Touch Of Class: The Political Divide Is Not About Racism

Like a Woke muezzin, prime minister Justin Trudeau is again calling to the faithful about ending “systemic” racism, a condition he claims poisons the nation. He must break down the “systemic barriers” that exclude people of colour from full participation in Canadian life.

In the U.S., virtual anything done by president Donald Trump allegedly reeks of his systemic racism. Cable TV hosts compete in their racial disdain for the bombastic Trump (even as Kanye, Ice Cube and 50-cent support him). His debunked “fine people” comment is still being employed by Joe Biden for political traction.

It’s all racism all the time on legacy media. For a large portion of liberal America, crippled by their “entitlement”, that is often enough. Except we all know that, while they might sample hip-hop, they won’t be having Cardi B. on their street.

The true purpose of hectoring the president and the unenlightened in America and Canada is not to end racism. The real challenge to society north and south today is maintaining the Woke class in its privilege. It’s not about Democrats or Republicans or Liberals. It’s about the expert class against an economic demographic they’ve purported to lead since the 1960s.

You see, the expert class, robed in authority and wisdom, has blotted its copybook on many fronts. People noticed— people died—because the health geniuses got just about everything wrong when Covid-19 arrived. The Woke grandees then flipped 180 degrees on their policies— and their media pals vilified people like Dr. Scott Atlas or Alex Berenson who called them on it.

It’s not an anomaly. From Bush 43 flunking the Iraq War to Trudeau being found in blackface to the failure of RussiaGate to produce anything but legal bills, Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable and irredeemables” are getting the idea they’re being jobbed.  And silenced. Please leave by the tradesman’s entrance.

There is a double standard at play. One for the elites who emerged from school together, married each other and sustain each other in jobs. The other, in the acid words of Sinclair Lewis, is for “a savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking chairs . . . and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.” 

Or, as Obama let slip, they’re people who “cling to their guns and religion” for solace. Critic and historian Fred Siegel— a lapsed American liberal— notes that “Wokeness is a force that undermines the middle class… and you couldn’t have had wokeness without an elite contempt for the values of the middle class.”

There was a time when the nomenklatura of the West at least pretended to like the folk in fly-over country. Joe Biden was the “kid from Scranton” who’d take you out behind the barn. Now, as the legacy media and their new cousins in Silicon Valley try to bury Hunter Biden’s crack pipe escapades, they don’t even pretend at fraternity anymore. 

They’re too enamoured with their cleverness and the smothering effects of the political correctness institutionalized by Obama from 2008-16. Mr. Siegel defines political correctness as ‘the inability to speak the truth about the obvious.” It’s led to an Orange Man Bad cult which refuses to admit it’s a cult. . “The clearest signal you’re in a cult is  that other members of the group actively try to prevent you from exchanging ideas with outsiders,” says critic Scott Adams.

Hence Trump and Brexit. The forgotten middle class knows that Trump is a flawed figure. But they admire that he chose to fight for them— at great personal cost the past four years. He’s profane and erratic but he’s authentic. His truth is obvious to them.

Who are the people pulling up the class drawbridge? In Canada they are the religionists of bilingualism, Pierre Trudeau’s gift to the nation. “Those with impeccable skills in both French and English (who) tend to be pulled from a rather narrow cultural-geographic-ethnic milieu,” says J.J. McCullough in the Washington Post. (The fact that McCullough’s brilliant analysis came from outside Canada is all you need to know about the hiving instincts of Canada’s media— who’ve largely been bought off by Trudeau.)

As McCullough notes they’re all-in on diversity, unless it interferes with their other pet project. “It’s always been curious how otherwise impeccably woke Canadians can turn into rigidly ideological meritocrats whenever the obviously discriminatory aspects of official bilingualism are raised.”

As radio show host Roy Green noted, "How do you define a white male interfering with a First Nations attorney general doing her sworn duty, then firing her as A.G. and ultimately dismissing Jody Wilson-Raybould from (the) LPC caucus? Is that systemic racism @JustinTrudeau? Just asking.”

The U.S. elite class, protected by the censoring hands of Mark Zukerberg (Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter) can easily be gleaned by a glimpse at Biden’s donors list. The Democratic Party, once the home of blue-collar middle class, is now the plaything of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood and legacy media. If you’re looking for Archie Bunker, he fled that nest 50 years ago.

As they showed in the 2016 election debacle the SJWs like getting their way. The protestations and machinations since then have been an assault on Trump, but also a warning to the “others” who might want to defy their orthodoxy in the future. They’ve moved from #SNL scorn to open threats.

Former Clinton hack Robert Reich is already drawing up an enemy’s list for a Truth and Reconciliation Tribunal fashioned on the lines of South Africa . “It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.”

MSNBC host Chris Hayes also touted a “truth and reconciliation commission” as “the most humane and reasonable way to deal” with those who seemingly question the COVID-19 orthodoxy. Just how much are Civil War reparations anyhow? 

The message from the powerful? STFU. Listen to ex-pat Canadian Ali Velshi baying at the moon on @MSNBC about lunatic Hawaii senator Maizie Hirono taking Amy Coney Barrett to task after she used the suddenly offensive term “sexual preference”. Within 24 hours of the Hirono fatwa the term was struck from dictionaries. Oz has spoken.

If you’re not afraid then you’re supposed to be. You can smell the revenge in the air for Nov. 3 if they can finally slay Trump.

As author/ broadcaster Jeff Giesea has concluded about the attempts to stifle flyover nation:  “Orwell didn’t write 1984 as a playbook. Yet here we are. As a friend quipped recently: ‘I thought we were becoming more like Brazil. Instead we’re looking more like East Germany.’ 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his next book Personal Account with Tony Comper will be available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca this fall.