Bruce Dowbiggin
White Out: “Some Ideas Are So Stupid Only Intellectuals Believe Them.”
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“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.— George Orwell
Say this. It took Christianity three centuries to take over the Roman Empire. The new religion of White Guilt has taken over Western culture in about a generation. Through government, schools and media, this cult has been made religion. And, like so many religions, there is no questioning the leap of faith required to believe.
It’s why so many whites took seriously the absurd claims of actor Jussie Smollett who fabricated a story about white men in MAGA hats assaulting him on a freezing cold Chicago street at 2 AM. Smollett knew that if he was exposed— it took over a week— he only needed to play the race card and still be embraced by guilty white liberals.
As author Pedro Gonzalez notes, social engineering has now “conditioned white people to instantly forgive victimizers with sufficient diversity points… The end of social engineering is that it makes people act in certain ways unwittingly—they don’t know they’re doing it.”
Political conservatives have stood by during this conversion, fearful of being called racists. Thus, minorities are now forgiven their trespasses based on past oppressions. For example, sentencing guidelines in Canada require that indigenous criminals receive lighter sentences or be sent to healing circles because Sir John A. Macdonald something-something.
This produced a Catch-22 dynamic we captured in September 2017:
Progressive: You can’t blame an undocumented young Latino for something his parents did 20 years ago.
Also Progressive: Whites can never make up for things their ancestors did 200 years ago.
Psychologist Sam Vaknin, who studies narcissism, says that in the new dynamic victimhood identity now extends to guilty whites. “Certain people are prone to adopt victimhood as an identity. Victimhood endows their life with meaning. They would seek to be victims even in situations where they would not have been victimized otherwise. When they are not victimized, they push you to become victimized.”
The current zeitgeist in the educated white middle class is now unconscious, fashionable contrition for anything people they don’t know allegedly did to those who came out on the short end of history. Distilled, it says white people have it coming, and they know it.
Typical was the Atlanta murder of an 18-year-old white man who was gunned down by two black youths for no apparent reason in front of his girlfriend. Anger? Elijah DeWitt’s girlfriend saw the gunmen as victims. “You don’t know how those kids were raised. You know, what they were going through,” Bailey Rediling said. Elijah’s father, Craig DeWitt, did the same. “You know, we don’t know the kids. We don’t know their backgrounds. We don’t know their story. They’re forgiven from me.”
Yes, it’s Christian charity to forgive. But what about the individual agency of the shooters? To Woke whites that’s a now distraction. The shooters were victims! And should you think otherwise you’re a racist. Progressives are seemingly one of the few factions who remain in denial about America’s social advancement over the past half-century.
The media campaigns tell the evolution of this transition. In Canada it’s the Rez School graves. In America it’s the tragedy of black slavery. In the UK it’s the subjugation of brown peoples around the world.
Ostensibly this retroactive guilt was to benefit those oppressed in your grandaddy’s day. Equating all social ills with the tainted white race etc. That’s what was advertised in liberal stump speeches for the Great Society when the Left went from the party of Jim Crow to the party of Jussie Smollett.
It did produce some guilt money to current black and indigenous and LGBTQ communities. A literal get-out-of-jail-free card. A liberal media so craven you can shoot them, and they can be sued for stopping your bullets. The political and financial strip-mining of white liberal guilt for fun and profit.
While demonstrating to the Rob Reiner Brigade that sufficient remorse allows them to punish their fellow whites who aren’t in on the hustle. As we wrote in 2017: “The high priests of this guilt told their white adherents they were unworthy to judge, disqualified them from feeling pride in culture. Power was instead ceded to anyone who had a gripe from “micro-aggressions” to occupying too much of a bus seat. Rending your $50K garment at the Oscars became the sanctifying moment of your guilty white existence.”
But the real benefit of the new religion has not been to the “victims” since the Democrats dumped their Dixiecrat past in favour of a more contemporary Massa’. No integration of communities for minorities. No holidays on Hyannisport. No mercy from Planned Parenthood’s eugenic past. The same urban blight.
Vaknin says of blacks, like Smollett, being constantly told they’re victims, “It’s very dangerous, because if you are a perennial victim and this is your identity, you would tend to develop attendant behaviours, for example, you would feel entitled to special treatment, and if you don’t get this special treatment you will become aggressive.”
White liberals don’t care. They can hold two thoughts in mind at the same time. Maintain the gated communities and leafy suburbs as befits their sensitivity. While forcing fellow whites to bear the burdens of the chaos they cause with defunding police, opening the border or robbing citizens of the right to protect themselves.
