Justin Trudeau’s Ceau_escu Moment – TK News by Matt Taibbi
Ceau escu s balcony will forever be a symbol of elite cluelessness. Even in the face of the gravest danger, a certain kind of ruler will never be able to see the last salvo coming, if doing so requires any self-examination. The neoliberal political establishment in most of the Western world, the subject of repeat populist revolts of rising intensity in recent years, seems to suffer from the same disability.
There may be no real-world comparison between a blood-soaked monster like Ceau escu and a bumbling ball-scratcher like Joe Biden, or an honorarium-gobbling technocrat like Hillary Clinton, or a Handsome Dan investment banker like Emmanuel Macron, or an effete pseudo-intellectual like Justin Trudeau. Still, the ongoing inability of these leaders to see the math of populist uprisings absolutely recalls that infamous scene in Bucharest. From Brexit to the election of Donald Trump to, now, the descent of thousands of Canadian truckers upon the capital city of Ottawa to confront Trudeau, a consistent theme has been the refusal to admit not even to us, but to themselves the numerical truth of what they re dealing with.
Trudeau is becoming the ultimate example. Truckers last month began protesting a January 22nd rule that required the production of vaccine passports before crossing the U.S.-Canadian border. Canadian truckers are reportedly 90% vaccinated, above the country s 78% total, a key detail that s been brazenly ignored by media in both countries determined to depict these more as anti-vax than anti-mandate protests (which seem to be about many things at once, but that s another story). When an angry convoy descended upon the capital, Trudeau dismissed them in a soliloquy that can only be described as inspired political arson:
The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing, do not represent the views of Canadians&who know that following the science and stepping up to protect each other is the best way to ensure our rights, our freedoms, our values as a country.
A near-exact repeat of the basket of deplorables episode, Trudeau s imperious description of unacceptable views instantly became a rallying cry, with people across the country lining the streets to cheer truckers while self-identifying as the small fringe minority. Everyone from high school kids to farmers and teachers and random marchers carrying jerrycans of fuel joined in as Trudeau s own words were used to massively accelerate his troubles.
Matt Taibbi at his excellent best.