Is Trudeau Panicking?

Standing tall.

In another sign of our fractious times, Colby Cosh has declared in the National Post that Justin Trudeau is “losing his marbles”; that he is “paranoid and unhinged.”

Unfortunately, I fear Cosh is right; and such things, impolite and ad hominem as they seem, may actually need to be said.

What prompts this for Cosh is Trudeau’s response to a recent letter signed by six premiers, warning that his proposed Bill C-48, effectively prohibiting new pipeline construction, will damage national unity. The Senate apparently agrees with them, and, in bipartisan consensus, has called for significant amendments to the bill.

Instead of any hint of compromise, Trudeau has declared that, by warning of threats to national unity, the premiers are threatening national unity. The Senate is threatening national unity.

It seems a classic example of hysterical denial. The polls, not incidentally, show that the premiers are exactly right. There will be hell to pay in terms of popular sentiment in the West for separation if the bill goes through. It seems even the nation is threatening national unity. Trudeau is simply in full denial of objective reality, and he is “projecting” his faults on others.

Cosh does not mention it, but it seems to me the current Liberal push to reintroduce section 13 to the Human Rights code, criminalizing “hate speech,” is similarly hysterical. The obvious suspicion is that the real aim is to criminalize dissent. It is the typical response of those in full denial to any criticism: “Shut up! Just shut up! Shut up or I will hit you.”

So was Trudeau’s heavy-handed treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. A sensible man, it seems to me, would not have pushed it to the point at which Wilson-Raybould and Philpott would resign from cabinet. It looks as though the game was never worth the candle. There seem to be a series of points at which Trudeau might have defused the crisis, and instead chose to “act tough.” He kept doubling down.

So too with Trudeau’s frequent condemnation of other governments on the international stage. He has burned up a lot of Canada’s good will elsewhere by acting as if Canada were some world power, with the right to comment on internal affairs anywhere. Why, other than to feel important?

It is perhaps as Aeschylus says of Zeus in Prometheus Bound: “his rule is always harsh whose rule is new.” That is, more broadly, repressive, arrogant, and inflexible reactions are signs of a fear of loss of control. Trudeau was from the start underqualified for his position. Panic is probably his instinctive reaction. To steady himself, he probably leaned on a few trusted advisors. He lost those advisors in the SNC-Lavalin scandal. It forced them to take the blame and resign. Now he truly has no idea what to do, and so his reaction is to cover this by acting tough. He is no doubt doomed now no matter what, in the next election. The danger is that he can smash an awful lot of china before then.

It seems to me that something like the same dynamic must also be behind the current censorship crackdown in and by social media. Google, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest seem to be acting directly against their own interests, and acting at the same time abruptly and erratically. Their recent response to Vox demands to censor Steven Crowder seemed flip back and forth hour by hour, as if they were unsure what to do. They are since resisting giving reasons for their decisions.

They have to somehow know they are doomed. They must be hearing footsteps. And this is after all altogether likely. High-tech businesses are intrinsically vulnerable to sudden fall, as technology moves on. Facebook should know; they suddenly and swiftly rose by imitating and knocking off MySpace. Google should know. They largely achieved their rise to dominance by knocking Microsoft off their pedestal. They must now see some new technology coming down the pike that makes their business model unsustainable. Some technology that they cannot co-opt by either purchase or imitation. They are flailing about in panic as a result. They feel the instinctive need to control the flow of information, because the information to come is soon not going to be to their advantage.

“Shut up! Just shut up! Shut up or I will hit you.”

More generally, this explains the hysterics on the left, which is to say, in the party of the professions. The professions as a whole are in trouble, and they know it. They are technically obsolete, in many cases—as we have surely already seen with journalism. And they are going to kick and scream and clutch the carpet, like Trudeau is, and stuff any silverware in their pockets, as they are dragged by divine Providence out the door. I’m afraid they may spill blood.

We live in what the Chinese might say are interesting times.