Ah, the blank canvas of a contented mind. Nowhere is the contrition of guilty whites more exploited than in the sudden representation of mixed-race or gay couples in advertising (as we covered in April). Corporations wedded to ESG present white liberals with the racial version of the West Wing: a progressive nirvana to instruct the white majority in Good Think. Heaven help those who resist.
As Orwell said, “ Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.” He must have had MSNBC/ CBC in mind.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). 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. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft YearsIn NHL History, , his new book with his son Evan, was voted the eighth best professional hockey book of by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Breaking: CBC News admits that host Rosemary Barton was wrong on April 16 when she said “remains of indigenous children” have been discovered.
Call it the Panic Election. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Quebec alienation to plastic straws, the dynamic is citizens being stampeded in a brief six weeks by Big Brother. (There’s no Big Sister. That would mess with the narrative.) Prompting Covid Part Deux from the Laurentian media scolds.
Nowhere is this panic more keen than among aging Boomers who’ve pronounced themselves willing to ignore a decade of Justin Trudeau’s clumsy, unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour in the wake of Big Bad Trump. Even the threat of losing the country’s AAA credit rating can’t sway them from full-throated panic about being the 51st state.
The 51st state gambit is the window dressing. The real Trump panic is over him exposing the inadequacies of a Canadian society penetrated by China, dominated by globalist fanatics and more indebted every day. Specifically, Trump labelled Canadians defence dead-beats and entitled snobs who’d be crazy not to join the U.S. The insulting Trump framing has been a lifeline to those most recently in office— Liberals— to point at the Big Bad Wolf outside the door rather than the Frozen Venezuela inside its walls.
Integral to this panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money. The 416/613 bubble ponies operate as if it were still 1985, not 2025. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. For instance, CBC’s flagship At Issue panel features three people from Toronto and a fourth from Montreal.
It has worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week, when the media guardians finally lost the plot. The combination of TV panel hubris and the incompetence of the Elections Commission exposed an industry more interesting in protecting its own turf than protecting the truth.
The meltdown was the notion that conservative social media— with its intrusive reporters and tabloid tactics— had no place in their sandbox. This hissy fit came after Wednesday’s French debate. Members of Rebel News, True North and other outfits dominated the party leaders’ scrums with obtrusive questions about Mark Carney’s opinions on same-sex sports and what constitutes a woman— questions the French moderator had neglected to ask.
For legacy reporters and hosts who take it as given that they be allowed the front pew this was an affront to their status. As purveyors of the one true political religion the talking heads on CBC, CTV and Global began speaking of “so-called journalists” and “far-right” intruders elbowing into their territory. Their resentment was all-consuming.
This resentment spilled into Debate Night Two when a shouting match ensued in the press room. A CBC source claimed (incorrectly) that Rebel Media leader Ezra Levant had been barred from the press room. A writer from the Hill Times screamed at members of their raucous rivals. The carefully chose panelists suggested that these outfits were funded by dark right-wing sources.
Before the debate had ended Elections Commission organizers— reportedly goaded by the Liberals— called off the post-debate scrum citing “safety” issues that seemingly included a Rebel reporter conducting a hostile walking interview with a furious Liberal official. This unleashed another torrent of Media Party vitriol about its position as the keepers of Canadian journalism.
In a show of irony, these complaints about right-wing misinformation came from people whose livelihood is dependent on Liberal slush funds or whose organizations have accepted government funds to stave off bankruptcy or whose union is an active shill for non-Conservative parties. The conflicts are never mentioned in the unctuous festival of privilege.
What makes this rearguard action against new media risible was the 2024 U.S. election where Donald Trump acknowledged the new day and rode the support of non-traditional media back to the presidency. His shunning of the legacy networks and hallowed print brands heralded a new reality in American elections. Poilievre has struggled to find this community in Canada, but for those with eyes it remains the future of disseminating political thought.
A perfect example of alternative media scooping the tenured mob on Parliament Hill has been the sterling work on China by Sam Cooper, a former Global employee who has independently demonstrated the ties between Chinese criminal gangs and the Canadian political structure going back to the 1980s. Working with others outside the grid he’s shown the scandal of a Liberal candidate urging Chinese Canadian voters to reap a bounty for turning his Conservative opponent to the Chinese Communist Party. A disgrace that Carney has forgiven.
Predictably Cooper’s work and the independent story by two retired RCMP investigators who implicated nine Liberal cabinet members in compliance with the Chinese communists has gotten the ‘tish-tish” from the Laurentian elites. Like the Democrats who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to save his father in the dying days of the 2020 U.S. election the poodle media hope to delay the truths about China long enough to get the compliant Carney over the finish line.
