He ruled for about the normal time for Canadian Prime Ministers. This, from Taibbi, is well-written nonsense:
Canadian Prime Minister and feminist heartthrob Justin Trudeau resigned this morning. His departure completes an unprecedented popularity cliff dive, dropping from 65% to an incredible 16% approval rating over the course of a nine-year reign that men will chuckle over, from now through the end of time. Centuries from now, fathers will sit sons on their knees and tell The Fall of Trudeau as a cautionary tale.
Trudeau had about nine years:
- Harper had 9 years;
- Martin had 3;
- Chretien had 10;
- Campbell had less than one, but was an unelected caretaker PM; and,
- Mulroney had 9.
American red-pill nonsense is just that. Trudeau was was a gifted politician who was bad at policy. He resigned because his own caucus wanted him gone, as they think they’re more likely to keep their seats without him.
The Liberals won’t win the next election, the standard pattern in Canadian politics is for the Liberals and Conservatives to alternate. Barring some huge surprise, the Conservatives will rule next. But how much of a majority they have will depend a lot on who the next Liberal leader is.
This is a nothing-burger. Yes, Trudeau could have been a better Prime Minister. He mishandled Covid in the same way as almost every other western leader; let in way too many immigrants, and inflation, especially in rent and food hurt him just like it did every other neo-liberal government of the era.
I despise Trudeau. He’s an empty neoliberal suit coasting on being le dauphin. (Son of Pierre Trudeau, one of Canada’s greatest Prime Ministers.) But he was a gifted politician, and his fall is bog standard for Canadian post-war Prime Ministers. It is entirely normal and has nothing to do with red-pills, cucks, soy, pick-up artists, feminism or any other culture nonsense. All of that is just noise, he may have been attacked on the cultural politics of the day, but he lost because people became worse off under his rule and because his time was, essentially, up. Even a very good Prime Minister finds it hard to hold on for more than two terms in Canadian politics.
He’s not an extraordinary cautionary tale and no one except historians will remember him in fifty years, let alone centuries from now.
mago
It’s impossible to start with this guy.
His handling of the trucker’s strike?
Covid?
His clumsy China policy, not to mention Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico and Latin America in general.
Suppression of dissent over genocide?
Flooding the country with Ukies and other toxic immigrants?
Gee, what else?
His poor fashion statements, not to mention his poor taste in music?
Let me count the ways . . .
But you know, he’s got that dickey thing down pat.
Credit given where credit’s due.
different clue
I wonder how many Americans like Taibbi know less about Canada than they think they know. As against how many Americans know what they know about Canada and know they don’t know any more than that. And how many Americans fall somewhere on the gradient between those two poles.
Failed Scholar
I don’t know Ian, I’ve never seen the amount of hate for a PM like this guy gets. Trudeau Jr is despised, truly. Is this a Liberal Party Extinction Level Event? IDK. Even in my riding here, which is SOLIDLY Liberal there are literal daily protesters out on the street waving Fuck Trudeau flags. Harper wasn’t liked in the end either but nothing like this that I can recall. Mulroney was hated in the 90s, but he was a bit before my time so hard to judge vs Trudeau Jr.. Chretien was ousted in a palace coup by Martin but I definitely don’t recall him being unliked, maybe just tired – but his reputation has withstood the test of time. I think most still genuinely like Chretien. Martin was uninspiring and totally forgettable.
But Trudeau Jr, whooo boy. He really does inspire some hate. And he’s earned it. Trudeau’s (and his ‘liberal’ party) policy choice of self imposed housing crisis hurt me good. I won’t be forgetting that anytime soon (read: ever). I hope the Liberals goal of turning Canada into a Temporary Foreign Work Camp was worth it, because I sure as fuck won’t ever be voting for that party, ever, again.
It’s a shame we don’t do Athenian-style Ostracism here. We could really use it.
Soredemos
@different clue
It likely goes both ways. You have two former British colonies of broadly the same liberal political tradition right next door to each other, that (think) they’re culturally nearly identical to the point that people from one can become celebrities in the other and many of their fans will never realize they’re johnny foreigner.
But how many Canadians confidently about the US as if they truly understood it, when they actually don’t? Probably the ratio is better than Americans commenting on Canada, but it’s likely still not great.
