Recruiting For Radicals: Running The Risks For Glory

“Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.” — Thomas Merton

In the 1999 comedy Bowfinger, Steve Martin (playing a director) talks his  simple-minded production assistant (played by Eddie Murphy) into running across the busy interstate like he’s a movie action hero. Martin’s character says the speeding cars are driven by stunt drivers. Martin tells him that pretty Heather Graham is waiting for him on the other side. He says it will make the nerdy character, a dead ringer for star Kit Ramsey (also played by Eddie Murphy) into a film star.

It’s hilarious slapstick watching a clearly terrified Murphy dodge trucks and buses on the 405 highway (spoiler alert: he makes it.) It also puts us in mind of the real thing: how earnest, virtue-seeking liberal idiots like Renee Good and Alex Pretti are being convinced to put themselves in harm’s way to fight the hated Donald Trump and his ICE henchmen on behalf of Obama World. In spite of polling that shows Americans want the bums out of the country.

Here are the governor of Minnesota and the Justin Trudeau lookalike mayor of Minneapolis whipping up ther locals. Here are teary late-night TV meat puppets like Jummy Kimmel volunteering others to take risks they’d never take themselves. And here are former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who both used to be all-in on deporting dangerous immigrants, subscribing to a plan to stage a 2020 coup against Trump

(Never heard on CNN or MSNews how over 100 former CIA leaders, leftwing politicians and Rob Reiner war gamed the project to create a coup against Donald Trump? Here is the Election Transition Integrity plan. )

If you are a nebbish Mark Ruffalo wannabe, hiving with over-medicated Karens, Marxist grad students in their Che/ Bill Walton T Shirts, this might move you to run across a highway for the revolution. Or take a handgun as you harass ICE agents as did serial protester Pretti, the former nurse turned vigilante.

But there’s no doubt that the most powerful Democrats in Washington and Hollywood (we see you, Edward Norton) are set to employ the shock troops, doubling down on their plans for the midterm elections. All it requires is a steady stream of death-wish devotees to flood the streets (Rachel Maddow of MSNow estimates 3.5 percent of the population should do it) and the media will do the rest to create a CIA-inspired colour revolution. 

In Canada the gullible target group playing in the traffic is Elbows Up, slappies who remain convinced that the best way to protect Canada is to entrust its future to the party that flushed the proud legacy of Canada down the Trudeau toilet for ten years. The buy-in is somewhat less dangerous work than dodging cars on the 401 or interrupting the Mounties as they make a drug bust. So it’s working.

Mark Carney’s persuasion technique is, as befits all Liberal schemes, a soft-sell potage of hockey themes and boycotting a Florida/ California winter vaycay. All you have to do is accept that you can take a little more China in your diet without any side effects, and that you can dump the U.S. economy, which represents $2.5 billion/ day in trade— without any loss in lifestyle.(And please, no questions about his Brookfield connections.)

Carney’s secret sauce is brash, bombastic Trump, whom the financially dependent Canadian media has made into Hitler’s successor. Whenever Carney is caught in a trap— say, reversing himself on China— he just applies a generous dollop of Trump and government-supported press do the rest. Seems to be working.

A year after his switcheroo with Trudeau before the election, Carney’s personal popularity remains far ahead of Pierre Poilievre, the punching bag of the Conservatives (Carney: 53% (+2) Poilievre: 25% (-) But that doesn’t translate to party. Despite all the hosannas bathing Carney, his Liberals are barely ahead of the Conservatives with the NDP vote heading back to the party under Avi Lewis (LPC: 39% (-5) CPC: 35% (-6) NDP: 12% (+6))

The noisy nature of American democracy is the thing about America that Canada’s toffs cite to puff themselves up is . The ability for people as diverse as Donald Trump and AOC to be allowed a voice offends many protected by Canada’s airless political environment. It’s why the impertinent Truckers Convoy shocked the Laurentian establishment and necessitated Trudeau’s overreaction, unlawfully invoking the Emergency Measures Act. 

The ability to stifle dissent in Canada may be at risk, however. As we have written since before the election the ruling Liberals have lost the U-50 cohort. A Jan. 18 poll by Abacus Data found that among respondents aged 18 to 29, 50 per cent indicated an intention to vote Conservative next time. They’re not buying their parents’ bull. The disparity extends into older demos until you hit the 60-plus Boomers, the Liberals’ sweet spot. 

In short, wiggle room is running out for Carney’s advantage. Death and MAID will start to tell. By which time it will be too late to turn out the Ottawa street brigades. Or wave bye-bye to Alberta, Saskatchewan or Quebec.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700