(Reprinted with permission) ELIZABETH NICKSON | MAR 09, 2024 Absurdistan anticipates a surge of power, passion. and commitment to life world-wide. One of the more unnerving revelations of January ’24, was that the vaccine and the virus attack the pineal gland, the seat of the soul, if eastern mystics are to be believed. It is through the pineal gland that God’s voice can be heard by the pure of heart, and sometimes the impure. Added to 5G, wireless, glyphosate and other chemicals, we are in a world of trouble. To be more precise and less New Age, according to Dr Michael Nehls, the men and women who designed the virus and vaccine, created the spike to specifically attack that part of the brain where our individuality, creativity, curiosity and fearlessness are to be found. They want to murder our souls, to eliminate the possibility of this: The Instructions of the Lord are perfect, reviving the soul. Dr. Nehl’s book, forwarded by Naomi Wolf, goes into excruciating detail about the spike cleaving to the S1/S2 site in the brain, in which sits the index of our memory, and thereby shuts down adult neogenesis, the ability of the human mind to create, and thus to grow. To shut down the mental immune system, erasing, in point of fact, part of our souls. The vaccine he claims, looks like an attempt to shut down the drive to take risks, to go out into the world and take it on, shift it. The specific “cluster of differentiation”, they attempted to destroy is TLR4. The spike of the virus and vaccine crosses the blood brain barrier and cleaves to this cluster, the cluster which holds our history. If you are new to Absurdistan, you probably don’t know that my mother was used in one of MKUltra’s mind control experiments in the 50’s and 60’s – specifically Subproject 68. My mother’s first day of college There were 150 subprojects, many located in California near the military bases and the Stanford Research Institute, many of those exploiting the ferment of the flower children revolution, but also all through the U.S., and no doubt the world. It was the CIA who seeded the counter-culture with LSD. It is believed that Charles Manson and the Unibomber were subjects of MKUltra. The Grateful Dead, John Phillips and countless others were witting or unwitting collaborators in the CIA’s effort to break the minds of those kids who wanted no more war, and a more compassionate America, with drugs. These books here and here investigate the claim. My senior academic cousins took acid with Owsley, when they were teaching at Berkley in the early 60’s. Owsley wasn’t a “reclusive acid impressario”, he was CIA. This was the beginning of the CIA’s pushing drugs into the American mainstream. This wasn’t a ‘natural” evolution, it was meticulously planned and executed to create a culture of death, of necrophilia, of despair. That way we wouldn’t create a new world where the powerful would be eclipsed, their fortunes eviscerated. Heartily endorsed by the left, because they believed the only way to create a socialist revolution in the U.S., was to destroy hope and civic peace. You can look at liberals or Democrats or Republicans or RINOs as natural enemies; you can also look at them, as victims and agents of an one hundred year push to destroy the hope of the world. Every thought they have has been given to them to think. The left particularly, is entirely the creation of the CIA and Tavistock with the affirmation and support of corporate America and Socialist Internationale. Subproject 68 was established as fact through a series of lawsuits, some via suing the CIA, the hospital, the university, the Canadian government, and the bloody evil and corrupt Rockefeller foundation which should be shut down and its wealth distributed to its many many victims. It is the apex predator foundation, and purely evil. Through discovery, and some really solid reporting from journalists like Anne Collins, we know a lot of what they were doing. Which was essentially bust the human back to infantile status and rebuild her. They used curare, insulin shock, massive repeated abusive ECT’s called Page-Russells, and a lotta drugs, including speed, LSD and sodium pentothol used together with methamphetamine in their interrogations of my mother, to discover whether she had taken on board her new installed memories. If not, they would put her to sleep, mask her senses and using a football helmet rigged with speakers, repeat hundreds of thousands of times, her new memories. This was called psychic driving. I have my mother’s psychiatric records because of those law suits. They are truncated but in fact, tell the story. My mother’s first child died, which triggered post-partum depression. Basically she went into the Allan Memorial for two weeks to treat her paralyzing anxiety and within a few years, as the CIA required, was diagnosed as having severe paranoid schizophrenia. The CIA needed people who were only mildly ill, which they could mis-diagnose. Every time she tried to escape - she tried three times - they upped her diagnosis. She was not a paranoid schizophrenic, but she (and we) carried that curse for decades. I didn’t have any more children because of that curse. When she was let out the second time, she had lost her memory. I was six, and it terrified me. Her personality – vibrant, sharp intelligence, funny – had been replaced by someone very very gentle and somewhat confused. Someone fragile who needed to be looked after. Again, I was six, and the oldest and that is what I saw. “Who’s that?” she’d whisper when the housekeeper came into the sitting room. “Hello, dear, who are you?” to my best friend who lived across the street and whom she’d seen every day for three years. Most of subproject 68’s subjects didn’t recover and there is a direct action lawsuit from the children who lost a parent and gained a lifelong charge, losing their innocence, their sense of safety, their strength, and replacing it with weakness and disarray. My mother did recover and I’ll tell you how; it is instructive to everyone who had Covid, and who was vaccinated. Who has been poisoned, their brain altered without their permission. You can rebuild and more; you can thrive. But what happened to me, when I discovered this at the age of 39, is also instructive. I had always been oriented towards a spiritual path, a seeker, a compulsive reader and studier. Around the age of 17, I was in a study group with the smartest boys at the school across the street, and we compulsively read and argued every religious classic published, late into the night for two years. That investigation continued throughout my life. At the time I found out what had happened to her, I was interviewing torture victims and the falsely imprisoned in the Mideast and Africa for Time Inc. Courtesy of MKUltra I am an empath, a child who learned to read emotions in order to survive. I felt the agony of these men and women, I absorbed the stories into my body. My world view shattered. I no longer saw the developing world as something filled with gentle people and hope. I saw it as a torture chamber, where people had no rights, and were subject to the will of Leviathan every single day. And hovering over it was the knowledge that my mother had experienced the same thing. Trapped in a hospital, drugged, shocked, and shocked again for days, then weeks. For no reason but to give who, I wondered, data about how to break us. I collapsed. I developed severe headaches, so blinding no painkiller could touch them. Three days a week, I’d lie on the floor of my mews house off the Portobello Road, whimpering in pain. My dog wanted a divorce from me. I wanted a divorce from me. The Dark Night of the Soul, which is what I was experiencing, is supposed to only last 1000 days. It felt like ten years. Andrew Harvey, a living Christian mystic, believes the whole world is experiencing a Dark Night of the Soul right now. Harvey’s politics are uninformed to the point of ignorance, but this brief video explains his theory, and I think in this at least he is right. Also, his first book, here, blew me away. This describes to the moment what I experienced during my grim awakening: What the human race is experiencing is a comprehensive overwhelming dark night process in which all the illusions and all the institutions and all the concepts and all the dogmas that we have created our identity around are being systematically demolished and destroyed by the divine. And when you hear that from the ego by which I mean from Sam or Jonathan or Christa’s ego, it’s terrifying, you are terrified. But when you go into the depths of the mystic tradition and when you understand beyond thought that what the dark night is, is a potential birth canal for a wholly new level of evolutionary power. presence and passion and compassion and commitment to life. sacredearthactivism A post shared by @sacredearthactivism That is where we are going. We just have to grit our way through this and try to enjoy it. We will, finally, throw off our chains. Somewhat like the excessive ECT and drugs used to destroy my mother’s memory, the vaccine and the virus were designed to shatter what Nehl’s calls the index of our memory. They mean to destroy those memories with fear. Hence the non-stop manufactured terrors inflicted on us. As Nehl’s explains, at the end of a normal day, our egos are tired, defences are down, and at that time, during the nightly news, or while watching the unrestrained violence courtesy of Netflix, Disney, Prime, Apple, HBO, the shock of this crap overrides our daily memories, some of which were probably pretty nice, pleasant, and replaces them with fear and panic and depression and the knowledge of deceit and evil. If assaulted when you are tired, the index of your memory will decant the memory, say, of your birthday party in 2013, and replace it with the ghastly murder of a character you have come to identify with on Netflix, or the memory of the twin towers falling, last summer’s catastrophic forest fires, October 7th, the Ukraine war. All ginned up to scare us into our small weak selves. Slowly erasing our personhood, our cultural and ethnic identity, our ancestral memory. And it is working. Sociologists and psychologists report that Gen Z is the weakest, most frightened generation in history. They can’t get anything done. They have plans, but they never effect them, and are in constant need of reassuring. Their emotional affect, how they feel about anything at a given time, is paramount. The purpose? Nehl’s describes: Instead, the Grosse Umbruch,2 (Great Upheaval) as Schwab himself aptly translates it in his native German, will abolish much of what fundamentally defines us as human beings—our culture and the established rules of coexistence—and replace it with a straitjacket that no human being would voluntarily allow him-or herself to be forced into. I followed my mother’s footsteps to recovery. What she did, finally, was exercise, excessively at first, by which I mean skiing through a blizzard on the local 9 hole golf course, then picking up golf and becoming ladies champion year after year. She had studied piano as a girl, and picked it up too, enrolling at the McGill School of Music, taking a degree. She practised when I was a child, six hours a day. furiously, classical music only, Christmas carols at Christmas. She rebuilt her brain. And her body. When she was older, she took up tennis and with the same focus and discipline became Ladies Senior Champion at her club. She had suffered the worst that can be inflicted on a modern middle-class woman and refused to give up, and sit in a dark room for the rest of her life, as her fellow patients did. She became fearless. She had faced the worst and triumphed. She became, in a way, meta-human. She became what we are all becoming, aware of our programming, aware of our freedom, and aware of our power to take it (expletive deleted) back. Please note this happening yesterday. Note too that most of the participants are young men, stepping up and refusing to be mashed into numbness and fear, feminized. And they are thrilling to the enduring spirit of the American Republic, the one thing the evil of this world have hated for the past three hundred years. --- [ED: This article comes with several visual aids that can be found at the source: https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/all-species-are-thriving-but-man] Elizabeth Nickson was trained at the London Bureau of Time Magazine, spending seven years there, ending as European Bureau Chief of LIFE Magazine. She published a novel, The Monkey Puzzle Tree with Knopf and Bloomsbury. She has written for the Telegraph, the Globe and Mail, Harper’s Magazine, the Sunday Times Magazine, British Vogue, the Independent, the Guardian, and the Observer. Elizabeth has moonlighted writing for the Daily Mail (fun!) and covered the collections in Paris and London for the Toronto Sun and the LA Weekly. She is currently making an impact at https://elizabethnickson.substack.com. "Absurdistan is supported by readers only. We are fully independent. I loathe having to ask for money but it is unfortunately a necessity. If you have been here a while consider becoming an annual subscriber." ~ E Nickson

On March 22, 2024, Jeremy Boreing announced that the “Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship.” That same day, Andrew Klavan built his show around his thoughts concerning Candace Owens and her departure, and by day’s end “Christ is King” was trending. Candace Owens has been one of The Daily Wire’s top talents since 2020. Owens used to be a liberal. In 2015 she was blogging about the “bat-shit-crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party”, and in 2016 she launched SocialAutopsy.com, a website that sought to expose Internet bullies by doxing people and violating their privacy. She faced resistance from conservatives and progressives, and blamed progressives for doxing her. Candace Owens became a convert to conservatism in 2017 when she realized “that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.” Following her political conversion, she made waves with her harsh criticism of BLM and her promotion of BLEXIT (a portmanteau of the words “black” and “exit”, which urges people of color to leave the Democratic Party). She also became friends with Kanye West after he tweeted in April 2018, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” She tweeted back, “I’m freaking out. @kanywest …please take a meeting with me. I tell every single person that everything that I have been inspired to do, was written in your music. I am my own biggest fan because you made it okay. I need you to help wake up the black community.” Her departure from The Daily Wire isn’t surprising. In the wake of October 7th and the Israel-Hamas War, Owens found herself in the crosshairs of The Daily Wire’s co-founder, Ben Shapiro. In a speech Shapiro called Owens’ response to the war “disgraceful”, and Owens retort appeared to come by way of a tweet that read, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” She followed that tweet with another that simply read, “Christ is King.” Shapiro tweeted back, “Candace, if you feel that taking money from The Daily Wire somehow comes between you and God, by all means quit.” On the day that Jeremy Boreing announced that they were parting ways with Candace Owens, Andrew Klavan devoted his show to discussing her departure. To insert a bit of levity, Klavan read a tweet that said, “Candace Owens is gone, so now Andrew Klavan is the only black woman at The Daily Wire”. Klavan joked that this was “obviously true, so I feel a certain responsibility to talk about this”. Racially Jewish, Klavan converted to Christianity when he was fifty, and in 2016 he published The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ. Being both racially Jewish and a late-convert to Christianity, Klavan brought a unique perspective to a quarrel that has both political and religious dimensions. Regarding Owens’ departure, and the reaction that would occur, Klavan warned that it was “going to be an absolute crap storm, obviously.” And he wasn’t wrong. The episode is titled “Because Christ Really is King”, and Klavan affirmed that this really is his belief. He expressed his support for Jeremy Boreing and the decision he had made, saying that in the wake of the decision “I personally felt a weight taken off my shoulders and I’m grateful to him”. While many have interpreted Candace Owens departure as an act of censorship by The Daily Wire, Klavan dismisses that allegation, affirming that he is “a free speech advocate”, and emphasizing that The Daily Wire