We should laugh at the post-totalitarian system we find ourselves in at every opportunity. The people in charge of it are dangerous, yes, but they still deserve mockery and ridicule.
During Freeland’s testimony on the use of the Emergencies Act, she claims that Canadian bank CEO’s told her that Canada is being called a joke. I have no idea whether those statements were ever uttered. But they are true enough. Canada has been a joke, and that was exactly why the people who had spent such a long time being the butt of the joke were protesting.
Throughout the pandemic, Canada sought to be in the top tier of countries in terms of totalitarian responses. While Europe was starting to second guess their restrictions, Canada was doubling down. The federal government and many provincial governments were all too happy to destroy lives while yanking the tethers of the welfare state out from under dissidents. All in the name of public health.
Aside from that, 24 Sussex Drive is currently being inhabited by a man who regularly gets his hands caught in the corruption cookie jar, and the Emergencies Act inquiry is being held by his hand picked minion.
Let me ask you, was Canada not a joke when:
SNC Lavelin was making illegal donations to the Liberal party, who then proceeded to cover it up?
When Justin Trudeau had a scuffle in parliament including grabbing a Conservative MPs arm and then elbowing an NDP MP?
When Justin Trudeau committed four ethics violations by vacationing at a billionaire’s private island?
When Justin Trudeau committed another ethics violation by trying to undermine the Justice Department’s probe into *ahem* SNC Lavelin?
How about when the military’s top general let “VIP guests” (who had no business being on a military flight) get handsy with flight attendants?
Or all the times when Justin Trudeau mouthed of like a chihuahua on the world stage before getting promptly ignored? Remember when we were trying to get on the UN Security Council?
We could go on, but I digress. If Canada under Trudeau wants to be respected on the world stage, they sure haven’t acted like it. In fact, the only thing that separates most of the body politic in Canada from children is their astonishing ability to spout zany acronyms (like ESG) and amorphous phrases (like diversity).
Simply put, the people running our country are not serious people. Bankers may not see a problem with that, I have no doubt.
The trucker convoy was blue-blooded individuals who finally had enough of only the most egregious of these lunacies. Protest was not their first resort, it was their very last. The reason it was their last resort is the same reason the protest had to be in Ottawa.
Most of the city had been working from home in their pajamas for the better part of two years. The discomfort they felt when the honks started is because most of them have never worked a difficult job in their entire lives. Meanwhile, the people protesting were the ones slinging the economy on their backs during the pandemic response. Yet we’ve heard more about the protesters that shut down a bridge for a couple days then we’ve heard about the bureaucrats that shut down the economy for a couple years.
Why is that?
The only explanation is the bankers that do not see a problem with the people running our country are not themselves serious people either. You know, when I heard that Freeland relayed the story about a banker hearing from an investor that he wouldn’t “invest another red cent” into our “banana republic”, I figured that the testimony was so over the top that it had to be fiction. Serious people simply do not talk like that. It sounds like a line that was written by a writer who can’t write or sung by a singer who can’t sing. But, for a moment, I forgot the kind of people we are dealing with are jokes, even if we are the butts of those jokes. Now that I remember, all I can do is laugh.
Remember, you’re living through history. It’s not everyday you get a front row seat to societal collapse.
Excellent commentary. You have touched on many things that are weakening our country. Liberal hypocrisy and incompetence is a major one.
That investor spoke true. But so do you.
The investor won't invest in Canada due to your regime, but he will make sure to profit from the inpetitude and corruption of it.
That's why the banking clans don't have a problem with corrupt and inept or incompetent governements: it makes it easier to profit without investments. Instead, you get the governement to underwrite all risks and liabilites and foist the burden of cost onto the citizens, all solidaric and equity-like.
Neoliberal economics: privatized profits - public cost and losses. What capitalist banker would sayno to that? It's like Chesterton pointed out more than a century ago in "The Man Who Was Thursday":
“You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
If I knew how to underscore, it would be this:
"The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't..."