community pools most towns including this one are trying to determine right now whether or not their community pools are going to be open because it'll be obviously there are health issues there are cost issues and how they're going to do this. But in the meantime, people are looking at ways to have their own pool or to encourage their neighbor to have a pool. And I'm told by a very reliable source, somebody in the pool business, that right now in Stratford,

allegedly the place with the highest per capita rate of swimming pools in the country, right now above-ground pools are sold out for at least 20 weeks. That's above-ground pools. Sold out for at least 20 weeks. That's above ground pools. Sold out for at least 20 weeks. And we're not talking about the little ones that you get a Canadian tire and blow up in, you know, two minutes with one of those hand pumps. We're talking about the big above-ground pools. So that's just on a Stratford level. Why did I look into that? I looked into it because there's a piece in the New York Times today about swimming pools,

that they can't keep up in many parts of the U.S. with requests for pool construction in homes for this very reason, finding a place to holiday this summer and to do it in their own backyard with a new pool. Now, it's funny because what I used to hear about pools is for every pool that's built, there's another one filled in in somebody's backyard.

The pools, you know, run their time. When the kids are grown up, nobody uses the pool. It looks great. Costs a small fortune to keep it looking good. If nobody's using it, why not just fill it in and make it a part of the garden again? But that's not what they're talking about this year.

They're talking about new pools. Lots of them. Maybe some government could be listening to this. Provincial governments or the federal government and have a pool grant. That'd get people working. Let's get some money into pools. Pool companies would love it. All sorts of new pool companies would probably start up

because the demand is so heavy. I still think, this is Canada, man. We should be able to figure out a way to have that pool in the summer turn into a skating rink in the winter. Why can't we do that? I know somebody's going to say out there, and they're going to write to me at the Mansbridge Podcast

at gmail.com. They're going to write, me at the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. They're going to write, oh, no, we can do that. They do that. There are companies that do that. Yeah, so I've heard, but I haven't seen. Okay? Anyway, people are rethinking this whole idea of what to do with summer and how to enjoy it in spite of what's going on around us.

You know, Cynthia said to me yesterday, she said, why aren't they, not why aren't they, but she said, I bet there's going to be a big increase in sales and resales of motorhomes. You know, the big Winnebago's. People pile into one of those, the family, and off they'll go on their Chevy Chase vacation across the country. Maybe. Maybe that'll happen.

Maybe we're going to see more Winnebago's on the road. Maybe we're going to see more Winnebago's in the Walmart parking lots at night plugged in. I don't know. I think it's probably got more to do with the fact that I would be awfully scared of trying to drive one of those. The main thing, I have no problem going forward. My problem is going backward.

I don't know whether I could do that. So if I was one, I'd like this whole idea of the parking lot, the Walmart parking lot, because you can park in such a way that you can drive forward to get out of the place. You don't have to back up. Anyway. You thinking of new ideas on ways to celebrate the summer? Or take advantage of the summer with your family?

What you're doing, let me know. Write me a letter. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. This is Thursday. Tomorrow, you know, it's just another day. But at the Bridge Daily, tomorrow is Friday, which means the weekend special, and your letters, your thoughts, your comments, your questions.

So don't be shy about sending some in. If you have some, we've already got a lot. I got a ton of them last night as a result of the Art of the Pause podcast, which was seen to be extremely popular, both for those who thought the Prime Minister showed real leadership in pausing, others who thought it was all part of his drama background. I'll have some thoughts on that tomorrow when I read your letters.

So, that's it for today. But you know what I say every day. When I thank you for listening, I tell you that I'm Peter Mansbridge, this has been The Bridge Daily, and we will be back in 24 hours.