didn’t “cancel” Owens. However, The Daily Wire stands for certain things, and apparently Owens had come into conflict with at least one of the things The Daily Wire stands for – its opposition to “race hatred”. Klavan sees “race hatred” as spreading a “smear of hate” over the “nuanced, difficult, detailed things that you have to think about”. He points out that “people can use truth to mask wickedness”, and offers up the example of the Devil quoting scripture when he came to tempt Jesus, speaking truth to mask evil. The War in Gaza represents a nuanced issue that is poorly understood by people on both sides of the conflict, resulting in many blanket judgments and condemnations. Some people seem to think any criticism of Israel is an expression of anti-Semitism, while others don’t recognize that criticism of Israel – even when valid - often masks anti-Semitism. Klavan’s perspective is that Candace Owens was promoting anti-Semitism. First there was Owens’ defense of her friend, Ye (Kanye West), who was expressing anti-Semitism well before the October 7th attack. Then there are the “dog whistles” that Klavan sees as deeply problematic. In politics, “dog whistles” involve coded or suggestive language that hides its intention, allowing one to convey controversial messages on issues without provoking controversy. Klavan thinks Owens has been using them – either wittingly or unwittingly. The first dog whistle Klavan identifies was Owens’ suggestion that a lot of the books that Nazis burned in the 1930s were bad books that probably needed to be burned. The second was Owen’s decision to retweet a post saying a Jew was drunk on Christian blood. Klavan said, “When you start to refer in this kind-of clever way to certain groups in Hollywood corrupting Blacks and killing Michael Jackson … you’re messing with us, and no one is fooled except those people who want to pretend to be fooled because they hate the Jews.” “The truth that hid wickedness that I thought was the most wicked truth to use was the truth that Christ is King”, Klavan exclaimed, implying that this phrase is also a “dog whistle”. Klavan said, “It is almost exactly twenty years since I acknowledged the Kingship of Christ in my life”. Some people had warned Klavan that he would not be accepted by Christians because he’s racially Jewish, but Klavan said “Christians have welcomed me with open arms - except this Christ the King anti-Semitic crowd.” The anti-Semitic crowd Klavan is talking about includes Groypers like Nick Fuentes, a well-known white nationalist, far-right political commentator. Later in the episode, Klavan refers to Fuentes specifically, taking issue with Fuentes’ claim that “the Jew’s religion is based on rejecting Christ.” One does not require six degrees of separation to link Candace Owens to Nick Fuentes. Owens and Ye are friends, and Owens defended Ye when he was being called out for his anti-Semitism. Fuentes and Ye are friends, and when Donald Trump agreed to have Ye over for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022, Ye brought three friends along, Nick Fuentes included. Trump received a lot a criticism for that, though he posted to Truth Social that he knew nothing about Ye’s intention of bringing Fuentes, and he didn’t know Fuentes. Many prominent Groypers openly supported Ye’s 2022-23 short-lived presidential campaign. Klavan declared, “Christ is the King … but when you use that phrase to mean that God has abandoned his Chosen People, the Jews, through whom He came into this world incarnate, and that He’s broken his promises, his covenant, with the Jews, you are quoting scripture like Satan does … you are quoting scripture to your purposes, and that to me is specifically wicked.” Klavan then spends 90 seconds presenting thoughts so complex that they’ll have to be the subject of a separate article, but in reference to other Daily Wire talents – Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson - Klavan says, “When you spit Christ the King at them … that just doesn’t sit with me in the least.” A lot of commentators weighed in on the suggestion that “Christ is King” was a dog whistle, and much of what I saw dismissed the suggestion as absurd. I’m not sure if these commentators really grasped the nuance of what Klavan was saying, or the way the phrase has been used. Phrases can convey meanings that often go beyond the words themselves. Subtext gets read into them. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is a perfect example of this. No sensible person would argue against the literal meaning of this phrase, yet the words represent a broader movement and message that many can dispute or refute. The founders of Black Lives Matter were Marxists trained to sell Marxism to the masses, and they used a slogan that no one could object to in order to shield themselves from criticism. When people started using the phrase “All Lives Matter”, BLM activists argued that this similarly unobjectionable phrase was racist because it took away from their message. The slogan “Love is Love”, popularized by LGBTQ+ activists, literally says nothing, yet it conveys a lot through subtext. Sometimes one has to understand the context behind a phrase in order to appreciate the message that it sends. “Let’s Go Brandon” is a prime example of this. Groypers and others have been blasting the phrase “Christ is King” at Jews as a sort of taunt, and when Jews take offense, that offense gets labelled as prejudice. A lot of people are insisting that there isn’t anything wrong with the phrase because they don’t see how the phrase is being used, or by whom. Andrew Tate has used the phrase in a recent post. Sneako has done likewise. Both men are Muslims highly critical and dismissive of Christianity. When these men say “Christ is King”, they means something other than what the phrase literally conveys. Klavan’s central contention is that “Jew hatred is Christ hatred in disguise”. Returning to the parting of ways, Klavan states, “So when Jeremy Boreing, a Christian man, has to sign a check – a big check – to pay someone to talk about Hitler wasn’t so bad in burning books, or a Jew is choking on Christian blood, or Christ is King, when Jeremy Boreing has to sign that check he’s doing something that he cannot abide”. He adds, “This level of hatred of Jews is a hatred of God – a hatred of Christ.” Klavan then explains, “When I, who have given my life to Christ, who have bowed to Christ as I have bowed to nothing else on this planet, who bends the knee to Christ the King, and I come onto this outlet … this outlet that I love … and I know that such things are being said under the aegis of The Daily Wire, it has to end. It has to stop.” Then Klavan exclaims, “If Candace wants to say those things about the Jews, about Hitler, no matter how she dodges and weaves, she has to leave The Daily Wire. She has to leave for one reason above every other … because Christ is King.” Rob Bogunovic serves as the editor at The Rubicon If you like our content, please consider subscribing and supporting our efforts.

Reprinted with permission. | CARL NELSON | MAR 24, 2024 “Those who tell the stories rule society.” - either Plato or a Native American attribution. My research has made it a coin toss. We live in a very encumbered age. We are encumbered by our wealth, our technology, our leisure, regulations, laws, social strictures, by the Deep State for sure… but most of all, I would think, by narrative. What are rules and regulations but ripened narratives with consequences? And we certainly have enough of them. And there is certainly a price to be paid for breaching them. All of them are touted as solutions. But, unfortunately… “The chief cause of problems is solutions.” - Sevaried’s Law We are metaphorically bathed in cautionary tales from dawn to dusk and then far into the night. The morning news wakes us. The evening news and a myriad of TV shows put us to bed. In between, there’s all that you heard throughout the day, all pitched in the best story form manageable, often cloaked in fear - so that you would listen, attend. These are the American society’s equivalent to Mao portraits. Really, it’s easy to suspect that the only thing you might be valued for is your attention - as all these narratives require acquiescent participants. “Desire generates narrative, causing narrative’s inherent prejudice.” - Bill Soames Dr. Michael Nehls is a molecular geneticist, physician, and author, most recently of “The Indoctrinated Brain: How to Successfully Fend Off the Global Attack on Your Mental Freedom”. In a recent interview he discussed how the general human hippocampus size has been shrinking versus its general expansion in past times. The hippocampus is the clearinghouse of learning. When our hippocampal index of new neurons is positive, we are able to incorporate new information with what we know of the past; we individuate. We particularize as individuals. And when we encounter new knowledge, we first vet it for red flags as regards our current measure of wisdom. When the hippocampal index is zero or negative, the newer knowledge no longer individuates but rather simply overwrites what is there. This is how indoctrination takes root and perpetuates itself. Fear and inflammation will prevent hippocampal neuron growth as resources are shifted elsewhere. As Dr. Nehls describes, this is how indoctrination occurs: the fear of the message prohibits neural growth, so that the present propaganda overwrites our historical memory of the past. Without a strong mental immune system (hippocampal index) which can resist fearful propagandas by comparing it with our already acquired wisdom - we are slaves to the current message. I think it is reality which forces Conservatives to swim against this increasingly relentless modernist current. And the reality is that the human essence is poetic and not narrative. The current legacy media is conducting a continual 24/7 bombardment of the foundational ethos against a populace who are hunkered down within their shrinking mandates trying to live their lives in a natural harmony with the world around them - that is, ‘poetically’. All the while, harassing narratives seek to restrict their movements, restrict their use of energy, restrict their use of labor saving appliances, restrict their use of language and free expression, restrict the use of assembly, restrict their use of representation, restrict their use of their lawful rights, restrict, restrict, restrict… this is what narrative fear accomplishes. But it isn’t only fear which drives this, to my mind, but the confining nature of narrative itself, as the only thing narrative naturally allows is its control; like a superhighway narrative exists only to get you from here to THERE. Currently, the poetry - the give and take, discussion, and the expansion of understanding - of our cultural life is barely surviving beneath a blitz of narrative attack: the CO2 creates global warming narrative, the 1619 Project narrative concerning the founding of the United States, the Covid-19 narrative and successive pandemic scare narratives, the Black Lives Matter narrative of systemic racism, the Feminist narrative of oppressive patriarchy, the LGBTQ narrative of sexual identity, … All of these insurgent narratives (and a host of others generated daily) are conducting strikes across what has become a wasteland of the American tradition and the poetry of the American dream. Poetry feels impotent, but it’s an impotence with the singular clarity of awe. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Matthew 11:15. We’re all going to die, and our placements eventually be for naught. Within this framework, Conservatives hold that the ancestral parents of our traditions lived and found out things making their lives more bearable and easier, which are the treasures contained within our traditions. Others do not think this, and furthermore think it deplorable to do so, because they worship the new. What is the ‘new’ in their minds, has superseded all that was the past in the long evolutionary struggle to be the fittest and survive. (Reminiscent of Dr. Nehls’, vulnerable hippocampus, in which the new has overwritten all.) They certainly espouse the most dire of tooth and claw tests for all received wisdom. And yet, they act as if their own, next, untested notions were Athenas sprung direct from the forehead of Zeus. They would rather sweep uncomfortable truths, such as the “human condition” and bits of painful reality - long encountered throughout history - right under the rug, or send it off to the gulag along with history itself. Doubt for them is a structural frailty, to which their newest, just upgraded narrative poses the solution - with an aphrodisiacal, whip cream plus cherry like topping of power and control. The nature of narrative is certainty. One thing leads to the next. And then it runs into a counter narrative and dispute. And then the best strategy wins, supposedly. But wins what? It wins control. It says how things are. This is the winner which over-writes history. Narrative is stasis, while appearing to be its opposite. If the frozen-in-aspic nature of our current national conversation playing in the legacy media hasn’t convinced you of this… well, I will, nevertheless, lay its future out: The underdog and upper dog will tag team as ‘round and ‘round they contend, the upper dog versus the controlled opposition. We are currently in an actual war between nothing ever happening ever again - which continually reappears with too much velocity to grasp - and the exercise of our free will and speech which currently present as an exhausting isometric exercise, resembling poetry. Narrative thrives in novelty and hubris, while poetry grows with humility and repetition. “A child kicks his leg rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding fatality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say “Do it again”/ and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.” - G.K. Chesterton All of this is illustrated by the famous Dunning-Kruger graph of subjective confidence versus the accumulation of objective experience. Higher learning greatly fuels the initial start of the Dunning-Kruger effect graph, which is where the narrative confidence most peaks, while reality begins dissolving narrative confidence with a descending curve near soon as experience begins. And with experience, monotony begins to extinguish the blush of the new. So that even on the rebound -at the level of greatest expertise and most experience - narrative never achieves the confidence of its first blushing birth. Indeed, the Dunning-Kruger curve is a graphic representation of Yeat’s “Second Coming” wherein… The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. But let’s hear about the spiritual problem posed by this from another perspective, in fact, from the Progressive’s demi-god, Charles Darwin: “My mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond, poetry of many kinds… gave me great pleasure… But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry… My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness.” - Charles Darwin Implicit and Explicit Memory According to Jonathan Gottschall, “The Storytelling Animal”, “There are two kinds of memory: implicit and explicit.” In the simulation model, as we acquire implicit memory, our brains are re-wired, so that though we have no memory of the activity or event which caused us to develop an ability, the ability persists. So, for example, you may not remember the very subtle sequences of choices by which you determined how to ride your bike without training wheels or (more advanced) how to roll a derby hat across your back from one hand to the other - but the skill persists, nevertheless. We have acquired ‘implicit’ memory. Explicit memory requires no such explanation but is the one most on display whenever we use whatever we can “bring to mind” to tell a story, craft an argument, or endeavor to either to win or to direct a discussion. Implict memory is what a poem resurrects. People dance, or perform, paint or sing… like a dream resurrects hidden feelings and knowledge. Implicit memory is the thing that raises those red flags when we hear what we think might be a wrong account, but we haven’t the facts yet to challenge it. We do not remember much of our dreaming, and yet the implicit memory of it helps us in our waking hours of problem solving. How many creative people remark upon finding the answer to a very difficult problem following a night’s very fertile dream? Isn’t it common knowledge that a productive way of solving a seemingly intractable problem