Jen Gerson: Five years on, our fight against bullshit continues

The details have changed. The mission has not. Happy birthday to us!

By: Jen Gerson

I have been reading about the near-blanket ban barring residents of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick from so much as setting foot in a forest as fires continue to rage out of control amid dangerously dry conditions. And I have been watching the reaction to those prohibitions from those individuals who are now actively engaging in civil disobedience — including one individual who was fined more than $28,000 for going for a walk despite being told to stay away from the woods.

This man, who consciously violated the law in full view of conservation officers, argued that the bans were disproportionate and irrational — his sneakers weren't going to set the forest ablaze, and at least here, he's correct. In a bid to prevent idiots from striking a campfire or freewheeling on an ATV, the provincial governments reacted with an over-broad dictate that is raising all kinds of bad memories like some kind of COVID-19 flashback. Add to that the rumour that at least one fire may have been started by an illegal homeless encampment, and we’re now well into culture war whack-a-mole territory.

Indeed, what we’re seeing here is some high weirdness. A repressed, vestigial anger that lays dormant in the national psyche until some crisis pops up; a direct a result of the unresolved disillusionment many people still carry around as a result of the way our governments handled the pandemic.

COVID-19 broke everyone in one way or another. We all suffered personal and professional lapses as a result of the stress of that event. For some, the virus broke in ways that instilled a deep paranoia about germs, suffering and death. It stoked resentment of those fellow citizens who broke with the social contract and failed to be compliant to government orders — regardless of how logical or sensible those orders actually were.

Others broke in the opposite direction; overreach (both perceived and real) instilled a deep fear of institutions and governments. This lot has suffered a loss of faith in everything and everyone once relied upon to determine meaning and shape behaviour.

Most of us have decided to collectively memory hole the entire affair and move on, but the underlying corrosion is still there. A little cancer eating away at social cohesion, and the general trust that we need to actually live together in a society. And it shows up at times like this. In emergencies.

If we faced another pandemic today, I don't think that any government would possess the moral authority to force compliance on lockdowns or mandates. They would not be able to do what they did in 2020. Most people would still comply. Most people do. But too much of the population will no longer be governed. Any kind of collective call to action or demand of sacrifice is going to be met with distrust at best, and conspiracies at worst. I saw this on display last summer when a major pipe failure forced much of Calgary to restrict their water usage for several weeks. We're seeing it now in the Maritimes.

I'm not here to wave my finger, to say that this reactive impulse is right or wrong; that civil disobedience is justified or unjustified. I'm simply noting it as fact. This is where we are right now.

We've lost something. COVID didn't create the underlying fragility, it merely catalyzed what was already happening — the echo chambers, mutually exclusive information spaces, the conspiracy theories, the declining institutional trust. All of that was on the march before the pandemic. The disease simply tipped us all over into a very new reality. Among a sizeable plurality of the population, there has been a fundamental breakdown of trust. Social distancing left its final mark in the erosion of social cohesion. A collapse in the idea that we Canadians are in this mess together.

I've been reflecting on that change as we approached The Line's five-year anniversary, which passed us just a few days ago.

We started The Line in 2020 because things were going pear shaped in the media institutions where both Matt Gurney and I had spent most of our adult lives. The collapse of social trust, the obliteration of sustainable business models, and the rise of an ideological strain that demanded near conformity of thought and expression across an array of complicated topics made complacency impossible. When we began The Line, a strain of militant and illiberal progressivism was ascendant. But we weren't willing to lose ourselves to the wrong side of anybody else's curve. We would pay fealty to no tribe; neither the identitarian left, nor the populist and ignorant conspiracist fantasies that increasingly shape the right.

We wished simply to exist as ourselves, free to write our conscience without fear of being cancelled or shut out or bribed.

The Line allowed us to do that. With your help, we've carved our own narrow and winding path through an uncertain brush.

And then — as we always knew it would — the cultural pendulum began to swing back. If 2020 marked the moment of Peak Woke, the plumb line is now swinging back hard and fast to something much worse. Those institutions that lost sight of their own liberal foundations five years ago now lack the credibility to strongly defend these core values from the rise of overt racism, nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism.

We in Canada are only relatively sheltered from these global trends. In the last election, we picked Mark Carney. I interpret this as an acknowledgement, of sorts. The previous Liberal government rode that cultural pendulum too far and too high for too long. Carney is, at a minimum, a tonal shift. He may even be a course correction, an embrace of a more grounded, small-c conservative approach to governance while avoiding the reactionary currents now holding sway down south.

We are in a very different place today than we were five years ago. The economic and geopolitical realities that have underpinned all of our assumptions of who we are and how the world works is in the midst of a total realignment. Canada seems to have finally pulled its collective head from its own ass, but have we done so in time? Can we actually marshal the necessary resolve to address our financial shortcomings and our cultural complacency, or is this a society that will continue to splinter and fracture as we watch the power of the left attenuate, and the darkening of the soul of what was once considered "the right"?

And wherefore The Line in all of this?

I think we still exist to call out bullshit, even as I admit that I'm increasingly so overwhelmed by its proliferation that I can't even keep track of all of it, much less write about it.

The contempt that I once felt for the Liberal party — and I do confess that it did congeal into a real contempt by the end of Justin Trudeau's tenure — has been staunched by both the course correction of the party under Carney; and my flagging faith that the Conservatives have anything better to offer.

I think we maintain an obligation to hold Carney to account; to point out when high tone is met with inaction. We'll see. We'll see.

I believe we must also express some dismay toward the state of a Conservative movement that is increasingly beholden to people who have anger to spare, but no real solutions. We have no truck for separatists and conspiracists and lazy libertarians who want to live in a world with limitless rights but no responsibilities.

I think The Line exists to contribute to the re-creation of that lost social cohesion — recognizing that trust in authority is not something that can be demanded by the powerful but rather must be built by consensus through good-faith disagreement and debate.

This is the heart of what true liberalism really is. For every generation, the ideals of freedom find themselves threatened by the appeal of authoritarianism; by a movement or a leader who sees the disunity and disagreement as a weakness rather than a process. Those who believe that there is one Right Way, one Right Answer, one land to be Great Again, one Utopia to which some might ascend — provided everybody get in line.

But that kind of power is appealing precisely because it is superficial. Authoritarianism is awful and brittle. Inevitably, it breaks. A truly liberal society must operate by consent, and herein lies not its weakness, but rather its incredible strength. When free people can be brought to bear on a crisis, we do so out of genuine conviction rather than fear. Our collective permission must be secured, yes, but once done, our will is real and unshakable. This process is messy and slow. Consent is neither universal nor permanent, but it is genuine and therefore durable.

When we choose — truly choose — to cooperate, willingly and with enthusiasm, toward a common cause in the common good, then there is no end to us. There is no complacency we cannot shake; no corruption we cannot reform; no future we cannot secure.

We need only a vision, and the means to see it through.

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The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com.