By Peter Christensen

Op-Ed Commentary

What to say about the current shortfall in international diplomatic rapport? Who is calling the shots? What is the US agenda? Everything we can imagine?  With all the conspiracy theories, Mr. Trump’s aggressive negotiations and the US media marketing violence throughout their communications networks one does feel nervous.

However, our American friends are not alone when it comes to mystery with regards to who is running ‘the show’!

The Liberals here at home, in 2019, ‘fired’ their Attorney General MP Jody Wilson-Raybould rather than have their ‘leader’ Justin Trudeau face criticism for pressuring her to look the other way while a Quebec company, SNC Lavalin, was bribing officials in Libya to cut a sweet deal with revolutionary forces; a war that resulted in tens of thousands of casualties since the onset of violence in early 2011. MP Wilson-Raybould resigned from Cabinet, as did her friend MP Jane Philpott, who said “there can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.”

This debacle was followed by the Liberal team biting hard into the Kamloops hoax that accused all Canadians of genocide and used this unfounded story to keep their golden boy becoming shallow ‘progressive’ booster in the limelight by having him parade every post-modern intellectual fad from ‘post-nationalism’ to ‘intersectionality.’

Ottawa’s bureaucratic and smug political class was running the country, a move that left the elected government accomplishing narrow missions ignorant of their impact or lack of it on the rest of us. These ‘progressivisms’ divided us but conversely worked to the advantage of the Conservative Party and led eventually to very low approval for the Liberals followed by Mr. Trudeau resigning as leader of the party. What at shemozzle!

I know politics can be underhanded and deceitful; however, this was the first time in my lifetime that Canada felt morbidly third-world. Had their young savior retired after his initial term, (he did well during his first term negotiating a new trade agreement with the Americans), rather than mire himself in the party’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, we all would have done better! Based on hero worship the party elected its ‘coyote’ to lead Canada into a second and third term minority government that ‘progressively’ dragged us out into an open field of fire.

Canada is now in a trade-war being ‘fought’ by a political party that advised Mr. Trudeau as Prime Minister to suspend Parliament at a critical time; all the while the next door ‘neighbour’ predisposed to negotiate using tried and true business strategies, threats and insinuation was inclined by our show of weakness to test an even greater goal, assimilation.

It is said that community springs out of conflict, a kind of tribalism is born, that individuals come together to face an outside threat and a ‘rite of passage’ follows. A ‘rite of passage’ is when the level of self-value a country possesses changes in terms of self-respect, competence and esteem. I am waiting for this?

It is ironic it took the machinations of a President like Mr. Trump, the weakness of a confused ineffectual leader and a self-serving political party that puts itself ahead of the good of the nation to shock Canadians into feeling threatened enough to grow a sense of community. As one wit put it, “do you know how badly you’ve got to f–k up to get the Quebecois to be proudly Canadian?”

When individualism is an end goal self-correction disappears; conflict and disbanding results. When community is celebrated feelings of civic nationalism awaken. The Liberal ‘divide and conquer’ strategy of the last two terms has left Canada vulnerable with the Liberal’s stalling and hunting for another savior.  In this case, Mark Carney, an unelected accountant, who is quickly divesting himself of questionable interests before he exposes himself to Parliamentary conflict of interest disposition or reveals his assets.

Debate is not simply a matter of deciding whether or not someone is telling the truth or lying, there is a third option. The third triad is not a new idea, it was identified in Athenian times as philosopher Plato’s “noble lie.” It is when a new intersubjective reality substitutes for a pre-existing reality. It is when a story of community replaces the contentious offspring of individualism.

A new story needs to be told, one where people form a community to stand together against outside forces. It is what is best for the country and needs to be led by a political survivor, someone we can trust to hang in there, fight the good fight in the House of Commons and not take us down the garden path of saviors.

– Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley based writer and poet.

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