Jessica
Trudeau has been in power (not gone yet) longer than any American president except FDR.
The Liberals do seem to be heading for a shellacking, though can’t be worse than Mulroney-Campbell.
Purple Library Guy
@mago
What ABOUT his handling of the . . . you’re calling it a trucker’s strike? Whatever. Seemed about middle of the road–intervened too slow for lots of people, too fast for lots of others. When he did intervene, it was fairly effective.
Covid he also handled middle of the road; some aspects decent, others a bit vacillating. He had the decency to let the NDP push him into better social supports during Covid than he would have wanted to on his own; as a result, Canada was one of the countries whose economy bounced back fairly well rather than going into deep recession.
His foreign policy largely toed the US line. Any plausible alternative Canadian prime minister would have . . . toed the US line. It’s a policy set I disagree with, but not one that has anything to do with Trudeau as a person.
Suppression of dissent over genocide . . . most of that stuff was done at a more local level. Trudeau backed it, but again, at roughly the level that most Liberal politicians did and less enthusiastically than most Conservatives. This is not Trudeau as an unusual politician in any way.
The very high immigration levels policy I’ve never completely understood, but it seems like a lot of deep pockets wanted it or it would have gotten talked about a lot more a lot sooner.
Fashion statements, music . . . whatever.
So OK, out of your whole list we’ve got ONE actively, unusually bad policy–a choice for unusually high immigration levels. This is not my biggest objection to Trudeau, I would have to nominate his amazingly two-faced “support” for “action” to stop climate change, exemplified by his purchase of a money-losing pipeline to appease know-nothing Albertans who were never going to be appeased anyway. Well, and mostly to appease very wealthy oil companies.
But on the other side of the ledger I’d have to put some accomplishments. He legalized marijuana, which was not only good in itself but also in pulling us a little bit out of the morass of the US war on drugs. And he did some stuff the NDP forced him to, involving limited public dental care, pharma care and day care. Which may not sound like much, but most of the best policies in this country have been the result of New Democrats forcing Liberal prime ministers to do them in minority situations. Letting the NDP force them to do nice things is what distinguishes the best Liberal prime ministers. If those had been true universal programs he might have gone down as a quite important Prime Minister.
On balance, he’s been a thoroughly unimpressive Prime Minister, trying too hard to be all things to all people to ever do anything very useful of his own volition, wishy-washy, moderately corrupt, or at least unwilling to make people mad who he has lunch with all the time, such as corporate lobbyists. A status quo man to the bone. But by the same token he hasn’t really done anything outstandingly bad.
His tragedy is that there are big problems in this country that do not call for quarter-measures; the eternal small-l liberal war cry of “We won’t make things noticeably worse!” just isn’t good enough in these times.
Ian Welsh
Mulroney was hated more. A lot more. People really didn’t want the FT and NAFTA agreements.
Soredemos
I will never not be amazed at how placid most people remain about covid.
He handled it ‘middle of the road’? It’s a fucking ongoing mass crippling event, in addition to all the corpses. Because of our social level, nay, species level, failure to act like adults, we’re all doomed to get it, and then get it again, and again, and again. And each time we’re rolling the dice on permanent damage, only the odds get worse with each subsequent infection.
I have no idea if or when this finally dawns on a majority of the public. Most people talk and think about covid as if it ended years ago. You can apparently literally kill a million people and they’ll thank you for getting rid of the very mild restrictions you ineffectually inconvenienced them with while mass murdering them.
Mark Pontin
Soredemos: “I have no idea if or when this finally dawns on a majority of the public. Most people … think about covid as if it ended years ago. You can apparently literally kill a million people and they’ll thank you for getting rid of the very mild restrictions (that) inconvenienced them.”
Sure. If you go back and look, forex, at the historical reaction to the Spanish Flu of 1918-19, which killed an estimated 25–50 million people, and maybe as many as 100 million in a world of only 1.8 billion —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
— it was to a remarkable extent ignored by contemporary accounts, especially in the immediate aftermath with the rush to return to business as usual.
Yet it killed a far, far larger proportion of contemporary humanity.
The dogs bark, the caravan moves on.
