Bruce Dowbiggin
Climate & Covid: How The Certainty of Elites Destroyed A Decade
It probably wasn’t meant as an epitaph for the years since 2008, but a speech from the recent movie Conclave might serve all the same. In the film, a British Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) must be deacon to the Conclave electing a new pope. He is hesitant to accept the responsibility in times of intolerance. His homily explains why.
“Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. .. If there were only certainty and no doubt there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith. Let us pray God will find us a pope who doubts.” (Spoiler alerts forbid further plot developments.)
Cardinal Lawrence might well have been describing the deadening effects of certainty since the election of Barack Obama (2008) and Justin Trudeau (2015). Under the guise of enlightenment Obama and then Trudeau have employed certainty as a battering ram. Those who expressed doubt were eliminated. Those bending a knee were spared— for now. Those at the top got great Taylor Swift tickets.
While artfully claiming disinformation/ misinformation as dire threats to humanity they used censorship to eliminate opposing views to their radical progressive agendas. The two most prominent of those agendas were, of course, the toxic twins of Climate and Covid.
While the global warming… oops, climate-change hustle had been around for some time it was only under the auspices of Obama and then Trudeau that it gained its ability to punish dissent. Who can forget Obama’s sneering admonition to doubters that 97 percent of scientists were onside with Al Gore and Greta Thunberg because The Science Was Settled? This was certainty on steroids.
In short order, newspapers banned letters to the editor disputing the manipulative programs of the UN and the IPCC (among the many drawing hundreds of millions in public funds). Opposing climate voices disappeared from CBC television panels. To dispute controversial claims was an invitation to disastrous law fare, as Canadian journalist Mark Steyn discovered. Our piece The Right To Criticize Climate Change Has Cost Mark Steyn Almost Everything highlights the decade-plus ordeal he suffered in D.C. courts for pointing out the fraudulence of Michael Mann’s hockey-stick oeuvre.
All for disputing the certainty of the science behind a global scheme to move billions from the first world to developing nations. (Which is then reportedly laundered back to the U.S.) Were Steyn’s case an exception we might grant his oppressors leeway. But the certainty principal of Obama and Trudeau on climate cost thousands of scientists their livelihoods, bankrupted others and blackened their life’s work. To no effect on climate itself.
In Canada, Trudeau named a convicted criminal and ruthless zealot as his climate minister. Steven Guilbeault took certainty to its illogical end, dragging the faculty lounge of idiots in Trudeau’s cabinet along with him. Again, career scientists and researchers were crushed by his onslaught of a useless carbon tax, EV mandates and ridiculous bans on workable solutions such as nuclear. Dispute was fruitless. They were that certain of their holiness.
But climate certainty was simply the appetizer for the banquet of Covid. Here both Trudeau and Obama (and his successors in the the U.S. health industry) wielded certainty into a script that not even Hollywood would have considered plausible in 2000.
Most now recall the Rod Serling scenario of an engineered Chinese virus somehow wiping out civilization. This plot was employed to suspend everyday activity and lock the population in their homes across much of the West and Asia. (Surprisingly Africa declined the invitation to insanity and survived nicely, thank you.)
Lock downs, masks, distancing, surface wiping, police raids, government bans— all were the poisoned fruit employed by bureaucrats and fanatics in service of their certainty. Everyone has their pained memory of overreach, from arresting surfers on the beach to locking arriving Canadian travellers into hotels to seniors dying alone in quarantined wards.
Citing the worthlessness of masks was always accompanied with the admonition that defying the new normal was a fatal threat to someone’s grandmother. It is a truism that people cannot remember the pain of dental extraction or childbirth. But the dystopian effects of Covid are likely to be carried to the grave by young people isolated from schools and grieving citizens denied a final farewell to parents.
While authorities sought to keep their grip, certainty finally began to erode. It was revealed that six-foot distancing was an invented standard, masks were useless in stopping the spread of the virus and the avalanche of positive tests were largely false positives and unlikely to make anyone sick. Soon Covid humour became accepted. Compliance was mocked. Citizens chucked the mask and re-started life.
Those certain in their power recoiled at the insubordination. Armin Rosen noted their stunned disbelief in Tablet, “Perhaps the higher levels of the American media complex, masquerading in the clothing of a different century, should embrace their essentially patrician urges and accept their permanent bafflement at the inscrutable, inexplicable passions of the American polity, thus exempting themselves from any deep concern about what the rest of us are up to.”
Donald Trump’s call to reject those who’d prospered in Covid found willing ears in the United States. His resounding sweep in the 2024 elections— every state in the union moved rightward in voting— was the final rebuke to those who preached certainty. The same people who sloughed off not one, but two assassination attempts on a presidential candidate as mere distractions.
