I suppose there are opportunities to be smug about your accomplishments or good fortune, which, if you are the type of person given to smugness, you predict to your friends, family, and anyone who would listen.
A dictionary definition is having and showing excessive pride in oneself or one’s achievements. Never having done or accomplished much of note, I hope I have never shown any smugness.
I am a bit of a political junkie, watching TV interviews of politicians and the movers and shakers, from kings, presidents, prime ministers, sports heroes and heroines, and entertainers. All this in an effort to keep tabs on what is happening around me locally, nationally, and internationally.
Lately, and I may be slow to the show, I am noticing far too much smugness.
There are some, in my mind, excellent interviewers on CTV, CBC, BBC, and CNN when it comes to politics and events that are shaping our world. Some of the guests are the ones with that smug look on their faces. And it’s not the player who just hit a grand slam because he knows darn well the next time at bat he could strike out. There is nothing worse than eating crow after you think you are the cat’s meow.
Okay, I’ll look up that cat thing later. Being a Liberal most of my life, I am now discouraged by the smug looks of too many of our ministers, especially the primo guy. My gracious goodness, they are in a minority position and miles behind in the polls and they still show up with a smug look on their faces. Maybe it is bravado, but I think not. Perhaps they are all acting. Naw, Gould, the Liberal house leader, is smug to the point of embarrassment.
The prime minister himself has gone from being smug to paranoid. And rightly so. Too many fabrications, prevarications, downright falsehoods, apologies so numerous one does wonder of their sincerity, and the peacock-strutting on the world stages has grown thin. Time to go. And take some of those smug ministers with you. Don’t worry about the backbenchers. We, the electorate, will look after them.
Across the floor that other smug guy who says nothing but axe the tax thinks he has it all wrapped up, but he is wearing very, very thin. If the Libs reboot, and lose the smugness before Christmas and the January election, they could surge in the polls. Okay, that is a pipe dream. I’ll look that up too.
Now take our man Doug Ford here in Ontario.
There is a man who never gets to look smug. He seems to stumble from one little misspoke to another blip, so he must look apologetic. First the green belt, the buck-a-beer, the tunnel, and going back, the Covid vacation home repairs. Okay, the Green Belt thing isn’t dead, the convenience stores have the beer, and tunnel madness is still alive.
Here on the home front, I have been watching, well, observing, our mayor for signs of smugness. None so far, but he has that harried look of a politician under fire. Peter scans the crowd, anxiously looking for familiar faces. After listening to a local political podcast, I realized why the mayor was checking crowd numbers, almost like Don Trump counting the numbers attending a rally. Sorry. Peter is looking to see if any or how many of his council members are in attendance.
The thing is, apparently, according to the Procedural Bylaw, if a quorum of the council is at a meeting or gathering, the ‘council’ is in session. They cannot take unsolicited questions or hear presentations, like Jeez, these hamburgers are really good, aren’t they? It’s the law – when a quorum is present – no questions or presentations that have not been vetted for time and content. Now, this may make some sense at a town hall meeting, but really? I suppose somewhere there is a bureaucrat or councillor with a smug look on their face.
Recalling council meetings some 30 years ago when the public could speak, we quite often had a fellow who spoke about homelessness and mental health. That he put scotch tape on his face to stop air leakage, only made him more of a character. But council heard him out.
A lady who we might now call a ‘bag-lady’ talked about her issues. And the sad thing is, we have those same problems today: homelessness and mental health care. But we can no longer come to council and speak of them without adhering to the procedural bylaw.
Maybe as a society, we have become smug about our accomplishments over the past century, but I wonder. Perhaps Artificial Intelligence will solve our problems for us. Or give us new ones. Just saying.
