Trudeau and the woke scolds reap what they sow. But is tit for tat really worth it?
The Prime Minister’s affinity for blackface is certainly uproarious given his reputation as the great paragon of wokeness. And the response from conservatives has understandably been full of schadenfreude and claims that he’s “unfit to govern.”
With the luxury of hindsight, it is hard not to wince when reading passages such as this one from Trudeau’s book, Common Ground: “Identity politics might have been one way of establishing rapport with voters, the kind of divide-and-conquer strategy favoured by the other parties. But I had no intention of going down that road.” Remarkable.
In a book about his personal and political development, a discourse on something like the blackface episode would have been fitting. It would have been ideal for him to meditate on how he had evolved from being an obnoxious, privileged young man to the established politician running for high office. It would have been particularly prudent since it’d construct an image of authenticity. Before it could have provided his opponents with the useful ammunition, Barack Obama was open about how he smoked marijuana and dabbled in a bit of nose candy in his youth. Trudeau would have done right by himself and his fellow Liberals to address “blackface” in a similarly straightforward manner.
But when it comes to this revelatory piece of information, the question is: How should conservatives and others proceed in the climate henceforth?
A popular sentiment seems to be that due to the malicious rules imposed by the woke Left, conservatives or others who are regularly targeted by the “cancel” mob should apply the same rules to them. Gad Saad, the well-known Canadian academic who has bravely been at the forefront of the fight against political correctness, has made this argument. As he says, Trudeau “has created a grotesque environment from which he silences others. To use his rules against him is perfectly fair.” Indeed, Trudeau, a man who fancies himself one of unassailable integrity, often smears his opponents should they deviate on issues like multiculturalism and immigration. Our politics have only become more unpleasant and his “woke” style is at least partly to blame. So I can sympathize with those who feel that a little tit-for-tat is a seductive proposition.
However, we should consider this: How effective will forcing the Left to “play by their own rules” be? What do we do when the Left only intensifies their tactics in response?
At the National Post, Jonathan Kay has cautioned that conservatives should think twice before participating in the cancel culture as a form of reprisal. He says that doing so will only legitimize the tactic. “Sparing Trudeau the logic of tit-for tat,” he writes, “might help arrest these awful trends.” I might differ on some of the details, but he’s right. The argument might be denounced as “soft” but how far will this type of strategy go? How far are we willing to go?
One of the arguments I’ve heard for an all-out “assault” is that the woke Left lack any capacity for self-reflection so the only recourse is to engage with them this way. In their self-righteousness, they certainly think they’re serving the cause of humanity, so the probability of them changing isn’t promising. But increasing our militancy to match theirs will needlessly escalate hostilities, as any preconceptions regarding the “extremities of the right” will be affirmed in their deluded mind. And they’ll feel triumphantly vindicated.
To think any of this will eventually bring us to felicity is, in my view, short-sighted. After all, the woke Left’s impossible standards always eventually leads to them devouring each other. Their program, as we’ve seen, unravels itself.
This is not to say that people should let it slide, but they shouldn’t adopt the coercive means of the woke Left. Perhaps they should resolve to relish the spectacle of woke self-immolation.
For this tit-for-tat logic will certainly not stay within the contentious media environments and will embed itself further into the machinery of government. Arguing against what he curiously calls “peacetime conservatives,” Will Chamberlain of Human Events contends that “wartime” conservatives don’t “hesitate to use government power to achieve conservative ends.” He calls for “sufficient ruthlessness” to prevail on issues such as social media censorship. This is nothing more than hollow bloviating.
Such an approach will prove to be improvident. What does using “the power of government” entail, exactly? Should we be willing to defile institutions in such a belligerent way to remedy current cultural ailments? Then, once the culture is deemed saved, what do we do to restore civil society? To wage war like this assumes that the “right” side will always hold the reins and the woke totalitarians will never be able to do as they wish when the power is in their hands. And what is the plan for that god-forsaken predicament? This is where retributive escalation might lead.
There is a debate to be had on what can be done to save the political culture and move away from the deranged state in which we find ourselves. Yes, there is the temptation to fling similar ordure at people like they have others, but any success at this would be short-lived, and any damage could be irreversible. One can derive much pleasure from “owning the libs” in this manner, but people need to consider what will serve our objectives. Whatever the method, they should be wary of allowing the desire to “own the libs” to supersede principle in the long run.