It remains to be seen whether docile Canadians, always deferring to authority first, will shake off the certainty crowd in the next federal election. The Liberals are still hoping they can fool them with the Pierre Poilievre-as-Trump-as-Hitler narrative, a scare tactic that failed miserably down south. (One recent poll shows the Conservatives winning 240 seats, the Liberals with 19.)
Cardinal Lawrence’s appeal in Conclave to a higher purpose than certainty should be a stake in the heart of those who’ve oppressed their families and neighbours to no perceptible gain. The Trump comeback signals an opportunity with RFK Jr. and Elon Musk for a revival of healthy debate and skepticism. Whether it holds and prospers is still uncertain. But we have learned that uncertainty is a thing to be wished for.
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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. 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.
The most-heard response to last week’s FBI arrests of NBA stars in a gambling sting was “Why do athletes earning millions need to win thousands betting spots?” Coming on the heels of the apparent Shohei Ohtani coverup— his translator took the fall—it also begs the question just how legitimate are the games on which the public bets? Especially with pro sports now partnering with legalized gambling outfits.
There have long been stories of the high-stakes poker and golf games played by Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and other mega sports celebrities. There was the shocking scandal of former NBA referee Tim Donaghy fixing games for gamblers. Hockey fans remember the tawdry 2006 episode of Wayne Gretzky letting his wife take the fall for betting debts with former NHL star Rick Tocchet.
Now this. NBA Hall of Fame member Chuancy Billups, the suspended coach of the Portland Traiblazers, and Terry Rozier of Miami Heat were the eye candy in the arrest, but the problems go much deeper. If you listen to people like former mob guy Mike Franzese, who now is a security consultant, the reality is not The Sopranos method of busting limbs and shooting deadbeats. It’s more subtle.
According to Franzese the biggest fear for those caught in the web of underworld gambling is exposure of their mistakes. They will do anything to avoid these problems becoming known to their families, their friends and, most of all, their employers. They think the best way to avoid exposure is to play along with mobsters, become a small pawn in crooked betting and poker rings. As if.
So how do they get caught up in there first place? As Franzese explains, “The competition they have on the field spills over into the dressing room, where athletes on the same team often compete with each other in what they think is innocent betting on other sports.” In short they feel like big shots in Guys and Dolls tossing around dice. No one will ever get caught. Pretty soon, these naïve young men are racking up debts in the tens and even hundreds of thousands.
Because they can’t go the bank to finance their debts they end up looking for money on the streets from bookmakers connected to the mob. (It’s why the underworld knew long before the news went public about the bets coming via Ohtani’s translator) And that’s where they get hooked.
The people holding their debt are happy to let their marks get even deeper in debt, so as to have a better grip on them. While the mob guys threaten violence, what they want most is a conduit to the action. So, in the case of Rozier or former Raptor Jontay Porter, they’re asked to shave points on the proposition bets offered on their production. In the case of Billups, they’re asked to front corrupt poker games with whales (big bettors) lured by the promise of celebrities at the table.
Whatever the hook, they hope they can quickly escape the trap, but soon they discover they’re captives till they are of no use in fixing results of drawing big card players. Because they’re often panicked or broke from a divorce or bad investment they try to make the money back quickly. For the reason that even a 60 percent winning percentage is considered high, repeat winners in the 80-90 percent range tip off authorities. Betting pros know not to be conspicuous but to accept a medium return over a long term. But Billups fleecing guys for big stakes in poker is not inconspicuous.
Most often they face the option of going bankrupt or turning evidence to the Feds to escape. Neither is an acceptable fate for someone who, until their habit tripped them up, was considered heroes and role models.
So how straight are the games that people trust for honesty? Especially now that legalized gambling has expanded the pool of bettors incrementally. With everyone looking for an edge or a secret source it’s a temptation trap. The pro sports leagues have security departments always win the lookout for suspicious behaviour, but they are loathe to expose those athletes who have gotten into the trap.
The leagues are also their own worst advocates. Even though Tocchet admitted to the 2006 gambling allegations the NHL has seen fit to let him coach in modern-day NHL. Gretzky turned in his innocence card when MGM needed a front man for its sports betting operation.
Current Tigers manager A.J. Hinch was the manager of the wining Houston Astros when they cheated in the 2022 World Series. And Ohtani continues to star with the Dodgers, despite leaving his gambling-addicted translator in the dressing room of the California/ L.A. Angels for almost five years to soak up the kind of info the mob craves.
Likewise the casinos and betting sites want no exposure from reckless gamblers. Combined with the addictive appeal of betting to the players and fans, the problems are not likely to diminish. As a famous robber once said when asked why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is.”
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.
There is a truism that politicians believe that strategy wins battles. Generals know that logistics win battles. Translation: You can have all the shiny new weapons but if you don’t have a delivery system to support them you’re going to lose.
