We are currently living under a kind of gyno-gerontocracy: rule by women, seniors, and especially female seniors. Public life is bubble wrapped, and discussion is only permitted within the confines they set. Step outside those boundaries and you’re treated as a threat to social order.
In Canada, those attitudes are enforced with tiny iron fists, rooted in a historical trajectory that diverged sharply from the American experience after the Revolution. Those tendencies would be one thing if the leadership hierarchy were not inverted and the country were not collectively being run into the ground.
Periodic reminders of underlying nationalist sentiment, whether recent banner drops or the convoy six years ago, tend to draw out the same visceral, panicked reactions from this establishment. Those reactions usually do more damage to their legitimacy than the events themselves. The problem is that these moments are never sustained long enough to deliver the reality shattering blow necessary to truly demoralize them. As a result, they remain among the most arrogant and delusional people in the country, armed with an immense sense of unwarranted self importance and completely insufferable about it.
The leaflib spirit needs to be crushed. Its adherents need to be strapped into a chair and forced to see reality, Clockwork Orange style, because otherwise even the slightly critical elements in Canadian society end up wandering down masturbatory intellectual and emotional dead ends. Instead of confronting fundamental issues, they get distracted by spectacles and absurdities like the ostrich farm incident and disappear into yet another cul-de-sac.
The horn that glows, the one that wakes them up and fills them with terror for their social order, will likely have to be sounded by a charismatic visionary. Such a figure would probably be bilingual, knowledgeable about history, rooted in eastern or central Canada, and perhaps partly French Canadian. He would invoke Quebec as both a precedent and a reference point, drawing on it to articulate a deeper Canadian identity upon which a genuine nationalism could be built.
If that person could also address every economic concern the left has while advancing a more right leaning social and cultural vision, the liberal regime in Canada could collapse like the old Soviet regime. Its authority rests largely on social pressure, institutional inertia, and the assumption that no alternative exists. The moment a credible alternative emerges and people stop believing the system is permanent, the whole thing could unravel with shocking speed. What looks invincible today could suddenly look hollow tomorrow.
Canada will not have civil conflict. It has the opposite problem -- it's too nice to have a serious open debate about its real problems:
* Low productivity growth
* Inability to retain talent
* Provincial fragmentation
* NIMBYism
* The perverse incentives of MAID