Posted by 2016 was not a good year to be a liberal but many of their wounds are self-inflicted. The collapse of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe in the early 90s led many in the West to believe the conceit that liberal democratic ideals combined with free-market economics was the apex of human social evolution. For too long, the smug arrogance of Francis Fukuyama style “End of History” liberal beliefs has been allowed to morph unchecked into a pseudo-intellectual grab bag of issues that the average man could care less about. As the Globe and Mail points out:
The concerns that animate Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau are not the concerns that animate the folks at [Tim Horton’s]. Mr. Trudeau is animated by carbon policies, social licence, aboriginal reconciliation, gender equality and peacekeeping missions in African hellholes to restore Canada’s cred at the United Nations. Tim’s folks are animated by job security, their kids’ employment prospects, whether those kids will ever be able to afford a house in Southern Ontario, finding long-term care for Granny, and hydro bills that are exploding because of the provincial government’s loony green schemes. They feel they’re being nickel-and-dimed to death, with no end in sight. And they’re right.
It is a strange world that we live in when the left has abandoned its traditional core support base (blue collar working class) in favour of “social justice” for “disadvantaged minorities” of all stripes (LGBTQ, blacks, hispanics, natives, etc.) This leaves the main core voters for social-democratic parties the educated intellectual urban elite. Although Democrats in America are still puzzled how previously solidly blue states in the Mid-West rust belt could vote for Trump; it is hardly a uniquely US phenomenon. In the UK, Brexit won primarily because the British rust belt in the Midlands and North also voted against their traditional allegiances. The problem in the UK is more obvious because the main party on the center-left is actually called the Labour Party; reflecting its unionist blue-collar roots. Here’s the problem: The huge success and popularity of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 80s caused the left to adopt many of the conservative’s policies themselves. Capitalism, free trade and tax cuts were de rigueur… but Labour coupled these with enhancements to minimum wages, National Health Services (NHS), and public education to create “New Labour” and a dynasty that Tony Blair ruled for more than a decade. One can make similar observations across the pond during Bill Clinton’s two terms.
That Labour would now choose a 66 year old socialist in the form of Jeremy Corbyn tells you how far the social democrats have fallen into an ideological quagmire. That he supported staying in the EU and lost dismally and now has approval ratings lower than the unelected and uninspiring conservative Prime Minister, Elizabeth May, even among core labour voters is telling. The political left throughout the west is currently in free-fall and getting worse. In the United States, that Bernie Sanders, a 75 year old self-proclaimed socialist would give Hillary Clinton such a run for her money (despite being rigged by the Democratic National Committee) mirrors what we saw in Britain. If the DNC elects Keith Ellison as its Chairman next month, it will complete the collapse of the centre-left social democratic parties in the Anglosphere. Instead of repairing its break with the blue-collar working class, the Democrats look to be doubling-down against the angry white old male by going with the African-American muslim for its chair. It would likely also put further stress on already deteriorating relations with the very important Jewish democrats who are disproportionately important in Democratic fund raising.
The problem with the current liberal coalition is that it is moving ever further left from center and that it’s inherently unstable and unelectable. Other than a sense of being a minority that is being discriminated against; what do feminists, LGBTQ, blacks, hispanics, natives, muslims and jews have in common? The only glue holding this together is a bunch of educated liberal white’s in New York and California (the fair-trade, low-fat, soy-milk, gluten-free, Latte sipping urban elite) saying how much they want to help and advance all these groups. This group has their own agenda though. One focused on showing how enlightened and holier-than-thou they are (hence the smugness); they are Social Justice Warriors (SJW) promoting diversity and equality while at the same time saving the planet (animals, forests, climate, oceans, or all the above) from the evil rapaciousness of mankind (and by mankind they actually mean old angry white males). Without the liberal urban elite goading them on, the minority groups probably have more issues that divide them than bring them together. They certainly have their own agenda’s and self-interests which, for the most part, put them in conflict with the agendas of many of the other groups. For example, last summer, the gay pride parade in Toronto was blocked by “Black Lives Matter” and called to task for their “anti-blackness”. These disparate groups are not natural political allies; all it takes is a clever politician and the right environment to drive a huge wedge between them. That is how Marine Le Pen of France’s far-right Front National took a 32% share of the vote among married gay couples in the 2015 regional elections – by convincing them that only the FN can protect the homosexuals from the muslims.
This is apparently “a thing” called “Identity Liberalism” but I didn’t know it until I wrote the blurb above and did some research. According to the New York TImes, “But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life… Identity politics, by contrast, is largely expressive, not persuasive. Which is why it never wins elections – but can lose them.”