Also, humanity got off extraordinarily light with Covid, even with Long Covid factored in. As a journalist I interviewed former Soviet and US bioweapons/biodefense people, and nowadays I’ve ongoing contact with people in the biogenetic technologies. Most people have no idea of the extraordinary things that can be done, given the advances there, in terms of designer pathogens. Simultaneously, Nature has arguably even more extraordinary capabilities to evolve threats of extraordinary lethality.
So, between the evolution of natural threats and the fact that enemies are likely to look at the continually aggressive actions of states like the US and Israel and decide that bioweapons provides the best bang for the bucks alongside the least possible grounds for conclusive attribution as to who carried out an attack, we may see far worse than Covid soon enough.
mago
@PLG. I was just spouting some opinions to which I have no attachment.
As a non Canadian, I could even say I don’t have a dog in this fight. (By that reasoning, I have no right to an opinion or stake in world events in general.)
And that brings me to different clue’s
point: I don’t think most people know what’s going on in their own nation, let alone that of others.
I once asked a friend who was an editor at a well known magazine if she knew who Victoria Nuland is and she said no and she didn’t care. I was surprised, but upon reflection decided her ignorance is her bliss, and who am I to judge.
Nonetheless, knowing what’s happening in world affairs is useful on many levels.
That my take and opinions might be skewed and wrong is my own personal shortcoming.
Oakchair
I’ll venture that the percent of people who think they understand a foreign country, but don’t is less than the percent that think they understand their home country but actually don’t.
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his handling of the . . . you’re calling it a trucker’s strike?
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Regardless what someone’s position on violating the the right to protest, free association, and free speech of those “racist” “fascist” truckers the Liberals did violate them.
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Covid he also handled middle of the road;
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Regardless what subjective rating someone want’s to give, the Liberals (as well as every other country) violated the right to bodily anatomy in order to inject the population with an experimental vaccine that –literally– according to the pharma corporations own fraudulent clinical trials increased serious adverse events such as death, hospitalization, disability, and illness.
It’s “The Testaments” (Hat tip to Margaret Atwood) to how much a dystopia we’re in that massive increases in mortality, disability, cardiovascular disease, cancer, infections, neurological diseases, developmental delays, and so on is “middle of the road”
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His foreign policy largely toed the US line
has (nothing) to do with Trudeau as a person.
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Even if someone only applauds a literal Nazi in parliament, supports a genocide, and supports imperialistic wars because they are tools of America’s ruling class that still has something to do with them as a person.
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So OK, out of your whole list we’ve got ONE actively, unusually bad policy
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Again this is the sign of how dystopian we are when supporting genocide, violating a wide range of freedoms, and causing a massive increase in mortality, disability, and illness is waved away as “not an unusually bad policy”
marku52
I don’t know, stealing people’s money because they disagree with you politically seems a bit over the top to me. Hadn’t seen that one before in a “western democracy”
Mark Level
Trudeau was indeed an empty vessel, a mindless Nepo-baby given power & authority due to Daddy’s rep, nothing more. Even NPR (which I never listen to but while driving yesterday heard 10 minutes of) admitted he had terminal “foot in the mouth” disease. Other quirks included being photographed not once but 4 times in “blackface” at parties!! So charming– rather like whichever of King Chuck & Lady Di’s Princelings dressed up in Nazi garb at parties. “The rich are not like you and me”– F. Scott Fitzgerald.
PLG evidently knows nothing about the Trucker demos. Trudeau literally froze and stole the bank accounts of people participating, a straight-out fascist response. He was cited by a Canadian court for this, which even the NYT covered– https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/world/canada/trudeau-emergencies-act-trucker-convoy.html — the “Emergency” response was “overreach”. Would PLG support the new Trump admin freezing bank accounts and stealing the money of, say, anti-Zionist protesters, or overly “Woke” clowns? For a library denizen (I’m a retired librarian myself) maybe you should read or research a bit more widely?
Taibbi is often brilliant, Griftopia is the classic on the Greenspan Financial Crash & Obama et al’s rewarding of the criminals. At times he is a bit of a doofus, however.
I live 100 miles as the bird flies from Canada, but confess I know little about it (beyond the Ukrainian Nazi horde brought in post-WW II and the ties of hereditary fascist Chrystia Freedland to it.)