For contrast to how it was— and could be— one only had to witness the moderator performance of journalist Steve Paikin of TVO. Largely unknown outside Ontario, Paikin overcame the skepticism of Westerners by playing it straight down the middle. Such was his honest-broker performance that Poilievre was heard telling him after the debate that he had no idea how Paikin might vote. (Ed. note: Paikin is a former colleague and longtime friend.) In other words, it’s still possible.
It’s a cliché that this election is a hinge point for Canada. Will it face itself in the mirror or indulge in more denialism about its true self? No wonder unaffiliated journalists joke that their stories today will be the lead on mainstream media in three months. Carney has promised to continue bribing the mainstream media, but their day is done. It’s simply a matter of fixing a date for the next panic.
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. 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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
It’s fair to say everyone in hockey wanted the Winnipeg Jets back in the NHL. They became everyone’s darlings in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers, the league’s second stab at a franchise in Georgia, were sold to Canadian interests including businessman David Thomson. (Ed.: Gary Bettman’s try number three in Atlanta is upcoming.).
Yes, the market is tiny. Yes, the arena is too small. Yes, Thomson’s wealth is holding back a sea of inevitability. But sentimentalists remembering the Bobby Hull WHA Jets and the Dale Hawerchuk NHL Jets threw aside their skepticism to welcome back the Jets. The throwback uniforms with their hints at Canada’s air force past were an understated nod to their modest pretensions. It was a perfect story.
The question now, however, is will the same folks get dewey-eyed about the Jets if they become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since (checks his cards) Montreal and Patrick Roy did it in 1993. It would be helpful in this election year if something were to bind a nation torn apart by politics. The Gordie Howe Elbows Up analogy is more than shopworn, and Terry Fox can only be resurrected so often. So a Cup win might be a welcome salve.
But the approved script has long dictated that the Canadian team to break the schneid should be one of the glamour twins of the NHL’s Canadian content, the Edmonton Oilers or the (gulp) Toronto Maple Leafs. The Oilers and their superstar Connor McDavid barely lost out last spring to Florida while the Leafs, laden with superstars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are overdue for a long playoff run.
Hockey Night In Canada positively pants for the chance to gush over these two squads each week. When was the last time Toronto played an afternoon game so HNIC could showcase the Jets? Like, never. Same for the Oilers, who with their glittering stars like McDavid Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins are the primary tenants of the doubleheader slot, followed by Calgary. Winnipeg? We’ll get to them.
But there’s going to be no ignoring them in the spring of 2025. The Jets in the northern outpost in Manitoba were the top team in the entire league in 2024-25. They’ll comfortably win the Presidents Cup as the No. 1 squad and have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. They have the league’s best goalie in Connor Hellebuyck (an American) and a stable of top scorers led by Kyle Connor and Mark Schiefele. Because Winnipeg is on a lot of No Trade lists, they have built themselves through the draft and thrifty budgeting.
But will the same people who swooned over the Jets in 2011 now find them as adorable if they ruin the Stanley Cup plot lines of the Oilers, Leafs and Ottawa Senators? Will the fans of Canadian teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal not making the postseason take the Jets to their hearts or will they be as phoney as the Mike Myers commercials for the Liberals?
In addition, the Jets will be swamped by national media should they proceed through the playoffs. It’s one thing to carry the expectations of Winnipeg and Manitoba. It’s another to foot the bill for a hockey crazy county. We remember Vancouver’s GM Mike Gillis during the Canucks 2011 Cup run bemoaning the late arrivers of the press trying to critique his team as they made their way through the playoffs.
It will be no picnic for the Jets, however strong they’ve been in the regular season. No one was gunning for them as they might for the Oilers or Leafs. They will now get their opponents’ best game night after night. Hellebuyck has been a top three goalie in the NHL for a while, winning the Vezina Trophy, but his playoff performance hasn’t matched that of his regular-season version.
Already the injury bug that sidelines so many Cup dreams is biting at the Jets. Nikolaj Ehlers collided with a linesman in Saturday’s OT win in Chicago. Defenceman Dylan Samberg is also questionable after stopping a McDavid slap shot with his leg. A rash of injuries has ended the run of many a worthy Cup aspirant in the past. Can Winnipeg’s depth sustain the churn of seven weeks of all-out hockey?
As always for the small-market Jets time is of the essence. Keeping this core together is difficult with large markets lusting after your players. With the NHL salary cap going up it remains a chore to keep their top players. Schiefele and Hellebuyck are tied up longterm, but 40-goal man Connor is a UFA after next season while Ehlers is not signed after this season. Young Cole Perfetti will be an RFA in 2026. Etc.
So how much do Canadians love the Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a Canadian Cup? Lets see Ron MacLean pun his way through that one.
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. 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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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