Dead Cat Bounce

 

I think it’s worth considering whether Justin Trudeau’s entire career as Canada’s PM has been the Liberal Party’s dead cat bounce.

I’ve long thought Jean Chretien destroyed the Liberal Party by making the party structure dictatorial, entirely top-down, the leader getting to choose or refuse local candidates. This might have been convenient for the leader, but it cut the party off from the grassroots. No surprise that it drifted away from any base over the years, and began to listen only to echoes and its own elites.

That almost already killed it under Ignatieff. It was running on fumes. It has to take a bit of time to kill what had become the Natural Governing Party. That implies a lot of inertia. Even so, choosing Trudeau as leader looked like a desperation move, to keep those yellow dog Grit instincts alive by evoking the sainted memory of his father.

About a generation seems right for the death throes of such a large cultural artefact. You need a full generation of new voters to break the spell. Chretien left office in 2003.

And Trudeau the Lesser never did that well. He lost the popular vote in all but his first election, when he was a novelty and could make the matrons swoon. Against Scheer and O’Toole, both of whom chose the appalling strategy of trying to sell themselves as just like Trudeau. As soon as Canadians were offered, with Poilievre, a clear alternative, the wheels came off the little red bandwagon.

When it works, it works, but the life of a centrist party is always precarious. Maybe more suited to the Canadian temperament than most others, but it can easily be squeezed into oblivion by any passionate disagreement between left and right. The British Liberal Party died, as any real contender, in the 1920s. In Canada, centrist parties have been squeezed out in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

I predict that Justin Trudeau or the federal Liberal Party without him will lose the next election. Nor can they save themselves with any new leader. And I predict they will never return to power. 

Who Replaces Trudeau?

 

As Justin Trudeau’s popularity plunges, people begin to talk about his possible successor as leader of the Liberal Party.

Chrystia Freeland is his second in command. But she is too closely identified with him: if his popularity goes down, hers does too. 

The rest of the cabinet does not look much better. The problem is that Trudeau has been relying on a personality cult, and no cabinet ministers have been able to develop a strong independent identity or following. 

Mark Carnet is mentioned. But he looks too much like Michael Ignatieff, vulnerable to charges of being a carpetbagger; and with untested political skills.

There is no obvious candidate that nobody seems to be mentioning: Jody Wilson-Raybould. This actually follows the typical Liberal tradition: a former cabinet minister who has resigned over disagreements with the leader comes back from retirement to take over. So Jean Chretien, John Turner, Paul Martin.

Raybould has earned a reputation for strict honesty and respect for the rules, which would be the antidote for the odour of corruption and overreach left by Trudeau.

She has remained loyal to the party: ejected, she ran not as an NDP or Green candidate, although she had offers. They would have killed to have her. She took the harder path of running as an independent.

Why do the mainstream media not mention her?

It seems sinister.

The Stupid Party

 

Zippy

Does anyone else remember Zippy the Pinhead? I can’t look at John Fetterman without being reminded of that cartoon character.

Not to mock Fetterman for his recent stroke; but even without it, he would look like Zippy the Pinhead; and the logic of his political positions would seem just as random. And even without the stroke, he would have a remarkably scanty resume for a senatorial candidate. Mayor of a small village; one term lieutenant governor. No significant business or professional experience.

Fetterman

So why did Fetterman, post-stroke, end up the Democratic Pennsylvania senatorial candidate? Can it really be that they had no one better or more visibly sane to put up for election? Apparently so.

The bigger question is why the Democratic Party in the US has such a weak bench. Last cycle, the best they could come up with for President was old Joe Biden, corrupt, a hack, and suffering from dementia. And all they could come up with for Vice President was Kamala Harris, who cannot seem to say anything coherent even with speechwriters. The closest competitor in the primaries seemed to be Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg also seems to be many Democrats’ best hope for 2024. And Buttigieg’s qualification is no more than that he was mayor of a small Midwestern city. Or perhaps they could have chosen Bernie Sanders, older than Biden, unknown before he ran for president, and a senator from a small state. In fact, the second smallest, and one in which even a yellow dog would be elected senator so long as he was a Democrat.

How can it be that, despite the fact that they represent roughly half the population of the US, 150 million odd people, this is the best the Democrats can come up with for leadership?

But it is not so hard to account for if you take into account the fact that half the US population is necessarily of average or below IQ. If they all or almost all vote for the same party, you will have the present Democratic situation: even the leaders will be people of roughly average IQ.  

So the problem of leadership reveals the problem with the Democrats, and the modern left. Their ideas are, as Margaret Thatcher said, simply wrong, and only stupid people buy them. Only stupid people think, for example, that when the government gives out money, it is a generous gift from those politicians, and not coming from their own taxpayer pockets.

Never mind the Republicans in the US. Witness as well the Canadian Liberal Party. The best they can come up with as leader is an impulsive and self-indulgent high school drama teacher. And the word on the Hill is that he is secure in his position, because they have nobody else who could plausibly replace him.

Intelligent people no longer become Democrats, leftists, or Liberals; unless they are on the take.

