The Liberals and progressives everywhere were so close.  At the height of their influence, no one, certainly anywhere in the English speaking world could make this claim: “Climate change IS NOT an existential threat to planet earth.” Those who did were immediately sidelined, ostracized by their cohorts, dismissed by corporate media and social media behemoths. Sure the battle still rages, but only in their information world where you still see phrases like “climate change denialist”.

You see their information world has not yet realized something new has happened.  History writers will say Elon Musk stopped the progressives in their tracks by buying Twitter, releasing the Twitter files and eventually with Donald Trump, swinging the information world in the direction of X.  If you have doubts just look at this picture.  While the Twitter files reveal the new information world was under the, let’s say ‘secret influence’ of the White House, this photo shows those same tech power brokers are publicly, and happily celebrating the man they worked secretly to bring down.  Or at least they’re not ashamed to publicly text their friends about it. The fact they’re not hiding probably reveals their eager support.

Sometimes we find it’s the people we look down our noses at who make all the difference.  Like those overweight beer-guzzling hunter types who wear the red hats. (No not the Roman Cardinals, but the Appalachian trailer house occupants). These conspiracy theorists started to proclaim that the world would in fact not burn up by next weekend.  Sure many of these seemed to be the same people who claim the world is flat and their neighbor is from another planet.  But then more people stepped forward.  Not about ‘pancake Earth’, but about the existential threat of climate change.

Family members and friends scorned and ridiculed them, and many still do.  They were outraged that a regular citizen would dare to share information from a completely sane climate scientist or researcher who did not agree with the majority. They’d lose their marbles on those silly enough to cite a peer reviewed scientific paper.  IF anyone was bold enough to take the time to read an entire report from NASA or Environment Canada, well you’d certainly hear someone say “You fool! You can’t do your own research!! You’re not a scientist!!”

Fortunately, funny man podcaster Jimmy Dore has the perfect comeback for these situations.  Dore says when his own friends warned him only a Conspiracy Theorist would do his own research, he replied “You know before COVID doing your own research used to be called… reading”.  It’s really worth two minutes to check this out.  If you don’t find it funny, really funny, then I’m sorry. One day you will.

Jimmy Dore on the shaming of doing your own research and questioning the narrative during the Covid era…pic.twitter.com/PxCRVgklbj

— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) January 2, 2024

Speaking of reading, in the days before the printing press the Church and various wildly wealthy monarchs had a stranglehold on information sharing.  Those who contradicted the party line could have their heads chopped off by a guillotine bought and paid for with their meagre tax offerings, or, they could expect to be publicly shamed and eternally condemned by their local preacher.  Sure some of them probably deserved it but who am I to judge?

Then the printing press was invented. At first the Church leaders said, “Great now everyone can be educated, learn to read and even write themselves, and study the Bible on their own!”  Eventually some of those same leaders said, “THIS IS A DISASTER! Everyone can be educated, learn to read and even write themselves, and study the Bible on their own!”  After a few centuries the power structures in Europe completely changed.  The Church divided into thousands of Protestant movements and the Catholic Church forever lost the political clout it never should have appreciated.  Universities sprung up around libraries. Monarchs handed over power to early democratic governments. Books about science lead to scientific innovations. Average Joe’s eventually moved from underground mud huts to middle class condos in the sky.

Well the same thing is happening now with the internet.  Except at breakneck  speed.  What took the printing press hundreds of years to accomplish, takes the internet a few months.  The emergence and re-emergence of Trump Presidencies, revolutions against power structures, could not have been accomplished without the way we get information on the internet.

Sure there’s a lot of murky confusion as corporate media used to their powerful podiums of the printing press and cable tv are moving their content over to the new medium.  But they’re being (sorry it’s all over, they have been) overtaken by the new form of information sharing.  We’ve gone from headlines and ten second sound bites, to three hour long conversations with plenty of time for explaining and context.  That’s something cable tv just didn’t have enough bandwidth to deliver.

So what does this mean for people trying to buy 1,200 square foot condos in Canada today?

Well we get to watch the power brokers struggle to retain their grip on / over our lives.

Those running to replace the son of … Hmm. Here’s a perfect example. Depending upon where you get your information from he’s either the son of Pierre, or he has an incomprehensively uncanny and impossibly accidental resemblance to a close personal family friend.

Those running to replace Liberal Leader Justin (let’s leave the last name out until the DNA results are back) definitely believe his father is Pierre. They believe Russians are our enemies.  They think COVID vaccines saved the world. They think NATO is protecting Ukraine. And they certainly believe if we pay higher taxes in Canada we’ll save the world from the temperatures many of us pay thousands of dollars to escape to for a few days for six months of the year.