is to “sleep on it”? Woody Allen once joked, showing off the handsome watch he’d acquired: “My uncle sold me this on his deathbed.” Our implicit understanding that there were more pressing matters at that point in Woody’s Uncle’s life, but that his Uncle is still in the day-to-day world of explicit existence supplies this joke’s humor. At one time in my life I was a medical student riding in the Medical Aid Ambulance as part of my training. One night we stopped at a home in an upscale neighborhood to pick up a very elderly woman from where she had been living with the daughter. The elderly woman was bleeding from both ends, and quite faint, but as we rushed her to the hospital she pulled at my sleeve with something urgent to say. It was quite noisy what with the sirens, motor noises, CB radios and such so I bent down close to hear, as I thought this very well might be her last words. “I want a private room,” she said. Implicit memory might declare to our hospital bound woman, that she had much more important matters to address then than whether or not she was to acquire a private room. But this would depend upon what sort of life she practiced. For to complicate matters even more, modern life, in which our experiences are more and more secondhand or even mimicked - has polluted the implicit memory we build from our experiences in the natural world. That is mimicking a social status had implicitly become more important to this woman than her very survival, or at least it was uppermost in her mind. An endless flotsam and jetsam of media driven narrative, plus interactions from the fabulous fictional, political and social worlds distort our implicit memory, sometimes beyond all common sense. We walk about as simulacrums of ourselves, derived from media concentrates, something like how the orange juice flavored liquids now offered have replaced the orange. Perhaps only the pulp (flesh) of our real existence is left, as a crutch to authenticity. (To go even further down this rabbit hole, I would recommend Aaron Ames essay, “Darwin, Bureucrtese, and the Decline of Poetry. https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2024/01/darwin-bureaucratese-decline-poetry-aaron-ames.html?utm_source=The+Imaginative+Conservative+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7f3afd8e16-Weekly+Newsletter_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6c8d563f42-7f3afd8e16-132552253&mc_cid=7f3afd8e16) I have memories of the theatre world, sitting within our group of playwrights and listening as another (politically active) playwright’s work was given a reading. She was a sound playwright, but her characters were made of plywood, assembled from glued chips of correct thinking, but which, it seemed were the production of her implicit memories of a politically reconstituted, human character was. How does a person get this across to another person. I remember on one occasion, I chanced to suggest that “what this play needs is a Republican. You simply cannot reach the epiphany - nor a sound denouement - with the characters you have assembled”. I was already the group ‘alien’, so the remark got more laughs than the usual mystification my observations typically produced. I was simply trying to suggest that any real solution to a problem cannot be reached without introducing reality. This should seem plain enough. Nevertheless, it seems currently that this woman playwright’s problem has gotten much worse, and in fact metastasized to afflict our entire society, our culture and our institutions.. The party of this woman’s reality is not our reality; in fact, it is not even real. [ED: this piece is an abridged version of a more ambitious essay, “The Underdog is Just a Dog” published in the March 2024 edition of the New English Review] Support barkingsquirrel (https://carln.substack.com/) By Carl Nelson · Launched around two months ago, maybe three. This a blog of the essayist/poet/publisher (of Magic Bean Books) Carl Nelson. More about Carl and his work may be found at magicbeanbooks.co.

Timothy Knight, co-founder and president of The Rubicon Free Press Chilliwack British Columbia Canada Thursday, March 21, 2024 It is the primary goal of The Rubicon Free Press to offer a unique community-centric social media experience in a news magazine platform to the general public. We offer a common sense approach to human associations and assembly that supports freedom of speech and expression in a shared digital space free from the social engineering of the external influences experienced increasingly in big tech, big media, and mainstream social media. We are committed to building a place where you may speak your mind and have your say, a place where you will find journalistic integrity and an authentic community. A local place. Your town. Your neighbourhood. Your community. As Rob Bogunovic, editor of The Rubicon Free Press, wrote in his article 'The Rubicon', we seek "to be a bridge that connects people to others within the communities where they live. However, to make that happen, The Rubicon needs you to bring forth your best. We invite you to share with us the news as it happens in your communities. You, too, can contribute directly to this publication. You can use it to promote your clubs, your schools, your businesses, your places of worship, and other forms of social gatherings. Become a citizen journalist and help build a free press capable of thriving in our post-modern state. And know that in helping us, we’ll be helping you to reach an audience that’s grown dissatisfied with existing in echo chambers." Many of our early development challenges have been met, and we are pleased with the evolution of the concept into a working prototype state. We have a lot of work ahead, particularly in serverside tools and integration. And there is much more work to do telling the story to many many small organizations that have had no real voice in this digital frontier. Their turn to be regularly seen and heard in their local community news has come. We are making trustworthy two-way relationships with advertisers who will provide conversational inspiration and gathering places in which people will meet via The Rubicon Free Press to share real-world time together. At this point in our lifecycle, we are warily taking off the training wheels (tippy toes to the ground under the pedals) and testing advertiser features live with select participants to whom we are deeply grateful for their invaluable feedback, insight, and patience. As a result, we have made a significant update to our revenue model regarding financial barriers to the general public. The previous Community Member plan, specifically designed as a security layer/paywall plan for the general public, has been discontinued. The Free Press Member plan, a recent test of our website security protocols, has proven successful and is now live, and represents the initial entry point into the opportunities for local real-world connection within The Rubicon Free Press. The goals and features of the two plans are now merged into one plan providing secure access to participate in hosted social media channels manage their own dynamic Community Profile write their own news and stories in the Community News without a paywall! We are very pleased to announce that this updated Free Press Member plan is free after applying a 100% discount (Code: FPM100) prior to purchase! Taking inspiration from the Right Honourable Brian Peckford, previous premier of Newfoundland and Labrador and the last surviving creator of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), as he stated during various appearances in 2022/23, "Participate. Demonstrate. Articulate." Free Press Members NOW have access to PARTICIPATE in the social media channels that various groups, teams, congregations, clubs, vendors, realtors, restaurants, and more will open up for their audiences and supporters. Free Press Members NOW have access to DEMONSTRATE their character and style as dynamic members of an authentic community built on the principles of free press. Free Press Members NOW have access to ARTICULATE their own voices, to freely exercise their own journalistic integrity in community news and stories. The Rubicon Free Press NOW asks you one simple question, "Got news?"

On Friday, March 8th, 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada handed down its decision in R. v. Kruk, a case concerning a 2017 charge of sexual assault. The decision raised a lot of eyebrows due to the written comments of Justice Sheilah Martin, who has served on Canada’s top bench since 2017. Justice Martin suggested it was problematic that a trial judge had used the phrase “a woman” in reference to the complainant, writing that the use of the term may have “engendered confusion”. Justice Martin does not explain why the word “woman” might engender confusion, and no one involved with the case identified as transgender, but in prefacing this concern, Justice Martin referred to the complainant as a “person with a vagina”. The context for this comment by Justice Martin was an argument Christopher James Kruk advanced during his appeal. Kruk complained that the trial judge, who was a man, relied on a generalized expectation of what a women would likely feel during penile-vaginal penetration, even though the judge, who was a man, would have “no personal experience regarding the matter”. Justice Martin was addressing that argument. Justice Martin wrote: "Where a person with a vagina testifies credibly and with certainty that they felt penile‑vaginal penetration, a trial judge must be entitled to conclude that they are unlikely to be mistaken. While the choice of the trial judge to use the words “a woman” may have been unfortunate and engendered confusion, in context, it is clear the judge was reasoning that it was extremely unlikely that the complainant would be mistaken about the feeling of penile‑vaginal penetration because people generally, even if intoxicated, are not mistaken about that sensation." Given the context, I think it is safe to say that Justice Martin was not trying to do away with the use of the word “woman” and was not promoting the use of the phrase “person with a vagina” to take its place. As further evidence, the judgment utilizes the phrase “a woman” more than two dozen times, and only once employs the term “person with a vagina”. While Justice Martin’s choice of words was unfortunate, engendering confusion, she wasn’t trying to abolish the use of the word “woman” or replace the term with “person with a vagina”. Nevertheless, Justice Martin’s comment spawned a lot of headlines. The National Post ran articles with the headlines “FIRST READING: Supreme Court decision opts for 'person with a vagina' over 'woman'” and “We didn't need 'person with a vagina' added to the legal vernacular”. The justice’s comments were also reported on by The Blaze, The Post Millennial, Rebel News, True North, The Epoch Times, Louder with Crowder, and The Babylon Bee satirized the whole affair with its headline: “Canadian Supreme Court Rules ‘Justin Trudeau’ Is An Outdated Term And Should Instead Be Referred To As ‘Person With A Vagina’”. Brian Lilley’s article in the Toronto Sun declared, “The word woman is confusing and for clarity, we should use the term person with a vagina, that’s the takeaway from the Supreme Court of Canada’s latest ruling. Sadly, this isn’t satire, it’s a real ruling written by a woman, or should I say person or judge with a vagina.” Lilley also tweeted, “A justice on the Supreme Court, a woman no less, said that the phrase ‘a woman’ was confusing and said it should be ‘person with a vagina.’ It’s one thing for this kind of nuttery to come from academics, but Supreme Court justice? What do you think?” I think Brian Lilley should have spent more time reading the case and considering the context for the justice’s comment. Most of this strikes me as being much ado about nothing, and it reminds me of a rather hilarious episode from Justin Trudeau’s remarkably colorful tenure as Canada’s Prime Minister. On February 1st, 2018, a young woman rose in a town hall meeting with the Prime Minister, offering him some fawning praise.  She thanked him for coming, and for filling the seats of his Cabinet with female leaders, proclaiming “we believe that you’ve done this because you’ve realized the ability and power that women actually possess.”  She than informed us that this power was something called “maternal love”, which she claimed was “scientifically known as mitochondria or oxytocin” that is “the necessity that sustains our global village.  And actually, this kind of love is a kind of love that puts others ahead of themselves, like a mother cares for her children.” The young woman then declared that “our world today is deteriorating in love.  There’s more wars going on, more hatred going on, even churches are also deteriorating.” She then explained, “we are actually from the World Mission Society Church of God.  And the reason why, actually, our church is different and is growing is because actually we have the female aspect of God, which is God the Mother, actually.  The whole world only knows about God the Father, but in the Bible, they’re two …” and here she is actually interrupted by Trudeau asking if she actually had an actual question – actually. The World Mission Society Church of God believes that their founder, Ahn Sahng-hong, is the second coming of Jesus, even though he died in 1985, and that their co-founder, Zang Gil-ja, is God the Mother – because that’s what Ahn Sahng-hong declared before he died.  The woman proclaimed, “in Canada, our volunteering as a charitable religious organization is extremely difficult.  Extremely.  That’s why, in actuality, we cannot do free volunteering to help our neighbors in need as we truly desire.  So that’s why we came here today to ask you to also look into the policies that religious charitable organizations have in our legislation so that it can also be changed, because maternal love is the love that’s going to change the future of mankind.  So we’d like you to …” And it was here that Trudeau once again interrupted the young woman, and it was here that the divine moment happened.  In the presence of women representing a religion that proclaims two Gods and a second-coming in the form of an already dead religious leader, Trudeau, like Moses on Mount Sinai, decided to proclaim his magnificent wokeness, issuing the words that would be heard around the world - “We like to say peoplekind, not necessarily mankind, because its more inclusive.” Fully woke, the woman jubilantly answered, “There you go, exactly.  Yes!  Thank you.” Trudeau then added, “We can all learn from each other.” Then, as Trudeau tried to actually address the question that was actually asked, the women proclaimed that they actually had another question, and said, “Also, we’d like to share the message about God the Mother with you sometime because it’s really the truth, and that’s really amazing and that’s something the world doesn’t know.”  She invited Trudeau to “study the Bible” with them. I suspect he declined that invitation. His “peoplekind” comment drew a lot of derisive commentary. Jordan Peterson said “That indicates precisely the way he thinks, and I don’t think he does think. I think he runs an ideology in his head and accepts the output without question.  And I think we’re really going to pay for it in Canada, in ways that we can’t yet imagine.” Ben Shapiro tweeted, “Justin Trudeau is what would happen if the song ‘Imagine’ took human form and then ate a Tide Pod.” But this, too, was much ado about nothing. Trudeau was simply making a "dumb joke", and he admitted later, "I don’t necessarily have the best of track records on jokes.” A lot of people didn’t think he was joking. They divorced his comment from the ridiculousness of the commentary being presented to him by this young woman. If I was presented with the kind of rambling religious rhetoric she brought forth, and was expected to provide an answer to it, I’d be tempted to make a joke simply to unburden of the moment of expectation. The ‘peoplekind’ comment went viral in part because Trudeau’s progressive policies suggested that maybe he wasn’t actually joking, but on this one I took Trudeau at his word. There are many other examples of epic fails as regards his attempts at humor, and we’ve never heard him use the phrase “peoplekind” in any other context. More importantly, it was actually funny. I know I laughed. Rob Bogunovic serves as the editor at The Rubicon If you like our content, please consider subscribing and supporting our efforts.

