There’s a theory that the current unhinged bent of conservative thought, angry, visceral, illogical, non-fucking-sensical, was bred in the driver’s seat of commuters’ cars, congested, making their way back and forth to work, listening to the lunatic ravings of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. Drive Time A.M. radio feeding a heightened sense of grievance and injustice. What’s with all the traffic?!?! Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Why aren’t we moving?!?!

You know whose fault this is?

All those cyclists and their bike lanes. Snotty downtown elites, looking down on us hard-working suburbanites. The scolds. The environmentalists. Pinko communists. The gays. The feminazis. The affirmative actioners. The DEIers. All these immigrants, coming here, taking our jobs and driving on our roads. It didn’t used to be this bad.

I know, right?

Ridiculous. Cracked and preposterous. Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.

And yet, here we are.

The government of Ontario getting ready to ban the use of speed cameras by municipalities because… because… It’s unfair to drivers who use their best judgment in order to speed judicially. What’s a few kilometres over the speed limit? they demand to know. Kids aren’t even at school right now. So why shouldn’t I be able to blow through a School/Safety Zone, by a couple excess clicks? Where’s the harm in a little lead-footedness? These speeding tickets just show up in the mail one day, out of the blue! And I’m bullied into paying it.

‘Cash grab!’ is the go-to claim, championed by the premier himself, in all likelihood concocted through extensive polling done by his comms team. By using these speed cameras, the unreasoning goes, municipalities are simply reaching into the pockets of hard-working taxpayers in order to stuff their coffers, so to speak. It’s tough enough out there already without forcing drivers to stick to the posted speed limits when they’re racing around at their busy lives.

I know, right?

Ridiculous. Cracked and preposterous. Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.

There’s no way to logically counter that argument because the argument is without foundation. Flimsy doesn’t even begin to describe it. Bad faith comes close. Disingenuous. Without merit. Revealing nothing but pure, undistilled entitlement, and a monstrous disregard for anyone else. Self-centred. Self-righteous. Utterly bereft of coherence. A dead brainer.

At the press conference last week announcing his government’s plans to strip municipalities of the use of speed cameras, in response to a reporter’s statement that studies have shown speed cameras actually reduce driving speeds and improve road safety, and police chiefs and their organizations are in favour of them, “Ford said… he respects both SickKids and police, but speed cameras aren’t working, calling the issue ‘black-and-white’.”

That’s two lies in a single statement and what can only be classified as a real fucking head-scratcher.

Of course the issue of speeding is ‘black-and-white’. You’re either speeding or you’re not. You’re either going faster than the posted limit or you’re not. You either get caught on camera speeding or you don’t. If you don’t speed, if you don’t get caught speeding, there’s no ‘cash grab’ to bitch about.

Of course, it’s black-and-white. Pretty straightforwardly black-and-white. Binary to the extreme.

But what does the premier mean when he’s arguing against the use of speed cameras and says the issue’s black-and-white?

Try as I might I can’t even begin to crack the code of the premier’s words here, even at my most cynical or following the most outlandish interpretation I am able to concoct in my noggin. It makes no sense except maybe as a slip of the tongue. Maybe he meant to say the issue isn’t ‘black-and-white’? Maybe the reporter misheard him? For politicians like Ford, speeding and speed limits are negotiable. Going just a few kilometres over the limit is OK, harmless fun. There’s reckless speeding and then there’s the reasonable kind of speeding.

That’s a grey area for the would-be speeder to wallow in. Going x kilometres over the speed limit (x being whatever the driver determines to be reasonable speeding) shouldn’t be treated as speeding speeding, fine-induced, demerit point speeding. It’s just how people drive. In real life. They shouldn’t be penalized for it. Certainly not by some unthinking, unfeeling technological trap.

As I’ve said here before, and as countless others have pointed out, ad nauseam, it’s a specious argument that few people would use in favour of any other form of lawbreaking. There’s no such thing as a little shoplifting or a little phone scamming. How much is too much hash to sling in a mall parking lot? So why is there such a thing as just a little speeding?

Because there’s politics to play with it. A politics Doug Ford plays expertly. A politics he’s played since his first appearance on the scene, riding the coattails of his late brother. The War on the Car. Ripping up bike lanes. His repeal of license plate fees to the detriment of the provincial treasury. When Doug Ford was first premier of the province, all the way back in 2019, it was politically prudent to grant municipalities the right to operate speed cameras. Now, six years later, once the groaning and moaning started, once the destruction of the speed cameras started, Doug Ford began listening to the loudest, most plaintive voices.

Play to driver entitlement. Hype driver grievance. Get them riled up and angry right where they boil over with rage the quickest. In the driver’s seat. That’s Doug Ford’s meat and potatoes.

So maybe, he did mean to say that the issue over speed cameras was black-and-white. You’re either in favour of leniency toward drivers breaking the law or you’re some proper PC, woke police who pushes their agenda on just regular, aw shucks, hard-working (have I used ‘hard-working’ enough in this post?) taxpayers folk who just want to get home to their families after a hard day at work as soon as they can. There’s nothing in between.

In the end, it’s all just politics to Doug Ford. Law and order is negotiable. Road safety is a nice to have not a need to have. Gut feeling always trumps documented evidence.