So when yet another Hollywood celebrity cum self-proclaimed honorary PhD in environmental science came to Canada yesterday to tour the oil-sands as a “guest” of Greenpeace; you kind of know what they’re going to say before they even step off their private jet to get on their helicopter tour of the evil carbon belching, environment destroying oil sand operations. Why they even bother to come to look is just a bunch of staged drama; their tiny minds were made up long before they were forced to find Fort McMurray on Google Maps. What was surprising was the barrage of left-on-left bashing that occurred afterward. This is what Jane Fonda whose numerous exercise videos makes her well qualified to comment on complex scientific and political matters had to say:
“When I heard that your Prime Minister, the shining hope at the Paris Peace… Paris Climate talks… and yet he has betrayed every one of the things that he committed to… I guess the lesson is that we shouldn’t be fooled by good looking liberals, no matter how well spoken they are. What a disappointment.”
Other than not knowing whether she’s protesting for peace of earth or saving the planet (maybe Hanoi Jane had a senior moment and thought she was in Vietnam in 1972 again), the statement is hilarious given the almost 80 year old actress who has had extensive plastic surgery herself could be fooled by good looking liberals (with nice hair). In other words, the Liberals are not LEFT enough for her; and one should remember that the word liberal in the context of an American, is already a loaded term denoting loonie-left and libtards unlike in Canada where it is more mainstream. But even Canadian’s have problems differentiating what it means to be left or right; this is understandable given that politics are an artificial construct that I occasionally have problems comprehending as well. For example, as I wrote earlier, the concept of free trade and free markets was very firmly a right wing ideology in the 80s when it was popularized by Reagan and Thatcher. Today, globalization and free trade seem to associated with the “New Labour” left while the right is more likely to be described as protectionist. Our good friends at Maclean’s (Canada’s self-described national weekly) attempted to explain the American election to the great unwashed masses using this (really bad) infographic:
This chart is particularly egregious as it tries to put a “scientific” and “intellectual” spin on where different parties are positioned in American versus Canada. According to this, the New Democratic Party (NDP) is the most “libertarian” while the Conservatives are most “authoritarian”. Seriously? Are these people on crack? The NDP is synonymous with socialism, big government, high taxes and social control which is the exact opposite of libertarian which is about individualism, small government, free choice and free markets. Maybe the idiot who made this chart simply mixed the axes up. But wait, while avoiding arbitrary definitions of right versus left, how the hell does Macleans’ think Bernie Sanders is left of the NDP and the Green party? He advocates wealth distribution via higher progressive taxes and higher minimum wages. Making education accessible through free tuition. Rights for all the current crop of politically correct oppressed groups including women, blacks, natives, LGBTQ. Universal medicare for all. All of this puts him smack in the middle of where Canada is today (asides from free college tuition… low but not free) which even the Conservatives in Canada are loathe to try to change. Sanders is a far cry from being left of the NDP. In Canadian politics he would be a centrist and may even be right of the Liberals.
Despite this, Liberals in Canada are suffering from the same group-think, Kumbaya bubble that their comrades in the USA and Britain have fallen into. They still believe that they are Canada’s “natural governing party” and that Donald Trump could not happen here. Clark Banack, a Brock University political scientist who studies populist movements says, “the kind of anti-elitist discontent that moves votes is seldom seen in Canada outside the West, and when it arises elsewhere, it tends to be short-lived. We have sporadic examples of people emerging for a short time around a specific issue, like Rob Ford’s rise to the Toronto mayoralty on the strength of working-class, suburban anger. But overall, Canadian political culture is less susceptible to populism than American political culture.”
OK Mr. Banack… you’re the expert on populist movements. But Canada’s pent up anger has yet to be exposed as the commodity boom (i.e. oil and gas) helped shield most of the “uneducated, blue collar, angry, white males” from the worst of the 2007 American sub-prime financial crisis and the ensuing European financial crisis. With Alberta on its knees now and Ontario sputtering under inane Liberal policies all it will take is a major recession (housing bubble crash anyone) to push those who have so far been mostly insulated from the worse ravages of globalisation to taste the bitter fruit from which populism springs.
In the end, Canadian exceptionalism may prove to be a chimera. A lofty fantasy imagined by the liberal urban elite in Toronto propped up by a quirk of history that our economy managed to weather the last storm a little better and our election cycle came one year before the Americans. If the economy goes pear-shaped, then populism will not remain a redneck Alberta phenomenon. All those angry white males who voted for Rob Ford as mayor of Toronto will come back with a vengeance and all the famous surnames and nice hair won’t save the Canadian Liberals from the political winds that are sweeping across the rest of the Western world.