Unfortunately, unintelligent people rarely know, or accept, that they are unintelligent. Witness the Dunning-Kruger Effect: you need to be smart to know you are smart, but equally smart to know you are dumb. Lots of research shows that, if a gap in IQ exists of more than 15 points, one standard deviation, two minds become mutually unintelligible. The less intelligent will not be able to grasp where the more intelligent is coming from, and is likely to suspect they are crazy or evil. Perhaps a “far-right extremist.”

We are separating out into a smart party and a stupid party. And the stupid party is in power.

Is the Genie Out of the Bottle?

Time's photo. Toga! Toga!.

How damaging is the Trudeau “blackface” scandal?

To me, it is trivial on its face, so to speak. It seems perfectly arbitrary to take offense at someone blackening their face; we see nothing wrong with people whitening their face, like the traditional clown, and then representing people with white faces as foolish. Why the double standard?

But initial indications are that others see it as a big deal. Time magazine first ran it; Drudge Report is headlining it—both American sources, not folks deeply interested in Canadian politics.

It shows Trudeau as a hypocrite: attacking Conservative candidates based on something in their distant past found on social media has been central thus far to the Liberal campaign. At the very least, they’re probably going to have to shut up about that stuff now. All of it backfires now. Can they quickly pivot to another strategy?

There were already signs of panic in Trudeau personally. Paul Wells has represented the Liberal campaign so far as a massive feint, in which Trudeau was largely irrelevant and ignored by his own team, making no major announcements. The real battle was the regular leaks against Conservative candidates. They may have been forced into such an odd approach in the first place because Trudeau was not up to carrying the ball; witness as well his strategically bizarre absence from the Maclean’s debate.

So what’s left if they cannot do this either?

Unfortunately, Trudeau’s expression in the photo looks slightly like a leer, as well, as he embraces some woman from behind. That it is from behind suggests visually, fairly or not, that the physical contact is uninvited.

This may evoke memories of previous accusations of groping against Trudeau. And his callous treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. It all may confirm the public impression that he is just a privileged frat boy who views women and minorities as useful tools or worse.

It even casts a worse light on his costumed clowning during his ill-remembered state visit to India. Wasn’t that a bit of blackface too, then?

It does not help Trudeau either that the leader of the NDP is rather spontaneously brown in the face. A lot of leftward thinkers may feel compelled now to virtue signal their commitment to anti-racism by voting Singh. And Singh naturally has the moral high ground to condemn Trudeau for this in the next debate. It could lead to a devastating exchange; and Trudeau already seems to fear debate. He may grow increasingly erratic now as he tries to medicate himself through the campaign—there is some video evidence that he is already doing so. Some wobbly-kneed public performances.

This sudden snapshot of the Trudeau shadow is exactly what the Tories needed to have a chance at winning the election: voters on the left moving in significant numbers from Liberal to NDP.

I feel sorriest for Pierre Trudeau, whose legacy is being damaged by the self-indulgent follies of his son—as it has been by his wife.

The Liberal Strategy Revealed

Justin Trudeau seems to have declared his line of attack for the next election. Every time now, in the Commons, he is asked anything about the SNC-Lavalin scandal, he responds by demanding that Andrew Scheer denounce white supremacy. At last Friday’s Liberal Party convention in Mississauga, he accused the Conservatives of planning to cut the federal budget, abandon the fight against global warming, and embrace white nationalism.

I expect that the Conservatives would have little quibble with Trudeau’s claims that they want to cut government costs and kill the carbon tax. Fair enough. Here Liberals and Conservatives disagree.

But Trudeau’s attribution to the Conservative Party of white nationalism and white supremacy is dishonest.

Are there any white supremacists in North America? No doubt; but no more than might fit in a clubhouse up some backyard tree. To denounce them is therefore counter-productive, if your intent is to oppose white supremacy. You are giving the position publicity and respectability. You are forcing it to the public’s attention. Some will want to know what all the fuss is about. If it is immediately and self-evidently false, then no harm done. And nothing useful done. In any other case, you are promoting it.

This Trudeau is blatantly doing for short-term political gain—to distract from scandal. Scheer would be irresponsible to do likewise.

There is another fundamental problem with denouncing “white supremacy.” It is the inclusion of that modifier, “white.” To denounce “white supremacy” as a stand-alone item is to imply that other forms of racial supremacy are fine: black supremacy, Asian supremacy, Muslim supremacy, aboriginal supremacy. The problem is not with supremacy, then; it is with whites. That is extreme racism. And should be called out as such.

There is a vital distinction to be made here, between white supremacist and white nationalists. Not the same thing.