In 2019 I was in Gatineau attending the convention of a new political party that was being much maligned by mainstream media outlets. Another of the attendees was calling some of us out into the hall to give us a sort of survey interview, asking each of us the same two questions. The first was, “Are you a fascist?” I gave the answer that we all had likely given – “No.” And I was probably as emphatic in giving this answer as any of the others surveyed. Then the interviewer asked the same follow-up he had asked the others: “What is a fascist?” I proceeded to answer him, talking of Giovanni Gentille and Benito Mussolini while explaining how fascism's central tenets differed from socialism and liberalism – its primary rivals. The interviewer was startled by my answer – because I had an answer. He said the others he had interviewed couldn’t provide answers to this second question, admitting to him that they didn’t really know what distinguished a fascist from someone adhering to some other political ideology. I was a bit disappointed in my fellow attendees, because if you don’t know what a fascist is, how can you be sure you aren’t one? He asked me what I identified as, and I told him that I align with classical liberalism, which advocates free market and small-government principles while championing civil liberties and the rule of law. We tend to promote individual autonomy, limited government, and constitutionally protected rights and freedoms (freedom of expression, of conscience, religion, thought, belief, and opinion, of peaceful assembly, and of association). I suspected that most of those attending the convention were of a similar ilk, though I don’t know how many would have employed this label to describe themselves. Most attendees likely identified as libertarians or as conservatives who had become disillusioned with the Conservative Party. I’m sure more than a handful of them considered “liberal” to be a dirty word. While there was likely no one at that convention who would have identified themselves as “fascist”, most would have had that label ascribed to them by Leftist ideologues who have a warped understanding of the word. The tendency of Leftists to falsely apply the “fascist” label to anyone who challenges their peculiar “progressive” policies is mostly a product of how the political spectrum was explained to them in high school. Basically, the political spectrum is presented as follows: Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Fascism. This places communism and socialism on the far left and fascism on the far right, so conservatives become fascist adjacent, and anyone who appears to be too conservative gets described as “far-right”, which is where “fascism” stands on the spectrum. The problem is that fascism is a lot closer to socialism and communism than the spectrum presumes. We see this especially when we understand the origins of fascist ideology. Fascism first became prominent when Benito Mussolini became Italy’s dictator in 1922.  Prior to World War I, Mussolini was one of the leaders of Italy’s socialist party (the PSI). The war created a split amongst Italian Marxists. Orthodox socialists wanted Italy to remain neutral in what they denounced as a “bourgeois war”, but national syndicalists like Mussolini wanted Italy to declare war and liberate certain Italian-speaking territories from the Austria-Hungarian empire. As this debate tore apart the PSI, Mussolini was expelled from the party.  He proclaimed, “The nation has not disappeared. We used to believe that the concept was totally without substance. Instead we see the nation arise as a palpitating reality before us! ... Class cannot destroy the nation. Class reveals itself as a collection of interests—but the nation is a history of sentiments, traditions, language, culture, and race. Class can become an integral part of the nation, but the one cannot eclipse the other.” In the wake of World War I, Mussolini gathered a bunch of national syndicalists and formed the nucleus of a new political party.  He became attracted to the political philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, who was heavily influenced and inspired by Plato’s Republic. Plato’s Republic laid out a vision for a perfect (utopian) society, one that required an oligarchy to rule with near absolute power. Like with Marxism, Plato’s utopia was anti-democratic, anti-individualistic, and totalitarian. While Marxism heavily influenced fascism, the two were immensely hostile towards each other. This is because of a few fundamental differences between the totalitarian ideologies. Marxists reject the concept of nationalism and promote a working-class revolution to overthrow the established powers (the State, the Capitalist, and the Church). Fascists embrace nationalism and believe that the established elite have the right to rule. Marxists try to abolish class divisions (in principle if not in reality), and fascists believe that an elite class would always exist in an orderly society.  They believe that the elite must exist, and that they must be permitted to rule over the masses. Otherwise, the masses will destroy order and good government. So, while Marxists promote a working-class revolution and the abolishment of national borders, fascists work to entrench the elite in their power and expand their nation’s interests. In labor-relations, Marxists work to organize strikes and promote unionism, while fascists tend to side with the employers, denouncing strikes and unions. These divergent ideologies create a lot of hostility and violence because both ideologies believe violence is a justifiable means to a political end. To be properly considered “fascist”, one must be a nationalist – and an elitist – and a totalitarian. Ironically, Marxist regimes tend to end up as fascist ones. As the revolution destroys the elites of the old order, Marxists leaders become the new elite, entrenching themselves in power. The result is a one-party state where massive bureaucracies govern over most aspects of one’s life, where citizens have few freedoms, and where elites exploit their many privileges. Frequently, these states also end up promoting nationalism. This was true of both Stalin and Mao. Fascism, like Marxism, is antithetical to liberalism. Liberalism promotes and defends the rights of individuals, while fascists believe that the interests of the State are more important than the rights of individuals.  Mussolini declared that “The Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State.  It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual.”  Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to protect individual rights as the government should be the master of the people, and not the servant of them. Canada doesn’t have a lot of fascists, but that doesn’t mean Canada won’t ultimately devolve into a fascist state. After all, there probably aren’t many in China who identify as fascists, or who openly promote fascist ideologies, yet the Chinese Communist Party is essentially fascist in how it governs its economy and its citizens, how it appeals to nationalistic pride, and in its national ambitions. China is practically the epitome of a modern Fascist state. Shortly after becoming the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, in response to being asked which nation he most admired, Justin Trudeau responded, “There's a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.”  This answer foreshadowed the authoritarian nature that would increasingly come to define Trudeau’s tenure as Canada’s Prime Minister. At the time, many wondered “what was he thinking?”  While it’s true that basic dictatorships can get a lot done quickly, this is only because they can abuse whoever they want whenever they want.  There’s a reason why people who live in basic dictatorships are so often desperate to leave them.  Trudeau’s “level of admiration” statement upset many foreign-born Canadians who’ve been wrongly imprisoned or tortured by China’s basic dictatorship, and praising a brutally repressive regime that harvests the organs of political and religious prisoners seems either callous or naïve. Admittedly, China’s economy is something of a miracle, representing perhaps the most alarming example of speculation driven growth in world history.  Unfortunately, speculation driven economies create bubbles that inevitably burst, and China has massively over built and over-leveraged everything.  China’s bad loans are creating a real crisis, and borrowing has skyrocketed in recent years. According to the IMF, more than half of the increase in the globe’s debt-to-GDP ratio since 2008 is due to China’s “unparalleled” rise. Trudeau’s admiration for China’s basic dictatorship should not be interpreted as evidence that he’s a fascist – even if China happens to be fascist – and expansionist – and genocidal. Trudeau isn’t a fascist. At best, he’s fascist adjacent. It’s true that his government is strikingly illiberal. Trudeau has trampled on parliamentary procedures and the principles of transparency and accountability, and he has abused the rights of Canadians with vaccine-mandates, travel-bans, and the improper invocation of the Emergency Measures Act. He has ordered bank-accounts frozen, and his government is prosecuting peaceful protesters – like Tamara Lich – for the “mischief” they allegedly counselled others to commit. He’s manipulated laws to support big corporate donors, like SNC Lavalin, and introduced a succession of bills to erode free expression, with Bill C-63 being only the latest example. He’s also used the threat of climate change to impose all sorts of controls and regulations upon Canadian industries, and to impose excessive and rapidly rising taxes upon Canadians attempting to drive their cars or heat their homes. Under Trudeau, Canada’s bureaucracy has expanded rapidly, and he’s increased annual federal spending by $200 billion, which is especially “impressive” given his failure to address some of the most pressing concerns of Canadians – like housing and crime. But he’s not a fascist. Fascists are nationalists – and if there is one thing Trudeau can’t be accused of, it’s nationalism. Perhaps that’s why Canadians opposed to Trudeau have adopted as their symbol the maple leaf, and why many Trudeau supporters seem to believe that the flag has become tarnished due to its association with those promoting freedom. No, Trudeau isn’t a fascist. Near as I can tell, he’s a cultural Marxist. But don’t take too much comfort in that. Marxist regimes often evolve into fascist ones. Rob Bogunovic serves as the editor at The Rubicon If you like our content, please consider subscribing and supporting our efforts.

