Downfall

 

Many commentators are asking how Trudeau and the PMO could have been so clueless as to think that Chrystia Freeland would cheerfully agree to reading a Fall financial statement she disagreed with, and then be replaced as finance minister the next day, for a position without portfolio. And being told this over a Zoom call! And without having any assurance from Mark Carney that he would take over!

The answer is narcissistic rage. 

Trudeau knew he was about to lose power. The polls show it, and now Trump was about to drop the hammer.

As M. Scott Peck pointed out, when a narcissist is challenged, and sees no exit, they lose touch with reality, become psychotic. Their world-view is in the first place based on a delusion, of their own superiority. Panicked, the imperative was to prove to himself that he still had power, by exercising it on someone else ruthlessly. He had to kick the dog, beat his child, see someone else entirely under his power suffer.

Freeland looked like a suitable scapegoat and victim, precisely because she had always been so loyal.  It would be most cruel, then, if he turned on her, and most hurtful.

Was it liable to blow up the government? Trudeau was not going to care. He knew he was going down anyway. His instinct was to do as much damage to others as possible as he went. Make it as spectacular as possible, to stay special. Best if he could destroy Freeland, destroy the Liberal Party, and leave Canada in the worst position to negotiate, on the way down. The narcissist, if he must lose, will do his best to take the world with him. It is the way a school shooter thinks.

What might Trudeau do next? I think it would be most characteristic for him not to prorogue parliament and step down, allowing the Liberals to choose a new leader. Rather, it would be to use the one power he has left: to go to the Governor-General and ask for dissolution and an election himself, or concur with Poilievre's call for a special sitting of Parliament. He's going down anyway. This is his chance to stick it to the Liberal Party, to those in the party who want him gone, and to the leadership hopefuls. It would also take revenge on Jagmeet Singh, who seems to be counting on the Liberals stalling by proroguing parliament to avoid a non-confidence vote until February, when Singh's pension kicks in.

Let's see.