It’s just one tweet. But it also seems to serve as such a handy summary of an entire political posture. It came Tuesday via the account of the Progressive Conservative member of provincial parliament for Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington.

There’s a picture, first of all, of a residential street that appears to be in downtown Toronto, the white of the crust of the recent ice storm still on the ground, a line of parked cars on one side of the road, brick detached houses visible in the background. In the foreground, are some branches that the storm obviously severed from a nearby tree, lying in the middle of the road. They are surrounded by yellow caution tape reading “Fire line do not cross.”

Then there’s Macho Man Randy Hillier’s comments, alongside the photo: “At home when branch falls across my lane way I take out my chainsaw and then stack the firewood. In Toronto a day later the road remains closed while they wait for govt.”

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So much of modern Conservative populism is packed into that short message it’s virtually a manifesto: The problem with the world is that these downtown urban elite pantywaists are too dependent on government, see? They’re afraid to roll up their sleeves and pull their own weight, and probably don’t own the power tools to do it anyway. They want the government to do everything for ’em, see, and the bureaucrats roll out so much red tape that they’d sooner string a fire line around a log than just drag it off the dang road.

This is familiar by now: it’s “common sense” Conservatism in brief. Pointing fingers at so-called sophisticated snowflakes who can’t get anything done; finding examples of how elites and bureaucrats needlessly overcomplicate every straightforward job, pointing out how easy it would be if the right people were in charge to just get ’er done.

So smug, yet so simple and so satisfying.

It’s also so stupid.

Look again at the photo. You may notice, as dozens of people who responded to Hillier’s Thank-God-I’m-A-Country-Boy tweet did, that there is a downed power line strung among those branches. Is it live? Possibly — hard to tell from a photo. Hard for most of us to tell at all, since we have no training and have been advised all our lives to stay the heck away from downed, possibly live wires. But presumably the presence of that electrocution hazard, and the preference to have a Hydro crew come out and clear the line safely, is the reason that fire tape is strung out there.

God knows — and Hillier should too since he spends time here in the legislature — that no Toronto driver would typically let some branches get in the way of their commute. Have you seen Toronto traffic? Very few things deter us from driving.

I have seen Toronto residents clear entire fallen trees from the road — I’ve helped some of them do it. I’ve seen them do more: The pointy-headed urban sophisticates in my neighbourhood plow back lanes all winter with their personal vehicles. The people of this city routinely direct traffic during blackouts (with or without their pinkies in the air.) Torontonians build pizza ovens and staircases and natural rinks in parks without waiting for the city to do it. Sometimes our craftsmanship isn’t all that great, I’ll give you that. But it isn’t a short supply of elbow grease that’s the problem.

Maybe, instead, it’s just that we’re smart enough to stay away from wires that could fry us. And maybe that isn’t a sign of a culture of abject dependency or of essential wimpiness. Maybe it’s a valuable survival impulse.

Now, I understand that Hillier is, by trade, an electrician. So perhaps when he heads out to his rural lane to operate his chainsaw among the live wires, he knows what he is doing. Maybe, from his working days, he still has the protective equipment to ensure he doesn’t get killed while he’s stacking up firewood.

Maybe he’s forgotten that most people — out in the country and in the city alike — have little experience handling potentially live power lines, or even recognizing them.

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Or maybe Hillier didn’t see the wire in the photo before tweeting about it. Who knows?

I do know that this is typical of these just-so stories populists often tell: they point at what looks like a simple picture, and suggest a simple solution is obvious. But when you look more closely, it turns out that the “common sense” solution is not only oversimplified, but possibly life threatening, and that the people who said it was more complicated had a point.

Something to think about when reading tweets, sure. And when reading political platforms, too.

Edward Keenan is a columnist based in Toronto covering urban affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @thekeenanwire

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