As you may be aware, the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons charged Dr. Charles Hoffe, from Lytton, British Columbia, with spreading misinformation about COVID-19. That hearing was scheduled to take place on March 5th, but on February 27th, the College adjourned their disciplinary hearing, with no explanation. What follows is a chronological history of the events, along with some of my thoughts on the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons and their actions in this process. I also hope to answer the question that is probably running through your mind. What are they trying to hide? First, the College has not dropped their case against Dr. Hoffe. If anything, they're going after him even harder. Second, the College and Dr. Hoffe's attorney, Lee Turner, had an agreement that all disclosure between the parties would be submitted no later than four weeks prior to the trial date - March 5th - because of the massive amount of material to go through. Third, nine business days prior to March 5th, the College dumped 42 case references and all the supporting documents, approximately 1,000 pages of legal documents on Dr. Hoffe's attorney. This tactic alone shows the College is not interested in the truth. They're interested in burying the truth. They're interested in burying Dr. Hoffe because they can't handle the truth that he discovered. This document dump violates procedural fairness, specifically the BC Health Professions Act, Part 3, Section 38, 4.1. Evidence is not admissible at a hearing of the discipline committee unless, at least 14 days before the hearing, the party intending to introduce the evidence provides the other party with (a) in the case of documentary evidence, an opportunity to inspect the document, (b) in the case of expert testimony, (i)the name and qualifications of the expert, (ii)a copy of any written report the expert has prepared respecting the matter, and (iii)a written summary of the evidence the expert will present at the hearing if the expert did not prepare a written report in respect of the matter, and (c) in the case of testimony of a witness who is not an expert, the name of that witness and an outline of their anticipated evidence. The document dump itself is a dirty underhanded trick by gutless cowards at the College who know the facts do not support their version of events. One must be willfully blind to not see the mountain of evidence against the MRNA gene therapy shots and their damaging effects on patients. Worse, is the motion buried inside that document dump seeking judicial notice of the essential facts of the case, as determined by the College. If granted, this judicial notice would remove Dr. Hoffe's ability to mount a defense. It would remove Dr. Hoffe's ability to testify about the research he conducted with his patients and the medical issues that arose as a result of the COVID-19 vaccines. And finally, it removes the ability of Dr. Hoffe's expert witnesses to testify on his behalf. That's brutal, underhanded and an abuse of process. What it proves, though, is the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons is not interested in the truth. They're interested only in silencing dissent from the government-approved narrative. Lee Turner, Dr. Hoffe's attorney, argued before the disciplinary panel that the College's actions are a breach of established procedure. They're also a breach of the BC Health Professions Act, as noted above. The College's deliberately late disclosure did not give Lee Turner the time required to sift through this new mountain of documents. Lee Turner also asked one more question. "If the facts of this case are indisputable, why are we holding a trial? Why not just proceed directly to a guilty verdict and move on with the destruction of Dr. Hoffe's medical career?" By the grace of God, the disciplinary panel agreed that the College's actions were unfair, and granted Lee Turner an additional 18 days to wade through all of this new disclosure. As of the date of publication, Lee Turner has only 11 more days to go through all of this new evidence. That's a gargantuan task. The College will then go through his response and get back to him, and then the College will schedule a new date for Dr. Hoffe's disciplinary hearing. The earliest new date is April 2024, Dr. Hoffe said. Now, this is where you can help. The College of Physicians and Surgeons has an entire legal team persecuting Dr. Charles Hoffe, and an unlimited budget of your tax dollars with which to do it. Dr. Hoffe has his limited income, because they stripped him of half of his income when they fired him from the Emergency Room for daring to contradict to government-sponsored narrative. Dr. Hoffe has his lone attorney. Dr. Hoffe must pay all the legal expenses that Mr. Turner incurs, plus, of course, his fee, for a man is worthy of his wages. Absolutely. But that is a massive burden for one man to carry. So I encourage you to donate generously to Dr. Hoffe's legal defense fund through DrHoffe.ca. Click the Donate button. But I want to leave you with one final thought from Dr. Hoffe himself. These are the words he spoke when I met with him on Sunday, March 4th. The authorities do this to people. They wear you down by destroying your financial position, destroying you financially through the legal system. They destroy your morale in the hope that you will become so discouraged that you just drop everything. The process is the punishment. Please support Dr. Hoffe's battle for the truth. Please support Dr. Hoffe's battle for integrity in the medical system. Please do it right now so that Dr. Hoffe can defend himself against these charges from the corrupt College of Physicians and Surgeons, their insistence that the truth is no longer relevant in our society, and their draconian attempt to this good man and anyone like him who dares to disagree with the established COVID narrative put forward by the federal Liberal government, the provincial NDP government, Dr. Bonnie Henry, and the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons. Help Dr. Hoffe tell the truth. Help the world to hear that truth. Thank you very much. DrHoffe.ca

Reprinted with permission. ELIZABETH NICKSON | FEB 18, 2024 The real threat is environmentalists, bureaucrats and politicians When I moved to the country at the age of 48 I was exhausted and sick. I spent most afternoons in bed, reading and resting and watching bad TV. I’d grown up in the country, but at 17, moved to the cities for education, and lived in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, New York and London, about 6 years in each, adding Paris because I worked there so often, I almost rented an apartment. More like a closet with a bed in Le Marais. “Some of us are bound to the earth,” a friend writes from her five acres in Ireland, which she is trying to rewild. I never felt completely well in the cities, I was trading youth and strength for enough knowledge to get out and make a living, a life, before I got cancer or heart disease, which is essentially how I thought of it. Another year, I’d say to myself, stick it out for one more year. I live now embedded in nature. My first house had a spectacular view, but I sold it to live deeper, in a house on two creeks, surrounded by forest. It is hidden and spectacular. I’ve traded fancy restaurants and fancy people and things for my own park. City people have to have views says James Ackerman, the Harvard architectural historian, and author of The Form and Ideology of Country Houses. They still see themselves as separate and above nature. Environmentalists are almost all city people trying to impose their will on nature. Real country people live immersed, in fields, and meadows, forests and gardens. I’ve covenanted in perpetuity my ravine and creeks, and in that ravine every summer owls hoot and call and breed. The first time I went down into it, five owls flew in and landed in the trees circling myself and my terrier, and just….stared at us. We stared back, in wonder. My land had never been lived on. It had been logged fifty years prior, but I still have a grove of old growth Douglas Fir they didn’t bother with. We have two blue-listed species in our forest, a sharp-tailed snake and a red-legged frog. The past two winters, we’ve played host to the American Dipper, who sits on rocks in the creek, bobbing up and down hunting water bugs. It is very exciting and people visit us to visit him. Most country people are like me, few of us who live here are vandals wanting to cut it flat and tear up the bottom ground of creeks for fertilizer. In the 80’s in the north-west U.S., traders like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, ripped the crap out of the forests for money, which triggered the War of the Woods. Here, in British Columbia, the war was triggered by a new socialist government cancelling long held leases which were being held on portfolios to be cut judicially over time. On threat of confiscation, cut flat. Industrial action and over-hunting eviscerated species in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in America, but all are long recovered. The environmental Kuznet’s Curve demonstrates that as median income rises - starting at $5000 per capita - environmental protection rises just as fast. I am part of the new generation in the country, sharply aware of its vulnerability, beauty and its resilience. “Nature,” says America’s most prominent philosopher of natural science, Alston Chase, “is far more resilient than man.” The environmental movement was taken over by multinational corporate interests sometime in the early 2000’s and twisted to its purpose which is to say taking as much land away from individuals or families and banking it for themselves. Environmental NGO’s now dance to their tune, inflicting endless pointless trouble on us. Here’s some facts to chew on: There’s no Sixth Mass Extinction. All those deluded kids vandalizing priceless art and obstructively gluing themselves to pavements are operating on yet another flagrant lie from the leaders of the environmental movement. Every species in the U.S. except the black footed ferret and the California hawk is growing in numbers by leaps and bounds. The Endangered Species Act, generally considered the most powerful law of the land outside the cities, is, however, destroying the human economy, our culture and heritage. I’d go further. The corruption of this well-meant act has inflicted a psychological paralysis upon us. We cannot go forward, we cannot even stay where we are, we must be driven inch by inch into smaller enclosures, with increasingly limited lives. And it’s all based on lies. Unstoppable lies, fanned by every media over and over again. Fanned by princes and kings. A lie that elevates people like David Attenborough, and makes fools out their legacy. The Chevron deference case before the U. S. Supreme Court may shift the landscape. If won, it means that no longer will only the scientists approved by the Department of the Interior give evidence in land and resource-based cases, shutting out contrary opinions. But the damage caused in the last fifty years since Nixon signed Endangered Species Act into existence, is profound and will take decades to turn into reasoned care and then, critically necessary economic progress in the heartland. Let’s review some facts. The U.S. has listed 1,186 species. There are species and sub-species which are biological terms. And then there are 'distinct population segments', which is a congressional definition that allowed functionaries to add hundreds more critters, provoking a tsunami of lawsuits. In fact, most court cases on the ESA are concerned with whether a frog from this river valley is threatened, while its brother, 100 miles away in another ravine, is thriving. The U.S. has designated 250 million acres of critical habitat and 60,000 miles of river habitat. This does not count other set-asides, which probably count for another quarter-million acres. In fifty years, the EPA has managed to recover 61 species and they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars doing so. A comprehensive report on just one threatened species costs at least $9 billion. In late December an analysis of the work of the department found the following: Unfortunately, at the half century mark, with the listing of 1,667 threatened or endangered species, there are only 62 officially ‘recovered’ species. Of these, 36—nearing 60%—are not real conservation ‘success stories.’ These ‘recoveries’ are hollow, as they are inaccurate proclamations attributable to an erroneous original determination that the species was endangered or threatened. The ESA’s poor showing is compounded by the fact that for some species that have recovered, the recovery is not primarily or even substantially attributable to the ESA. Of the species currently proposed for delisting on the basis of recovery, at least 5 of 12 appear more likely to owe their improvement to original data error. About 20 of 40 of the downlisted species (lowered from endangered to threatened status) pointed to by USFWS as recovering, appear to primarily owe their improved status to data error as well. Rob Gordon, one of the few experts on this fiendish legislation, has published a fifty page report on the Act, its many failures and consequences of that failure. It is a must-read for anyone attempting a business outside of a mega-city, and it will save any prospective entrepreneur a million bucks in legal fees all of which will disappear into the environmental movement's financial black hole. Between 1890 and 1920’s species were in fact, depleted across the board, the result of mass industrialization and immigration. The environmental Kuznet’s curve shows as economic prosperity rises, so does the health of the environment. We got richer and where there were once 100 black bears in Massachusetts, there are now 5,000. Yet, the black bear is still on the endangered list, not because it is threatened, but because a so-called "distinct population" segment, the Florida black bear, is not thriving. That said, there are so many black bears out west, that the young males are being driven eastward to prop up the population. One of the Trump administration's fixes was to forbid the agency to consider setting aside "potential habitat" as well as "critical habitat." The Biden administration changed that. Now anything can be considered potential habitat, and thus economic activity must be stopped. It can be on private land, your back garden, the range you lease to graze your cattle. If carbon emissions are added to endangerment characteristics then…. everything is at risk. Wolves are now, courtesy of faux hysteria, everywhere, and ranchers I know have to leave their bedroom windows open in order to listen for their predations. The Trump administration tried to delist wolves, but no. Most of the introduced wolves, breeding happily, were from northern Canada, and these wolves did not behave in the way wildlife biologists claimed, which was that they only fed on wildlife. These wolves lost their ancestral patterns, and they happily feed on pets, chickens, lambs and cattle. Wolves eviscerate profits for marginal ranchers every year, which, ranchers believe, is yet another deliberate attack. The Centre for Biological Diversity, an outfit funded by the most extreme elements both in government and the private sector, is a plague on the rural economy, because its "success" is measured via lawsuits, forcing listings and timetables. Its science is almost always exaggerated, its tone hysterical. The requirements for listing a species are so onerous that the EPA can rarely meet deadlines set by the courts, those deadlines forced by the CBD, which knows the necessary steps the agency must take. When missed, CBD sues, wins and takes the money to sue again. The CBD, roundly hated in rural America, has sued to list the Monarch Butterfly, the habitat of which encompasses pretty much all of North America. If listed, it means that dill weed, the butterfly’s most favored food, has to be privileged over cattle, for whom dill weed is toxic. Cut glyphosate use, and the butterfly will thrive. Cut geoengineering and the butterfly will thrive. But no, ranching must die. One meets, over and over again, such profitable contradictions built into the ESA. Revolving doors exist between the agency, environmental NGOs, and the Department of Justice; rules are written to profit those NGOs. The cases lock up courts at every level in every state, creating stasis, poverty and addiction, all of which is funded by taxpayers. It must be reformed, root and branch. And the environmental NGOs that feed upon it, must be reformed or be buried under the contempt of the civilized. People care about the earth, not government, not bureaucrats, not multinationals, not legislators or hedge funds. More property rights and those individual and family-held, strengthened must be our future. Welcome to Absurdistan is reader-supported. Absurdistan does not paywall. We do not litter pieces with pleas for money or separately solicit you in emails, because we trust that IF you find value in us, you will subscribe annually, which is the cheapest possible avenue. That’s the only way we want you here, voluntarily. And we are grateful. --- [ED: This article comes with several visual aids that can be found at the source: https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/all-species-are-thriving-but-man] Elizabeth Nickson was trained at the London Bureau of Time Magazine, spending seven years there, ending as European Bureau Chief of LIFE Magazine. She published a novel, The Monkey Puzzle Tree with Knopf and Bloomsbury. She has written for the Telegraph, the Globe and Mail, Harper’s Magazine, the Sunday Times Magazine, British Vogue, the Independent, the Guardian, and the Observer. Elizabeth has moonlighted writing for the Daily Mail (fun!) and covered the collections in Paris and London for the Toronto Sun and the LA Weekly. She is currently making an impact at https://elizabethnickson.substack.com.

