"48 per cent think Justin Trudeau is qualified to be PM"

The other 52% are buying gold:

The people most likely to see him as having what it takes to fill the job are Liberals, predictably, but also women, Atlantic Canadians, university-educated people and also those earning between $20,000 and $40,000 a year.

University educated people, eh? There are somethings so stupid only an educated person could believe. Like Justin Trudeau being qualified to lead one of the world's oldest liberal democracies.

The skeptics about his fitness for office include Conservatives, with 67 per cent saying Trudeau lacked what it takes to be prime minister, as well as middle-income groups; people earning between $60,000 and $80,000 a year.

So in other words the productive classes with practical skills know that Justin's a dud. It's the poor, who look continually for a cash dispensing Messiah, and the excessively schooled, who are easily fooled by hazy rhetoric, that have eagerly picked up this wooden nickel. The greed of the poor is understandable. The skepticism of the hard headed and practically minded is also understandable. But aren't university educated people suppose to be the best and brightest? The top third of the Bell Curve?

That's rather the problem. University educated people have quite a bit emotionally invested in their education and intelligence. It's who they are. Their education has also indoctrinated them to believe that intelligent people, like them, believe in Big Government. The statist utopia is delayed only because too many ordinary people are allowed to vote. Various Nanny State regulations are necessary in order to keep the common folk from wrecking society.

Justin is in many ways the perfect candidate for the over educated, or to be more precise the excessively schooled. Much of modern schooling is focused on emotion, word play and imagery. Self esteem is developed not through accomplishment, or skill development, but through mindless boosterism. The use of politically correct language is rigorously enforced. If there are no bad words, then there are no bad things. In time words become a substitute for action and results. Anyone who has listened to a politician talk, or the next worse thing a corporate executive lay out a "vision statement," will recall such verbose nonsense.

For people who exist in the word universe, for whom concepts are forever divorced from concretes, then Justin provides a perfect vessel. There are no real ideas or substantive proposals, just spin and a pretty smile. Very few of Justin's supporters talk about what he will do, but what impact he has at energizing an apathetic electorate. The metric here is not results, but what other people feel. Second handers worship of the second handed. Two mirrors reflecting off each other in an empty hallway. Justin Trudeau is a creation of media support and PR doctring, sustained by the more gullible portions of the electorate.

As generations of Marxists observed, the contradictions inherent in the system will lead to its destruction. The welfare state is fraught with contradictions which can be summed up with an old saying: You cannot be all things to all people. That is the Big Lie of Big Government, that it can provide you with utopia without destroying liberty or fiscal probity. It's impossible, as the European states are demonstrating now, and as the United States will be demonstrating shortly.

The original architects of the welfare state had envision this problem. It's why the system they designed had strict means testings and was dependent on regularly balanced budgets. The welfare was suppose to be a safety net, not a scheme to perfect mankind and alleviate every ache and pain. Once it began to morph beyond these modest beginnings many of the original advocates, including Churchill, warned about its future unsustainability. They were dismissed. 

The Jacobins who seized control of the West's intellectual apparatus in the 1960s had no problem with an ever expanding welfare state. It would speed the collapse of capitalism. The old girl capitalism proved more resilient than anyone thought, and the welfare state instead morphed into a bloated vote buying and rent seeking scheme. Those blessed with a grasp of logic, history and basic arithmetic quickly pointed this out. But there was no one to listen. The public schools had so succeeded in dumbing down the electorate, aided and abetted by an increasingly stupefying popular culture, that such arguments were simply lost on them.

One of the long standing tropes of TV journalism is the "Man in the Street" interview. This is where an intrepid reporter goes out and questions ordinary people about the issues of the day. The original TV "streeters" date back to the early 1950s and there is a considerable amount of video, some of it on You Tube, that gives you a sense of what ordinary people were like more than half a century ago. 

The first thing that shocks you about these early streeters is the care and attention people took in grooming and dress. Even day labourers dressed better than many business people do now. Their diction is also surprisingly clear. Their posture unusually erected. Their demeanour generally polite and respectful. These unplanned interviews have a sort of formal quality. This is partly because of the camera technology of the time, which limited spontaneity from both the TV personality and interviewee, but it was also a reflection of the culture.

Yet what is most shocking is the coherency of the Man in the Street in the 1950s. Despite the fact that most would have spent far less time in school than we moderns, there was an effort to provide reasonable and sensible answers to the questions posed. There are even honest admissions of ignorance. These are people who are far less schooled, far less wealthy and far less fortunate in life than the average Canadian or American today, yet most are clearly better educated.

The electorate of the time voted in men like Louis St Laurent, C.D. Howe and John Diefenbaker. They would not have taken more than a few seconds to dismiss a non-entity like Justin Trudeau. This is how the Left stays in power, by crippling the intellectual faculties of the common man so they cannot see what their grandparents would have grasped immediately: A blatant swindle.

 

Comments

[Roseberry]

Well put, but may I suggest that we can sum up the political program of the Young Prince in one word: Katimavik.

[Jim Whyte]

Katimavik, ouch.

Shiny Pony is not like his father, which would be bad enough; he's like the people that voted for his father.

[John Chittick]

The three major parties (Sorry, Lizzie) are vying to be the New Liberal Party for the benefit of the vast mushy middle of the Canadian electorate. Harper, who now governs like Chretien with language skills but more caution and less corruption so far; Mulcair, afraid of the S word even though it describes his party and most Canadians; and Trudeau, assuming his coronation in a few hours, personifies the mushy and mindless centre-left with a bonus genetic link to the ghost of Christmas past.