Sanctimonious Superiority

His callow, shallow presence makes thoughtful Canadians shudder at the prospect of the scion of the Trudeau dynasty attaining to the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.  Not that the Liberals are in any shape just yet to take on the reigning Conservative government.  But the very potential of Justin Trudeau taking the helm of the desiccated party brings on paroxysms of apprehension for the future of Canada.

He is a natural thespian, and that is precisely where he should seek to make his mark on posterity.  His father, celebrated as Canada's philosopher-king left his legacy of impulsive but highly intelligent choices in governing the country.  Canada is still divided on the legacy of Pierre Elliot Trudeau.  Mr. Trudeau himself was conflicted about what he left, when he left public office.  His initial reaction was to begin a hysterical pilgrimage globally to enlist world leaders in his personal vision of global peace.

Which was, in retrospect, a whole lot more palatable than his successor, Jean Chretien, taking advantage while in office to pave the way through countless trips to China with a huge retinue of Canadian business and corporate leaders in tow, to earn him familiarity with elite personages of note in Beijing and elsewhere who would prove to be most useful to him in private life as a highly-remunerated legal lobbyist for trade and investment opportunities.

Justin Trudeau portrays himself as a spokesman for the Canadian middle class, a much beleaguered demographic with which he empathizes through his imagination, not by experience, given his richly elevated lineage.  He has cultivated a common, a popular touch, by using language not normally associated with Parliament in a display of arrested juvenile ebullience at who and what he is.  He seems to revel in pronouncing absurd statements that just seem to pop out of his empty head.

And in response to news media having been alerted by Jewish groups that an Islamic event to which he had been invited to address the gathering as guest speaker, had as its chief sponsor, IRFAN-Canada which was identified by the Canada Revenue Agency as a financial sponsor of the terrorist organization Hamas, he organized his speech to clarify his position.  "It is short-sighted to pit groups of Canadians against one another. It may make some feel good for a little while, or even work politically in the short term, but it is no way to build a country", he intoned piously.

And don't we know it.  It is, in fact, the way the country was built.  The social/cultural environment that Justin Trudeau can claim as his heritage took the initiative to hold themselves superior to ethnic and religious groups from Europe and Asia in the formative years of the Dominion of Canada.  He spoke of the struggle to bridge the gulf between Canada's Two Solitudes, the founding British and French.  And spoke also of the country's constitutional protections and egalitarian freedoms.

Between the founding British and French and their still-intractable divisions, and before the more recent advent of the constitutional protections there were all those irrelevant and irritating displays of racial intolerance and institutional bouts of rendering afflictions to the discomfited.  The Chinese head tax, the incarceration of Japanese Canadians, and the neglect of Canada's First Nations' problems in attaining their place within modern Canada as the true founding peoples of this geography.

The negligible embarrassments of refusing the salvation of entry to Canada during periods of existential duress for Europe's WWII Jews, in a "none is too many" social environment upheld from the highest echelons of political power to the lowest common denominator on the streets where anti-Semitism had free reign, admittedly not a topic that would gain much applause at the Islamic Spirit conference to which Mr. Trudeau spoke so cheerfully of his Canada and his vision for his Canada.

"Good people. People with common hopes and common challenges, coming together to find common ground."  Obviously no place to suggest to those present that in renewing their commitment to the Islamic spirit, a concerted effect should be made to become more pluralist-oriented, more open to other ethnic and religious groups among whom they live in this great, free country.  With whom they should be sharing those common hopes and common challenges, coming together in spirit of acceptance and goodwill on that common ground.

A recommendation that it is to no one's good that commitment to turning Canada's universities into slanderous hate-fests flogging boycott-and-divestment-of-Israel - follies that should be left at the immigration gates.  Supporters of the Palestinian cause jousting with supporters of the Israeli cause happen to cause injustice and needless recriminatory oppression. Justin Trudeau, Member of Parliament of the Government of Canada, remains hugely unimpressed that his critics attempted to tap into "fears and prejudices" sapping the acceptance of others. 

Does he listen to himself?

Tellingly, another contestant in the leadership race for the Liberal Party of Canada, one who has had a wide range of experiences, a mature intelligence with the potential makings of an outstanding leader, Marc Garneau, spoke clearly on the issue of addressing a conference with such a questionable funding source; it would not be his discretionary or ethical choice to attend.