One of the many self-satisfied, self-congratulatory national myths indulged in by Canadians that has been shattered by two years of COVIDMANIA is the idea that Canada is essentially a classless society. Right from the start the population was officially divided into two classes: a privileged class for whom the potential health risk of merely stepping outside their front door was considered so severe they had to be accommodated to work from home... and an underclass of minimum wage earners in supermarkets and big box stores who would be exposed to that risk for the convenience of the privileged class.
Of course the actual risk to almost everyone turned out to be close to zero. But that's beside the point. The operating premise was that in a scenario in which it was assumed a universally deadly pathogen is in circulation, it was decreed that one class of Canadians needed to be protected and another class needed to be exposed in order to serve the protected class. As we enter the third year of mass psychosis we are witnessing yet another, even more overt demonstration of the class divide in Canada. The catalyst for this rupture is the trucker protest.
Basically, working people who have been most directly impacted by the destructive, authoritarian dictates imposed on them by people higher up on the social economic food chain have had enough. For two years they've patiently endured whatever the political class in provincial capitals and far off Ottawa chose to inflict on them. They've tolerated being condescended to by financially secure, materially comfortable journalists, politicians and medical professionals who have dismissed their suffering as selfishness and as griping about doing their part for the greater good.
But these people live in the real Canada. The Canada that exists beyond the small, insular bubbles of privilege inhabited by an effete media, political and professional class in downtown Toronto and Ottawa. These are smart, proud, working class people of every race and creed who, to put it bluntly, know bullshit when they see it. They haven't been conditioned by years of professional training to perceive common sense and principles as barriers to career advancement. They are the kind of people who will actually show up to help their community in times of need as opposed to writing opinion pieces about how other people just don't care as much about their fellow human beings as themselves. The men and women who drove their rigs across the country in the dead of this Canadian winter are representing the values, the grit and down to earth realism of that Canada. They are reintroducing Canadians to the heart and soul of their own country by bypassing the gatekeepers and taking centre stage.
And how is the small clique of self-approving urban elites in Toronto and Ottawa responding to this uninvited challenge to their authority? Unsurprisingly, they're responding exactly the way heartless, soulless apparatchiks of establishment power always react when the peasants stop obeying their betters. They are incensed. Practically apoplectic. And they're using every lowdown dirty tactic they can think of to smack these working class Canadians back into their place.
They took their cue from the very top of that power establishment. Justin Trudeau, who has debased the office of Prime Minister beyond recognition, set the tone of dismissive condescension. As truck drivers made their way across the frigid Canadian landscape towards Ottawa, Justin dismissed them as "a fringe minority" and officially pronounced their views to be "unacceptable".
But the countless images shared across social media of average Canadians braving the cold, lining highway overpasses, waving Canadian flags and shouting their support as the growing convoy rolled across the country made Justin's attempts to minimize what was happening look desperate and absurd.
By the time the convoy converged on Ottawa it was international news. The Canadian media establishment, which had gone out of its way not to report massive protests against COVID measures in other countries, couldn't downplay what was happening in their own front yard.
What they could do however, was use their platform to smear everyone involved. Which is precisely what they did.
The media defaulted to the predictable playbook:
Problem - Working class people standing up for themselves against the privileged and powerful. Response - Slander! Call them stupid white supremacist Nazi rednecks and claim they're trying to overthrow the government.
Alex Boutilier (Global News, Toronto Star) led the pack in implementing the agenda:
Supriya Dwivedi (Canada’s National Observer, CBC, Toronto Star) presented her measured, professional take on the situation that wasn't in any way an unhinged, paranoid conspiracy theory:
The geniuses at CBC blamed the Russians:
The editorial staff at the Toronto Star went out of their way to find some obscure ideologue who could be counted on to spout venom with no concern for credibility, reason or literacy:
Bruce Arthur, sportswriter and infectious disease authority who is also employed by the Toronto Star, must have thought...'Ideologue who could be counted on to spout venom with no concern for credibility, reason or literacy? That's my gig!'... and quickly Tweeted this:
When Tashah Kheiriddin (National Post, CTV, CBC, Global News) isn't using her platform in mass media to dehumanize her fellow Canadians by calling them "living petri dishes", she is breathlessly (but totally responsibly) reporting that someone on the phone told her Ottawa is being overrun by Nazi Civil War reenactors:
Here's The Globe and Mail providing a platform to someone named Omer Ariz, an obscure former 'adviser' in Justin Trudeau's government, to characterize people protesting the authoritarian dictates of his former boss as "an assault on democracy":
Here's Justin Ling openly lying in Maclean's Magazine by asserting that these thousands of truckers are enacting a "plan to remove our democratically-elected government":
Next is journalist Dale Smith demonstrating that the job of the Parliamentary Press Gallery is to protect the people in Parliament against challenges to their power. One way to do that is to characterize citizens who dare stand up for their democratic rights as "extremists" trying to... you guessed it... "overturn democracy".
