Bruce Dowbiggin
2024 In Review: The Year Woke Fever Broke

How shall we describe 2024, the year just past? How about the Year the Fever Broke?
Entering 2024 the Western world was still under the social contagion launched by the election of Barack Obama as president of the U.S. Since 2008, when the African/Hawaiian become the first black president and the Nobel committee gave him the peace prize for his pigmentation, a fever of progressivism came over the institutions of the West. Woke World became your world.
Observes @feelsdesperate: “The big lib project, from Obama on… would partner with NGOs, media, and academia to create a new liberal economic order legitimized by the continuous generation of *Progress* (i.e. institutionally approved identity-narcissism and new liberatory adventures) while civil liberties… were continuously undermined.”
By January of 2024 the fever still raged in the body politic. “Instead of Obama’s virtuous rhetoric from 2008 they’re now in a far darker place. They are joined to the civilizational suicide of White Fragility promoter Robin DiAngelo. Or Ibrahim X. Kenji’s bilious racism. Or Hamas’ death cult. With no escape.”
Appropriately this fever had been spread by a Chinese-produced virus which, for almost three years, subdued the citizenry, suspended civil rights and forced many to die lonely deaths in the ICU. A dubious vaccine, forced on people who didn’t need it, harmed as many as it helped. As we wrote our 2024 look-forward, the spreading contagion carried fashionable labels. DEI, ESG, BLM, LGBTQ and IPCC. It demanded the deconstruction of pronouns, gender, energy, immigration, meritocracy. Science became settled. Men could have babies. Children could decide gender. White people were Nazis. The expert class was omnipotent.
In this cultural hallucination Hollywood figures were thrust into leadership positions (George Clooney, Will Ferrell, the cast of The View). Blue-check Disney was destroying classic films with Woke updates. Jay-Z and Diddy were black cultural icons. The demented Joe Biden was aimed toward a second term as POTUS. Greta Thunberg was still a media go-to on climate. The Ukrainians were dutifully being slaughtered to protect the natural gas interests of the West.
Elon Musk was an upstart dictator about to bankrupt Twitter. Heroes were to be prosecuted . And Trump was yesterday’s man.
In Canada, virtue— slavishly supporting radical positions aimed at destroying western society— was all. The douche dauphin Justin Trudeau, held an iron grip on the PMO, ergo he controlled the nation’s politics. Quebec was still getting its usual billions in equalization from ROC. The Indigenous were entitled to claim Crown lands for the alleged sins of the past . The most noble position one could aspire to was having your eight-year-old chemically or physically castrated to satisfy the whims of teachers’ unions and mid-level bureaucrats. .
It was worth your life to speak up against this corrupt ruling class. In Canada you were a racist/ fascist for supporting the Conservatives but praised for loving China. In England they put citizens in jail for Facebook tweets that offended protected groups. Saying you’d vote for Donald Trump again as president was tantamount to expulsion from social media.
Legacy media still ruled these narratives, even though they’d lost half their audience. (In Canada that was more like 75 percent of its audience.)
Then, as 2024 progressed, something remarkable happened. Almost as one, it occurred to the hapless middle class that they were the victims of an enormous practical joke fostered by the Marxist shills of “NGOs, media, and academia”. What caused the shift? Largely fatigue with people you wouldn’t hire to clean your pool. Aggravation with woke marketing. Discovering political insiders were suddenly obscenely rich.
Whatever the reason, the Fever broke. A new consensus saw the unrepentant Trudeau was an empty suit determined to achieve destruction of the Liberal party. And, with the NDP, to take down Canada. The fainting goats of elite Ottawa recognized with a start that their Trudeau lassitude the past decade had left the country wide open to outside forces such as Trump’s tariff threats.
By the end of 2024 it was clear that letting another nation pay for your defence was abdicating your sovereignty. That allowing a porous border and foreign money-laundering was bound to get you discovered. That unlimited social experimentation sapped a culture’s resistance. Trump certainly noticed.

Certain things became clear. Canada could not win a tariff war with Trump. Quebec understood that if swallowed by America their precious culture will be reduced to Louisiana with poutine. That a 50-cent dollar made Canada a third-world economy. No wonder Kevin O’Leary talked of economic merger with the U.S. The other options are going, going and gone.
South of the border the Fever broke harder. Biden was revealed to be non compus mentus, not “sharp as a tack” per the Left media. Someone else— no one knew who— was running the government. They noticed that Trump may be batshit crazy, but that wanting him dead seemed a tad excessive. That re-working every commercial or TV cast to represent 70-80 percent blue-check priorities was obnoxious to both traditional audiences and the groups it sough to promote.
That all the trillions spent so far on climate mediation hadn’t cleaned the air or water but had certainly enriched the political elite. That Ukraine was about natural gas, not Russian imperialism. That RFK, the iconoclast son of a Democratic dynasty, had made common cause with both Trump and Musk

