Over the Easter Long Weekend, I had the good fortune to see a very close friend of mine who has long moved away to more urban pastures. He left for opportunities in music as well as culture, and his politics do not coincide with mine in the slightest. We haven't agreed on political issues for over a decade, proving that one can be best friends with an opponent. Yet this weekend we both had a good laugh of derision over Justin Trudeau.
There are readers of this paper who are convinced that I am a plant by the alt-right or another nefarious group and, because it makes for good press, I don't mind playing up my role as the token reactionary. But it bears repeating that when the Right of Centre guy is sharing a laugh with a leftist from Vancouver about our most progressive prime minister ever, no amount of polling should reassure anyone in the Liberal Party of Canada.
Of course there are a variety of possible answers to this shared derision. But let us make one thing clear: this man is losing respect from every group the short pants brigade focus tested in the run up to his leadership and then electoral success. Furthermore, in three years of ruling Our Home and Native Land, it would appear that Trudeau's single most notable achievement is that I'm now supposed to remember new lyrics of grammarian idiocy for our rarely sung anthem.
I'm not going to bother making the litany of grievances - go read the National Post and you'll get a better understanding of them than I can reiterate here, especially if you're digesting Andrew Coyne. Let's skip to the sophomore question and get some answers about why Trudeau's fumbles matter.
We are on the verge of what might well be a Conservative renaissance in this country. In B.C., a shaky lefty coalition is teetering on the edge as the extremists pull the strings; in Alberta, a party of supposedly the same name is all but sure to lose to a revitalized Tory party run by the most effective politician in Canada; and in Ontario, the "activist centre" Wynne Liberals could very well lose to Canada's own angry man with bad hair by default, no matter how hard they try.
Progressives should be worried, because for all their disbelief in trickle-down economics, they definitely subscribe to trickle-down resentment. Thatcher, Reagan, Bush Jr., Harper, Trump - all these names have been used by liberals and the far left to denigrate the character of lone candidates on the right at every level of government. But with their own hands on the wheel of federal power as well as major provinces, it is now they who look inept and totally out of touch.
To put it bluntly, it is their favorite leaders' names that make for good slurs against anyone's character or personal competence. Trade wars, national disunity, a fanatical mindset towards economic, moral, and environmental issues do not prosperity or allies make. Take this with the looming wave of retirees resulting in strains on our sacred cow of healthcare, as well as the untold liabilities for pensions, and anyone with an ounce of sense is forced to shudder.
In the generous spirit of the Easter miracle, I offer the same advice I did to right wingers on the night of Harper's defeat: get woke to your own issues and put your house in order. In our democratic system, a fundamental belief is that we can self-improve through proper reflection, planning, and action; the alternative is mob rule turning eventually into tyranny - realities that no moral and sane individual would invite upon their own lives, or those of their loved ones.
You're welcome to disagree with me but please do so with intelligent explanations of why your comrades in protests shout impossible demands or your dear leaders' leaked papers look like minutes from SPECTRE meetings. In the end, progressives are no different than we on the right: we all get the leaders and policies we deserve, no matter how high our hopes are.