(Reprinted with permission.) Carl Nelson, Feb 3, 2024 “An old Russian joke tells about a poor peasant whose better-off neighbor has just gotten a cow. In his anguish, the peasant cries out to God for relief from his distress. When God replies and asks him what he wants him to do, the peasant replies, “Kill the cow.” - Chuck Colson in the Christian Post I live in a small town along the Ohio River where the living is affordable for someone with a meager income, and the neighborhood is safe. The drug dealers live mostly across the river, and the users mostly OD quietly without a lot of fuss. Their souls drift upwards, I suppose, while I’m asleep. The evident crime is quiet and quite ordinary, also. Domestic abuse, vehicular infractions, assaults, illegal possessions, and drunken and disorderly pretty much fill the bill. Convicted pedophiles, who are often the product of some nasty divorces, occupy spare rooms here and there. Embezzlement is the real copperhead in the grass around here, but it most often hangs out in the wealthier developments. My neighbors are mostly blue collar and minor professionals, sprinkled with some well-to-do, the retired, disabled, and felons. Racially, it’s white bread Appalachian, which means that I live within a fractal of family trees and simmering feuds, which waft in all directions on the breeze like honeysuckle. A sophisticated persona is a rather rare thing in this neck of the woods, but what personas abound, you’ll get a lot of. Like the Woody Allen joke: Two women are seated at a restaurant, and the first says, “The food isn’t very good here.” To which the second replies, “Yes. But they give you so much of it!”  It’s not uncommon when talking with the rednecks around here to watch them pause at the end of a statement, as a sort of verbal stare down which is reflexive. At worst around here, you’ll find some very truculent failure. As featured in a recent Facebook posting of mine: It's all too common back here for people to get large, ferocious dogs and not train them, but just to let them run loose - and likewise, with their children. They grow larger but they're not raised. They're not taught to work, how to hold a job, to be responsible... you all know the drill. But I was sitting in the hot tub at the pool today with this likable enough fellow who began a conversation about his kids (with former wife) who he'd since tossed out of the house. They'd never gotten a driver's license. They just drove anyway. No insurance. His son was upset about something and ran four stoplights on the way to stop 'a friend' from stealing his dog - finally T-boning this woman and her child. He ended up with a dislocated hip, and cursing loudly at the cops. I told the fellow that his son would likely meet an early end. This didn't seem to bother him. He laughed. I also told him, that if I were the cop I'd probably step on his dislocated hip real hard. This didn't bother the fellow either. He was smiling almost gleefully about what a nuisance his son was. And I had an epiphany. These people are not ashamed of the children they've raised (nor the vicious dogs they let loose in the neighborhood). Rather, they revel in their relations' intransigent, worthless, stubborn, anti-social behavior, as if it were a badge of honor, not truckling to any standard of responsible behavior. I am reminded of Faulkner's Trilogy featuring the Snopes clan. In short, the perfect place for a writer! …especially one who loves Country music. I sit daily at a literal buffet of humanity suitable for a modern day Chaucer’s Tales - excepting that nobody here is an anticipating penitent. No pilgrimages are taking place, because this hereabouts is… Almost Heaven. There are cuts and minced portions of Shakespearean dramas, tenderized and simmering in reductions of neighborhood squabbles. And they make perfect side dishes and special sauces to offer within my occasionally submitted personal essays and poems. And it’s quiet! Did I say that? (Except for the neighbor’s kid who bicycles past, shouting, “Mutherfuckers!”) My neighbor, Bob, (who recently ran for mayor of our small town), and I started out on friendly terms. When we first moved into the neighborhood our home required some work. And Bob loaned me tools (for example, a canted porch floorboard pneumatic nail gun, and later a compression hammer), a smidgeon of expertise, and the contacts with a few ‘contractors’. I would stop at his small porch servicing the ranch duplex he and his wife, Jane, inhabited on the south side of the street a couple homes east, to chat with on the return leg of walking the dog on nice afternoons. He’d offer me a beer. Or, I might walk over sometimes with two beers. We’d nod agreement over some things. We’re both MAGA supporters. Later on, Bob’s porch evolved into a bit of a neighborhood meeting place. His shared duplex renter was a woman with Alzheimer’s, for whom the woman across the street made a bit of money being a caregiver. And then the elderly woman had two dachshunds. And the caregiver from across the street brought her mid-sized Mutt, who was a girlfriend of Tater’s (my dachshund). Then add the two yapping white poodles of Bob’s wife. Then settle Bob‘s wife (who also had had a piece of her brain removed years ago) in there, tight. Then rotate this clockwise, milling menagerie of all sorts onto and flowing off of the small front porch of the duplex - and you’ve got the mix for the totally organic, spontaneously combusted afternoon Elm street neighborhood gathering. Oh, plus, add the husband, at times, of the neighbor caregiver, as he returned afternoons from his job as a security guard for the government offices across the river. Plus the elderly woman’s often present son. So then, we had two attending that were armed and carrying. Then, as a thickening agent, I shall add that the elderly woman’s current husband was in prison for fraud, and that the caregiver had done three stretches in the pen, herself. Personally, and as a poet, I thoroughly enjoyed this motley dynamic centered around an older woman who was quite cheerful, loved all of the activity, caught the humor bubbling up from all of it all very quickly - but couldn’t remember sh*t. “You live where?” She’d usually ask three or four times of an afternoon session, then wink. (She thought I was hot.) I indicated the two story frame home two houses down and kitty-corner. “And is this your dog?” I nodded. “I just looooooove, dachshunds!” So it was much like a good poem - or a deracinated Seinfeld episode - all of this cacophonous feeling and burble moving and circling the nothingness of this pleased elderly Alzheimer sufferer. Every afternoon seemed like the heavenly afterlife in soft lighting. Lions lying down with the lambs, hillbilly style, you know? But the very devil will have its way. And it flourishes in these parts like a weed. Across the street from us and two doors from Bob’s duplex is one of Belpre’s Historic Homes, beautifully renovated by a very upscale interior designer of the area. It comes with several floors and a cupola with widow’s walk from which to view river traffic. Beautifully restored huge old planks floor the side and expansive front porches. Our designer, Jake, runs his business from there, and in doing so added a showroom - an assembly well conceived as an aesthetic whole - attached to the back of the homestead. Lovely landscaped grounds surround. Bob had fought the improvements. “I’m a man of strong opinions,” Bob liked to say. “I don’t mince words about how I feel.” But I’d do a little politicking nevertheless, over beers. “Who else has the kind of money to restore a local treasure sitting right next door to us - who would also want to live where it sits, one home away on its west side from a dilapidated trailer court? The thing would deteriorate and likely as not, around here, end up taken over for taxes and run as a halfway house for drug offenders.” Bob shrugs. Take him or leave him, is what that means. So, the feud simmered. Nobody buries the hatchet around here. (The best you’re going to uncover are arrowheads, and buried Indians.) Next, the city refused to re-pave the mansion’s drive, which curved like a hockey stick to connect one alley’s end to the city street. The city maintained, that what was used as a street, since alley dwellers and others would use the drive to come and go, was actually the decorator’s private driveway - so the city needn’t pay for its resurfacing, and in fact, couldn’t. So our decorator decided that if it was indeed his driveway, then he would close it to through traffic. The decorator was particularly miffed by one crazy alleyway resident who would race his loud 4x4 up and down the drive to a spot about 2 blocks down the street near thirty times a day - and then race it back. (Can you spell Meth?) “He can’t do that,” Bob argued, “if the roadway has been in common use” (over a certain number of years). (They could easily leave their alleyway by going the other direction.) Bob and Jane would end up yelling curses and threats at Jake whenever Jake tried to discuss some kind of amicable arrangement over the blockade. Jane’s venom especially was scary -unhinged. “Bob,” I’d argue, “look at is this way. You’ve gotten free passage of his driveway for umpteen years! Why not consider it a good deal, a bit of largesse to write off, which finally reached its end?” Bob shrugged, and hewed to what his interpretation of the law would provide. So our designer neighbor barricaded off his driveway. Bob, in turn, (having gotten himself elected to the city council, by the barest sliver of a margin running against a former drug felon) used his influence with the city to close the alleyway to large trucks - so that our designer neighbor could not use it to deliver and remove items from his showroom. Our designer friend, in the interim, did not tell Bob that he now used an off-site warehouse anyway. Meanwhile relations with the neighbors along the opposite (west) street side of Bob continued to sour. Bob had used his connections within the city to have a handicapped zone designated just across the street from his home where he parked his vehicles - his expansive garage on the alley being too crammed with overflowing cardboard boxes for use. He personally got the determination based on his wife’s handicap and so felt that the zone was entirely hers, regardless of what other handicapped persons on the block wanted. Then, when his wife’s car’s battery died, he left the car in the handicapped zone, where it has sat for months, rather than to fix it, or move the wreck to his back alley. So his wife can’t use the car and the neighbors can’t use the handicapped parking spot. And this irritation sits like a wart directly in front of his neighbors, and squats like a toad in front of all. (Apparently by law, in our small town, you can’t leave a disabled car in your front yard - but can leave it sitting in the street.) Then things reached a head when Bob forced his Alzheimer’s tenant from her duplex, on the pretext of not liking her son, who stayed over some days as caregiver. Since Bob couldn’t legally evict her, he raised her rent above what she could afford and forced her out that way. This incensed the neighbor caregiver. Shouting matches ensued between her and Bob’s wife, Jane. Greetings were shouted back and forth across the street: “You stupid cunt!” “I’m going to the town council where you’re running for office and tell them that you’re throwing an old lady with Alzheimer’s out onto the street!” “It’s my property and I’m well within my rights!” Bob called back. She did. And he did. Our Alzheimer’s friend was eventually situated in a better home nearby her other son. But the magic (and existence) of the afternoon neighborhood clutch was gone. Meanwhile, the neighbors began taking the spots Bob used to park his cars on the far side of the street, as revenge. So Bob began strategizing his parking times so that he never left the neighbors an opportunity. So currently, all three cars of Bob’s command the off street parking on the north side opposite Bob’s home. (Two of which are near inoperable, and only one of which he commonly uses.) Then, around 10:30 one night in the pouring rain, a police officer appears at the neighbor caregiver’s door. Because of the shortage of off-street parking, this neighbor had parked their two cars in the driveway slot of their home. Apparently, the second car was projecting a foot or so onto the sidewalk and must be moved. The young officer was very apologetic. He had obviously been ordered to enforce the quibble at this most troublesome time. (Most probably by his chief, who probably looked to Bob as a loyal funder of police services on the council.) This, of course, enraged the caregiver neighbor with gimpy knees - as was undoubtedly intended. Bob’s current tenant is a convicted sexual predator, who Bob has on a month by month basis. The other early morning, I was walking my dog Tater, when I passed his tenant who was starting his car parked in front of our home. I nodded. We exchanged greetings. Then he moved his car to fill the slot Bob had just left in order to head off to place some campaign signs. Then, I’m guessing he went back to his duplex to return to bed. “So Bob owns him,” I declared, to my security guard neighbor, later that day in conversation.  My neighbor nodded. I’m sometimes brought up on charges of being a Pollyanna for my insistence in looking at things as if the glass were half full - of being a waffler. But my impression of life is that it is a half-full glass of water floating down a very muddy river. Half-full is the reasonable person’s trade-off. You’re not above it all, or out of the swim, but still afloat. You live and enjoy the view from the upper half, and leave the other half to co-exist with the unconscious flow.  No need to visit with it more than a boat’s need to visualize its ballast. And, if I were to fraternize of the basis of all the half-empty beliefs of many people, I wouldn’t have time to die - even though it might kill me. Half-empty people, they just sit waiting… on their porches around here, as if suspiciously watching out for Godot. As my wife pointed out one day, “Almost Heaven is Purgatory.” Currently, I had an opportunity, while returning from my walk with Tater one early morning, of a ‘visualization’. (Very close to a visitation, but the lesser.) Most parked cars were off with their owners to work leaving the strings of campaign signs exposed on both sides of the street facing off against each other like opposing troops. On the west side were signs for Bob’s opposing candidate for mayor, Beverly, which extended a couple blocks of our neighbors up and down the street. On the south side was a motley of signs for Bob, extending most the length of a block. Then, just a few days before Election Day, this anonymously typed and sent message was delivered by mail to several neighbors on the north side: “(Mayoral candidate) Beverly Brown despises Bob Reynolds. Drive by Bob’s house and it is obvious. This shows Beverly’s character. Every neighbor left, right 4 across the street have Beverly signs in their yard. Bob does not support Beverly in council so she has these signs to spite him. I’m here Bob and I’ll make your life hell. This has been Beverly’s lifestyle. She is mean, hateful and will push you down and grind you. She will not make a good mayor. In charge of Camden Clark ambulance wait time went from 15 min to 3 hours. She was told to retire or be fired. A hot topic in Belpre is the Belpre city school levy. After the last election Beverly came out against the levy. Now she has people saying they are voting for her because she supports the schools. A mayor can’t play both sides. I was at the Woman club debate. I wrote a question. It was not asked. I know 4 others, question weren’t asked. The woman club obviously wants Beverly for mayor. She was asked more questions. The questions that were thrown away were questions Beverly would have looked bad on. Shame on woman’s club for showing favoritism. Funny how yard signs show us the hateful signs of Beverly” Bob trailed last in the mayoral election returns. While headed to the gym, I spied his wife Jane standing, looking lost, on the corner of the town’s main thoroughfare onto which I was turning. “Hey, you lost?” I joked. “Yes, I am,” Jane said. She looked forlorn, pale, not healthy, and quite a bit slimmer than just a month or so ago. I put the car in park. I was parked in the street, but you can do this is a small town. No one was approaching. “Aren’t we all,” I said. “I wish things could all just go back the way they were. Maybe just bury the hatchet, you know, and continue as if things had never happened.” I nodded. “I don’t have anyone. No one in the neighborhood likes me. I’m in pain all the time from my arthritis. And I don’t know how to keep the dog from barking. Thanks for speaking with me.” I shrugged. “I’m glad Bob didn’t win the election,” she said. “Me, too.” I agreed. She smiled wanly. “We were right in what we did, but he didn’t have to go about it like he did.” I didn’t choose to disagree. “Bob, isn’t a very reasonable fellow. He seems to seek aggravation.” She agreed. “You’re right. It fuels him. I try to reason with him, but he just steps in closer and closer yelling, until all I can do is agree with him. …I don’t have anywhere else I can go.” We both remained there with our thoughts. “That’s a beautiful tree over there,” I said. The deep autumn reds were overtaking the rich deep greens in a huge oak a block away. “It is,” she said. “I appreciate your speaking with me.” In the intervening time between then and now, there has been no Christmas at Bob’s.  