We who wrestle with Laurentian screwjobs

Common-sense Canadians have just six weeks to again salvage a win for facts over fear, and to re-frame a political moment turned cultural.

When the clock strikes ‘2020-2022 sociocultural phenomenon,’ facts have a way of losing out to feelings, again.

In Jordan Peterson’s ‘We Who Wrestle with God,’ the famed — and, to the left, infamed — author, speaker, and psychologist sets out on an at times unwieldy journey to distill the undistillable, to make his readers more explicitly conscious of who they are and what they must serve, to make clear stories of betrayal and rebirth, in the hopes of uniting and inspiring.

In what — to this writer, at least — reads as the novel’s raison d’etre for examination and unspool-ification in the first place, Peterson states:

“We elevate what we most highly regard to the utmost place of supremacy or sovereignty. We aim at the upward target we deem central, however momentarily. We bring our consciousness itself to bear on what we define as worthy of the expenditure of our attention and the efforts of our action . . . Aim thereby gives the world its point, prioritizing and organizing even our perception of it . . . We see what and who impedes our movement forward, and we despair; we see what and who aids us, and we hope.

“Much of our communication is the description of aim . . . Thus, we value descriptions of how to perceive and behave—and perhaps more highly than we value anything else.”

With an election call in Canada expected to be all but hours away, and with Peterson being no friend of the new Corpo-Authoritarian Degrowth Left, and being very much involved in moving the Overton Window back to the centre-right for the young, and particularly young males, it’s hard not to find parallels in his work, and in the messages of old, for a country that has an affinity for modern history repeating itself.

The doom charts can be THIS BAD, and it won’t matter to 3/10 Canadians.

All signs can point to the same cursed administration (“But she’s got a new hat!”) continuing the self-harm and sabotage of not one month ago.

That same administration can be backed by the Bond villains at the ‘Century Initiative,’ who aim to further betray any Canadian born after 1988 to a degree hitherto unseen in the Western world.

3/10. Won’t matter.

As discussed on Friday’s pod, that is at least a malleable 3/10.

EP06 -- Something wicked this way comes

The Liberal voter base can move. It has a range as low as 30, and as high as 36-37 — depending on the stages of NDP collapse and utter redundancy.

That “we elevate what we most highly regard” is just a different proposition entirely for Canada’s modern Liberal boomer. (Editor’s note: I don’t enjoy using “boomer” so flippantly, but I’d rather use it than routinely saying “old,” because yes it’s just a number, and ageism is a legitimate ‘ism’ — and an obnoxious one at that.)

The upward target they deem central continues to be “whatever this government tells me it is.” The worthy expenditure of their attention and actions is protecting the order that works for them (understandable), and ensuring they pull up the ladder and drop down a grenade for those behind them (dramatically less admirable).

And, as during Covid, they’re placing immense value on descriptions of how to perceive and behave.

“We’re all in this together.”

“Two weeks, months, years to flatten the curve.”

“Get your filthy unvaccinated child away from me.”

“It’s the 7th shot that will definitely do the trick.”

“It wasn’t a lab leak; the lab leakers said so.”

And now: “Elbows up.”

And: “Team Canada.”

That values proposition remains off — way off. It’s upside down, really. Sacrifices, historically, are supposed to flow in the order of old to young, not young to old.

It matters not that ‘Team Canada’ has elbows that keep catching the under-40s, working stiffs, and the energy sector square in the jaw, and that may lead, legitimately, to Alberta separation and a brain-drain of millions in Canada’s missing middle; it’s a soothing balm, an ‘other’ to blame, a social license, to run this back, and to run you over.

I lack the mental capacity and the rhetorical abilities to spend 500 pages honing lessons from Abraham, Cain & Abel, and the Tower of Babel, into a kind of spiritual Cliffs’ notes for the liturgically curious. What I know myself to be capable of is communicating stories of betrayal and rebirth, in the hopes of uniting and inspiring.

We are very much in a story of betrayal at present, the second Canadian “screwjob” with some geographical overlap in Montreal.

It’s not over, and there is still time to unite and inspire. There are millions of Canadians who have never voted, those who can’t find work, and those not on Frank Graves’ “Why on earth are you contacting me at three-AM” call-list.

We likely have just six weeks to salvage a win for facts over fear, and to reframe a political moment that has been literally and figuratively Trumped by a cultural moment, and then exploited and profited off of to the utmost degree.

As with Covid, we found our wins, however belated, and we found our tribe.

What comes next, regardless of the outcome, will require keeping that faith.

Alexander Brown is a writer, non-profit director, and part-time politico. To support the best-selling Acceptable Views Substack, consider chipping in with a free or paid subscription.