ALL of these “Leader” clowns are cut from the same cloth, Trudeau included. Apart from the quirks (blackface, cheering 2x in Parliament for a 98-year old Waffen SS mass-murderer), he does what they all do, so I’ll mostly defer to Ian’s take. They make big promises to help the plebs, then the exact opposite, doing exactly, 100% what the Donors & Zionists demand. They come in with great popularity (stupid human identification with pretend-Alpha types). Then they enact the Austerity, the corporate looting and scams, the further militarization & state violence both at home and abroad. They leave hated by a majority, who woke up & smelled the coffee far too late.
This culture is doomed, and more and more people now realize it. My free local weekly ran a pretty good piece (his occasional off-topic errors less in evidence) by Michael Moore on the Luigi Mangione set-up & the public response. Here’s a link for those interested– https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/a-manifesto-against-for-profit-health
Beyond making ’07’s “Sicko” available to all for free online, a great moment is noting the racist Zionist Josh Shapiro denouncing Mangione as a “coward” and a “murderer”. Yet Shapiro is openly enthusiastic and “joyful” (Kamala theme from the failed summer “genocide Joy” DNC meeting) about the starving & murder of Palestinian men, women, and especially children. Obviously Shapiro’s ideology does not acknowledge that Palestinians (or Arabs generally) are even human. Therefore their mass extermination is not a problem, and actually desirable. But to kill a corporate predator “father” like Brian Thompson (who has killed tens of thousands with his AI gimmicks, impoverished hundreds of thousands more) is verboten, because he’s a shining light of Corporatism. His killing is state-sanctioned and supported, not “illegal”, so just shut up and take it, plebs.
I do feel we are reaching an inflection point, even here in the Dumb as a Doorknob USA. And I think Trump’s chaotic insanity may hasten the process.
Steven Cook
I wish I knew more about Trudeau. My impression is that he is Canada’s neoliberal Obama, foreign and domestic, following Harper as Canada’s GW Bush. More psy op than real. He certainly faithfully toed the US line in foreign policy.
CBBB
Well anyone remember any Canadian PMs in 50 years? When Canada or the Provinces are US states? Will Canada have like they have in Texas with “Texas History”, school classes to teach people living in the former Canada about pre-union history?
Carborundum
The way his resignation is materially different is in the extent to which it is a cross-border event linking elements of the American and Canadian electorates. The MCGA crowd are positively giddy about capturing the flighting attention of the Trumpist Wurlitzer and falling all over themselves to out prostrate one another in front of the altar.
It’s almost as if they had no concept at all of the central precepts of Canadian conservative thought… /sarcasm
Steven Cook
If the Liberals actually wanted to change things, they would form a partnership with the NDP and lock out the Conservatives permanently. Trudeau’s leadership has shown me once and for all that the Liberals and Conservatives are two facets of the same party, just like the American Republicans and Democrats.
Jake
Key to understanding how this Trudeau did ref Trudeau senior is to look at the challenges faced. This Trudeau faced a declining West (economically and from that, the fallout of less influence coupled with standard foolishness led by the US’ oligarchs attempting to extend what cannot be extended) plus what I perceive as an unprecedented pandemic – yes there was 1918 but the tools and understanding we have now was missing then, we can and so we did screw up much worse.
I am not an historian. I would have to research the prior Mr. T. to see what challenges he faced. Anyone?
So, how bad was this Mr. T? Average, I’d say.
KT Chong
Well, things could have turned out worse for Canadians. Your PM could be married to a pedophile who’s old enough to be his mom and used to be a man.
Ian Welsh
A pedophile should be in prison, if it can be proved. I don’t hate transexuals or care if they marry a politician. What I care about is the policies politicians follow and Trudeau was an overall negative, with the few good things he did forced on him by the NDP.
Polievre will be worse, except maybe on immigration. (That’s a big thing to be better on, though, if he is.)
The way the truckers were handled was, indeed, wrong. There were laws on the books they could have been hit with, but freezing and seizing bank accounts was a terrible precedent and essentially extra-judicial. I wrote an article saying so at the time and, obviously, I didn’t agree with the content of their protest.
But so what? Protesters still deserve to be treated reasonably.
NR
KT Chong is deep in the right-wing propaganda bubble, I see.
There is no proof that Brigitte Macron is transgender, and the two women who started the rumor lost a court case over it.