No decorations this year. And he’s wrecked his car three times since; the third time by backing into his neighbor’s garage dooe. If  Bob and I were still talking… (We stopped after my angry wife placed campaign posters for his opponent in our front yard. I tried an approach, but he wouldn’t look up from where he sat on the porch, and the two poodles were working up such a snarling lather from the end of their stretched tethers, I demurred.) I might say, “Bob, if winning makes your life as bad as all this, maybe you should try not winning - and see how that works out?” But, here again, look at how I spend my time writing essays for which there is little remuneration, and lots of opportunity to piss someone off - just for the joy of trying to catch a bit of life on a page, kind of like fishing.  So perhaps Bob and I just enjoy a different sport fish, and utilize a different bait.  Nevertheless, I think it’s true that he has a mean streak that could use cauterizing.  So, in this respect, perhaps I’m a person of strong opinions myself. On another note, there’s a common plaint among the those of a Progressive bent around here that it’s bad form to write poorly of the area.  That its resilience, authenticity, and rugged, homespun traditions would be better publicized, than writing of the area which is critical, that is, “punching down”.  I would respond that I chose to live here, I haven’t left - but that the Progressives are trying to censure much of what gives the region its vitality and local color, and which circulates mostly in the stories locals tell about themselves! And besides, “when they begin acting different, I’ll write different.” Old Yeller My small yellow dachshund, Tater, likes to race out the back door every so often and bark! At anything, everything, and mostly nothing. He thinks I should also, and I'm considering. Whenever I shift in my TV chair, he’s up and racing out back to scrabble and howl! What if we all stepped out our back doors throughout the evening, hourly to bellow? Here and there throughout the town. Really got our ya-ya’s out! Would we all then head back inside by ten, turn off the lights, tuck ourselves in, sigh, and sleep better? * Names have been changed in this essay to protect both the innocent and guilty. --- Support barkingsquirrel (https://carln.substack.com/) By Carl Nelson · Launched 2 months ago. This a blog of the essayist/poet/publisher (of Magic Bean Books) Carl Nelson. More about Carl and his work may be found at magicbeanbooks.co

Dr. Charles Hoffe, from Lytton, BC, Needs Your Support. He goes before the BC College of Physicians & Surgeons' Disciplinary Committee on March 4th thru 15th, where he must defend himself for telling the truth about what the COVID-19 vaccines were doing to his patients - truth that neither the BC Government or the BC College of Physicians wanted to hear. Dr. Hoffe wants you and everyone you know to attend his disciplinary hearing, via Zoom, to show your support for his standing up for his patients and the damage these vaccines did to his patients in early 2020. The College does not make it easy to attend a disciplinary hearing. They won't send you the link if you email and ask them for it. (I tried, and got no response). They will not permit you to call them and ask for the link either. You must apply in writing to attend Dr. Hoffe's Disciplinary Hearing 2 weeks in advance of his hearing. DEADLINE TO APPLY to attend this virtual hearing is February 24, 2024. SO... Scan the QR Code to download the application form to attend Dr. Hoffe's disciplinary hearing. Once the form is completed and signed, scan or snap a photo of it and email that image to the disciplinehearings@cpsbc.ca. They will email you the information to access the disciplinary hearing (we hope). Be sure you include these two lines in your email: "I am interested in attending the Discipline Committee Hearing for Dr. Charles Hoffe on March 4 to 15, 2024, via Zoom. I have signed and attached the CPSBC Observer Policy form as requested." Also, include your phone number when you sign the document. While the form itself does not include a space for it, when you read the requirements on Page 1, they state your phone number is required. While we realize it is almost impossible to commit to being there for every minute of every day, Dr. Hoffe asks that you log in to the hearing every day, even if you can't sit and watch it completely. This will show the College that Dr. Hoffe's position and his evidence is of great importance to you, and that their actions will be scrutinized, in public, by everyone watching. This is important, because petty tyrants love to operate in secret, where they can do whatever they want with no accountability or repercussions. Our virtual attendance shines the bright light of truth on these people and their actions and, we hope, bring that weight to their conscience in the hope they will act rationally in their dealings with Dr. Hoffe. On behalf of Dr. Charles Hoffe, I thank you for taking interest in the truth and for helping him defend himself before the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons who, years after the rest of the world can see verifiable evidence of Dr. Hoffe's statements, they insist on stripping him of his right to practice medicine. We cannot permit this to happen and, with your support, it won't. Please scan the QR Code above, download, complete, and sign the form, then email it back to disciplinehearings@cpsbc.ca. Today is February 19th. You have only FIVE short days to get this done, so please do it right now. Thank you again on behalf of Dr. Charles Hoffe and everyone who believes in freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.

When Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Stephen Guilbeault, declared that “Our government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure”, it caused a lot of eyebrows to rise and a lot of voices to speak out. Most people consider the building and maintaining of vital infrastructure to be one of the quintessential duties of any regional government. Indeed, a classic argument for why we need governments is “Who else will build the roads?” In making this comment, Guilbeault elaborated that “Of course, we will continue to be there for cities, provinces and territories to maintain the existing network, but there will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network. The analysis we have done is that the network is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have. And thanks to a mix of investment in active and public transit, in territorial planning and densification, we can very well achieve our goals of economic, social and human development without more enlargement of the road network.” In the face of a tremendous amount of backlash, Guilbeault tried to walk back his comments. He first insisted that he didn’t say what he obviously said, and when that failed to convince people, he said that this decision only applied to mega-projects, like new highways and highway expansions. I don’t think Guilbeault’s backtracking mitigated anyone’s concern. After all, highways are roads, and Guilbeault has made it clear that his priority is stopping climate change whatever-the-cost. He also wants to stop people using plastic. He elevates these goals above the material and social needs of Canada’s people. Guilbeault wants to slap ever higher carbon taxes upon Canadians and has sought to ban many forms of single-use plastics. Guilbeault is motivated by a belief that plastics and climate change both constitute existential threats to humanity, and he imagines that science is on his side - which is a common delusion. On November 16, 2023, Justice Angela Furlanetto ruled that the Liberal’s plastic ban was “both unreasonable and unconstitutional”. Furlanetto recognized that there wasn’t much scientific merit to the many claims the Liberals were advancing regarding the plastic products they were arbitrarily banning. Prior to being called to the bar in Ontario, Furlanetto received a Master of Science in Biochemistry, so she had a firm grasp of the science underpinning (or undermining) the arguments being presented to her in that case. And that’s why the Liberals lost. On May 13, 2013, President Barrack Obama tweeted “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”  The statement wasn’t true.  Obama appeared to be referencing a 2013 study published by John Cook, which was highly flawed.  Moreover, Obama misrepresented what the Cook study actually said. The impact of that tweet was tremendous.  Climate change is an issue driven by politics – and I don’t say that to circumvent the actual scientific concerns that exist relating to this issue. It is political in how it has been marketed to people. The 97% consensus myth has been cited again and again by mainstream media pundits who use it as a hammer to silence voices of dissent, painting “deniers” and “agnostics” as a fringe minority who are not to be taken seriously. This is a political tactic that is misaligned with scientific reality and is antithetical to scientific inquiry. I have watched how the mainstream media (and other Establishment institutions) have dealt with the issue of climate change, and it seems to me that whenever something bad happens in connection to the weather, climate change is blamed, yet when something good happens in connection to the weather, climate change gets no credit. This tendency reflects political calculations and distorts reality. Climate change is always the villain, never the hero. A major peer-review quickly exposed the errors in John Cook’s paper.  Cook claimed there was a 97.1% scientific consensus among scientists on whether man had caused at least half the 0.7 C° global warming since 1950.  However, of the 11,944 published climate papers Cook examined, only 41 (0.3%) explicitly stated that man caused most of the warming since 1950.  Cook himself had flagged just 64 papers as explicitly supporting that “consensus”, but further analysis revealed that 23 of the 64 had not in fact supported it.  Furthermore, Cook had not considered whether the published papers had said climate change was “dangerous”.  The consensus Cook considered was whether man had caused most post-1950 warming, and even on this weaker definition the true consensus among published scientific papers was nowhere close to 97.1%. Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, was among those who exposed the errors in Cook’s data and methodology.  He said, “It may be that more than 0.3% of climate scientists think man caused at least half the warming since 1950.  But only 0.3% of almost 12,000 published papers say so explicitly.  Cook had not considered how many papers merely implied that.  No doubt many scientists consider it possible, as we do, that man caused some warming, but not most warming … It is unscientific to assume that most scientists believe what they have neither said nor written.” So rather than claiming that 97 percent of scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous, Obama ought to have tweeted that “Of the approximately one third of climate scientists writing on global warming who have stated a position on the role of humans, 97% thought humans contribute somewhat to global warming, though there is significantly less agreement over how dangerous this trend towards warmer temperatures will be.” Such a statement would have been considerably more accurate than the tweet Obama sent, but it doesn’t quite have the same impact, does it? Politics cares more about the impact of a message than it does its accuracy. Science cares about accuracy. Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch have found that most climate scientists disagree with the “consensus” on key issues, such as the reliability of climate data and computer models.  Furthermore, surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find that a majority oppose the alleged “consensus” regarding it being dangerous.  Of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a 2012 survey, only 39.5% said man-made global warming is dangerous. A 2011 paper published by researchers from George Mason University probably best demonstrates the statistical landscape.  It found that of respondents who returned completed questionnaires, 97% agreed that global temperatures had risen over the past century, and 84% agreed that “human-induced greenhouse warming is now occurring,” while 5% disagreed and 12% didn’t know.  This “consensus” falls apart when more substantive questions were considered.  56% of those surveyed said there was over a 50% chance of human-induced global warming raising global average temperatures by two degrees Celsius within 100 years, while 19% said the odds were less than 50%, and 26% didn’t know.  Regarding how dangerous it was, 41% said the effects would likely be severe/catastrophic, 44% said effects would be moderate, and 13% said effects would be trivial/mild.  2% didn’t know. Many scientists question the degree to which having a consensus even matters.  Dr. Roy Spencer (NASA’s former senior scientist for climate studies) sums up the problem: “How Important is ‘Scientific Consensus’ in Climate Research? In the case of global warming, it is nearly worthless. The climate system is so complex that the vast majority of climate scientists — usually experts in variety of specialized fields — assume there are more knowledgeable scientists, and they are just supporting the opinions of their colleagues. And among that small group of most knowledgeable experts, there is a considerable element of groupthink, herd mentality, peer pressure, political pressure, support of certain energy policies, and desire to Save the Earth — whether it needs to be saved or not.” Spencer adds, “Climate researchers do not know nearly as much about the causes of climate change as they profess. We have a pretty good understanding of how the climate system works on average…but the reasons for small, long-term changes in climate system are still extremely uncertain.  The total amount of CO2 humans have added to the atmosphere in the last 100 years has upset the radiative energy budget of the Earth by only 1%. How the climate system responds to that small ‘poke’ is very uncertain.” There is a tremendous disconnect between what scientists have (and haven’t) said, and what politicians and journalists keep saying. Canadians have a lot of questions, and the unfortunate truth is that activist politicians like Stephen Guilbeault appear either unable or unwilling to answer them. That would be fine if Guilbeault wasn’t trying to push policies that’ll fundamentally transform how Canadians get to live their lives, but Guilbeault promotes a fundamental transformation. Guilbeault wants Canadians to abandon the use of cars and plastic products, and he wants to drive up the cost of carbon to levels that’ll impoverish millions of us, driving up the costs of goods we depend on. Where science would tend to render one agnostic, Guilbeault remains a true believer. Rob Bogunovic serves as the editor at The Rubicon If you like our content, please consider subscribing and supporting our efforts.

