After suffering a long period of ill repute when it was known as phrenology, the science and art of reading faces, Facial Action Coding Systems (FACS), developed by UCLA psychologist Paul Ekman, is making something of a comeback. One can find YouTube channels and various discussion forums dedicated to interpreting faces, their expressions, as well as body posture and movements. The Smithsonian Magazine notes that “reading faces is an ability latent within us all.” Of course, one must be cautious about making firm judgements in order not to wrongly discriminate or indulge in simple prejudice.
Yet one can often recognize a criminal face. And sometimes, even many times, one can “tell” a person, as if in a poker game, by his or her physical attributes and general presentation, before even doing the necessary research into character, behavior, and associated muniments. Sometimes, just looking, really looking, is all the headstart one needs.
For example, with respect to candidate Obama’s visit to Israel in July 2008, I wrote to my Jewish friends both in Israel and the diaspora, some of them prominent figures in literature, journalism, and government, who were ecstatic over Obama’s comforting July 23 Sderot address to the Israeli people, treating him like royalty. (The YouTube video is now conveniently “unavailable.”) Simply by reading his excessive, consoling manner and listening to his didactic yet syrupy phrases, I assured them that the man was not to be trusted and would assuredly go back on his word. I predicted that he would eventually show his true colors as Israel’s devoted enemy and would do everything he possibly could to harm the Jewish state. (His second visit in May 2013 was a repeat of the first. But the time was closing in when I would be vindicated.)
All that was needed to arrive at this conclusion was a close reading of body language and exaggerated inflection. A modicum of research into Obama’s history, his mentorship by Marxists and Muslims reflexively sympathetic to the Palestinian victimhood narrative, had subsequently confirmed my suspicion. But my initial reading of facial expression, tone of voice, and theatrical sequence of movements would have been sufficient. My colleagues were amused and not a few disturbed by my apparent cynicism. “Israel has a true friend in Obama,” one well-known commentator opined. To another, I wrote: “Nothing this fellow says can be believed, not a single syllable. He is a liar from the womb. How can you not see that?” His reply was to accuse me of advanced paranoia and recommend I consult a shrink.
My debate with Alan Dershowitz, hosted on FrontPage Magazine a few years later, followed the same pattern. Proud of his president for having visited the embattled Israeli town of Sderot and for having Israel’s back, he fell for every lie that escaped Obama’s lips. As with many of my Jewish friends, Dershowitz could not admit he was wrong, but merely kept repeating a series of flabby clichés and fixed talking points, never once addressing my arguments, claiming that Obama was a hypocrite and an enemy in friend’s clothing. I was not surprised. I had long felt that Dersh was not the oracle he thought he was.
Interestingly, I had precisely the same experience when I first set eyes on images of Tim Walz and Maxine Waters before I knew who these people were. I saw immediately they were bad news. In the same way, just looking is how I initially judged our last two prime ministers before I learned more about them through records, biographies, common knowledge, and considerable observation. And I was not wrong.
Justin Trudeau’s mannerisms and gestures struck me immediately as traces of a frivolous personality. His simpering mode of address, his hermaphroditic gait, his flamboyant attire, the self-assured flavor of the arrant nonsense he regularly emitted—all these were tokens of a snowboard instructor, not a prime minister. Piers Morgan in Woke Is Dead slagged him as “the most PC-crazed leader in the history of peoplekind” (Trudeau’s word).
I have written at length about Trudeau on this and many other sites, journals, and magazines. That a country could give its early support and a 66% approval rating to a preening charlatan boggles the mind and beggars the imagination — or would, if Americans had not done the same with a smooth-talking ignoramus like Barack Obama, who thought the U.S. consists of 57 states, that Austrians speak Austrian, and got his Islamic history wrong in his notorious Cairo speech by a matter of several hundred years. Like Obama, Trudeau was superficially attractive, but the inner imbecile was evident to anyone with eyes to see.
Mark Carney is my current bête noire. I knew almost nothing about the man apart from a glancing resumé of his banking career in the U.K. and Canada before I first glimpsed his photo in the newspapers and his presence in video interviews. But even before I studied his records, observed him in action, noted his pro-EU, anti-Brexit stance, and reflected on his interminable and frankly indigestible book Value(s), my first impression was all I required to suspect what we Canadians would be dealing with. The sallow complexion, the oddly feeble carriage, the general cast of insecurity layered by an effect of compensating, overdone seriousness, the weakish, vacant smile — this is what I saw, and it was enough to convince me that the electorate had made the greatest mistake of its collective life. Trudeau was the sorcerer’s apprentice, but Carney was the master. I could imagine Trudeau saying, “Do you miss me now?”
The visible badges of economic stress are everywhere in Canada, thanks to Trudeau’s ineptitude and now Carney’s finishing touches: galloping unemployment, unabsorbable immigration, plummeting GDP, unmanageable debt, a deplorable housing market, wildfire immigration, surrender to indigenous title and land claims, under-the radar carbon tax, industrial slowdown, rising inflation, trade and export shortfalls, and a loving embrace with Communist China.
Carney’s rhetoric is all about virtue and values, but as Former MLA and Alberta Minister of Tourism, Parks and Recreation Christine Cusanelli points out, Carney is “trying to conjure Canadian loyalty by invoking mores and lecturing Canadians on values, as though the role of a Prime Minister is to perform national virtue rather than deliver national outcomes” Of course, what Carney means by “virtue” would be commonly understood as decadence. Cusanelli continues: “Values don’t pay mortgages. Virtue doesn’t strengthen a currency. Symbolism doesn’t keep families employed.” That pretty well sums it up.
And, as mentioned, just one gander at Carney told me the man was problematic and should not be trusted. A recent exchange in parliament is informative. Carney taunted Pierre Poilievre, saying, “I recognize that the Leader of the Opposition is just visiting his riding,” to which Poilievre replied, “I recognize that the Prime Minister is just visiting Canada.” Carney spends much of his time out of Canada visiting Global institutions and arranging trade deals that come to nothing. The man is pure cardboard.
To return to my original theme. Obama, Trudeau, and Carney are, in my estimation, three bad dudes, and the quality of their natures was glaringly evident at first view. Those are the FACS. Such men are peregrine intrusions into a customary political landscape that augurs poorly for the future of our nations. These individuals belong to the plenum of progressivists who do not pay tribute to a country but to a set of values, and these are generally vague, abstract, and self-inflationary. Men like this triumvirate are political liabilities and strike me as human failures.
Study and continuous attention are necessary to confirm or disconfirm an initial impression, but a close and instant apprehension will sometimes turn out to be valid. This is not because the observer is especially astute, but because some people are really like the covers of a book, and all one has to do is look. In such cases, reading the book merely serves as verification.
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