Panicky progressives and their media shills sought to keep the fever alive. Sensing Trump might actually win re-election Obama induced Clooney to front a coup to replace Biden— who’d soiled himself in a June debate— with a fatuous black/ Indian woman who spent high school in Montreal. It worked about as well as you could have predicted.
Which was when “unknown parties” tried to assassinate Trump. Twice. They also produced a progression of fake polls that showed Kamala ahead of Trump when she was nowhere close. In short, they spent all their credibility on losing propositions, and now… heeere’s Donald!
Trump/ Trudeau is a fever all its own. Canadians fed a diet of MSNBC eye-rollers think it’s the end of our culture. Whether it’s better or worse we will find out in the next 12 months. But the reason Trump is here is that your friends who spread the Fever can no longer be trusted. Turning off the porch light doesn’t convince the dangerous opportunists not to ring your door bell.
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 new 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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Canadians Thinks America Owes Them. Trump Has Other Ideas

Breaking: It’s now being reported that in the 2024 U.S. election, zero Canadians voted for Donald Trump. In fact, zero Canadians voted for anyone on the ballot. They’re not allowed to. And yet rage monkeys in the Canadian media seem to have the idea that Canada is— and should be— an immediate priority of POTUS 47.
Here’s Globe & Mail/ CBC wind therapist Andrew Coyne about ten exits past normal on the idea of Donald Trump on Canadian soil. Okay, on Alberta soil. “We’re going to roll out the red carpet for the wannabe dictator of America at the very moment he is moving to suppress dissent with armed force?” (You mean like the Truckers Convoy?)
Cartoonist Michael DeAdder, who likely cries if you use improper pronouns, says “Hold my kombucha”. His latest etching has Trump asking a veteran what he did in the war. The witty retort is “Fought against people like you”. Get it? Trump murders six millions Jews. But The Hill keeps this guy working, and the laughs just keep on coming. Free speech!

The presumption is jaw-dropping. Even as Trump’s approval rating hits 53 percent, Canadians online were echoing Democrats’ fever dreams of forming a shadow government to take over from Trump via coup. This sense of impunity at a distance is why the Canadian government— along with other drive-by virtue signallers UK, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia— have imposed sanctions on two sitting members of the Israeli cabinet. They know it will rile Trump’s America.
For ordinary Canadians, Trump became a post-it note to justify giving Team Liberal another swing at ruining the nation. “We used to be such friends! He’s a tyrant.!” This just in: Love him or hate him Trump is employed by Americans to do their bidding. He’s not a sentimental buddy of Canada who’ll cut us some slack for old time’s sake. He has no remittance from Canada to please the Laurentian elites. If your defence is non-existent and your military gender-obsessed: you had it coming.
Are his policies jostling Canada? Absolutely. Read Art of the Deal. The 51st state jibe when Justin soiled himself was rude. But it worked on pliant Canadian liberals. Now the The Little Banker is disavowing the dissolute decade of Trudeau while employing Conservatives’ policies on defence spending, inter-provincial trade and border security. Hell, he’s naming longtime Tories to his personal staff.

In the end Carney knows this ain’t mock Parliament. That his dossier begins and ends with satisfying the beast to the south. None of this should be a surprise. Yet Canadians dozed when Trump made clear in his election campaign that the American economy is the greatest in the world. If you want to fish in that pond it’s not going to be for free. That means tariffs for a range of U.S. industries that couldn’t compete in a Biden world.
We can argue how well tariffs work, but Trump wants them to reduce taxes on the people who elected him. Not the Canadians who fly first class but pay economy. And who have pushed his approval ratings into the 50s, higher than ever before. (Likely to spike higher after the No Kings Riot season peters out.)
No wonder Canadians preferred the guy before Trump, the senile sock puppet whose government was run by anonymous figures using the auto-pen. Sleepy Joe let Canada slide into mediocrity and financial peril without any judgement. It was comfortable. Then The Donald had the nerve to expose the ditch Canada was in.
Canada, Trump pointed out, was delinquent on its defence, harbouring Chinese drug lords, printing money like Canadian Tire and its banks were involved in money laundering. That was the nice stuff. Try Organized fentanyl networks operating with impunity in the largest cities of the nation So dumping on Trump in salty cartoons allows Canada’s Mod Squad to ignore the real issues that should have been litigated in the April election.
We have written extensively about the ruse that was played on gormless Canadians in “U.S. Voters Smelled A Rat But Canadian Voters Bought The Cheese” We have catalogued Canada’s drug and money laundering disgrace in “Chinese Gangs Dominate Canada: Why Will Voters Give Liberals Another Term?” We’ve described the real-estate bubble economy created by Trudeau and sidekick Carney that threatens to crash the economy and ruin seniors’ pensions in
In the end, it is still la-la-la-la We Can’t Hear You. Trump-obsessed Boomers more concerned with the equity in their jumped-up bungalows gave the finger to the next generations and blamed it all on Orange Man Bad. In the monotone of Canadian political comment it all seemed so easy. Turn against Trump. Cash another dividend. Cheer on MSNBC and CNN bitch sessions.
The Family Compact don’t get it. Their Antifa heroes down south plan demos and “nonviolent” activity to crater the public resolve. In Canada that still works. But in the U.S. the Covid reverb is hitting the natural governing class of the nation. While they craft fine phrases about democracy the consumers remember them using a virus to stop society.
The appetite for Gavin Newsom blovaitors and Jen Psaki fart catchers is crashing in America. Riots may be coming in the U.S., but it won’t be like George Floyd and Covid and the pussy hats. At some point Canada’s docile classes better wake up, too. America owes them nothing. They need to earn the respect.
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 new 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 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Simone Biles Fails To Stick The Landing Going After Riley Gaines