Bruce Anderson (The Globe and Mail, CBC, chairman of polling firm Abacus Data) demonstrates that if you simply make up malevolent statements of intent and put them in quotations you can paradoxically accuse other people of inventing "a load" while instructing them to "get real":
Some Canadian journalists, like Althia Raj (Toronto Star, CBC) appear to believe their job description includes speaking to working class Canadians like they're speaking to their children:
It's obvious that Althia is so comfortable with her sense of superiority and contempt for these people it doesn't even cross her mind there could be anything improper about using her platform to broadcast those sentiments.
It wasn't just the godawful Canadian media trying to characterize a movement of mostly working class Canadians opposing authoritarian political policies as a version of the Nuremberg Rallies with toques.
The godawful Canadian political class got in on the slandering of the people they're hired to represent as well.
Here's Liberal Party nobody and MP for St. Catharines Chris Bittle doing his best to create a Nazi tempest in a partisan teapot. He helpfully included a screenshot of the moment which will live in infamy:
Now, you might look at this image and notice the people passing behind Michael Cooper are sporting a variety of symbols. A Quebec flag for instance.
But Liberal MP Chris Bittle doesn't want you to look at that. Well how about the Canadian flags behind Michael Cooper? Nope. Liberal MP Chris Bittle doesn't want you to pay attention to those either. So what is it that Liberal MP Chris Bittle wants you to exclusively focus on?
Well, see the teeny weeny hand drawn swastika on the corner of that upside-down Canadian flag on the right? Focus on THAT!
But now you may ask: Isn't it rather obvious that the intent of the person drawing that symbol on an upside-down Canadian flag is to signal his opposition to what he perceives as Canada emulating the totalitarianism of the Nazis?
And presumably the answer to that fair-minded observation would be... SHUT UP, Nazi!
But it wasn't just unimpressive backbench nobodies like Brittle trying to score political points by smearing working class Canadians.
Unimpressive Party leaders like Jagmeet Singh of the NDP were doing the same thing:
And to no ones surprise, the Prime Minister himself was doing everything he could to vilify thousands of working class Canadians. Here he is associating them with a handful of alleged minor infractions, sightings of two "racist flags" that no one genuinely associated with this cause would carry and straight up false claims about vandalism and disrespecting veterans:
And just in case the messaging was too subtle for some people, Justin came up with a veritable cornucopia of loathsome views to attach to these working class Canadians. Now no one could miss the point: People challenging Justin's power are evil and morally inferior to Justin and anyone who obeys him:
Only someone as shallow as Justin Trudeau could deliberately demonize thousands of Canadians while simultaneously congratulating himself for "working to make Canada more inclusive".
He could have said that there have been reports of a handful of incidents but that they don't represent the thousands of our fellow Canadians at this protest. That's something a mature adult in his position would say in order to lower the temperature, foster goodwill and signal that he is the Prime Minister of all Canadians and not just the ones who quietly submit to his will. It also happens to be the obvious truth.
But no. Justin just ain't that guy.
This is irresponsible, low level stuff. But it emphasizes the sad fact that many of the highest offices in the country are held by frighteningly unimpressive people.
But it wasn't just dullard journalists and vacuous politicians going out of their way to destroy whatever remaining vestige of credibility their profession may have once possessed. Medical professionals, particularly ones whose public profile has benefited from the narrative of unending COVID catastrophe, were eager to jump on the public vilification bandwagon too.
Take Dr. Brian Goldman for example. Brian is an emergency room physician in Toronto. He also has his own taxpayer funded radio program on CBC that presumably somebody listens to. Not only that, Brian identifies himself as an expert on kindness. He is the author of a book, The Power of Kindness. He does public speaking gigs where he talks about... kindness. And how important it is to have empathy. Lots and lots of empathy. You can find videos of his discourses on these vital subjects on YouTube.
Here's Brian providing a demonstration of the power of kindness in action:
Let Brian's empathy for these working class people who, through no fault of their own don't have a taxpayer funded radio program on CBC, wash over you.
Cleansing, isn't it?
Marvel at the power of Brian's kindness as he pronounces their opinions about what he wants to inject in them to be "entirely irrelevant and valueless."