Mark Twain once quipped that a “favorite theory of mine” was “that no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often.” A similar thought, which is often ascribed to Twain, is that “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Events of today often echo events of the past in ways that are quite remarkable. George Santayana wrote in 1905 that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, and because all societies are full of people who are quite ignorant of the past, society repeats its mistakes ad nauseum. Those who study history often see past dramas play out in present time, and marvel at the similarities. Two of the most remarkable social movements in Canadian history, the Winnipeg Strike of 1919, and the Freedom Convoy of 2022, are separated by over a hundred years of history. Our society is nothing like the world that was inhabited by those strikers, yet these two events are remarkable in how well they rhyme. The Winnipeg Strike of 1919 was the largest general strike to ever occur in North America, and it brought Winnipeg to a stand-still for weeks. The Freedom Convoy was the largest convoy protest to ever occur in North America, and it brought Ottawa to a stand-still for weeks. That is just the first stanza of many. Consider, for example, the contributing factors. The 1919 Strike emerged after years of Federal and Provincial governments abusing emergency powers granted to them by the War Measures Act. Governments had given themselves broad powers that greatly limited the rights of the people. Moreover, in the preceding months, Canada was hit by a devastating global pandemic – the Spanish Influenza – that left over 50,000 Canadians dead, and millions globally. Consequently, the people had just spent a year wearing masks, restricting their movements, and avoiding public gatherings. Moreover, because the War Measures Act labelled many foreign-born citizens as “enemy aliens”, many people were being segregated from the larger society, interned or isolated, being treated as second-class citizens. “Enemy aliens” were made to carry identity papers and report regularly to the police. People were also arrested and interned because of their political beliefs. The War Measures Act empowered the government to censor and suppress communications and was used to ban hundreds of publications. Fast-forward a century and change, and one finds that, prior to the 2022 Freedom Convoy, Federal and Provincial governments were abusing emergency powers granted to them by declared states of emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Governments gave themselves broad powers that greatly limited the rights of the people. The Covid-19 pandemic claimed over 50,000 lives in Canada and millions globally, and because of emergency health orders, people spent more than a year wearing masks, restricting their movements, and avoiding public gatherings. With the roll out of vaccines – and the mandating of them – large segments of the population were segregated from general society, left interned or isolated in their homes – a kind of house arrest without charges or trials. People were made to carry passports to demonstrate their compliance with vaccine mandates and were denied service in many establishments and institutions if they couldn’t. Media outlets censored journalists and commentators who dared to question the government’s narrative regarding the safety and effectiveness of masks or vaccines, and hundreds-of-thousands faced severe sanctions and the suspension of their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Both events rhymed in the polemic responses they generated. The strike in Winnipeg inspired dozens of sympathy strikes in other Canadian cities, just as the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa spawned similar events in other cities, and saw massive support rallies that mostly centered on the overpasses, mostly timed for when the convoys would pass by. However, the response by establishment forces and their subservient media outlets was inflammatory and insulting. Mainstream media outlets were remarkably uniform in their collective condemnations. In 1919 the Strike was denounced as a communist revolution influenced by foreign powers. Strikers were called “Bolsheviks”, and those opposed to the strike called for violent crackdowns - and celebrated when police started beating people with batons and trampling them with horses. In 2022 the Convoy was first dismissed by the Prime Minister as a “small fringe minority … holding unacceptable views”, and when it turned out to be a bit larger than he anticipated, Trudeau went into hiding, and the Freedom Convoy was denounced as an occupation. The mainstream media refused to call it the Freedom Convoy without first putting the word “freedom” into sneer quotes - or prefacing it with the qualifier “so called”. Media outlets said that MAGA Americans were funding the movement. The government and their media allies went to great lengths to malign the strikers in 1919 and the truckers in 2022. The government response also rhymed. In 1919, Federal cabinet ministers who ventured to Winnipeg during the strike refused to meet with strike leaders. The government was not interested in hearing what the strikers had to say and made no inquiry into their grievances. In 2022, the Freedom Convoy sought an audience with the Prime Minister, but the Liberals refused to meet with the Convoy’s leaders and maligned any politician who did. Given the numbers involved in these events – tens-of-thousands - the 1919 strikers and the 2022 truckers both displayed incredible discipline in the face of provocations – which were considerable. Though technology has transformed the way police conduct their duties, somehow one of the rhymes in these events appears to be police trampling people with their horses. They also deployed batons. In Winnipeg, police used their batons to strike strikers; in Ottawa police reportedly used them to smash truck windows. In the deep chill of an Ottawa winter, the police seized the fuel of truckers in an alleged attempt to freeze them into submission. Ultimately, two people were killed in the Winnipeg Strike, thirty more were injured, and over 90 strikers were arrested. The Convoy protests saw fewer injuries, with perhaps the most dramatic incident being when an Indigenous woman was knocked over by a Mountie’s horse, suffering a shoulder injury. However, there were over 190 arrests. The leaders of both movements were targeted by law enforcement. Numerous strike leaders and Convoy organizers were arrested and charged. In 1919, the most common charge these strike leaders faced was sedition. In 2022, the most common charges are mischief or counselling others to commit mischief. The nature of the charges, and the evidence offered to support them, were often ludicrous, especially when contrasted to other criminal acts that weren’t aggressively prosecuted, like the war profiteering of Canadian industrialists during WWI, or the fraudulent claims and corruptions influencing the Covid-19 pandemic response efforts. The message was clear: friends of the establishment get one standard of treatment before the law, enemies get another. In Winnipeg, J.S. Woodsworth, the editor of the Western Labour News (a strike bulletin) was charged with seditious libel for quoting from the Bible. The “seditious” verses were Isaiah 10:1 (“Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed”) and Isaiah 65:21-22 (“And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the days of the tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.”) Woodsworth ended up spending five days in prison before being released on bail, and the charges against him were never filed. Charges were filed against Fred Dixon, the other editor of the Western Labour News, but he obtained a jury acquittal. Other strike leaders were not so lucky. Rules were changed so that certain foreign-born leaders could be deported, while others were convicted of sedition and were sentenced to serve up to a year in prison. The trials focused less on the actions of these strike leaders than the men’s political beliefs. We don’t yet know the ultimate outcome for those Convoy leaders who have been charged. Tamara Lich is perhaps the most well known of the leaders facing jail time. She’s primarily being prosecuted for the “mischief” she allegedly counselled others to commit. Lich was arrested on February 17th, 2022, and applied for bail on February 22nd. That application was rejected by a judge who ran for a federal Liberal seat in 2011. That denial was overturned on March 7th on the condition that Lich refrained from using social media. On March 24th, Lich was charged with six additional offenses: counselling mischief, mischief, counselling to obstruct police, obstructing police, counselling intimidation, and intimidation by blocking and obstructing one or more highways. A month later she learned that she would be awarded the 2022 George Jonas Freedom Award, but accepting that award led the RCMP to claim that Lich had breeched her bail conditions. She was re-arrested on June 27th, had her application for bail rejected on July 8th, but that denial was overturned on July 26th. It is now 2024 and Lich’s case has yet to be resolved. At the urging of the strikers, a provincial royal commission was launched to inquire into (and report upon) the causes and effects of the General Strike. Headed by H.A. Robson, the report helped ensure that the verdict of history has been favorable for the strikers – even though strikers achieved none of their goals and endured much hardship for their efforts. Robson concluded that the striking workers had legitimate cause to be dissatisfied, and that it wasn’t primarily caused by radical socialists seeking to overthrow democracy. This finding was a repudiation of the establishment narrative. Whether the verdict of history will be favorable for the Freedom Convoy participants is yet to be determined, but early signs are good. The Emergency Act required that an inquiry occur at the conclusion of the emergency. Liberals chose Paul Rouleau to lead the commission of inquiry, and on February 17, 2023, Rouleau issued his Report. It was a mixed bag. Rouleau acknowledged the presence of extremists in the protests, but he also suggested that these elements were peripheral, and said, “the presence of controversial and extreme elements at the protests … should not detract from my findings that many and perhaps most of the protesters sought to engage in legitimate and lawful protests.” Rouleau admitted that the convoy had Canada-wide support and stated that the protests were “the culmination” of two years of restrictive lockdown measures that created much suffering. Rouleau said that for hard-working Canadians tired of pandemic restrictions, the convoy protests were a ‘powerful symbol’. All of this repudiates the mainstream media’s reporting about the convoy, and the characterization of it by Liberal and NDP MPs. Rouleau viewed the use of the Emergency Act as justified. However, Richard Mosley, a Judge of the Federal Court of Canada, recently ruled that its use by Trudeau and his Liberal government was unconstitutional and unjustifiable. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, immediately announced that they would be appealing the decision. The party politics of these events also rhymes, though there is an interesting inversion in play. The 1919 Borden government was a kind-of-coalition. Borden was a Conservative, but in 1917 he formed a Unionist party, bringing Conservatives and pro-Conscription Liberals together. That Unionist government was arguably the most illiberal government Canada has ever had. Borden rigged that election by enfranchising the female relatives of soldiers (who were likely to vote for conscription) while disenfranchising the “enemy aliens” his government has spent three years abusing. Then they imposed Conscription on the nation and ignored the cost-of-living crisis being created by inflation. Things did not go well for the Conservatives in the wake of the Winnipeg General Strike. In 1921, support for the Conservatives collapsed. They lost 27% of their prior support, lost 104 seats, and finished in third place behind the Progressives. Trudeau’s current government is also a kind-of-coalition, relying on the support of the New Democratic Party. Even though Trudeau identifies as a Liberal, he has presided over the most illiberal government Canada has known in his lifetime, and the polls are showing that his political support is collapsing. Because of inflation, Canadians are struggling to pay the bills and afford a mortgage. Conservatives are now projected to win every province except Quebec, and they are leading Trudeau’s Liberals by 14 points. The inversion is that, while both Robert Borden and Justin Trudeau led illiberal governments that imposed harsh measures and controls upon the Canadian people, the two occupy opposite sides of the political spectrum. This same inversion applies to the polemic attitudes that existed during 1919 and 2022. In 1919, support for the strikers came predominately from the political left. In 2022, support for the Freedom Convoy came predominately from the political right. Robert Borden did not lead his party into the 1921 election. He resigned, urging that his finance minister take his place as Prime Minister. However, the finance minister declined, so Borden turned to his Minister of the Interior, Arthur Meighen. Meighen led the government’s response to the Winnipeg General Strike, working to subdue the strikers, and following the strike he enacted amendments to Section 98 of the criminal code, banning association with organizations the government labelled as seditious. Chrystia Freeland is Canada’s current finance minister and deputy Prime Minister, and she would likely assume the office of Prime Minister should Justin Trudeau resign. As finance minister she engineered the policy of freezing the bank accounts of those found to be supporting the Freedom Convoy, and she was a key figure in the roll out of the Emergencies Act, which a Federal judge ruled was unconstitutional. I’m not saying we’re about to see Freeland take over as Prime Minister, but if she did, and if she then got clobbered by the Conservatives in the next election, it would add one more rhyme to this unfolding verse. Rob Bogunovic serves as the editor at The Rubicon If you like our content, please consider subscribing and supporting our efforts.