The success of the Woke Left this past generation has been its creation of delivery systems in the media and culture to carry out their agenda. The result: a feminization of Western culture, exemplified by the manic hatred of 1980s alpha man Donald Trump. From their modest demand for “safe spaces” they now have rendered all criticism of social dysphoria as hate speech and the speakers criminal. Murder in the service of trans— suggested by Jane Fonda— is considered holy.
Writes conservative political analyst Helen Andrews.. “Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition… The most important sex difference in group dynamics is attitude to conflict. In short, men wage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies.” Translation: If it feels good it must be correct.
As we noted in June emotional narratives now override facts in public discourse. The currency in this societal change has been victimization as the badge of virtue. Young women, in particular, are willing to believe even the most outlandish claims of victimization in exchange for credibility in the Woke camp. One example from the past week’s No Kings performative marches example: Women are being ignored in media or being discriminated against in hiring or academia. As if.
No Kings had all the hallmarks of the victim strategy. A predominately female, plus-60 audience and their handlers from the education system, all united in loathing Donald Trump. The shared distress brought on by POTUS 47. A Hollywood component led by Kathy Griffin.
So, after all the bonding and talking, what message did they take away from the large crowds and media love? Was it empathy or rationality? As Andrews writes, “The outcome of a discussion is less important than the fact that a discussion was held and everyone participated in it.” Besides a few pathetic folk songs, badly written signs, cheeky assassination memes they mostly took away a feeling of unity. It was, like Stalin’s Soviet Union army parades, a display of the delivery systems they’ll use to enforce loyalty in the future.
For organizers who know they’re not going to get rid of POTUS 45/ 47 anytime soon, there was the added confidence that this base will fall obediently in line when the nomenklatura call them to do their bidding— the same way they did on lockdowns, vaccines and pussy hats.
The problem for the Left’s leaders after all the Charlie Kirk references and Pete Seeger nostalgia is that the delivery system is still struggling to find a new wedge weapon to slow down Trump. (He’s still polling in the high 40s approval with pollsters who correctly called 2024.) All the Congressional shutdowns, Epstein references and Putin references that worked before are now failing.
“CNN: This shutdown is a different world for Trump than the 2018-19 shutdown. He’s in a much better spot. Here is his Shutdown Trump Net Approval
Blame Trump for Shutdown:
2019: yes 61%
2025: no 48%
Worse, support for critical issues such as trans is falling. Canadian political scientist Andrew Kaufman shocked progressives with polling showing that trans identification is in free-fall among the young the past five years. So is nonbinary identity. (Pretty soon only their demented parents will buy the grift.)
As well, Congressional district adjustments could give the GOP as many as 20 new seats in the midterm. Hence the broad hints at violent civil unrest from the more excited paraders this weekend. And the disingenuous claims of how peaceful the Left was on the weekend. In short it was No Kings. No New Ideas.
While America roils in the dynamics of a Woke retreat, Kaufman points out that Canada remains entirely in the thrall of the feminized morality introduced by Justin Trudeau’s election ten years ago this month in 2015. “Liberals: Stop importing US politics into Canada. Also Liberals: Hey look, the U.S is holding a ‘No Kings’ protest. Let do it too.”
The image of the hip, sexually ambiguous Trudeau has been followed by the feminized Mark Carney with his trans child. The symbolism is no accident. The Canadian Left’s rock/ paper/ scissors emotion now trumps irrationality. Canadians questioning dysphoria or promoting traditional male roles is now punishable by firing or banishment from social media. Emotional blackmail is a delivery system for Canada’s left. But it only goes one way. If you act like a traditionsl man publicly (see: Danielle Smith) your female cloak of supremacy loses its superpowers.
While the U.S. Left struggles the political delivery system Canada is, by contrast, armed to the teeth with live feminist ammo aimed at Pierre Poilievre. Somehow the meek bureaucrat from Ottawa is painted as mini-Trump by the heavy hitters of the Left. The past week saw the titans of the keyboards twist anti PP comments from a former Stephen Harper aide into an attack from the former PM. It took hours before Harper’s office quashed the implications of Polievre hate, too late to expunge the scars.
Elbows Up aficiandos took their shots, too: “Here’s a sample: @PierrePoilievre has desecrated the memory of my father and insulted every officer who has served in the RCMP. This cannot be forgiven or forgotten.” This after Poilievre asked why it was not an issue that a fired Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson Raybould, was not allowed to ask why Skippy didn’t want the RCMP to do their job. This was 14 times she was told to stand down on issues over Trudeau’s donors.
To forestall any rejection of Woke, Carney’s strategy is to turn Canada in the direction of ultra-liberal Europe and away from Trumpland. But the logistics of a crumbling economy and separation on several fronts in Canada may take the decision out of his hands.
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.
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