We can still hear that high and sometimes irritatingly nasal note of whiny self-righteousness today among Canadians who, accepting the undoubted superiority of American military power, feel that their distinctive contribution to the alliance can and should be a quality in which Americans are poor, while Canada is specially, even uniquely rich — morality (Walter Russell Mead in God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World).
Marx’s often quoted passage about historical repetitions is worth playing with in the case of the two Trudeaus, father Pierre Elliot and son Justin, as hereditary Prime Ministers of Canada. The term ‘Trudeaumania’ was first coined in 1968 to describe the wild popularity of the father, whose countercultural leanings induced a Lisztomania-like effect on the Canadian public. Whether it was pirouetting behind the queen, openly flirting with Marxism, legalizing homosexuality or implementing the War Measures Act and taunting journalists with the infamous “just watch me” line, there was an intellectual charisma to the man that the son lacks in spades. This second generational round of ‘Trudeaumania’ may well be reminiscent of Marx’s repetitive historical reversal, and the term may come to define Justin’s ‘out-of-season’ liberalism in a clinical way — ‘Trudeaumania’ as a descriptive for Justin’s pathological psychological state rather than public enthrallment, which is wearing increasingly thin.
As I pointed out when JT was first elected, his immense popularity was in large measure due to the failure of Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party to form any meaningful ideological base as much as his smiling, youthful, celebaby, selfie-talking, bumpkin persona refueling nostalgic sentiment. However, Justin himself frames the win over Harper’s Conservatives in terms of an ideological shift in governmental policy that is simply not there or only to a very superficial degree — the Canadian equivalent to Obama’s empty ‘change’ rhetoric.
Some of the apparent similarities between JT and Trump have been dully pointed out. However, while I maintain that Trump has come to represent the contemporary Zeitgeist, Trudeau has come to represent history repeating itself merely as farce. Junior is not simply the shadow of his father, but his shade he just does not know it. When papa Pierre broke protocol and normalized relations with Cuba and Castro, it was seen in the context of the times as a heroic and defiant gesture, the radical Left was in the ascendant and Pierre was just one icon of its Zeitgeist. However, when Junior unequivocally positively eulogized the former communist dictator, he was lampooned by the same media that usually fawns over him, and the hashtag #Trudeuaeulogies became a widely popular treading topic — memorable for me because it was the day that I finally won the internet, that is with my own Trudeaueulogy:
Today we say goodbye to Judas Iscariot, who will always be remembered for his affectionate embraces and practical business sense. #Trudeuaeulogies
Trudeau’s glib blunder sparked a media storm backlash; Cuban-Americans like Marco Rubio tweeted out in condemnation of the Prime Minister’s radical partisan eulogizing, asking if it was a joke. Trudeau effectively whitewashed the illiberal atrocities of Castro’s regime, sending a wave of condemnation his way — a laughingstock ensued.
Part of the reason for Justin’s blunder is because he is living in the past, he is the echo of his father’s legacy of the 1960s and the cultural Marxist hegemony of yesteryear, seemingly unaware that what his father stood against has become the system and the establishment utterly — that his ‘rebel sell’ image only worked against a stuffy “old stock” party bureaucrat like Harper. The jig is up, the tide has turned and JT is lagging behind, with a plethora of alt-lite media and personalities taking the fore against a radical Leftism that has reached the end of its rope.
This is an attempt to corral together a compendium of Justin Trudeau’s most blatant chronic idiocies and twisted contradictory SJW logic.
1. The SJW Hypocrite
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered remarks and participated in a Q&A session at Elementary Teachers of Toronto Federation Day 2016 held on Friday, December 2, 2016 at Toronto Congress Centre.
Responding to a question about how Justin Trudeau ‘checks his privilege:’
This idea that, like it or not, we are society where I was given power and a voice that I did nothing to earn, that I did nothing to deserve, other than ended up being born luckier unfairly than anyone else.
