Citizens today see the creeping dementia of president Joe Biden and the blissful incompetence of PM Justin Trudeau and ask themselves, “This is the best we can do?” Where they once chose between dynamic leaders, voters now choose between the least offensive options.

The extremes of the Left and Right hold sway. Tribalism reigns. Much of this the result of the tech revolution of the internet. Seen initially as a flowering of knowledge it is now a grim carnival of censorship, polemics and hate. Democratization has morphed into demonization.

The Media Party— never strong on history— searches for comparisons to another time. The advent of Nazi Germany. The Chinese cultural revolution. The U.S. Civil War. All are cited to explain how to understand this careening cultural crisis.

If they seek a true comparison, however, they should look to The Reformation, a detonation that was no less than a re-ordering of Western civilization after nearly 1500 years of the Christian Era. As 1500 arrived, there had been numerous peasant revolts usually brutally repressed. The causes were often food shortages and plagues that visited themselves on the peasant class— catastrophes that saw kings and popes look impotent. (There was also, as today, the existential threat of Islam at Europe’s door,)

Trust in the ruling classes wobbled. But the Catholic Church remained the ultimate authority, controlling kings, princes and parliaments through its awesome powers of excommunication and, often, execution. A citizen’s relationship to God went through the church. A direct relationship to the deity was heresy, punishable by burning.

This monopoly on souls allowed for extreme corruption in the Church, which, by the sixteenth century, was a shakedown operation on a vast scale. In addition to onerous taxing and begging, the Church sold profitable indulgences— allegedly freeing a sinner of their sins. It controlled vast tracts of land and expensive estates across the continent. As much as half of the economy flowed through the Church in some nations.

This ability to operate in both the spiritual and physical world was widely resented. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, published in 1386, catalogued the tensions between classes, genders, knights, working classes and a clergy who made a farce of their celibacy.

Then, much as the internet circumvented today’s authority, European civilization was shattered by technology. Gutenberg’s printing press in the mid-1400s. Suddenly the transmission of thought, belief, opinion and protest went from rare parchments passed hand-to-hand to books that could be mass produced and distributed widely around Europe.

This revolutionary technology— and the messages it spread— soon made possible the Renaissance, notions of liberty and no less than modern science. Into this new world also flooded voices of protest and grievance against the Catholic Church and ruling class. By the time Martin Luther, Erasmus, Thomas More and his patron Henry VIII were done, the Western world was shattered for hundreds of years to come.

Henry ransacked the Church properties when they would not submit to his status of Defender of the Faith in England. x Henry’s break with the Church of Rome over his marriage to Anne Boleyn (which cost Moore his head) led to the Church of England being the religion of the British Empire around the world. Germany was racked by wars for centuries.

It also redefined the individual’s role in the world. Luther’s incandescent 96 Theses (a Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences ) preached a direct relationship with God and led to the establishment of Protestant regimes across Europe. The individual, not a church, would now be at the centre of belief.

Comparisons between today’s cultural chaos and the Reformation— both sparked by revolutions in knowledge technology— are obvious. In Yeats’ immortal words on the eve of WW II, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”.

The Left seeks to revolutionize basic understandings of Western tradition on gender, race, science, mathematics and economics. The Right, using its sliver of the web, pushes back against change through Donald Trump, its version of Henry VIII, a chaotic, charismatic enemy of the corporate press and its anointed politicians.

The non-stop murderous 2020 riots from BLM and antifa were matched by the shambolic, deadly invasion of the Capitol by the Right after the presidential election. What both sides share is their categoric rejection of the status quo represented by the “new church”— Washington, Wall Street and the legacy media.

They both symbolize a challenge to the centuries-old concept of democracy and privilege and the self-interested bureaucracy that supports it. The blight of insiders profiting and blatant double standards mirror the disgust with the Church during the Reformation. Authority in establishment media and academia has been cheapened. The two sides fight to fill the void with a disillusioned public

There is often hope that understanding the past can provide solutions. We should hope that The Reformation example is not replicated. With conflicting new doctrines and political models, it plunged Europe into centuries of war and slaughter. Three hundred years later, Marx sought to re-order a more equitable society, and his “from each according to his means” ended up killing hundreds of millions in the USSR, China, Cambodia and other socialists :”paradises” now extolled by the Bernie Sanders and AOCs.

Seen in this light, Trump’s demands to “drain the swamp” would have found great support in the Reformation. As would the total war waged against him as he challenged the status quo. He was both bellwether and threat. The grandees of DC think they’ve discouraged anyone from following his example. For their sakes they better be correct.

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 new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

How The New Reformation Petrifies Today's Elites