And here's Brian making it clear he feels entitled to dismiss every one of the thousands of people who won't submit to his will as irrelevant fools - whereas three "souls" who humbled themselves before him and "asked" to be baptized, er... I mean vaccinated... are deemed worthy of his remembrance:
Dr. Andrew Baback Boozary, executive director of social medicine at Toronto's University Health Network slandering protesters as white supremacists/ Nazis and expressing contempt for valuing "freedom" in a liberal democracy:
Lisa Richardson MD practices General Internal Medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto. And yet she still manages to sound like a 20 year old college student trying desperately to mimic the required language and attitudes of a first year social justice course:
Mary Fernando, MD:
Here's emergency room doctor Dr. Lisa Salamon-Switzman who appears to be equating "going to work in Scarborough" with joining the French Resistance:
Then there's Palliative Care Physician Amrit Arya:
The problem for Amrit is that he is so singularly focused on demonizing other people and elevating himself he doesn't bother to examine his own logic. So obvious questions never occur to him, like: 'Could the same argument I'm using to malign other people be used against me?' Hmmm...
The academic class, most of whom spend their days doing things nobody cares about, were eager to share their disdain for working class people too. In the process they succeeded in proving themselves to be shallow snobs who have no idea what it's like to live outside the insular bubble of academia.
Steve Saideman, Carleton University:
I wonder what this former restaurant owner would have to say about Steve's assessment of the legitimacy of working people's grievances from the vantage point of academia's ivory tower:
Mike P. Moffat, assistant professor Richard Ivey School of Business:
Stephanie Carvin, associate professor Carleton University:
Thomas Juneau, University of Ottawa:
Sam Tecle, Ryerson University:
Amarnath Amarasingam, assistant professor Queen's University:
Alexander McClelland, assistant professor at Carleton University seems to find cranes deeply sinister for some reason:
They brought their own cranes? Who, truckers? With trucks? Some of which have cranes on them? And they're using them to fly Canadian flags?
Oh NO!
This next one is particularly illustrative of just how disconnected from common sense the people who exist in these insular bubbles of class and privilege really are. Keep in mind that Jess Marin Davis worked for the Canadian government in the department of Global Affairs, for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and is considered an expert on "terrorism indicators" and "intelligence analysis".
So what did the "far, far worse" thing identified by our expert in "terrorism indicators" and "intelligence analysis" turn out to be?
This:
Here's video of one of the scary extremists identified by Jess the Canadian terrorism expert. Watch as he expresses his extreme views about "everybody helping each other" and the "unity of all Canadians of all sorts". Truly frightening stuff:
The enthusiasm for this campaign against working class Canadians exposes the urban professional class in Canada as a collection of unprincipled, mean-spirited snobs with an entirely unjustified sense of their own exceptionalism. They jealously guard their hold on influence and authority against incursions from people not of their socioeconomic status - people they clearly think of as their inferiors. As we've seen, they consider the opinions of working class Canadians about what has been done to them over the last two years by governments in their own country to be "entirely irrelevant and valueless". Just shut up and do what you're told!
It's a relatively small group of nasty, joyless, relentlessly conformist bores whose highest value is unquestioning obedience to authority. And for some reason they've been allowed to take over the national dialogue, control it for years and proclaim that their dreary priorities define what is acceptable to think as a Canadian.
They have no imagination or interesting ideas. Those qualities would make them stand out from the grey wash of their peers. And that is the thing that terrifies them more than anything - standing out. Not being like everyone else. Being perceived as thinking the wrong the things. Or not supporting the right things. Of not liking who you're supposed to like and hating who you're supposed to hate. What if their friends and colleagues think they're weird? Not a team player? What if someone calls them an unpleasant name? Better to just go along to get along.
And that is why they are venting so much unhinged anger at these working class protesters. They hate seeing people who are free of all of that.
Free of the crushing self-consciousness. Free of the pressure to conform. Free to point out lies. Free to maintain their principles. Free to rebel. Free to say what they really think. Free to be themselves.
People who are free to be free.
Andrew Coyne (Globe and Mail, CBC) makes this sneering resentment explicit: "They're basically a bunch of anti-social yobs with delusions of grandeur, a persecution complex and too much time on their hands."
I'll conclude with this short clip of Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media and propaganda studies at NYU. Mark is something of an outsider in the academic world having come into his position "laterally" as he describes it, and not as a product of a "graduate program" in media studies. In what has to be one of the most exquisite examples of the absurdity that defines the current moment, Mark was prohibited by his institution from teaching his propaganda course after encouraging his students to be conscious of the propaganda being projected at them to generate compliance with mask mandates.
Mark provides insight into why we're seeing what we're seeing from the professional classes. He says:
"Working people generally... are less credulous than the 'educated', the professional classes."
Go touch grass.