Why the Canadian Government Seems to Hate Canada

There is an old saying, “never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by simple incompetence.” And Justin Trudeau was certainly unqualified for his job as Canadian Prime Minister. Nevertheless, some pundit recently said that the destruction Justin Trudeau has wrought on Canada over the past ten years cannot be accounted for by mere incompetence. It must have been out of malice.

And Carney, boasted of being particularly well-qualified, seems to be continuing many of the same destructive policies. Notably the “elbows up” approach to negotiating with the US and Donald Trump: sheer suicide.

It sounds mad, of course: why would someone want to be Prime Minister in the first place, if they hate the country? Isn’t patriotism, love of country, the natural emotion? 

Yet we can see it is true, not only of Trudeau, or Carnet, but of the left generally. Not only in Canada, but across the developed world. The Canadian “woke” left show open contempt of Canada: its history, its customs, its values. It is the despised patriarchy, a “settler colonial state,” guilty of imagined genocide against First Nations, and of an imagined history of slavery. Statues of its founders must be pulled down, their names erased from public places. Trudeau asserts, “there is no Canadian mainstream.” If not evil, Canada is nothing at all.

Trudeau’s policies are the natural expression of this. Canada must be beaten down and suppressed. And the fact is, this is a sentiment shared by enough Canadians to keep him in power for ten years, then vote in his chosen successor. With similar leaders and electoral successes in other nations.

Where does this weird hatred for established institutions come from? Commentators commonly cite guilt over the past; but I dissent. There is actually little in our collective past to feel guilty about; the guilt is mostly falsified and manufactured. It cannot be the cause.

It is often also described as “self-hate.” I almost used the term myself, and balked. That is not so. Nobody can plausibly accuse Justin Trudeau of having too little ego. It is not a matter of hating oneself, but of scapegoating others, either whitey or men or one’s own ancestors, in order to make oneself seem more important, significant, and virtuous. 

 I think narcissism is again, as so often, the answer. Across the developed world, thanks to modern pop psychology, “building self-esteem,” “self-assertion,” and the doctrine of “unconditional love” in childrearing, we have deliberately bred several generations of narcissists.

If you put a narcissist in charge of anything he has not built himself, he or she will try to destroy it. Why? Because he did not build it. Destroying it makes it fully his, uniquely his possession, and ensures no one else can own it. 

This simple explanation can account for nearly everything that has gone wrong in the culture. It explains the seemingly self-destructive “woke” ad campaigns we have seen in recent years: executives and ad agencies seeming to deliberately alienate their consumers. Like Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney ads, or Jaguar’s bizarrely sexually ambiguous ads. It explains Hollywood movies going “woke” and alienating their audiences by deliberately tinkering with and altering the characters that built their “franchises.” It explains the many “legacy” comedy TV shows that seem to have stopped telling actual jokes and trying to be funny. It explains the outrageous media bias of recent years, grand old newspapers and news organizations destroying their credibility with the public. As David Burge put it, “The Left doesn’t create institutions. It infiltrates them, captures them, and then wears them like a skinsuit, demanding respect.”

If a narcissist has not created something--and narcissists are never creative--they will do their best to infiltrate, capture, destroy, and demand respect for themselves. Trudeau is a classic example. 

Not incidentally, this is also true of the family. If a narcissist has children, he or she will do their best, openly or secretly, to destroy them. Abortion is the most obvious example. It expresses their complete possession and dominance. They will also tend to destroy the legacy of their parents, as Justin has marred the memory of his father Pierre. Like the mobs pulling down statues of the founders. Like Kronos in Greek myth, to the extent they can, they first castrate their own fathers, then devour each of their children as they are born.

Can Canada escape collapse? Perhaps. There are signs of redemption south of the border, at least. Canada always wants to do whatever big brother is doing, with a lag of about seven years.

But it will take several generations to repair the damage.