The reflection that I had and actually I did free verse style reflection on being a straight White male, but the essence of it was that if I am lucky, and I am, then I have a responsibility not to go around hanging my head and beating myself up for being lucky, because I didn’t pick it, it just happened.1
This is typical of limousine liberal’s political usage of “oppressed groups” to further obscure their own elitism, which is based on wealth and class, rather than the groveling of minority identity politics. How about Justin Trudeau is lucky, not because he was born a “straight White male,” but because he were born Justin Trudeau! Trudeau was “given power and a voice” that he “did nothing to earn,” and he “did nothing to deserve” because he was born a Trudeau, not because he was born a SWM!
He is privileged because he never had to clean a public toilet, or serve tables, or wash dishes to pay his way through school and he never had to keep doing those McJobs long after he graduated because there was no place for him even with a degree. He never suffered from crippling student debts, he never had to compete with favored minority groups over a dwindling pool of decent jobs, he never had to worry about whether he could make the rent, or afford a vehicle. Trudeau has no idea what it is like being a member of the White working poor, who are then scolded by limousine liberals like him that they are part of a “privileged” class — Trudeau was born lucky because he was born rich and famous, not because he was born a SWM. Instead the weak Liberal apparatchiks rallied behind him because of his scion name recognition.
The way he (Trudeau) clicked with delegates he attracted like groupies at the party’s Montreal leadership convention that year was a first glimpse of how Trudeau could parlay mere name recognition into a much rarer thing: the illusion that fleeting contact with a star is both welcomed and somehow meaningful. ‘I was surprised and enthused by the response I got from party members on the convention floor,’ he writes.2
In order to virtue signal his inclusivity, Trudeau’s first public relations stunt since winning the election was making a big show of his gender-parity cabinet appointments, based on equality of out-come rather than merit “because it’s 2015.”
Trudeau appointed 15 women to his cabinet. Harper, in his last cabinet, appointed 12. That’s despite the fact that he had fewer women than Trudeau to choose from. The main difference is that Trudeau’s cabinet was capped at a more reasonable 30 portfolios, Harper’s at a bloated 39, including a slew of ministers of state. So percentage-wise, Trudeau hit his 50 per cent quota of XX chromosomes.3
This also meant that women in the Liberal Party had a 3/1 advantage of securing one of the illustrious and lucrative cabinet positions over their male counterparts, a privilege they secured entirely based on their luck to be born women that is based on gender not merit.4 But Trudeau’s empty SJW rhetoric and hypocrisy does not stop there. According to his “male feminist” logic (who is putting a ‘Canadian Rosa Parks’ on the nation’s currency), we should all then feel pity and a sense of “responsibility” for the Fuerdai-like Chelsea Jiang, who, although she is one of hundreds of thousands of Chinese millionaire immigrants flooding Vancouver, is not socially “privileged,” since she is not a SWM.
So when a straight White male Vancouverite gets priced out of the housing market by these poor stigmatized minorities, and is then serving them crab legs or pumping the gas in their Lamborghinis, we can rest assure that his “privilege” has been sufficiently checked. If there is to be found a lesson in these and other rich minorities, it is that the only common humanity to be had is wholly material, and that higher universalisms that liberalism attests are mere confetti in the parade of individual vanities.
2. The Limousine Liberal (Corrupt Elitism)
Trudeau’s SJW’s campaigning effectively does nothing to his and the actual global positions of those privileged and powerful — the wealthy global elite —, while simultaneously placating an entitled minority by socially signaling solidarity with “the oppressed.” Even more condemning, is that like Hillary Clinton, Trudeau has been caught red-handed in a ‘pay-for-play’ scandal for which he is suffering, according to Michael Den Tandt of the National Post, “a crippling erosion of his brand.”
To understand Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s reluctance to acknowledge what is plain — that cash-for-access fundraisers violate the letter and spirit of his own rules for open and accountable government — we must first appreciate this PMO’s approach to what is euphemistically termed ‘issues management’; that is to say, scandal.5
The highly exposed fundraising event at a Chinese Billionaire’s home went down like this:
One of the guests at the event was a well-heeled donor who was seeking Ottawa’s final approval to begin operating a new bank aimed at Canada’s Chinese community.
The Globe and Mail has learned that wealthy Chinese businessman Zhang Bin who, with a partner, donated $1-million to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal Faculty of Law weeks after the fundraiser, also attended the event. Mr. Zhang is a political adviser to the Chinese government in Beijing and a senior apparatchik in the network of Chinese state promotional activities around the world.
Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce chair Benson Wong played host to Mr. Trudeau and 32 other people at his Toronto home. Among the donors was insurance tycoon Shenglin Xian, the founder of Wealth One Bank of Canada, and several Chinese billionaires.6
So for a $1,500 dinner plate, Chinese billionaires got access to the PM which explicitly violates the ‘ethical rules’:
Attending the fundraiser appears to breach the ethical rules laid down by Mr. Trudeau after he took office. These “Open and Accountable Government” rules state “there should be no preferential access, or appearance of preferential access” in exchange for political donations.
The fundraiser also appears to violate Liberal Party guidelines that require party officials to ban anyone from attending a fundraiser if they have direct business interests before the government.7
Obviously, we can see a conflict of interest, because a few weeks later those Chinese billionaires donated $1 million dollars to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal Faculty of Law, and then got federal government approval for a bank to service Chinese capital in Canada. If Trudeau had any sense of decency, he would step down like Nixon.
Trudeau defended this weakly, stating that he had no formal or informal relationship with the Foundation, despite his brother, Alexander Trudeau, being on the Board of Directors. Recently, this tangled mess of obvious corruption was even lampooned by the Taiwanese.
3. The Telescopic Philanthropist
Limousine liberals like Justin Trudeau carry on the liberal tradition of the Anglo-upper classes in practicing what Charles Dickens called telescopic philanthropy. Trudeau signaled this very hard by pushing onto the national agenda the Syrian refugee crisis. Trudeau used the humanitiarian crisis to morally signal Canada’s place in the world, and was recently putting his drama degree to good use by crying while talking to a refugee. However, when disaster struck closer to home Trudeau made light and joked during a crisis involving Albertans.8 9
(The Greatest Justin Trudeau satire!!!!!)
4. The Regionalist Supremacist
This brings us to his longstanding regional supremacist tendencies. Time and time again Trudeau has made statements claiming that Canada belongs to Quebecers. And again dismissing the concerns over Albertan job losses by pointing out that “we’re in Ottawa…” This carries on the Trudeau tradition of ostracizing western Canada, his father passed the National Energy Program.10
5. The Star Wars Fanboy
This may seem the most innocuous charge on the list, but may in fact be the most incisive. The Star Wars universe is defined primarily by a Manichean divide between good and evil. There is no nuance to the Star Wars universe; its patent appeal therefore will tend towards simple minded folk who demand simple answers — good versus bad. The fact that Trudeau is such an ardent Star Wars Fanboy points to his inability to conceive of the social world in terms that are not readily identifiable in a good versus evil schism. The refugee crisis was tackled from this emotive moralizing rather than practical concerns or reservations — it was simply the right thing to do.11 The major concern with people who view the world in absolute terms is that they can become zealots, and indeed liberals often cloud issues with excessive moralizing, using their heart instead of their head and thus overturning the order of the classical soul.
[2] MacLean’s, Like Father, Like Son. Only Not Always, 2 October 2015
[3] Bikram Lamba, Fawning Liberals Wake Up to Hypocrisy of Trudeau’s Supposed Gender Parity in Cabinet, 6 November 2015
[4] National Post, Andrew Coyne: Trudeau Cabinet Should Be Based on Merit, Not Gender, 2 November 2015
[5] National Post, Michael Den Tandt: Trudeau Faces a Crippling Erosion of His Brand With Pay-for-Play Fundraising, 8 December 2016
[6] The Globe and Mail, Trudeau Attended Cash-for-Access Fundraiser With Chinese Billionaires, 22 November 2016
[7] The Globe and Mail, Trudeau Attended Cash-for-Access Fundraiser With Chinese Billionaires, 22 November 2016
[8] Debate Post, Watch As Trudeau Cries Over Syrian Refugees, But Laughs at Homeless Albertans, 5 December 2016
[9] Rebel Media, Trudeau Tweets Sympathy for Postmedia Layoffs — But Not the 100K Albertans Out of work?, 21 January 2016
[10] MacLean’s, Like Father, Like Son. Only Not Always, 2 October 2015
[11] International Business Times, Syrian Refugee Crisis: Justin Trudeau Places Canada in Position of Global Leadership, 25 November 2015
