How does the Premier of the itsy-bitsy province of New Brunswick ignite something of a national firestorm in Canada? He does it by protecting the rights of parents to know what’s happening with their own children when they are at school.
No, really.
That’s what it takes to spark outrage and controversy in whatever this place is that still goes by the name Canada.
Premier Blaine Higgs ended a policy from 2020 that allowed teachers to keep parents in the dark about their kids being referred to by different names and, ugh… pronouns… when at school.
The official framing of the issue was instantaneous:
Evil bigoted Conservatives want to harm ‘trans’ children by forcing enlightened public servants to ‘out’ them to evil bigoted parents.
This kind of framing is vital. It lets the ideological fashionistas know the talking point they’re supposed to restrict their thinking to and what to parrot as their own opinion.
Seamus O'Regan Jr, Liberal MP St. John's South:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:
"Right now trans kids in New Brunswick are being told they don't have the right to be their true selves, that they need to ask permission. Trans kids need to feel safe, not targeted by politicians. We need to stand against this."
Randy Boissonnault, Liberal MP Edmonton Centre:
The editorial staff at the Globe and Mail decided to make it absolutely explicit that they are a platform for the perspective of the state. They published a column on the controversary under the banner 'The state has a duty to protect trans students.'
The Globe made it clear that authority resides with government employees in the school to decide what parents deserve to be informed about when it comes to their own children:
"Certainly a school should tell parents if they believe a child is at imminent risk of harm. A change in name or preferred pronouns does not meet that test."
In a demonstration of obsequiousness to the supremacy of the state that would make Joseph Stalin throw up, Canadian ‘journalists’ robotically chanted the Party line:
Of course if you subtract the ideological imperatives and phony moral posturing from what these people are saying, you’re left with the real premise underlying their position:
Parents can't be trusted to act in the best interest of their children but total strangers employed by the government can.
In other words, the rights of the state supersede your rights as a parent when it comes to your kids.
It isn’t hyperbole or some kind of conspiracy theory to notice that this way of thinking is a common feature of totalitarian regimes. The only way to avoid this is if you’re ignorant of the fact or to actively talk yourself out of acknowledging it.
Rachel Gilmore, who was briefly employed by Global News as something resembling a journalist, almost certainly falls into the former category.
Here she represents the ideological group-think that 'parents are the enemy, the state is benevolent and trustworthy' in the most guileless and straightforward manner:
“One of those changes was to force trans kids to stay closeted, or be outed to their parents.”
We should be grateful to Rachel for consistently providing the most transparent example of the thinking process of fundamentalist ideologues.
Basically, there are 2 steps:
Step 1: They look at an event in the world.
Step 2: They apply the generic ideological interpretation/framing and then… they stop thinking.
They’re done!
This is because the ideological precept is all encompassing. It captures the totality of the issue and resolves it entirely.
There is nothing else to take into consideration. Other points of view, values, data or opinions are superfluous at best and almost certainly malevolent. The only possible motivation for advancing them is to thwart the perfect, morally enlightened solution in order to inflict as much harm as possible.
But again, strip away the self-aggrandizing ideological narrative and the underlying conceit of the argument is revealed:
Rachel is arguing that government employees in taxpayer funded schools have the right to conspire with other people's children to keep vital information about their psychological and social development from their parents.
Of course, if you confronted Rachel with this she would deny it out of hand. She would insist she is simply standing up for the rights and safety of ‘trans’ kids.
This is what is so troubling and dangerous about fundamentalist ideologues: They can’t hear perspectives from outside the bubble of their ideology. There is no valid criticism of their point of view. There are no other perspectives. There is only the infallible perfection of their own opinion.
The self-righteous, self-aggrandizing moral narrative provided by their ideology is so intoxicating it blocks out the sun.