The prime minister arrived home from liberating SE Asia from itself to be confronted with a raft of problems, from disloyal caucus members to India’s wrath over Khalistan. His opponents relished the consequences as he testified under oath on Wednesday. But Justin Trudeau has entered his Sir Lancelot phase, where he rides about the countryside with a pure heart, his lance pointed at enemies of the PMO Round Table, hoping to make suburban damsels swoon again..

In the face of blistering criticism from within and 25 percent approval ratings he blithely offers a confident yes/ oui when asked if he plans to contest another federal election. Even his harshest detractors wonder at his serene confidence as the ship sinks around him. Like his father— who tried to create world peace in his last days as PM— Justin has gone to another plane.

Some suggest he can’t quit for reasons personal or for future employment in the globalist job market. But those expecting Trudeau to be burdened by the here-and-now miss his self-appointed mission. His divine task can be summed up as “What can be, unburdened by what has been”.

If that sounds familiar it’s because this chrysalis image has been Kamala Harris’ dreamcatcher in her run… er, her imposition upon the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Like Harris, who had 3.5 years as vice president to do something about her pet causes, Trudeau wants Canadians to ignore his scandal-plagued nine years as PM and envision a new tomorrow of his possibilities. He wants to lead them into the nirvana of a mankind unburdened by fact checking or Commons committees.

In his breathy incantation of change it’s a message of purity. It’s also the definition of Marxism. As author James Lindsay writes, “Marx’s ontology of man… is that man is naturally socialist. Indeed, being socialist, Marx says… is what makes him human in the first place. Man is not Homo economicus. Man is Homo socialismus, socialist man, but he’s lost his way…

“By calling it a “complete return,” he’s also indicating that man has lost touch with his true nature; he has forgotten who he really is, and socialism reminds him.

Enter gallant Trudeau as the hero to complete that conversion of Canada to a stateless, classless society with high economic standards and controlled speech. To do so, however, he must get Canadians unburdened by their icky past of imperial conquest and Constitutions. Like the climate hysterics, he wants you to return to an idyllic past by launching yourself like Elon Musk into the future. (Okay, Musk may be a bad comparison.)

To ascend with him into the heavens of socialism will require being Green and bisexual and vegan and DEI conscious. And denouncing those of your neighbours who stray from the narrative. While losing your notions of classic statehood and religion.

For Marxists that last bit has always been the rub. When sane people point to the hundreds of millions killed in the failed socialist experiments of the USSR, the Soviet Bloc, China, Cambodia and Cuba, Marxists contend it was because people failed the state religion, not the other way around. Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution tried mightily to eliminate the Four Olds: ‘old ideas’, ‘old culture’, ‘old customs’, and ‘old habits’. No matter how many of his citizens Mao killed, they still were not worthy of the task. So Mao starved them to death.

For Trudeau, who came of age in a Quebec looking to replace the Roman Catholic religion as the moral force in their lives, his quest has a religious quality. It’s why, teddy bear in hand, he knelt before fake graves of fake murdered indigenous children. And told the UN that Canada must struggle against its genocidal past.

Nothing speaks more to this quest for purity than his promotion of a carbon tax to reduce emissions. While not even its most fervent supporters can say that it has curtailed any significant pollution in the atmosphere, the escalating charges serve a vital point. The suffering they inflict on Canadians is a test of their worthiness in the “what can be”. It’s why the government so strenuously contends that the tax actually benefits average Canadians. Canada must be made clean by suffering, even as China and India belch tonnes of pollutants into their air.

“What can be” is also behind DEI and ESG. The burdens they place on Canadians are meant to be painful, to unhinge them from their “olds”. Trudeau and his Glee Cabinet embrace the struggle-session motif of peasant versus pit boss (even as they live like pit bosses). He sees a day when, led by his selfless example of sending the Mounties against truckers, Canada can proudly take its place among her great postmodern states whose citizens surrender to an all-knowing state.

Where he can hang with Kamala’s Marxist Daddy, Barack Obama. Obama ran the master class in 2008 on the Woke notion of “You didn’t build that road. You didn’t build that bridge.” It was an admonishment to the creative class to know your place in a modern state where all must be shared. In his telling, slavery, feudalism, capitalism are history moving inexorably toward social organization without consciousness.

Obama later borrowed (stole?) from MLK Jr. when he said, “The arc of of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice”. Trudeau realizes that he’s been in charge for a long time, but dreams that, if hangs on long enough, justice will one day declare him the new man, unburdened.. Good luck with that.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Note to @FOXSports announcers. Francisco Lindor was never a Cleveland Guardian. He was a Cleveland Indian until white liberals– not Indians– decided it was a racist name.