Carney, Gould, and Freeland don’t seem to realize everyday Canadians are simply done with the idea that a Carbon Tax in any form is going to save the world.  Thanks to the internet, regular folks/voters have had time to do a little reading and listen to a few long conversations about this.  Average people are understanding that CO2 makes up not 40% or 60% of the atmosphere, but .04%.  Of that .04%, less than 4% is caused by humans. Mathematically it’s silly to think that paying more for food and groceries and everything else in Rosetown, Saskatchewan or Red Deer, Alberta is going to stop, slow down, or make any difference at all to global temperatures in 20 years.

It’s ironic that it’s the modern progressive movement who are stuck in the old information age.  You’d think the slower thinking conservatives would hold on to the old ways and they’d be the ones trying to enforce restrictions on the new communication movement.  Somehow the self proclaimed forward looking progressives are the ones trying to censor.  Maybe it does make sense.  Conservatives are more likely to read their history.  They know the ones who censor are always trying to retain their failing grasp on power.  New information consumers are ready, willing, and annoyingly attempting to debate.  But there’s no debate for those who say “The science is settled.” I guess that means they’re all finished learning things.

Sorry to the Liberal Leadership hopefuls.  They haven’t heard the news.  Well actually they have and that’s the problem.  Instead of paying attention to what’s really happening, they’re dismissing everything and everyone who doesn’t appear on the cable news channels.. other than to be ridiculed that is.

I leave you with this short video from Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.  Franco explains how those vying for control of the PMO are tripping over their new versions of an old and failed Carbon Tax. Pity them. They don’t realize voters have moved on.

The two-year campaign for colorblind equality notches its biggest win yet.

Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order abolishing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracy in the federal government.

The move marks a stunning reversal of fortune from just four years ago, when Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, and DEI seemed unstoppable. Following the death of George Floyd, left-wing race activists made a blitz through America’s institutions, rewriting school curricula, altering government policy, and establishing DEI offices in major universities, big-city school districts, and Fortune 100 companies. The Biden administration immediately followed suit, mandating a “whole-of-government equity agenda” that entrenched DEI in the federal government.

No more. President Trump has rescinded the Biden executive order and instructed his Cabinet to “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions,” and “all ‘equity action plans,’ ‘equity’ actions, initiatives, or programs.” In other words, President Trump has signed the death warrant for DEI within the federal government.

How did we get here? Through patiently building a movement and winning the public debate. At the beginning of 2023, I worked with Florida governor Ron DeSantis to launch the “abolish DEI” campaign. We began by terminating the DEI bureaucracy at New College of Florida, a small public university in Sarasota, where I serve as a trustee. The reaction from the racialist Left was intense. Protesters descended on the campus and the left-wing media published hundreds of articles condemning the move. But we held firm and made the case that public institutions should judge individuals based on their accomplishments, rather than their ancestry.

The argument began to take hold. The polling data indicated that Americans supported a “colorblind society” over a “race-conscious society” by large margins. Even the New York Times, one of the largest boosters of left-wing racialism, started publishing pieces that criticized DEI. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement was ensnared in scandals and the leading intellectual voices of DEI, such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, faced sustained public scrutiny and seemed to disappear from the spotlight.

We pushed onward. Governor DeSantis led the way, signing legislation abolishing the DEI bureaucracy in all of Florida’s public universities. A dozen other red states followed, restricting DEI programs and banning DEI-style discrimination in their public institutions. The process became a virtuous cycle: each state that passed an anti-DEI bill reduced the risk of the next state doing the same. The campaign moved from the realm of debate to the realm of policy.

Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris on November 5 sealed DEI’s fate. Corporate America, including companies such as Walmart, and Meta, interpreted the event as an incentive to change, voluntarily terminating their DEI programs before Trump took office. Mark Zuckerberg made it explicit, arguing that the country had reached a “cultural tipping point,” which convinced him to stop DEI programs. And Zuckerberg, along with numerous other tech titans, were prominently seated at the inauguration yesterday.

In one way, Trump’s executive order yesterday was priced in—people knew it was coming. Still, it is a crowning achievement for those who have built this campaign from the ground up. There will be many fights ahead—the bureaucracy will attempt to evade the order, and more needs doing on civil rights reform in general—but, for the moment, we should celebrate. The forces of left-wing racialism are on the defensive, and the forces of colorblind equality are on the move.

None of it was inevitable—and nothing will be going forward, either. It has taken courage, hard work, and more than a little luck. But this is undoubtedly a moment to feel optimistic. America’s institutions are not beyond correction, as many feared. The American people were wise enough to realize that their country might not have survived four or eight more years of government by DEI. The spoke on November 5, and now President Trump is acting accordingly.

Christopher F. Rufo is a Senior Fellow of the Manhattan Institute, Contributing Editor of City Journal, Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College, and founder of American Studio, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating new work about the American experience.

The hub for all of my work on critical race theory, gender ideology, institutional capture, and social decay.