'Don't look away' from the end of Canada's progressive consensus

On social justice struggle sessions, matters of decline, and a 'post-national' experiment in ruin.

“Don’t look away.”

We’ve heard that phrase a lot lately — too often, perhaps.

We’ve all borne witness to scenes of mutilated corpses, heard tales of booby-trapped bodies, and watched as an activist class made up of the perpetually under-employed breaks bad “after years of marinating in taxpayer-funded pseudo-academic dogma.”

Who wouldn’t want to look away from wall-to-wall social media coverage of headless rave-goers, the return of pogroms, and familiar instances of Instagram slacktivism that carry a faint whiff of that ridiculous summer of BLM ‘black squares’ and orange shirt self-flagellation, that went far beyond the practical, and likely brought about the permanent untethering of Liberal wine aunts from all reality?

Then there’s the abject ghoulishness behind the tearing down of missing hostage signs; the professionally down-trodden Covid fetishists occupying MP offices; the federal government statements still waiting for a retraction, that have only served to further fan the flames; the Hamas flags (remember when the Canadian media cared about flags at protests? It’s been a minute)…

It’s indeed a lot. It’s understandable to #VeryMuchWantToLookAway.

I found myself thinking about #DontLookAway while driving down East Hastings Street in Vancouver last week, through kilometre after kilometre of bureaucratic injury and moral tragedy. Blocks away, another “playtime revolutionary” from the far-left Canadian protest circuit had just labelled 1000 dead Israelis and oven-baked babies as falling to some “amazing, brilliant offensive.”

Like you, I’d rather not be told how to think, I don’t need my eyelids held open like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, forced to bear witness to the worst of humanity and the ever-expanding cowardice and shit-for-brains victimhood complex that lurks within that well-marinated and wholly fraudulent modern Canadian ethos.

But that’s how we got here, by looking away.

We #LookedAway over a decade of darkness and decadence, as deeply unserious, emotionally stunted failures to launch stumbled into adulthood, and eventually, into prominence in our public sector.

We #LookedAway, in part, as our friends and loved ones with ties to a wholly imperfect geopolitical actor, from a surrounded-on-all-sides Jewish homeland, nestled amongst the most dangerous patch of real estate in the entire world, reminded us, repeatedly, that what happened before could very well happen again.

We #LookedAway — or, at least those in power, and certain voter blocs — as our streets slowly turned to ruin, as catch-and-release turned Canadian cities into something more resembling East Baltimore, and so-called ‘safe injection,’ and the foundations of the hydromorphone super-highway brought a taste of East Hastings to once-pastoral towns that dared to criminalize, well, crime.

Those same folks #LookedAway as the progressive Canadian consensus on carbon taxes, ‘decolonial’ struggle sessions, and even Canada’s mind-blowing, country-destabilizing immigration targets began to sour into full-blown resentments.

Much as the Toronto Star would prefer to blame “misinformation,” or that increasingly popular apple-munching Leader of the Official Opposition, who is on his way to a supermajority, with or without the support of desperate Liberals who consider his ability to articulate the suffering of the disenfranchised to be some “threat to democracy,” they have no one to blame but themselves.

These are matters of decline, ‘post-national,’ in large part.

When newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a bewildered Canada in 2015 that Canada was to become some “post-national state” under his tutelage, he set himself on a path to his eventual undoing.

It may have taken longer than some might have liked, but as it turns out, both ‘old stock’ and new Canadians alike don’t take kindly to being replaced five times over each year by unsustainable immigration targets, in the country where they already can’t afford a home, or groceries, or their hydro bill after the carbon tax, and where they can’t find a family doctor, reach the police in a timely manner, or feel comfortable sending their child off to school on public transit.

Y’know, little details like that.

Two more years of this may seem inconceivable, but it’s indeed coming to an end. The bill has come due.

Only, there’s still work to be done; there’s only one way to ensure that a Canada made less-bad actually sticks. Consider it insurance against all modern matters of moral turpitude.

This time, we can’t look away.

Alexander Brown is a writer, comms director, and part-time politico. If you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter, click below to become a free or paid subscriber.

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