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. George Orwell
Or, in the case of Olympic legend Simone Biles, only gymnasts believe in the incendiary issue of trans men competing in women’s sports. Biles, who has made a secondary career as an object of pity, took exception when former swimmer Riley Gaines, an opponent of trans men competing against women, sent a picture of Minnesota softball team that recently won a state title with a pitcher who is reported to be transgender.
“Comments off lol,’ Gaines wrote in response to the post which wasn’t permitting any comments from the public. “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”
That brought Biles into the fray. ‘You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. ‘You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! ‘But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!’
She then poked Gaines again, saying: ‘Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.” (Gaines husband is 6-foot-4)

The loser reference was to Gaines having lost to a trans swimmer in an NCAA race. Since then Gaines has launched a campaign to outlaw biological males from competing with cisgendered girls and women. She has testified in the U.S. Congress and has appeared in numerous interviews espousing a position supported by the vast majority of Americans.

One might think the proof of this position— unquestioned as recently as a decade ago— would be obvious. But Biles and gender radicals who’ve tried to make trans into the Emancipation Proclamation of the 21st century are not giving up the fight.
Here’s someone named Nancy Armour in USA Today. “There is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do..” When legislation banning trans men in girls/ women sports was presented in the U.S. Congress 106 Democrats voted against the motion. The chattering class on CBC, MSNBC and CNN likewise have a cohort of those opposing the ban.
But it was the outburst from Biles that most appalled fans who’d worshipped her as the GOAT of Olympic gymnastics and then sympathized with her victimization by Dr. Larry Nasser. Even when she bailed on her teammates at the 2024 Games they cut her slack. But suddenly a woman who’s preached against body shaming and intolerance was deriding a fellow athlete’s body and mocking her complaints.
Critics were quick to post Biles’ hypocrisy about compassion, citing her own tear-stained testimony about how she was taken advantage by a doctor. Here’s how we described her psychological distress last August during the Olympics. “Prominent among them was gymnast Simone Biles who described the abuse she’d suffered from a male trainer and on social media as the greatest female gymnast in history. Even as she added more golds to her mantle she’d seemed unable to find peace in her accomplishments.
“Due to mental blocks, she’d had to step away from the sport for a time to get her head straight. She had a lot of company from fellow competitors who described sexual harassment and intimidation on social media for their unhappiness. (Hence the constant mental health commercials on the TV broadcasts.)”
Now the same role model is mocking Gaines? It seems unthinkable. As for the claims that men have no advantage against women, it was pointed out that there are zero women who try to reverse the equation, going into men’s sports. They show the hard truths about competitive records of men versus women in a range of sports. They describe the physical risks for women playing against larger, stronger men. Here. Here. And here.
It’s still stunning to see Biles toeing the radical LGBTQ line while asking for traditional pity of a victimized woman herself. Or the amount of support that the cause has garnered from progressives throughout society. When did people became so obtuse about the growth this societal contagion?
We wrote earlier this year about how such notions take hold. MacDonald Laurier Institute fellow Mia Hughes charted a history of similar social contagions such as bulimia and multiple-personality disorder. “In 1972, British psychologist Gerald Russell treated a woman with an unusual eating disorder involving binging and purging. Over the next seven years, he saw a further 30 woman presenting with the same condition. In 1979, he wrote a paper published in Psychological Medicine, in which he gave it the name bulimia nervosa….
“Then something remarkable happened. The illness swept the globe like wildfire… affecting an estimated 30 million people by the mid-1990s, the majority of whom were teenage girls and young women. The explanation for this rapid spread is what philosopher Ian Hacking calls ‘semantic contagion’ – how the process of naming and describing a condition creates the means by which the condition spreads. The epidemic of multiple-personality disorder in the 90s was spread this same way… Multiple studies demonstrate the media’s culpability in the spread of social contagions.”
The new contagion is trans athletes. USA Today is just one example of how influencers try to legitimize campaigns to boost their own self esteem. As the battle to reverse the trans incursion shows, there are only too many willing to play politics in the gender debate. Like the pro-Palestinian movement in North America the trans athlete hoax exists is a bubble where reality and fiction can co-exist, knowing they’ll never be put to the test.
Orwell called it doublethink “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Biles and the liberal elites have it mastered. Nursing their grievance while finding it a fault in others.
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, Bruce is regular media contributor. The new book from there team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin is Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. In paperback and Kindle on #Amazon. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
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