Are there any white nationalists in North America? That’s a more interesting question: it illustrates the likely effects of Trudeau’s strategy. Just a few years ago, say 2015, there was apparently also no “white nationalist” movement to speak of in Canada, or for that matter in the US. When the term “alt-right” was first coined and aggressively promoted on the left, the people it was referring to and demonizing were only geeky kids on the Internet playing with memes, just yanking legs. But the aggressive promotion of the term―on the left―seems to have now summoned up such a movement for real. Faith Goldy, for example, seems to be a genuine white nationalist; as was the guy who shot up mosques in Christchurch. Before the left invented the “alt-right,” they probably would not have come out with their views, even if they entertained them in private. It may well have been the left that suggested to them that others apparently felt the same way. All I can say about that is that I followed conventional right-wing news sites and aggregators throughout the relevant period, and heard for months not a peep about the alt-right, nor any views endorsing anything like white nationalism. For months, all the noise about it was coming exclusively from left-wing sources. Only eventually did right-wing sources begin to be heard—all either dismissing the alt-right, or condemning it. 

An early "alt-right" meme: the flag of Kekistan.

Nice job, lefties. White nationalism is your baby, not Scheer’s.

Now Trudeau and his like are hell-bent to up the ante to promoting white supremacy. And, by declaring any view on any issue and any person with which they disagree “white supremacist” and “alt-right,” the left suggests real white supremacy is equally reasonable. If everyone is Hitler, including really nice people, what’s wrong with Hitler?

And the white nationalists are creatures of the left, of the Trudeaus of the world, in yet a third and more direct sense. Nationalism of all kinds, or, more accurately, tribalism rather than nationalism, has been aggressively promoted by the left over the past forty years. They call it “multiculturalism,” and even make it legally mandatory. They have long insisted on black tribalism, and Cree tribalism, and Inuit tribalism, and Iroquois tribalism, and Innu tribalism, and Muslim tribalism, and Quebec tribalism, and Irish tribalism, and Greek tribalism, and Ukrainian tribalism, and Sikh tribalism, and Hispanic tribalism, and Portuguese tribalism. Even gay tribalism, and transgender tribalism. It is obviously arbitrary, discriminatory, and dishonest for them to object only to white tribalism. They have been promoting it all along, the only distinction being the substitution of the word “white” for more specific ethnic categories.

It’s Trudeau’s tarbaby. Scheer and the Conservatives have nothing to do with it, and they have no call to sully their hands with it. It is up to Trudeau to denounce tribalism in all forms.

Nor is this playing this “white supremacy” or “white nationalism” card hard likely to work for Trudeau. To begin with, it seems unlikely that the public are gullible enough to be distracted by this from the SNC-Lavalin scandal. But even if they are: is it even by itself a winning issue? The Liberal government has suddenly reversed its policy on accepting refugees. From open borders and an open invitation, now they are proposing to deport everybody. Their own opinion polls are apparently telling them something. Apparently unhindered by principles, they are pandering to “white nationalism” themselves.

Hard to do that while scapegoating the Conservatives for hypothetically wanting to do the same. And it looks as though, arrogant and utterly out of touch, they are trying just like Hillary Clinton to insult as “white nationalists” and racists the very average voters they are expecting to vote for them.

Reasons Canada is Not Ready for Self-Government #5: Justin Trudeau

Sieur Justin Trudeau

Although he was the scion of a wealthy Quebec family, and a well-known public intellectual in that province, in terms of federal electoral politics, Pierre Trudeau came pretty much out of nowhere in 1967, when he was appointed to Pearson’s cabinet, then elected Liberal leader the next year.

So what exactly, he was asked, were his political beliefs?

Trudeau claimed his ideology came from Plato’s Republic.

This seemed to please everyone; it dodged Marxism, and sounded impressively intellectual.

But what does that actually mean?

Plato’s republic was not a democracy. He called for an aristocracy in which leaders were trained from infancy for the role. He also held that there should be no private property, women and children should be held in common, and the lower classes should be kept ignorant and indeed lied to if this is in the interests of the state

Trudeau, in short, was an aristocrat, in all but title, and he was claiming his class privilege to rule.

Canadians thought this was great.

A generation later, the Liberal party has turned to Trudeau’s son to take up his mantle of leadership. Appropriately enough, Trudeau fils has no qualifications for the role whatsoever, except the traditional one of being to the manor born. As Liberal leader, he follows Bob Rae, who follows Michael Ignatieff, who follows Stephane Dion, who follows Paul Martin Jr. – all from well-established families, New World gentry. In Ignatieff’s case, Old World gentry as well. (Thomas Mulcair and Jack Layton are from the same mold, as was John Turner).

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with being an aristocrat. And there is nothing wrong with electing an aristocrat. Winston Churchill and FDR were both blue of blood, and they did well enough for their respective countries.

But in the usual order of things, for an aristocrat to successfully contest an election for the Commons, he is expected to renounce his hereditary privileges and publicly declare himself a democrat at heart.

Pierre Trudeau, Compte d'Outremont.

In Canada, there seems to be no such need. Trudeau pere never bothered to conceal his respect and affection for Fidel Castro. Trudeau fils has recently openly expressed his admiration for dictatorship as a more efficient form of government. He still rides high in the polls, and the Liberals just did very well in four byelections.

Canadians would apparently be happy if relieved of the burden of thinking for themselves. They’d rather be ruled without consultation by a self-appointed, hereditary elite.

And democracy is just not the kind of thing you can force on a people.