Tailing on to the previous article, here are some thoughts from The Line‘s Matt Gurney about the strengths and weaknesses of Justin Trudeau — and I despise the man, but I accept he’s a very good politician — and the odd fact that he can’t seem to grasp the reason for his ongoing fall in popularity among Canadians:
… it was a specific comment by the PM that really stayed with me. It’s this:
… Trudeau does believe, however, that Liberals are up against something relatively new in this climate, which he calls opinion-as-identity politics.
“I don’t think that was a feature too much of other times in politics — where what you think about something actually creates the circles and the people that you actually associate with, and it defines who you are.”
I’m going to let Tom Cruise in the delightful and little-remembered sci-fi film Oblivion convey my reaction to the PM’s comment there:
This is a statement that I’m having a hard time processing, and that I’ve been reflecting on for weeks, because there is no version of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — at least, in my understanding of the man — that is dumb enough to believe such a silly thing. Dividing ourselves into tribes identified by our opinions on stuff is exactly what human beings do, and have always done. The first monkey to get out of a tree and stand on solid ground and think to themselves, “Hey, it’s kind of cool down here,” was undoubtedly, immediately ostracized by all the other monkeys that thought that life atop the trees could not possibly ever be beaten.
And we’ve been finding new things to disagree about, and kill each other over, ever since. Which skin colour is best, which holy book contains the real guide to salvation, which ideology is the path to true human enlightenment … human beings have slaughtered each other by the millions over this stuff for as long as there have been human beings. Sure, every so often we squabble over resources. Who gets to control which oil field or prime cattle pasture and the like. But most of our nastiest fights have been over opinions about stuff. Maybe substantive matters, things like racial identity or religious affiliation, but still just opinions. And if we’re honest, some of the opinions have been pretty dumb. Not worth killing or dying over.
Hell, as I was thinking about writing this column, my young son very solemnly and seriously told me about some drama on the schoolyard he’d been part of. It turns out some kids who are normally good buddies had come to tears and almost to blows because … they liked different NFL football teams, and tensions were running high during some of the recent playoff games. I know it’s easy to dismiss this as just boys being boys, but I actually think it’s pretty useful here as an example of humans being humans. There is nothing that symbolizes the way we simian-brained weirdos approach life better than imagining a bunch of thinking, feeling people becoming emotionally overwhelmed because of a disagreement over which collection of overpaid athletic prodigies should advance while a different collection of overpaid athletic prodigies wearing another colour shirt heads home for a long break.
It’s ridiculous. But it’s us. It’s humans. Through and through. I’m a sports fan, too, and I’m well aware of the fact that sports are one of those handy things we use as a society to channel our base, primal, aggressive instincts. I get up and cheer wildly when the Leafs beat the Canadiens because it satisfies some part of my brain, and millions of other brains, that would probably otherwise result in Toronto and Montreal raiding each other for chickens. Or worse. Human beings are constantly deciding stuff and then sorting whole populations accordingly, and then getting emotionally invested in those divisions. I like it more when we channel it into sports rivalries and fights over who has the superior bagel.
How can the prime minister not understand this about us?