With Cleveland beating the Detroit Tigers on Saturday in Gm. 5 of the ALDS, Guardians jars throughout baseball will be overflowing. That’s because most baseball media and fans will reflexively call the team the Indians instead of the pre-fab name they adopted in 2021. Each time they have to throw a quarter in the jar.

Little wonder for the persistence, as the Indians nickname was around since 1911, allegedly honouring player Louis Soxalexis who was a big deal for a time in Cleveland baseball. Opinions vary, except that sometime after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 it became fashionable in liberal circles to take scalps deemed offensive. Did we say scalps? Oops. Put a quarter in the jar.

In Obama’s rush of enthusiasm for defining the entire culture as a racial struggle session pudding heads like Bob Costas decided that natives names on teams in every sport had to go. Those of a tendentious nature also insisted the use of Indian symbols on helmets or jerseys is a case of cultural appropriation. At the head of the shit list was Cleveland Indians.

Agitation begun in college culture-studies classes spread like wildfire (oops, another quarter) through the Woke media until the club relented in 2021, choosing the anodyne nickname Guardians having to do with a statue on a bridge and Bob Hope’s father. Don’t ask.

It was the same for the NFL Washington Redskins who were relentlessly shamed about their team’s nickname, even though the team’s sober indianhead logo was respectful of a native man, drawn by a native man , approved by natives councils and was a symbol of pride in much of the community. After years of resistance the team name was changed first to Washington Football Club and then to the (gack) Commanders.

There were dozens of other long-established team names that took an arrow (Oops, this is getting expensive). In Canada the apogee of political correctness was the campaign by Edmonton politicians to change the name of the CFL team away from Eskimos. Because blubber eaters, condescension etc. (Eskimos is the chosen name for American natives in Alaska.) In a move that offended everyone but city councillors the club is now called the Elks. EE, get it? In a stroke of kismet the team has been hot garbage on the field ever since.

As we wrote first in 2016: It would seem from reading media accounts that a vast movement of native Americans and Canadians is underway. Yet, what’s unique about this struggle is the almost total indifference for these virtuous pearl clutchers among the people most affected by the alleged abuse. Polling consistently demonstrates that, as tempests go, this one is predominantly hot air.

A 2004 poll showed that 90 percent of those native Americans polled did not object to the Redskins nickname. A 2016 Washington Post poll which duplicated the poll question asked in 2004, produced an identical result. In another WaPo survey of native Americans “pride” was the word most associated with the team’s allegedly hateful name.

The general public was not gripped by the Redskins debate either. As DC journalist George Will reports, “A 2013 AP-GfK poll showed that 79 percent of Americans of all ethnicities opposed changing it, and just 18 percent of ‘nonwhite football fans’ favored changing it.” National public opinion polls find that a majority of the general public support the team’s continued use of the name, ranging from 60 to 83 percent in recent years.

Those white liberal protesters who object to the nicknames are no doubt sincere about their feelings, but as crusades go this one is several demonstrators shy of the Selma march of 1964. (Which never stops progressives seeking to educate the “deplorables” in American culture.) Sure enough, Canadian native activist Douglas Cardinal thought it was time to get his name in the media again. But his belated complaint was briskly shut down by a judge.

To be sure, there is a range of native symbols caught up in this debate. The Indians name, allegedly to honor native player Louis Soxalexis who played for Cleveland in the first decade of the twentieth century, might be fairly benign. The Cleveland caricature logo, Chief Wahoo, is offensive on just about every level. 

The NHL Chicago Blackhawks name and logo, by comparison, seem to be respectful of the culture. The name was originally to honour not the native tribe itself but a branch of the U.S. military who used the nickname during WW I. In fact, natives often wear the Blackhawks logo themselves as cultural symbols. Ditto for the Braves’ name— although the fans’ war chant owes more to Hollywood than native culture. 

Because the Redskins play in the political fever swamp of Washington D.C. they have naturally received the most attention from activists and from media slavishly following the latest glittering progressive/ left object. Which allows people such as native activist Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo, to proclaim, without facts, that “the majority of Native American people who have spoken out on this” want the name Redskins banned. And not get laughed into the Potomac. (BTW: The high school football team at Miss Blackhorse’s reservation New Mexico? The Redskins.)

Other zealots prefer a more hands-on approach to convincing natives how badly they’re served by these nicknames.  Folks such as Bob Costas are free to use their platforms to make their feelings known. Which is their right. But it doesn’t mean that they’re aided by the facts. The media have leapt in feet-first to promote the right to First Amendment rights while ignoring data.

All of which begs the question: If so many of those affected by this supposed insult don’t see it as an insult… then who is the progressive culture industry doing it for?  I’ll take your answer off-air.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.